THE AIM OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION
"A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy
state in this world. He that has these two has little more to wish for,
and he that wants either of them will be but little the better for
anything else."[24] In these words Locke sets forth for all time what
should be aimed at in the physical education of the child, and in the
light of modern physiological psychology the position must be emphasised
anew that one of the essential conditions of sound intellectual and
moral vigour is sound physical health, and that body and mind are not
things apart, but that the health of the one ever conditions and is
conditioned by the health of the other.
Moreover, at the present time, it is all the more necessary to insist
upon the need for the systematic care of the physical culture of the
child, since in many cases the conditions under which the children of
the poor live in our great towns are most prejudicial to the full and
free development of the organs of the body. The narrow, overbuilt
streets in the poorer parts of our towns, the overcrowding of the people
in tenements, the unhygienic conditions under which the vast majority of
our very poor live and sleep, are all active forces in preventing the
full and free development of the physical powers of the child. Thus the
purely educational problem of how best to promote the physical health
and development of the child by the systematic exercises of the school
is involved in the much larger and more important social problem of how
to better the conditions under which the very poor live. The agencies of
the school can do little permanently to improve the physique of the
children until, concurrently with the school, society endeavours to
improve the social conditions under which the poorest of the population
of our great cities herd together. For a similar reason much of the
endeavour of the school to found and establish in the child's mind
interests of social worth is counteracted by the evil influence of its
home and social environment. If the physical, economic, and ethical
efficiency of the children of the slums is ever to be secured, if we are
ever to attain a permanent result, then concurrently with the creation
of new and higher social interests must go hand in hand changes in the
social environment of the child. Mere betterment of the physical
conditions under which our slum population live is of no avail unless at
the same time we have a corresponding change in the slum mind by the
rise and prevalence of a higher ideal of the physical and material
conditions under which their lives ought to be spent.
For experience has shown in many cases that the mere betterment of the
material conditions under which the poor live without any corresponding
change of ideals soon results in the re-creation of the miserable
conditions which formerly prevailed. On the other hand, the mere
instilling of new ideals into the minds of the rising generation will
effect little, if during the greater part of the school period and
altogether afterwards we leave the child to overcome the evil influences
of his environment as best he may. The ideals of the school are too
weak, too feebly established, to prevail against the ever present and
ever potent influences of the environment unless side by side with the
rise of the new ideals we at the same time endeavour to lessen, if we
cannot altogether remove, the obstacles which prevent their realisation
and prevalence. This problem of how to raise by education and by means
of the other social agencies at work the children of the slums to a
higher ideal of life and conduct and to secure their future social
efficiency is the most urgent problem of our day and generation. Mere
school reforms in physical and intellectual education will effect little
unless the other aspects of the problem are attacked at the same time.
Further, our school system, which requires that the child should
restrain his instinctive tendencies to action, and for certain hours
each day assume a more or less passive and cramped attitude, is also
prejudicial to the development and free play of the organs of the body
which have entrusted to them the discharge of certain functional
activities.
Hence the evil effects of the school itself must be removed or remedied
by some means having as their aim the increased functional activity of
the respiratory and circulatory systems of the body. And therefore the
aim of any system of physical exercises should be not merely increase of
bone and development of muscle but also the sustaining and improving of
the bodily health of the child by "expanding the lungs, quickening the
circulation, and shaking the viscera." This, as we shall see later, is
not the only aim of physical education. It may further aid in mental
growth and development, and be instrumental in the production of certain
mental and moral qualities of value both to the individual and to the
community.
Another cause operating in the school to prevent the full and free
development of the body is the method of much of the teaching which
prevails. A quite unnecessary strain is often put upon the nervous
system of the child, and as a consequence a lassitude of body results
which physical exercise not only does not tend to remove but actually
tends to increase. Methods of teaching which fail to arouse any inherent
interest in the attainment of an end of felt value to the child require
for the evoking and maintaining of his active attention the operation of
some powerful indirect interest, and if persisted in, such methods soon
result in the overworking and exhaustion of some one particular system
of nervous centres, and in the depletion through non-nutrition of other
centres. As a consequence, the child is unable to take any part in
physical exercises or in school games with profit to himself. He is
content to loaf and do as little as he can. The evil is further
intensified if there is also present under or improper nutrition of the
child.
Thus along with our schemes for the physical education of the child we
must endeavour to improve the methods of our teachers, to make them
understand that experiences acquired through the arousing of the direct
interest of the child are acquired at the least physiological cost, and
to make them realise under what conditions this direct interest can be
aroused and maintained. No one indeed wishes to make everything in the
school pleasant to the child, or to reduce self-effort to a minimum. But
effort and interest are not opposed terms. The effort which is evoked in
the realisation of an interest or end of felt value is the only kind of
effort which possesses any educational value. The effort which is called
forth in the finding and establishing of a system of means towards an
end which the child fails to see, and which, as a consequence, rouses no
direct interest in its attainment, is an effort which should for ever be
banished from the schoolroom. Such, _e.g._, is the effort evoked in the
mere cramming of empty lists of words or dates or facts. Little mental
good results from such a process, and the physiological cost is often
great.
