Sec. 6 provided for the establishment of this department of education in all normal schools or schools of methods hereafter devoted to the training of teachers under the state. Sec. 7 placed a penalty of $25 upon any responsible officer who failed to carry out the requirements of the law.

The advance of public sentiment in the Ohio general assembly on the subject of physical education was remarkable. The bill was received with favor in some directions not expected, particularly by members from rural districts. We hope to have the Nippert bill introduced at the coming session of the Ohio general assembly.

One pertinent, practical question arose among several members of the general assembly who were experienced educators, viz.: In case such a law is enacted, are there sufficient educated specialists to supply the demand? To this we readily responded: "Such demand will soon create the needed supply."

We are aware that some have objected to compulsory legislation until there is at hand a sufficient number of specialists to supply the needed demand. Thirty can readily meet the requirements at institutes in eighty-eight Ohio counties during the institute period in case the law is secured. When the field is fully established, many experienced educators will be ready to enter normal schools to prepare for this service.

I am well aware that here today are some who, having spent years in preparation and in gaining experience, will not appreciate the plan of ten yearly lessons for teachers who are wholly without previous physical discipline. To this I reply: We do not wait until the state is flooded with experienced grammarians and arithmeticians before sending teachers to the district school. The fact is, teachers are employed too many times who are barely able to secure certificates in the primary branches. If this seems a necessity in mental work, we think it is possible to accomplish something in physical education under similar circumstances, since it is the best that can be done.

All depends upon giving inexperienced teachers the best instructors our various training schools of physical education can produce. After only ten lessons of the kind referred to, even the untutored girl will be able to go to the schoolroom for the first time, and before a term closes change, in many instances, the physical trend of rural students of unfortunate physical habits. To know how to stand, sit, walk, and breathe properly, with some of the simplest exercises for various parts of the body, may give to the country boy or girl new conceptions of what physical efficiency means, and of its bearing upon success in life.

The department of physical education under the Woman's Christian Temperance Union indorses no special system to the exclusion of others. Foundation principles are advocated upon which all systems build.

In the work of securing laws in the states we earnestly ask the co-operation of all physical educators. To you, as specialists, we must

largely look for support in an effort which requires influence from the educational field.

One efficient law will open the way for similar work in other states and give great impetus to normal schools, upon which we must depend for educated specialists.

THE ETHICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF PHYSICAL TRAINING

HANS BALLIN, SUPERVISOR OF PHYSICAL TRAINING, LITTLE ROCK, ARK.

"Physical training" is the term broadly applied to that part of the science of education which deals with man physically. The popular belief that bodily exercises influence only the physical man, his blood, muscles, and sinews, has been proved fallacious by the researches of physiology and psychology. These sciences have shown beyond a doubt that any exercise, or movement of the body, is a direct or indirect action of the mind also.

If this educational truth were thoroly understood, we should encounter fewer mistakes in teaching. What Pestalozzi surmised, Froebel felt, and Herbart endeavored to expound, modern sciences have made perfectly clear all knowledge comes thru our senses. To train these, to make them recipients of all impressions, and to fit the channels of intercourse between mind and body for easy and prompt action is the object of physical training.

From this exalted standpoint, physical training takes an indispensable place in the school curriculum of every schoolroom in the land. It is as important in rural districts as in the most populated parts of our large cities.

A heritage of evils that man was piously wont to submit to has been removed by sanitary measures, the benefits of which are hardly realized. The oriental view of the relationship of soul and body which found its climax in the acts of the flagellants is in contradiction to evolutionary thought. Instead of looking for morals in affliction, we today strive for morality thru health. If it is a moral obligation for the individual to care for his body and make and keep it healthy, it is the same for society wherever the care of individuals becomes its duty, as in the public school.

In ancient Hellas the vying to form the human body beautiful was as much an ethical endeavor of the individual as it was a matter of state. Human beauty of form was recognized and admired as the highest type in all nature. Thru the ceaseless practice of gymnastics the Hellenes not only achieved the most beautiful bodies, but reached a more exalted position in art than has ever been attained by any other race.

Hand in hand with the achievement in this ethical field, the Hellenes manifested their intellectual superiority. Posterity has perverted the Grecian conception of mind and body.

There are many sayings, and still more acts, which once led to the belief that to subdue the flesh was to sanctify the spirit, and also that man should not take pride in the appearance of his body. "Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourself likewise with the same mind, for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin." While, on the one hand, the Grecian youth took pride in his healthy skin of red hue, which characterized him as a civilized man as distinguished from the "barbarian" of white skin, on the other hand, the hermit saint exposed his filthy and wounded body to the burning sun and gnawing vermin for the glorification of God. To eradicate this conception of our duty to our body is the ethical task of physical training. Let us become thoro believers in the truth that each man can do much to make himself healthier and more beautiful, and that it is a moral duty which he owes society, as it is the duty of society to foster beauty and health in its public schools.

