How to Get Strong and How to Stay So Part 4

CHAPTER VII.

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, surpa.s.ses 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 a.s.sure 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 cla.s.s 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 st.u.r.dy, and equal to the tremendous tasks which their great activity of mind led them willingly to a.s.sume, 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 pa.s.ses 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-cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s. A knowledge should be had of the exact kind and amount of work requisite for a cla.s.s 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.

CHAPTER VIII.

WHAT A GYMNASIUM MIGHT BE AND DO.

Few colleges of any pretension have not some sort of a gymnasium--indeed, hold it out to parents as one of the attractions.

There is a building, and it has apparatus in it. The former often costs twice as much as needs be; the latter may be well made, and well suited to its purpose, or may not--in fact, more frequently is not. Instead of having apparatus graded, so as to have some for the slim and weak, some for the stout and broad, too often one pair of parallel bars or one size of rowing-weight must suffice for all. Frequently the apparatus getting loose, or worn, or out of repair, remains so. The director is little more than a janitor, and is so regarded. In many instances he does so little as to render this opinion a just one. Imperfect ventilation, and in winter lack of proper warmth, help to make it unattractive. The newly-arrived Freshman is generally run down and thin from overwork in preparing himself for college. Many a time, when much work was telling on him, he consoled himself with the thought that in the college-gymnasium, with his fellow-students about him all eagerly at work, he would soon pick up the strength he had lost, and perhaps come to be, in time, as strong as this or that fellow, a few years his senior, the fame of whose athletic exploits was more than local.

As a rule, the American student is not very strong on entering college.

President Eliot, of Harvard, said, a few years ago, of a majority of those coming into that university, for instance, that they had "undeveloped muscles, a bad carriage, and an impaired digestion, without skill in out-of-door games, and unable to ride, row, swim, or shoot."

The student is usually inerect, and really needs "setting up" quite as much as the newly-arrived "pleb" at West Point. But does he get it? No.

If coming from good stock, stronger than the average, and it happens to be a year when there is much interest in athletics, the rowing-men or the base-ball or foot-ball fellows will be after him. If they capture him, he will get plenty of work--more than enough--but in one single rut. If he knows something of the allurements of these sports, and desires to steer clear of them and be a reading man, still not to neglect his body, he is at a loss how to go to work. He finds a house full of apparatus, and does not know how to use it. He sees the boating and ball men hard at it, but on their hobbies, and looks about for something else to do. He finds no other cla.s.s of fellows working with any vim, save those eager to show well as gymnasts. He falls in with these, takes nearly as much work the first day as they do, which is ten times too much for him, quite out of condition as he is. He becomes sore all over for two or three days, has no special ambition, after all, to be a gymnast, and, ten to one, throws up the whole business disgusted.

In the warmer months even the oarsmen and ball-players work out-of-doors, and, except a little brush by the new-comers during the first month or so, he finds the place deserted. At the start there was n.o.body to receive him, place him, and to encourage and invite him on. If naturally persistent, and he sticks to it awhile, he gropes about in a desultory way, now trying this and now that, until, neither increasing in size nor strength so fast as he had expected, he prefers to spend his spare hours in more attractive fields, and so drops the gymnasium, as many have done before him.

He has no more given it a fair trial than he would have his chemistry had he treated it in the same way. It is not his fault, for he knew no better. The whole method of bringing up most American boys does almost nothing to fit the average boy for even the simpler work of the gymnasium, let alone its more advanced steps. Often, in the university gymnasium, you will see fellows actually so weak in the arms that they can hardly get up in the parallel bars and rest their weight on their hands alone, much less go through them clear to the other end. It is a pretty suggestive commentary on the way these establishments are conducted that the men so lamentably deficient are by no means all from the new-comers, but often those who have nearly completed their course.

Yet here is a school which, rightly used, would do the average student more good, and would fit him better for his life's duties, than any other one branch in the whole curriculum.

But a few years since a son of a lawyer of national reputation, a highly gifted youth, made a most brilliant record at one of our best known colleges. All who knew him conceded him a distinguished future; and yet he was hardly well out of college when he took away his life.

Had there been a reasonable, sensible allowance of daily muscular work, had the overtaxed brain been let rest awhile, and vigor cultivated in other directions, the rank, the general average, might have been a trifle lower, but a most efficient man saved for a long and honorable life. And yet every college has men who are practically following this one's plan, overworking their brains, cutting off both ends of the night, forcing their mental pace, till even the casual observer sees that they cannot stand it long, and must break down before their real life's race is well begun. Now, however exceptional may be the talents such a man has, does not his course show either dense ignorance of how to take care of himself, or a lack of something which would be worth far more than brilliant talents--namely, common-sense?

Ought there not to be some department in a college designed to bring round mental development, where the authorities would step in and prevent this suicidal course? Oh, but there are such and such lectures on health. Yes, and in most instances you might as well try and teach a boy to write by merely talking to him, taking care all the time that he have no pen or pencil in his hand. It is a matter of surprise that college faculties are not more alive to the defects of the gymnasium conducted right under their very eyes. In every other branch they require a definite and specific progress during a given time, an ability to pa.s.s successfully periodical examinations which shall show that progress, and, if the pupil fails, it tells on his general standing, and is an element which determines whether he is to remain in college.

But in the gymnasium there is nothing of the sort, and in many cases the young man need not step into it once during the four years unless he likes. This state of things is partly accounted for by the fact that too many of the professors in our colleges do not know anything about a gymnasium, and what it can do for a man. Indeed, often, if from practical experience they were better up in this knowledge, it would beneficially affect the reputation of their college as a live inst.i.tution.