Let us now consider the conditions necessary for sound physical health,
and inquire how far the school agencies can aid in the providing of
these conditions: they are mainly four in number. In the first place, in
order to secure the full growth and development of the bodily powers,
there is needed a sufficiency of food. But mere sufficiency is not
enough, the food must be varied in quality in order to meet the various
needs of the body, and must be prepared in such a way as to be readily
assimilated and rendered fit for the nutrition of both body and mind.
Manifestly the home ought to be the chief agent in providing for this
need. But, as we have seen in considering the problem of the feeding of
school children, the home in many cases is unable adequately to provide
for it, and, for a time at least, some method of public provision of
good and wholesome food for the children of the poor may be rendered
necessary. But much of the physical evil results from improper
nutrition; and here the school agencies may do a great deal in the
future by furthering the teaching of domestic science to the girls of
the working classes. Such teaching, however, if it is to be effective,
must be real and must take into account the actual conditions under
which their future lives are to be spent. At the present time much of
the teaching is valueless, through its neglect of the actual income and
resources of the working man's home.
The second condition necessary for bodily growth and development is a
sufficiency of pure air. This is necessary, since the oxygen of the air
is not only the active agent in the maintenance of life, but is also
requisite for the combustion of the foodstuffs conveyed into the body.
Much has been done within recent years in our schools to provide
well-ventilated classrooms and to instruct teachers how to keep the air
of the school pure. Here again the problem is to a large extent a social
one, involving the better housing of our great town population.
A third condition necessary for the physical development of the child is
sleep sufficient in quantity and good in quality. The weak, puny
children in arms to be seen in our crowded slums owe their condition, in
many cases, to the want of sound sleep, to the fact that they never are
allowed to rest, as much as to the under and improper feeding to which
they are subjected. As we shall see in the next chapter, much might be
done by the establishment of Free Kindergarten Schools in our
overcrowded districts to alleviate the lot and to better the education
of the very young children of the poor.
But in addition to the three conditions already named, which may be
classed together as the nutritive factors in bodily growth, there is a
fourth condition essential for all development, whether bodily or
mental--viz., exercise. For "development is produced by exercise of
function, use of faculty.... If we wish to develop the hand, we must
exercise the hand. If we wish to develop the body, we must exercise the
body. If we wish to develop the mind, we must exercise the mind. If we
wish to develop the whole human being, we must exercise the whole human
being."[25]
But any form of exercise will not do. The exercise which is given must
be given at the right time, must be in harmony with the nature of the
organ exercised, and must be proportioned to the strength of the organ,
if true development is to be attained.
In order to understand this in so far as it bears upon the aims which we
should set before us in the physical education of the child, it is
necessary that we should understand what modern physiological psychology
has to teach us of the nature of the nervous system.
If the reader will look back to an earlier chapter,[26] he will find
that education was defined as the process by which experiences are
acquired and organised in order that they may render the performance of
future action more efficient, or alternatively it is the process by
which systems of means are formed, organised, and established for the
attainment of various ends of felt value. The establishment of these
systems of means is only possible because in the human infant the
nervous system is relatively unformed at birth, is relatively plastic,
and so is capable of being organised in such and such a definite manner.
On the other hand, in many animals the nervous system of each is
definitely formed at birth; it is so organised that experience does
little to add to or aid in its further development. Now, while the
nervous system of the child at birth is not so definitely organised as
that of many animals, yet on the other hand it is not wholly plastic,
wholly unformed, so that, as many psychologists and educationalists once
believed, it can be moulded into any shape we please.
Rather, we have to conceive of the nervous system of the human infant as
made up of a series of systems at different degrees of development and
with varying degrees of organisation.[27] Some centres, as _e.g._ those
which have to do with the regulation of certain reflex and automatic
actions, start at once into full functional activity; others, as _e.g._
those which have to do with purely intellectual functions, are
relatively unformed and unorganised at birth, and become organised as
the result of conscious effort, as the result of an educational process,
as the result of acquiring, organising, and establishing experiences for
the attainment of ends of acquired value.
