CHAPTER III 

 Athletics and Sports 



There are few influences more valuable than 

 those of our usual school sports and athletics — 

 when they are managed with care and judgment. 

 They organize the native "play" spirit of the 

 child, and play is of the very greatest import in 

 the moral, mental, and physical development of 

 the girl and the boy. And by play I mean the 

 kind of play characteristic of children in the dif- 

 ferent stages of their development, and not the 

 kinds of play sometimes forced upon them by 

 ignorant or unthinking adults for the avowed 

 reason that the children will be benefited thereby. 



A very good example is dancing. All children 

 like to dance, and_many dances have almost 

 spontaneously sprung up among children — 

 individual, primitive dances, such as can be found 

 among the street children in our large cities. 

 I do not mean the ordinary, dancing-school 

 "round" or "contact" dance at all, with its 

 artificial environment and manner, its unvaried 

 movement, and baneful psychic influence. I 

 mean the more free and open dance of the "folk" 

 variety, where the movements are varied and 



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