THE SCHOOL THE TRUE PLACE FOR CHILDREN'S PHYSICAL CULTURE.
But, well adapted as our homes are in many ways for the proper care and
development of the body, there is one place which, in almost every
particular, surpasses them in this direction, if its advantages are
understood and fully appreciated, and that is the school. A father may so
arrange his time that a brief portion of it daily can be regularly
allotted to the physical improvement of the children, as John Stuart
Mill's father did his for his son's mental improvement, and with such
remarkable results. But most fathers, from never having formed the habit,
will be slow to learn it, and their time is already so taken up that it
will seem impossible to spare any. The mother, being more with the child,
feels its needs and lacks the more keenly, and would gladly deny herself
much could she assure her children ruddy health. But her day is also by no
means an idle one, and, just when she could best spare half an hour, it is
hardest to have them with her. Besides, in too many instances she is
herself far from strong, and needs some one to point out to her the way to
physical improvement more, even, than do her children.
There is a feeling that the child is sent to _school_ to be educated, and
that certain trained persons are paid to devote their time to that
education. As they are supposed to bring the children forward in certain
directions, this leads easily to the conclusion that they would be the
proper persons to care for other parts of that education as well. Nor is
this view so wide of the mark. The teacher has always a considerable number
of scholars. He can encourage the slower by the example of the quicker; he
can arouse the emulation, he can get work easily out of a number together,
where one or two would be hard to move. If he rightly understood his power;
if he knew how easy it is, by a little judicious daily work, to prevent or
remove incipient deformity, to strengthen the weak, to form in the pupil
the habit of sitting and standing erect, to add to the general strength, to
freshen the spirits, and do good in other ways, he would gladly give
whatever time daily would be necessary to the work, while, like most
persons who try to benefit others, he would find that he himself would gain
much by it as well. He has not a class of pupils stiffened by long years of
hard overwork of some muscles, and with others dormant and undeveloped.
The time when children are with him is almost the best time in their whole
lives to shape them as he chooses, not morally or mentally only, but
physically as well. The one shoulder, a little higher than its mate, will
not be half so hard to restore to place now as when confirmed in its
position by long years of a bad habit, which should never have been
tolerated a day. If the chest is weak and flat, or pigeon-breasted, now is
the time to remove the defect. Build up the arms to be strong and comely
now; accustom the chest and shoulders to their proper place, whatever their
owner is at; cover the back with full and shapely muscles; get the feet
used to the work which comes so easy and natural to them, once they are
trained aright; and the same boy who would have grown up half-built,
ungraceful, and far from strong, will now ripen into a manly, vigorous,
well-knit man, of sound mind and body, familiar with the possibilities of
that body, with what is the right use and what the abuse of it, and knowing
well how to keep it in that condition which shall enable him to accomplish
the best day's mental labor. And he will be far fitter to face the
privations, anxieties, and troubles of life in the most successful way.
Nor is the rule at all difficult to follow. Little by little the boy's mind
is led along, until the difficult problem in arithmetic seems no harder to
him than did the adding of two and two at first. For hundreds of years the
mental training of youth has been a matter of careful thought and study,
and no effort is spared to secure the best advantages of all the teaching
of the past. But with that past before him; with its many great men--not
always, to be sure, but so often--men whose bodies were sturdy, and equal
to the tremendous tasks which their great activity of mind led them
willingly to assume, he is encouraged and urged to keep his mind under
continual pressure for many hours daily, and every incentive is brought
to make the most of him in this direction. And yet that which would
have helped him in almost every step he took, which would have fitted
him to stand with ease what now in a few years so often breaks him
down, is totally ignored and left quite out of sight.
It is plainly no fault of his. The blame lies with the system which, for
generations together, has gone along so blindly. The life a farmer's son
leads makes him strong and hearty, and when his school-days are over his
work is of such a sort as to maintain all his vigor. The city lad who
plays on the brick sidewalks, born often of half-developed parents, has
no daily tasks which bring his muscles into vigorous play, strengthening
his digestion. Is there any possible reason why the city lad should be
favored physically like the country boy? The first has every
incentive for daily exercise, the latter none at all.
There ought to be no more delay in this matter of physical education in
the schools. Prompt and vigorous steps should be taken to acquaint every
school-teacher in this country with such exercises as would quickly
restore the misshapen, insure an erect carriage, encourage habits of
full breathing, and strengthen the entire trunk and every limb. If the
teachers have not the requisite knowledge now, let it at once be
acquired. They, of all persons, are expected to know how to acquire
knowledge, and to aid others in doing the same. As soon as they have
gained even partial knowledge of how to effect these things, let them
lose no time in imparting that knowledge to the pupil.