Between the systems at the lowest level and those at the highest we have
centres of varying degrees of organisation at birth. Moreover, these
centres of the middle level reach their full maturity at different
rates. The centres, _e.g._, which have to do with the co-ordination of
hand and eye and with the attainment of control over the limbs of the
body reach their full functional activity before, _e.g._, the centres
having control of the lips and speech. The centres, again, which have to
do with the co-ordination of the sensory material derived through the
particular senses are still longer in reaching their full functional
activity, while the higher intellectual centres may not reach their
highest power until well on in life. Hence, since education is the
process of acquiring experiences that shall modify future activity, it
can do little positively to aid the development of the lowest centres;
it can do more to modify the development of the middle centres; while
the highest centres of all are in great part organised as the result of
direct individual experience.
As regards the systems of the lowest level, what we have then to aim at
is to allow them free room for growth, and to correct as far as possible
faults due either to the imperfections of nature or to the unnatural
conditions under which the child lives. So long as these systems are
provided with nutrition and allowed freedom in performing their
functions, we are unaware of their existence. We, _e.g._, only become
aware that we possess a circulatory system or a respiratory or a
digestive system when the functional activity of these organs is
impeded. The opinion, therefore, that physical exercise has for its
chief aim the sustaining and improving of the bodily health is no doubt
true and correct, but it is not the only aim. On this view we are
considering only the lowest system of centres, and devising means by
which we may maintain and improve their functional activity. Moreover,
it is necessary to endeavour to secure the free development of these
centres and their unimpeded functional activity, because otherwise the
development of the higher centres is hindered, and the whole nervous
system rendered unstable and insecure.
But a wise system of physical education must take into account the fact
that a carefully selected and organised system of exercises can do much
for the development of the centres of the middle level which have to do
with the proper co-ordination of various bodily movements. These are
only partly organised at birth, and education--the acquiring and
organising of experiences--is necessary for their due organisation and
their adaptation as systems of means for the attainment of definite
ends. It is for this reason that the beginning of the formal education
of the child at too early an age is physiologically and psychologically
erroneous. In doing this we are neglecting the lower centres at the time
when by nature they are reaching their full functional activity, and
exercising the higher which are at an unripe stage of development.
Moreover, lower centres not exercised during the period when they are
attaining their full development never attain the same functional
development if exercised later. Hence the difficulty of acquiring a
manual dexterity later in life. Again, it is on this theory of lower and
higher centres maturing at different rates and attaining their full
functional activity at different times that we now base our education of
the mentally defective. We must organise the lower centres; we must
educate the mentally defective child to get control over these already
partially organised centres, before we begin to educate the higher and
less organised centres. Moreover, it is only in so far as we can secure
this end that we can stably build up and organise the higher centres of
the nervous system. Hence also such qualities as alertness in receiving
orders and promptness and accuracy in carrying them out are, at first,
best learned through the organising and training of the centres of the
middle level. What we really endeavour to do here is to organise and
establish systems of means for the attainment of definite ends, which
through their systematic organisation can be brought into action when
required promptly and quickly, and once aroused work themselves out with
a minimum of effort and with a low degree of attention, so that their
performance involves the least possible physiological cost.
From this the reader will understand that the aim of physical education
is the aim of all education, viz., to acquire and organise experiences
that will render future action more efficient.
Moreover, the early training of the centres of the middle level is
important for the after technical training of our workmen. The boy or
girl who has never been educated in early life to co-ordinate and carry
out bodily movements promptly and accurately is not likely to succeed in
after-life in any employment which requires the ready and exact
co-ordination of many movements for the attainment of a definite end.
The proper physical education of the child is therefore necessary for
the securing of the after economic efficiency of the individual, and it
can also by the development of certain mental and moral qualities be
made instrumental in the development of the ethically efficient person.
We must now briefly note two other educational agencies which may be
employed in the securing of the physical and mental efficiency of the
child--play and games. Psychologically, games stand midway between play
and work. In play we have an inherited system of means evoked into
activity and carried out to an end for the pure pleasure derived from
the activity itself. Such systems at first are imperfectly organised,
but through the experience derived the systems become more and better
adapted for the attainment of the ends which they are intended to
realise. In games, on the other hand, the activity is undertaken for an
end only partially connected with the means by which it is attained,
whilst in work the means may have no intrinsic connection with the end
desired. Hence the effort of a disagreeable nature which work often
evokes.
In animals fully equipped at birth by means of instinct for the
performance of actions the play-activity is altogether absent. Their
lives are wholly business-like. On the other hand, in the higher
animals, whose young have a period of infancy, play is nature's
instrument of education. By means of it the systems of the middle level
which form the larger part of the brain equipment of the higher animals
are gradually organised and fitted for the attainment of the ends which
in mature life they are intended to realise. Play is their education--is
the means by which nature works in order that experiences may be
acquired and organised that shall render future action more efficient.
Without this power, "the higher animals could not reach their full
development; the stimulus necessary for the growth of their bodies and
minds would be lacking."[28]
Play also is nature's instrument in the education of the young child.
The first and most important part of his education is obtained by this
means, and, on the basis thus laid, must all after-education be built.
