482 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 743 



This goes on with increasing freedom. 

 He learns to handle hammers; to cut with 

 a knife; to throw and catch and strike; 

 to explore and hunt; to run and climb. 



At the age of twelve the second great 

 change takes place in his evolution. He 

 finds that he is part of a community and 

 begins to take interest in games involving 

 organization. He becomes one of a gang 

 or team, and this involves cooperation, 

 self-sacrifice and discipline— qualities that 

 he docs not recognize before this stage. 



A band of savages who have organized 

 to fight under a chief instead of every man 

 by his own hand have arrived at the same 

 stage of evolution as Anglo-Saxon boys of 

 twelve to fourteen, as has been so well 

 pointed out by Gulick. 



A rational system of physical instruc- 

 tion must follow this evolution if it is to 

 be hygienic or successful, and this was 

 done with preeminent success by Froebel 

 in the kindergarten, where the games and 

 exercises are designed to imitate the 

 hopping of birds, the flying of bees, the 

 circling arms of the wind-mill — objects 

 familiar to the child and appealing to his 

 awakening imagination. 



With his increasing age the child is pro- 

 moted to the lower grades of the public 

 school where space becomes valuable and 

 his freedom is curtailed by the limitations 

 of the school room. The normal occupa- 

 tion of a child is play, but school life 

 means periods of fixed posture and the 

 first application of the hand of discipline 

 to prepare him for community life. 



Corrective exercises to overcome the evil 

 tendencies of prolonged sitting when 

 writing and reading must now be intro- 

 duced, and the time for free play is cur- 

 tailed. 



The well-rounded course would contain 

 these corrective exercises given at frequent 

 intervals throughout the day; class exer- 

 cises and marching for discipline ; and the 



plays and games that children of that age 

 have always played, modified in some cases 

 to fit the limitations of time and space im- 

 posed by the school hours and the play 

 ground. 



At about sixteen there is a break in the 

 youth's education. Most children finish 

 their formal studies and go into their life's 

 work. A few go on to college; but the 

 freshman class of a college is also made up 

 of young men recruited from the farm, 

 the shop, the office, the factory and the 

 night school, presenting all the mental and 

 moral defects of these widely varying oc- 

 cupations. Many of them have uncor- 

 rected eye defects ; round or crooked backs ; 

 narrow, flat chests and flabby muscles. 

 The play instinct may have been crushed 

 out by the hard grinding life of the fac- 

 tory, or office, and they may have lost the 

 knowledge and desire to play. They are 

 old before their time. In contrast to those 

 are the undisciplined and self-sufficient 

 athletic men, who do not take kindly to 

 the discipline of college life, considering 

 it as an unnecessary evil to be avoided as 

 much as possible. 



A careful physical examination should 

 precede any attempt to provide physical 

 instruction for college students. 



This examination should include data on 

 family history; habits of life; health his- 

 tory, obtained by leading questions which 

 may be followed up if necessary; tests of 

 simple maximum effort in the movements 

 most frequently employed, extension of 

 the back and legs, flexion and extension of 

 the arms, the grasping power and lung 

 capacity, with a certain number of meas- 

 urements for purposes of comparison. 



The students may then be divided into 

 three classes: (1) Defective, (2) average 

 and (3) athletes. 



Defectives need personal advice and in- 

 dividual prescription to correct flat foot, 

 uneven shoulders, constipation, hernia, 



