EDUCATION OF THE BODY . [To the. Editor of TILE
SPECTATOR.] Sys; I read with interest the article On the above subject in your issue of. February 15th. The writer's: description of. what is being-done. in.the schools is most lucid, and his plea for a constructive policy of physical education most forceful.
-But I much .regret one statement contained in the article., " In the new Senior Schools," writes the author, " more time might usefully be given to the subject, particularly for those children who are not likely to - benefit greatly from the purely academic side of education." (The italics are mine.)
It is exactly this kind of statement which has in the past been used to buttress the case of the reactionary headmaster who agrees that while the dull boy may be spared for physical training, the bright and promising boy must not waste his time.. If physical training is a preparation for the bearing of certain stresses in school and after-school life, then any. increase in the stress of application to academic subjects must entail a concomitant provision against btleakdown. It is exactly the bright and intelligent scholar who needs amplified physical training ; and, as a visit to a . secondary school will prove, it is exactly that type of boy who is robbed of it.
It may be inconvenient to find in our hyper-academic system a place for this extra physical training, in which case the right course is to alter the system but not to abrogate the clairri to-extra physical training.—Yours faithfully,
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