6388 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914, 
and perfecting her processes. In education, man has neglected, even 
fought nature. 
This is shown most conspicuously in the traditional attitude toward 
play and the neglect of its physical, intellectual, and moral meaning. 
Considered without traditional bias, education holds no antagonism 
between play as the living out of hungers and instincts, and work as 
a developing capacity for efficient living in a highly complex, special- 
ized civilization. Such antagonism is medieval and frequently car- 
ries with it a survival of asceticism. The traditional school evolved 
its organization for the convenience of the teacher in transmitting 
information to a physically passive child. Play frequently inter- 
fered with the teacher’s program, hence was interpreted as a product 
of the imps. Does not this attitude still survive ? 
Because play has been despised, the programs for moral education 
are weak and bloodless. Morals and character in child life come out 
of living under influences that mold associated ideals and instinctive 
ways of acting; not out of drill in abstract precepts or in thinking 
about conduct disassociated from real conduct, however valuable the 
latter may be when supplementary to the laboratory method, which 
is directed play. Ethical instruction, to be dynamic, must be built. 
on a broad foundation of instincts tramed in play, under a leader 
who has the ethical aims and who wil fix the ethical ideal. This is 
a practical program for the masses. 
In the unnatural conflict between the mental and the physical this 
bias in educational thought is even more apparent. The traditional 
school has dealt with one narrow phase of child nature. It still 
recognizes organic and nervous education with begrudging stinginess 
and is attempting to bolster the traditional program with a “school 
hygiene” that, as a substitute, is utterly futile. This superficial and 
unscientific attitude is carried over from a phase of philosophical 
speculation that has no place in education. Physical education is 
discussed as though it were a subject of study in the curriculum, 
instead of one attitude in considering the whole educational process, 
of which it is the basic part. Physical education, as a special field of 
educational effort, arose because of the twist in educational thought 
created by the rise of asceticism. It persists because of a survival 
of asceticism. Because of this bias, the programs for physical educa- 
tion in most schools are pathetically superficial and the children show 
it. Vigorous, big muscle play is nature’s method of physical educa- 
tion and bulks large in the efficient program. 
So obsessed is our consciousness with the idea that education is 
something which comes from books, and so dominant has been the 
intellectual or cultural idea, that the masses of children are prevented 
from getting an educational experience. We insist that they shall 
master the tools of learning before they get any experience, and then 
