FREE PLAY IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 815 



cise, because exercise was presented to them in the wrong way, 

 under an arid and difficult form. , 



Thus, our artificial methods of gymnastics are not favorable to 

 the physical education of children, because they are athletic and 

 not hygienic methods. They look especially for strong subjects 

 to make champions of them, when a good hygiene should look 

 for weak subjects to make strong ones of them. We must not 

 forget that the weak form the large majority of the children of 

 the present generation. Our children, so precocious now in their 

 mental development, are far behind in their bodily growth. 

 They need methods of education adapted to their weak physical 

 aptitudes. This is the capital fault of artificial and difficult 

 methods ; they do not bring exercise within the reach of children. 

 They are, properly speaking, methods of " selection." They sub- 

 ject children to a sort of trial, taking the strongest to make ath- 

 letes of them, but leaving the weakest, or the great majority, de- 

 livered to all the physical and moral woes that are derived from 

 want of exercise. 



It is obvious that difficult exercises can not be recreative. This 

 is still a great reproach to our gymnastics when we undertake to 

 apply it to children subjected to school work, and who have so 

 great need of amusement and distraction in the intervals between 

 their studies. It is not a relaxation that the brain of the child 

 can find in these methodical exercises, but one lesson more added 

 to so many others. Among the movements of our gymnastics, 

 those which are not hard enough to discourage the child by a 

 long apprenticeship are so destitute of interest that they repel by 

 their monotony. Such, for example, are the "floor" exercises. 

 Forty children ranged in three lines wait with erect body and 

 fixed eye the command of the master. Then all together, at his 

 order, turn the head, first to the right, then to the left. They 

 count aloud one, two, three ; and, while counting, extend their 

 arms, bend them, raise them, drop them ; then the legs have their 

 turn, and finally the trunk and loins. All these motions are very 

 hygienic ; but where is there a place for transport and joy in that 

 cold discipline that fixes the features and effaces the smile, in 

 those insipid gestures of which the slightest distraction would 

 destroy the grouping ? Yet, to the pupil, pleasure is not only a 

 moral satisfaction, it is a hygienic element indispensable to his 

 health. Under the influence of constraint and weariness the vital 

 functions languish, nutrition is retarded, the nervous centers grow 

 torpid. To impose on a child exercises in which he will find no 

 pleasure is more than a want of solicitude — it is an offense against 

 hygiene. 



All methods of physical education must reckon with the ne- 

 cessity of giving some kind of attraction to the movements, even 



