Use of games in securing motor control.
[Sidenote: Games]
Miss Winter, the efficient young principal of the city’s newest and
best-equipped grammar school, had realized keenly that her older pupils
were entering the “awkward age,” and she determined to eliminate that
uncomfortable time from her school so far as possible. She reasoned that
too much talking to the pupils about clumsiness and awkwardness would
merely make them self-conscious, and hence even more awkward to
coöperate with her and with each other in training to quiet and orderly
movements in the schoolroom. She realized that another effective aid in
this work would be the use of games requiring exact motor control. She
encouraged the use of basketball, croquet, tennis, games of skill of all
kinds. “House games” that could be adapted to the schoolroom were often
introduced into the regular routine as “rest periods,” after a
particularly fatiguing period of study. The children became very deft in
catching bean-bags, knocking down Indian clubs, hitting a mark, catching
balls, etc., and with each new accomplishment came a little better
control over the clumsy muscles, though, of course, the pupils were not
thinking much about this part of the program.
One part of Miss Winter’s plan for physical development was just now
causing her much perplexity, however. The big sanitary swimming tank in
the gymnasium was the chief pride of the school, and now the fond
mothers seemed leagued to prohibit its use. She had just received five
letters complaining that Johnnie, Bess, and Margaret had caught colds
from the frightful exposure of damp heads to the winter air. But that
was absurd. No gymnasium teacher could be more particular than hers
about dry heads after the water frolics. Colds that came from other
sources were being blamed on the innocent swimming tank by women who
believed it a new-fangled superfluity. Surely they did not understand
its significance in the lives and health and training of their children,
or they would coöperate instead of oppose!
Miss Winter reread the letters. Her impulse was to ignore and override
their protests. Didn’t the school board know better than the individual
parents the needs of the children at large? But—such a course would
generate antagonism between herself and the parents of her pupils, and
she wanted harmony. But how could she avoid the discord and induce the
mothers to applaud the innovation which they now resented? A solution
presented itself—a demonstration of the benefits of the tank! Rapidly
she sketched out ideas. Then she called a teachers’ meeting for the
afternoon and set her plan afoot. And the children were delighted with
its announcement next morning.
Three busy weeks passed, and then the day arrived for the swimming
exhibition. At two o’clock all the members of the school repaired to the
gymnasium and ranged themselves along the walls, smiling consciously up
at mother faces lining the balcony above. For the parents had responded
warmly to an attractive invitation and had come in a body, each bringing
a quarter to help pay for a wonderful new electrical apparatus for
drying hair. That precaution at least, if they must concede the tank,
was sensible and praise-worthy, they had said.
Such doings! Jimmy Cole exhibited his backward dive from the
spring-board; Frank Lane, his marvelous ability to swim under water; and
Alfreda Johnson floated serenely for five minutes while she smiled up at
her mother in the gallery. Then there was a model first swimming lesson,
and next somebody trod water, and after that a whole class joined in an
exciting game, amid so much splashing and laughing and rollicking fun
that the mothers felt young as they watched, and ceased to begrudge the
time filched from readin’, ’ritin’, and ’rithmetic and the dollars spent
on swimming suits.
And after two absorbing hours it was all over and the excellence of the
new drying instrument was proved.
The mothers were completely won over and proud of their young swimmers.
The big tank lacked no champions now, and Miss Winter as she looked upon
the radiant faces all about her, clasped her hands and was thankful that
a threatened opposition had melted into hearty approval.
Children are frequently blamed collectively for being a “hard school to
manage,” when the causes of ill-behavior might be found in schoolroom
conditions for which the children are not at all responsible.