A Study of Scholastic Achievement and Physical Performance at Logan Junior High School

It has been a common statement by many educators that the athletic type is a person who has more brawn than brain. Many people assume that low physical ability usually accompanies superior mental ability and high physical ability usually accompanies inferior mental ability. Some members of the academic faculty object to relinquishing school time for athletic and sporting activities. They assume that the majority of the students involved are of the poorer academic type and cannot afford to miss school time for sporting and athletic activities. Research on previous studies support the contention that mental achievement and physical fitness are related and that there is a consistent tendency between strength and both academic achievement tests and grade point average. Intelligence is not monolithic; it is a composite of mental factors. For example, some students who excel in English find mathematics to be extremely difficult. There is no indication that the correlation between the mental trait that ensures success in English and the mental trait that ensures success in mathematics is greater than the correlation between physical ability and mental ability