After enumerating what he has observed of the activities of the child, Froebel asks and reasons:

But has this instinct for play no deeper significance ? Is it appointed by the Supreme Being merely to fill up time - merely to form an occasion for fruitless exercisemerely to end in itself? No! I see now that it is the constituted means for the unfolding of all the child's powers. It is through play that he learns the use of his limbs, of all his bodily organs, and with this use gains health and strength. Through play he comes to know the external world, the physical qualities of the objects which surround him, their motion, action and reaction upon each other, and the relation of these phenomena to himself; a knowledge which forms the basis of that which will be his permanent stock for life. Through play, involving associateship and combined action, he begins to recognize moral relations, to feel that he cannot live for himself alone, that he is a member of a community, whose rights he must acknowledge if his own are to be acknowledged. In and through play, moreover, he learns to contrive means for securing his ends; to invent, construct, discover, investigate; to bring by imagination the remote near; and, further, to translate the language of facts into the language of words; to learn the conventionalities of his mother-tongue. Play, then, I see, is the means by which the entire being of the child develops and grows into power, and therefore does not end in itself. Play is the natural, the appropriate business and occupation of the child left to his own resources. The child that does not play is not a perfect child. He wants something - sense, organ, limb, or generally what we imply by the term “health” - to make up our ideal of a child. The healthy child plays - plays continually-cannot but play.

It is upon this understanding of the nature of the child that Froebel founded the kindergarten. This institution should be the connecting link of the nursery and real life; should, by directing play, bring the child in contact with the realities of the world. Not stunting, but rather fostering, this natural inclination of the child, the kindergarten should enhance the opportunities for sense-impressions. Thus guided the child

should enter school. But the kindergarten is by no means within reach of all children of the land—the public school is. Does the public school realize the great philosopher's ideal? Does it lead the child thru play acts to investigate, invent, construct, and discover? There is no intermediate step from the cozy mother's lap to the hard school seat. Is it possible that our schools can ignore the child's nature so entirely with impunity when it expects the child of six years to behave in school as the young person of the high schools? This is done, however, and if this charge cannot be laid at the door of a goodly number of first primary teachers, there are so many of whom it can be said as to make it rather the rule than the exception.

Modern physiology has rendered immeasurable service to pedagogy by its investigation of the growth of the human body. The folly of the past in considering the child a storehouse into which knowledge and power could be introduced at any time, if only proper methods be used, has done much harm. The feat of Basedow, who taught his child to speak Latin at six years, is as monstrous as the endeavor to make athletes of children of the same age. Physiology has taught us that each period of a child's growth has its fixed time, that certain parts of the body have their time of greatest development, and that these are not varied materially except in abnormal children. Thus the muscles grow stronger from the center of the body to the extremity; the heart and lungs have their greatest development during the years of adolescence. Not only should we not interfere with the growth of these organs by overtaxing them during the period of their growth, but we must be cognizant of the fact of the close connection of the body and the brain. An undeveloped muscle of the finger has an undeveloped nerve-center in the brain, and vice versa. An organ of the body which at any period of growth develops faster needs a larger supply of nourishing material blood. The blood taken away for other work of exertion- mental work, for instance-interferes with the very important growth of these precious organs. It is approximately in the years of adolescence that these organs grow faster, all out of proportion with their former development, and these are also the years that the public schools are making heavy demands for the mental work of the children. Many earnest thinkers have attributed the apathy of girls between thirteen and sixteen years, and of boys between fourteen and eighteen years, for school at this time to the disregard of these physiological phenomena. Physical training must, if it wishes to lay any claim to rationality, consider them and so arrange the materials of its system as to help during the different periods of growth.

The different ages and the periods of growth of the child require such exercises as will be beneficial at that time of life. These movements must have physiological effects upon the whole body and upon its many parts, which are conducive to their perfect development. Training, then,

is not a hastening process, but a judicious treatment of the present forces in the child. Why should it be otherwise with the humany body than with all other living and growing creations? There never was a rose before the bud.

The physiological effects of exercise must be known; the requirements for each period of life must be known. Then enters a third factor of no less importance: the psychological effects of exercise must be known. With the knowledge of development of the muscles we are enabled to say if the mind is capable of executing a certain exercise. From the fact that the muscles of the fingers, for instance, are the last muscles that reach full growth, we can understand the difficulty which children before the age of seven years have in executing movements with them, and we can understand the cramped position of their fingers and hand when obliged to hold the pen or pencil in a prescribed way. From the time that the child lies in the cradle the education for co-operative work of mind and body begins.

"We begin to cultivate the co-ordinating activity from the very beginning of our existence. The small child gropes along in an uncertain way when it wishes to reach a desired object, and only after many attempts does it succeed. Gradually, however, it becomes familiar with this often-repeated co-ordinated motion, until at last it has thoroughly mastered it. The child has gradually learned to get hold of an object placed within its reach, if it wishes to do so, and has learned to do so quickly and safely, and without any waste of energy whatever. In a similar manner, after many wearisome attempts, the child learns to walk, run, jump, etc., in short, it brings a number of well-known forms of motion, with which the co-ordinating action of the will is familiar, to school with it; and on this foundation physical training bases its work."'

Physical training is not, as has often been represented, for utilitarian purposes. Its office is not to prepare the child for military service, the stage, and the like. It is simply one of those formative agencies in edu cation whose ultimate aim is consistent with that of education itself. Physical training should lay the groundwork upon which all higher and nobler activities of the mind and body may build. Thus it should give to the mind its strength to work with intensity; to the body the ability to train for the nobler arts. Manual training must have physical training for its preparatory school; drawing, painting, sculpture, singing, and stage-acting must find their groundwork in physical training.

Will the American people recognize the importance of physical training to its full extent by making it an indispensable part of youth education? Let us quote a few who love their country well. Frederick Treves says in his Physical Education:

The great elements in human progress afford, indeed, proper material for admiration. There is no one but would admit that the advantages of the civilized man over the savage are such as to make reasonable comparisons scarcely possible; but there follows upon this the question as to whether the so-called blessings of civilization represent an unmixed good. The intellectual victory has been great, but it has not been effected without cost. We have in our midst the inventor, the man of genius, the handicraftsman, but