Abstract
This paper compares the ways in which Nomad discourses on the need to educate the human body were adopted and adapted with the development of physical education as a school subject in France and Argentina between 1880 and 1940. The historyof physical education during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries shows that many educational systems were created for educatingthe human body [1] as a special subject. The similarities between different countries in terms of the institutional context in whichphysical education was promoted, the scientific arguments that justified the need for physical education and the design of similarbodily practices aimed at educating the human body, support the claims made in neo-institutional theories about “world institutionalization of education” [2].