Jacques de Rette, a cultural ferryman in physical education and sport?

Abstract

Jacques de Rette, known for the realization and national diffusion of the organization of physical education conceived as a Republic of Sports in the mid-1960s (Vivier, Loudcher 2006), first conducted this experiment in Calais. Before this period, through documents distributed by him, he experimented and developed an original physical education, linking a territorial particularity in Calais and the transformation of physical education. As early as 1959, through the EPS and Hyper magazines, Jacques de Rette submitted a series of articles explaining his proposal for discussion and enrichment. Later on, his proposals took the form of a mimeographed publication. The ideas and experiments presented went far beyond the principles of the time and encouraged the professionalisation of the teacher as an educator. Jacques de Rette advocated a renovation of the contents in the discipline where he innovated the culture, autonomy and responsibility of the pupil, as much new knowledge to be dispensed through the entrance of health. The distribution of a mimeographed document questioned the teachers of the discipline on a new role of educator at the beginning of the 1960s. The educational issues raised by the author thus raise the question of the place of teachers and the content of physical education at the time of the arrival in power of the Fifth Republic and of the whole sport. These documents and articles, little studied in the scientific literature (Landry 1988), will be analysed under the prism of cultural history in order to understand the processes of diffusion and acculturation. The history of Calais constitutes the starting point of a new dynamic of knowledge taught by Jacques de Rette, who then took on the role of cultural mediator. He hopes to spread his vision throughout the country.