Nor is the director, with very few exceptions, the right sort of man for his place. Either the faculty have no conception what they do need here, or they effectually drive off the man they ought to have by starving him. Professors' salaries are generally small enough, but the director of the gymnasium seldom gets half so much as the poorest paid of his brother professors. Indeed, the latter do not regard him as an equal at all, and until they do so with good reason, there is little prospect of improvement in this direction. A doctor as ill up to his work as the average college gymnasium director would soon be without a patient.

Nor are the gymnasiums of our cities and towns much better off. New York city to-day, with one or two exceptions, is utterly without a gymnasium worthy of her. Two of the best known are situated, one far below the street level, the other directly over a stable, and formerly at least, if not still, a very redolent stable at that. There is generally plenty of apparatus, most of which is good enough; but the boy or man who comes to use it finds at once the same things wanting as does the student in the college gymnasium. If he can already raise a heavy dumb-bell over his head with his right hand, he may, and often does, go on increasing his power in this single direction, but in years actually gains little or no size or strength in his other arm, his legs, or any other part of his body. No one stops him, or even gives him an idea of the folly of his course; indeed, no one has the power to do so. Ordinarily the place is kept by a man simply to make a living. This secured, his ambition dies. He may be a boxer or an acrobat, or even a fair general gymnast. With one or two exceptions, we have yet to hear of an instance where the instructor has either devised a plan of cla.s.s exercise which has proved attractive, or in a given time has brought about a decided increase in size and strength to a majority of his pupils in a specific and needed direction.

College rowing and base-ball, while often unquestionably benefiting those who took part in them, have been found to work detrimentally, but in a way, as will be shown in a moment, certainly not expected by the public.

The colleges in this country which pay most attention to rowing are Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and Columbia. It is well known that in both Oxford and Cambridge universities the men who row are numbered by hundreds; that over twenty eight-oared crews alone, to say nothing of other cla.s.ses, are sometimes on the river at once, and that the problem for the "'Varsity"

captain is not, as here, to find eight men all fitted for places in the boat, but, out of many fit, to tell which to take. For years the American press has reported the performances of our student oarsmen even oftener and more fully than the English non-sporting papers those of their own oarsmen, so that they have filled a larger s.p.a.ce in the public eye. Men naturally thought that the interest among the students themselves was well-nigh universal, and many fathers expressed misgivings about sending sons to inst.i.tutions where the regular curriculum seemed a secondary matter, and performance in athletic contests the chief thing.

Yet, strange as it may seem, this whole idea is an egregious mistake. Most of the students do take some interest in these contests, but it goes no farther than talking somewhat about them, and viewing them when they come off, and perhaps betting the amount of their term-bills on them. The number who actually take part, either in the racing or the ball matches, or in trying for a chance in them, is ridiculously small. Dr. Sargent says that at Yale College, where he has been for six years instructor in physical culture, they actually do not exceed three per cent. of the whole number of students, while five per cent. will include every man in college who takes active work at the gymnasium, on the river, or the ball-field!

Any one familiar with American college athletics knows that the proportion of students who either play ball or row is probably, taking year and year together, about as great at Yale as anywhere in the country.

Surprising as these figures are, they prove conclusively that the present system of college athletics, so far as it a.s.sumes to benefit the students at large, or even a t.i.the of them, is an utter failure. Here, then, instead of the supposed advance in the general physical culture over that of years ago, there has been almost no advance. There are a few men who devote much time and attention to severe athletics, more than there is any need of, and become skilled and famous at them, but the great majority do little or nothing. Better ideas they doubtless have of what is and what is not creditable performance among the athletes, and also as to the progress that can be made in muscular development by direct and steady work. But that progress and that work they have no share in.

The very natural result follows, that the great majority of students, at graduation, average no better in size, strength, health, vigor, endurance, or stamina than those of a generation ago, or are any fitter to stand successfully the wear and tear of their life's work. Indeed, it is very doubtful if they are physically as well fitted for what is before them as the previous generation were, for in the latter case probably more came from farms and homes where much manual labor was necessary, while now a greater fraction are from the cities, or are the sons of parents whose occupation is mainly sedentary. Yet in that day gymnasiums at the colleges were almost unknown, while now they are general.

Does the gymnasium, then, pay? Yes, like a bath-tub--if used, and used sensibly; but if not, not. Then, as it is used so little, is it worth having?

At Harvard, for instance, to-day there is in process of erection, at great expense, a gymnasium which, when finished, will doubtless be the most costly building of the sort in this country, and very possibly the best appointed as well. But unless there is introduced some sensible and vigorous system of bringing the students regularly there, and working them while they are there, it will almost surely prove a failure, and accomplish little or no more good than did the old one. Now, suppose, first that this new inst.i.tution is to be carried on with no more vigor or good sense than its predecessors. Next, suppose that, opposite this expensive affair, on some neighboring field, there were built a commodious shed, costing perhaps one-tenth as much as its more pretentious rival, strongly framed, weather-tight, sensibly arranged, well lit, and comfortably warmed, large enough, too, to admit, at the edge of the main room, of a running track of say twenty laps to the mile.

In an L adjoining let there be ample and well-ventilated dressing-rooms, a locker for each student, and sufficient was.h.i.+ng facilities to meet the demand. Suppose the ordinary sorts of apparatus were there, but made with great care, and of the proportions skilled gymnasts have found most suitable. Let there be, besides, all newly-invented appliances which have proved valuable, such as the twenty or more Dr. Sargent has introduced, and any other good ones as well. Suppose, too, that heavy weights for lifting, and all heavy clubs and dumb-bells, were carefully excluded.