Physical education ought to be made compulsory in every school in this
land. Have it directly under the eye and guidance of the teacher, and
have that teacher know that, at the quarterly or semi-annual
examinations, reasonable progress will be expected in this department
just as certainly as in any other, and if he is not up to his work, that
some one who is will be put in his place. Then that progress will surely
come. It has come already, where the means have been understood and
used, as witness Maclaren abroad and Sargent here; and it brings such a
benefit to the pupil that no pains should be spared to insure it.
Scarcely a week passes but the press of our larger cities repeats the story
of some overworked man or woman breaking completely down with general
debility, the body not only a wreck, but too often the mind as well. Had
that body been early shaped, and hardened, and made vigorous--as, for
instance, Chief-justice Marshall's father looked to it that his great son's
was--and the habit formed of taking daily work, and of the right sort to
keep it so, and had the importance of that care been impressed on the
mind till it had fixed itself as firmly as the sense of decency or the
need of being clean, is it likely that the person would have allowed
himself to get so run down, or, if he did, to remain so?
The trouble usually is that the man does not know what to do to tone
himself up and keep himself equal to his tasks, or that it needs but a
little to effect this. He will spend money like water; he will travel
fast and far; he will do almost anything, but he knows no certain cure.
Is it not as important to have good health and strength as to figure or
write correctly, to read the AEneids or Homer, to pick up a smattering
of French or German? Who is the more likely, if his life be in-door
and sedentary, not to live half his days--he who has never learned
to build and strengthen his body, and keep it regulated and healthy,
and to know the value of that health, or he who has?
Is not work which will almost surely lengthen one's life, and increase his
usefulness, worth doing, especially when it takes but a very little while
daily to do it, and less yet when the habit commenced in childhood? Go
through our public and private schools, and see how few thoroughly
well-built boys and girls there are. Good points are not scarce, but how
small the proportion of the deep-chested, the well-made and robust, who
give good promise of making strong and healthy men and women! Fortunately
there is nothing really difficult in the work of strengthening the weak,
making the somewhat crooked straight, of symmetrizing the partially
developed; indeed, on the other hand, it is, when once understood,
simple, inexpensive, and easy. More than all this, it is a work which
the teacher will find that almost every scholar will take hold of, not,
as in many other branches, with reluctance, but with alacrity; and it
is always pleasant teaching those who are eager to learn.
But a little time each day is needed, never over half an hour of actual
work in-doors and an hour out-of-doors. Suppose a teacher has forty
pupils, and that thirty of them have either weak or indifferent chests.
Let her form a chest-class out of the thirty, and, for ten minutes a day,
let them practice exercises aimed exclusively to enlarge and develop the
chest. Some of such exercises will be pointed out on page 245. Begin very
gradually, so mildly that the weakest chest there shall have no ache or
pain from the exercise. For the first week do that same work, and that
much of it daily, and no more; but do it carefully, and do not miss a
stroke. Let this exercise come at the appointed hour, as certainly as any
other study. The second week make the work a trifle harder, or longer, or
both. In this, and in every exercise, insist, as far as possible, on an
erect carriage of the head and neck, and frequently point out their value.
Insist, further, on the pupil's always inhaling as large, and full, and
slow breaths as he can, seeing to it that every air-cell is brought into
vigorous play. Be careful that he or she does not, without your knowledge,
get hold of heavier apparatus, or try more difficult exercise in the same
direction, before the muscles are trained to take it. Overdoing is not
only useless, and sure to bring stiffness and aches, but it is in it that
any danger lies, never in light and simple work, adapted to the pupil's
present strength, and done under the teacher's eye, or in heavier work
after he has been trained gradually up to it. Now, when a fortnight
has gone by, use a little heavier weights; stay at the work without
weights a little longer, or draw the pulley-weight a few more strokes
daily, never forgetting to hold the head and neck erect.
Will dumb-bells and weight-boxes be necessary? Yes, or their
equivalents. If the former cannot be had, flat-irons or cobble-stones of
the same weight will do pretty well, and sand-bags can be used in the
weight-boxes when pear-shaped weights or packed-boxes are scarce. It is
a very small matter to supply a school with light dumb-bells, when they
cost but five cents a pound, and when, if necessary to retrench, a
quarter as many pairs of them as there are scholars will suffice. As
will be shown in a later chapter, there is a very wide variety of
exercises which could be practised in a school-room, which do not need
one cent's worth of apparatus. They simply need to be known, and then
faithfully practised, and most gratifying results are sure. In large
cities it would be well to have all the teachers instructed by a
competent master in the various exercises which they could so readily
teach in school, and which would prove so beneficial to the scholars.
