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PHYSICAL EDUCATION

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PHYSICAL SCIENCE

vigorous play mostly out-of-doors. Not only muscular but mental and moral qualities of vital worth were developed by strenuous and varied action which the conditions of life made possible and necessary. While people to-day are not required to devote as much time or strength to hard manual labor as formerly, still strong, well-trained muscles, nerves and nerve-centers which work with the muscles and are developed by them are as essential now to healthful, successful living as they were. Normal development in children does not occur without the opportunity for and incentive to a variety of activities similar in principle to those which produced health and power in former generations.

It is within the scope of physical education, then, to indicate the kind and amount of motor-activity desirable for different ages and sexes and to provide in play, games, dancing, athletics and gymnastics the activities necessary to the best development of th© young and for the preservation of health and organic efficiency in adult life. It also is within the responsibility of physical education to know the biologic condition of the individual and to provide as far as is possible for the care and training made desirable by personal limitations. This personal care and training may include attention to special sense-organs, — teeth, throat and other parts of the body which may need treatment as well as corrective gymnastics for tendencies to weakness and deformity. The improved physical education of the future will provide for the logical correlation of large motor-activities with subjects and interests of the young in school and outside wherever such correlations are practicable. The material of the new physical education will be largely composed of play, dancing and games. The formal, set gymnastics which have been devised to counteract the unhygienic tendencies of modern life lack in essential educational values. They are formal, more or less artificial and lack the interest and spontaneity characteristic of more natural and satisfying forms of action. Formal gymnastics will be used as adjuncts to more spontaneous exercises, but they will be modified and reconstructed to meet the demands of modern physiology and pedagogy, and will occupy a relatively smaller space in the educational program of the future. Elements for play, dancing, and games will be supplied by historical material, folk-lore and modern adaptations of large movements which conditions may render desirable and possible.

The needs of the individual should always provide the first test of the fitness and value of these fundamental motor activities. Participation in class or group activities should not conflict with the interests of the individual pupil. Outdoor exercise is always more desirable than that which is taken in

a building. But in inclement weather suitable exercise in the gymnasium often is indispensable.

The kindergarten program should provide many large bodily movements through simple games, dramatic representations and dances. The finer activities of eye and finger should be carefully limited for young children. In the first and second elementary grades the larger exercises of the kindergarten may be continued with gradually increasing complexity. At this age apparatus for the easier climbing and swinging movements may be used; children of seven and eight may advantageously be given simple marching and drill formations. In the tliird and fourth grades dramatic representations are less suitable, games of skill are advantageous, marching and dancing are to be continued, squad formations and gymnastic drills with and without simple apparatus are in place. In the grammar grades there should be a continuation of the former exercises with a gradual increase in the difficulty and complexity of movement. Games and exercises requiring skill should have prominent place, and in the upper grammar grades group-games become more appropriate.

Through the period of rapid growth in early adolescence boys and girls should have abundant exercise in and out of doors, but as growth is often irregular and endurance very limited, much care should be taken in individual cases to prevent excessive strain and fatigue. At the beginning of rapid growth of girls, just preceding adolescence, boys and girls should be instructed in separate classes in physical training (excepting the simple exercises given in the class-room), and a definite differentiation should be made in the exercises for the two sexes in the gymnasium and on the playground.

The conscious interest of the pupil should always be engaged as fully as possible, and, before the high school at least, this interest should be related to the external purpose or advantage of the exercise rather than to the beneficial effect upon the body.

THOMAS D. WOOD,

Physical Sci'ence, a term used in contrast with natural science to denote all those sciences which deal especially with inanimate matter. This distinction between natural and physical sciences, which was explicitly suggested by Maxwell, would reserve natural science for the subjects considered under the heads of zoology, botany, paleontology, physiology, anatomy, psychology, anthropology and ethnology, all of which deal with life in some of its aspects; while among the physical sciences would be included physics, chemistry, mineralogy, geology and astronomy, etc. This classification would make biology the fundamental science of the natural group and physics the foundation of the physical group. Physical science