Hence the importance in early life of allowing full freedom for the
manifestation of this activity. Hence also the very great importance of
securing that the children of the poor should be provided with the means
of realising the playful activities of their nature and of being
stimulated and encouraged to play. Hence one aim of the Kindergarten
School is to utilise the play-activity of the child in the development
of his body and mind.[29]
The third agency which we may employ in developing the physical powers
of the child is that of games. Games, however, are not merely useful as
means for the attainment of the physical development of the boy or girl;
they also may be made instrumental in the creation and fostering of
certain mental and moral qualities of the greatest after-value to the
community. No one acquainted with the important part which games perform
in the life of the Public School boy can doubt their great educational
value. By means of them the boy acquires experiences which in after-life
tend to make more efficient certain classes of actions essential for any
corporate or communal life. In the playing-fields he learns what it is
to be a member of a corporate body whose good and not the attainment of
his own private ends must be the first consideration. Through the medium
of the games of the school he may get to know the meaning of
self-sacrifice, of working with his fellows for a common end or purpose,
and of sinking his own individuality for the sake of his side. In
addition he learns the habits of ready obedience to superior knowledge
and ability; to submit to discipline; and to undergo fatigue for the
common good. If found worthy, he may learn how to command as well as to
obey, to think out means for the attainment of ends, and to know and
feel that the good name of the school rests upon his shoulders. These
and other qualities similar in character may be created and established
by means of the games of the school. And just as the utilising of the
play-instinct is nature's method of education in the fitting of the
young animal and the young child to adapt itself in the future to its
physical environment, so we may lay down that the games of the school
may be largely utilised as society's method of fitting the individual to
his after social environment, and in training him to understand the true
meaning and the real purport of corporate life.
On account, however, of the vast size of many of our Public Elementary
Schools and for other reasons, such as the limited playground
accommodation in many cases and the want of playing-fields, organised
games play but a small part in the physical and moral education of the
children attending such schools. But even here much more might be done
than is done at present by the teachers in the playground to encourage
the simpler playground games, and "to replace the disorganised rough and
tumble exercises which characterise the activities of so many of our
poorer population by some form of organised activity."[30] The aimless
parading of our streets by the sons and daughters of the working and
lower middle classes in their leisure time, the rough horseplay of the
youth of the lowest classes, are due in large measure to the fact that
during the school period they have not been habituated to take part with
their fellows in any form of organised activity, have never realised
what a corporate life means, and as a consequence are devoid of any
social interests.
One other question must be briefly considered, viz., How far should we
in the physical education of the youth keep in view the end of securing
the military efficiency of the nation? As Adam Smith pointed out, the
defence of any society against the violence and invasion of other
independent societies is the first duty of the sovereign. "An
industrious, and upon that account a wealthy nation is of all nations
the most likely to be attacked, and unless the State takes some measures
for the public defence, the natural habits of the people render them
altogether incapable of defending themselves."[31] He further asserts
that "even though the martial spirit of the people were of no use
towards the defence of the society, yet to prevent that sort of mental
mutilation, deformity, and wretchedness which cowardice necessarily
involves in it, from spreading themselves through the great body of the
people, it would still deserve the most serious attention of
Government."[32]
On these three grounds, then, that the defence of the country is the
first duty of every Government and therefore the first duty of every
citizen, that a nation engaged in commerce tends to render itself unfit
to defend itself unless means are devised to keep alive the patriotic
spirit, and that the keeping alive of the patriotic spirit is useful for
the cultivation of certain necessary social qualities, we may maintain
that the military efficiency of the youth should be included amongst the
aims of any national system of physical education. If the emphasis which
is laid upon the securing of the after military efficiency of the youth
of the nation occupies too prominent a place in the schemes of physical
education of some Continental countries, we on the other hand have
almost wholly neglected this aspect of the question. Every encouragement
therefore should be given to the formation of cadet and rifle corps in
the Secondary Schools of the country and in the Evening Continuation
Schools attended by the sons of the working classes. The time when
systematic instruction in military exercises and in the use of arms
shall form part of every youth's education has not yet arrived, but the
necessity for some such step looms already on the horizon.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Locke's _Thoughts on Education_.
[25] Bowen's Froebel (Great Educator Series), p. 48.
[26] Cf. chap. ii.
[27] Cf. MacDougall's _Physiological Psychology_ (Dent); _also_ Sir
James Crichton Browne's article on "Education and the Nervous System,"
in Cassell's _Book of Health_.
[28] _Principles of Heredity_, ibid. p. 242.
[29] Cf. next chapter.
[30] _Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers_ (English Board of
Education), chapter on Physical Education.
[31] Adam Smith, _Wealth of Nations_, p. 292.
[32] _Ibid._ p. 329.