London is already ahead of us in this direction. _Harper's Weekly_ of
February 8th, 1879, says: "The London School Board has appointed Miss
Lofving, at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars a year, as
superintendent of 'physical education' in the girls' schools."
A man like Dr. Sargent, of the Fifth Avenue Gymnasium, in New York, could
easily, in a few half-hour lessons, instruct the two thousand or more
teachers of the public schools of that city in the simpler, and yet very
valuable exercises. They would be then well qualified, in turn, to
instruct all the pupils, and to so grade their exercises as to adapt the
work to all. The ordinary gymnastic instructor, as years have shown, in
most of our gymnasiums, lets the pupil do about as he has a mind to. This
would be just about as effective as if the same rule was followed out in
mental training. But men like Sargent, strict disciplinarians, trained
physicians, and practical gymnasts as well, are far too scarce among us,
and his is a field which many of our young physicians might enter with
prospects of doing very great good in the community in which they live.
Let the school commissioners of each State look to this matter at once.
Let them insist that each teacher shall forthwith obtain the knowledge
requisite to properly instruct and bring forward every pupil in his or
her class. A knowledge should be had of the exact kind and amount of
work requisite for a class of a certain age. Let some suitable person or
persons be appointed in the cities to supervise this branch of
education, and see that the teachers are thoroughly qualified. Let the
scholar understand that his body can be trained exactly as well as his
mind, and that the sound health of both is intimately connected with
having it so trained. Let the school-hours be so arranged that ten
minutes in the middle of the morning session, and again in the
afternoon, shall be allotted to this branch. See what Maclaren[F] did
for the Radley and Magdalen boys in _one hour a week!_ see what
Sargent[G] did in our country for two hundred youth in two hours a week,
and with wooden dumb-bells, very light clubs, and a few pulley-weights
at that! Let people at once and forever get rid of the notion that this
exercise is a mere play-spell, or that it is only good to make athletes
or acrobats. It is as much a branch of education as any taught in our
schools to-day; and who will question that, if such uniform and splendid
progress was made in each school as was made in the cases just cited,
and in different instances, with at first such unpromising pupils, the
brief twenty minutes daily so spent would be as well spent and as
valuable to each pupil as any other twenty or thirty minutes of his day?
It should no more be allowed to interfere with their usual play than any
other branch is. It is a matter of progress and development, in a way
highly important to every scholar, and should be so treated, and the
child's play-hours should be in no way curtailed to accomplish it.
Superintendent Philbrick, of the Boston schools, is a man of long
experience in most matters connected with schools, their management, and
wants. This gentlemen has lately received, at the Paris Exposition, high
honor for his accomplishments in this direction. But are the schools of
Boston to-day taking the care they ought to and could so easily take to
make the children healthy and vigorous? Let Mr. Philbrick set about
introducing into every public school in that city such a system of
physical education as shall effect, for example, simply what Maclaren
effected, what Sargent effected and is now effecting, and no more. Let
him stick to his task as persistently, if need be, as Stanley stayed at
his infinitely harder one, until every boy or girl who is graduated from
a Boston school has a strong, shapely, and healthy body, and knows what
did much to make it so, and what will keep it so. Then the east wind may
blow over that good city, even until no gilding remains on the
State-house dome, and the formerly weak throats and lungs will not mind
it any more than they do the gentlest southern zephyr; Mr. Philbrick can
feel, when he looks over his life's work, that he has accomplished a
thing for the scholars of his charge, and introduced a public benefit,
which will redound to his credit as long as the city stands. There is no
more need of Americans having poor legs than Englishmen. There is no
more need of a boy's chest remaining a slim and half-built affair at the
Brimmer School, or the Boston Latin School, than there was at Radley.
When the good work is commenced, when other cities begin to send their
delegates and committees to watch methods, progress, and results, to
take steps to secure the same benefits for their own schools, then the
admirable example Boston has set in leading off in this direction will
be better understood. Then all will wonder why so simple, so sensible,
so effective a course, conducive to present and future health and
well-being, had not been thought of and been carried out long ago.
FOOTNOTES:
[F] See page 140.
[G] See pages 291, 292.