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