PHYSICAL TRAINING OF YOUNG CHILDREN. 451 



ive application of gymnastic exercise will yield as readily to a 

 distorting one. It is only wlien the frame lias become mature 

 and firmly set that such exercises can be applied without danger 

 and to advantage ; and that they are then useful when rightly 

 applied can not be gainsaid. 



These objections do not lie against floor exercises, or light 

 gymnastics, which are not performed with fixed apparatus. In 

 these, the child bends, stretches, and shifts his arms, legs, head, 

 and body in various directions, at the command of the teacher, in 

 measured rhythm. These motions are hygienically irreproachable. 

 They do not exact any very intense muscular effort, or vicious 

 attitude of the body, or abnormal use of the limbs. But even 

 when performed in concert they are not recreations, and this is an 

 extremely important matter with pupils whose brains are working 

 to excess. They become exceedingly monotonous, and the child 

 begins to perform them reluctantly, or learns to partly evade 

 them. Although he can hardly escape going through the visible 

 motion, he can easily avoid the muscular effort without which 

 it is ineffective. The evasion may, it is true, be corrected by 

 strict vigilance on the part of the teacher; but what becomes then 

 of the distraction, of the mental relaxation which the pupil ought 

 to find in his physical training ? To compel one to the perform- 

 ance of the motions is no way to make him love his exercise. 

 In this way the pupil finds in them, not a recreation, but a lesson 

 additional to the others — a new burden. Now, recreation is not 

 only a moral want of the child, but it is an important physical 

 need, in so far as it furnishes a remedy for the nervous weakness 

 and irritability that are induced by constant constraint, and helps 

 to prevent disturbance of the equilibrium of the vital functions. 

 Both of the gymnastic systems of physical education, therefore, 

 lack the important essentials of being hygienic and recreative. 



The prime fault of both these kinds of gymnastic exercise is 

 that they are artificial. They were introduced for the praise- 

 worthy purpose of suppljdng the want of natural exercise where 

 that could not be obtained ; but they have gone beyond this, and 

 the notion has arisen that a child can not take proper exercise 

 without going through an apprenticeship and being subjected to 

 a method : the more complicated the method, and the more diffi- 

 cult the apprenticeship, the better the results that are anticipated. 

 The elaborate gymnastics, which many regard as a kind of perfec- 

 tion of natural exercise, is, from the hygienic point of view, noth- 

 ing but a make-shift when we can get no better means, but a poor 

 substitute for the spontaneous gymnastics to which every child is 

 naturally inclined. This instinctive exercise would amply suffice 

 for the development of the body if the instinct was listened to 

 every time it speaks, but social and scholar conditions do not per- 



