The city gives slightly more than the usual amount of time to physical
training in the elementary schools. Except for first and second
grades, where a slightly larger amount is set aside for the purpose,
pupils are expected to receive one hour per week.
TABLE 13.--TIME GIVEN TO PHYSICAL TRAINING
======+=======================+========================
| Hours per year | Per cent of grade time
Grade +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
| Cleveland | 50 cities | Cleveland | 50 cities
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
1 | 63 | 46 | 8.7 | 5.4
2 | 54 | 41 | 6.2 | 4.5
3 | 38 | 40 | 4.4 | 4.5
4 | 38 | 40 | 4.3 | 4.2
5 | 38 | 38 | 4.3 | 4.0
6 | 38 | 40 | 4.3 | 4.2
7 | 38 | 38 | 4.3 | 3.7
8 | 38 | 39 | 4.3 | 4.0
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
Total | 345 | 322 | 5.0 | 4.2
------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------
Even though it is a little above the average amount of time, it is
nevertheless too little. A week consists of 168 hours. After deducting
12 hours a day for sleep, meals, etc., there remain 84 hours per week
to be used. In a state of nature this was largely used for physical
play. Under the artificial conditions of modern city life, the nature
of children is not changed. They still need huge amounts of active
physical play for wholesome development. Most of this they will get
away from the school, but as urban conditions take away proper
play opportunities, the loss in large degree has to be made good
by systematic community effort in establishing and maintaining
playgrounds and playrooms for 12 months in the year. The school and
its immediate environment is the logical place for this development.
The course of study lays out a series of obsolescent Swedish
gymnastics for each of the years. The work observed was mechanical,
perfunctory, and lacking in vitality. Sandwiched in between exhausting
intellectual drill, it has the value of giving a little relief and
rest. This is good, but it is not sufficiently positive to be called
physical training.
Very desirable improvements in the course are being advocated by the
directors and supervisors of the work. They are recommending, and
introducing where conditions will permit, the use of games, athletics,
folk dances, etc. The movements should be promoted by the city in
every possible way. At present the regular teachers as a rule have not
the necessary point of view and do not sufficiently value the work.
Special teachers and play leaders need to be employed. Material
facilities should be extended and improved. Some of the school grounds
are too small; the surfacing is not always well adapted to play;
often apparatus is not supplied; indoor playrooms are insufficient
in number, etc. These various things need to be supplied before the
physical training curriculum can be modernized.
In the high schools two periods of physical training per week in
academic and commercial schools, and three or four periods per week in
the technical schools, are prescribed for the first two years of the
course. In the last two years it is omitted from the program in all
but the High School of Commerce, where it is optional. With one or two
exceptions, the little given is mainly indoor gymnastics of a formal
sort owing to the general lack of sufficiently large athletic fields,
tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and other necessary facilities.
Special commendation must be accorded the home-room basis of
organizing the athletics of the technical high schools. Probably no
plan anywhere employed comes nearer to reaching the entire student
body in a vital way.
With the exceptions referred to, it seems that the city has not
sufficiently considered the indispensable need of huge amounts of
physical play on the part of adolescents as the basis of full and
life-long physical vitality. High school students represent the best
youth of the community. Their efficiency is certainly the greatest
single asset of the new generation. There are scores of other
expensive things that the city can better afford to neglect. The one
thing it can least afford to sacrifice on the altar of economy is the
vitality of its citizens of tomorrow.