Physical Education in Rural Schools

CARL L. SCHRADER, STATE SUPERVISOR OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION,

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BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

HEN we speak of physical education to people in rural communities, I think we find them less prepared to grasp its full meaning and more negatively set, than communities elsewhere. Co-operation is certainly needed in order to bring about any great changes in any particular field, and especially in the field of education. I believe that the reason for this antagonism (if we may call it that) on the part of the rural community is that they attach to the words "Physical Education" the one meaning only, which is health. They take it for granted that their living in the country has really made them naturally so healthy that they do not need any of this newfangled education called "Physical Education." Reference has been made to the draft of soldiers during the Great War. Did the rural boys show up so marvelously well as compared with the city lads? I dare Then there must be a reason. No. say It is simply a question of health in the largest sense. Health is an absolute accompaniment of what we term Physical Education. You cannot have the one without the other. It is one of the main results which we get in physical education, because in physical education the activities are designed (though not aimed directly) to induce a craving for sleep because of activity, a craving for food because of hunger created by this activity, and various other natural re-actions which might be mentioned as results of such activities. I do not mean to imply that the question of health should not have attention, for it is very significant indeed; but to seek this one thing out and call it Physical Education is a mistake, not only upon the part of those in rural communities, but upon the part of those who would like to inject into Physical Edu

cation something which to their mind dignifies it. We speak many times of the "hard-headed business man;" I wonder if we could not just as well apply that expression to the farmer when he absolutely shuts his mind to anything that is comparatively new. If the need for physical education in the country is not particularly along the line of health, where is it? Dr. Butterfield said that a lack of co-operation is the chief evil which has brought about the isolation of the rural population. Co-operationwhere is co-operation taught? or is it teachable? or do people in the city co-operate better? I am inclined to think they do, and it is because they have had experiences in co-operating. As yet that opportunity has not been very far-reaching, but there has been that opportunity which comes partly because of their living close together. Socializing being almost a daily procedure, there has been opportunity for co-operation. Co-operation is one of the things that is actually taught on the play field. Wars have been won on the play field, and the play field makes the successful business and national life. The problem of activity on the playground must be handled as an educational matter, and the playground must not be considered as a place for children to go to be kept out of mischief. It must not be thought of as a place to send boys who are bad, but as a place where actual lessons fitting for life are taught. All the games that we play, particularly in the older and upper grades, have that idea as one of their chief elements. We will take the games which we call "organized play," and there we have the real foundation for co-operation. Now, there are those who feel that this loyalty which we term "group loyalty" has its dangers. If this group loyalty is a loyalty which adheres only to the group in which the individual belongs, ignoring other groups, I think there might be ground for such a belief. I believe that in the loyalty which we now have in the labor organizations, a loyalty which is just loyalty within that group, failing to see that there are other groups to which they owe a certain degree of loyalty, is an example of this. Now, in our team play which we advocate, unless we study very carefully the habit of being loyal to somebody, we are establishing in the mind of the child, the boy

or the girl, a very limited loyalty; and I thoroughly believe that we have gone wrong in that way, that we have, perhaps, developed a loyalty among our teams that is extreme or aims at a wrong objective. In this connection I refer particularly to young people of the high school age. We have gone the limit and are on dangerous ground, inasmuch as we have developed a loyalty which is absolutely shut in to this small group; and when we add to that the other danger, which is that a boy may be taught to be loyal to a group, no matter whether its aims are right or wrong, or whether the means to attain them are straight or crooked, we are on exceedingly dangerous ground. The only reason that this has gone to such an extent is that we as educators have failed to appreciate the importance of this element and have not looked at it as a part of education, led by people in division, but as a thing foreign to it and something which would take care of itself. We have now come to the realization that it will not take care of itself; it must be considered and taken care of by the community, and by the educational staff of the community in particular.

Considering the question of a program of physical education in the rural school, we know that so far as equipment (meaning playground space) is concerned, the rural school is far better off than the city school, this being especially true in the season for out-ofdoor activity. It is true that during the inclement weather the country child is not given opportunity for activity which rightfully belongs to him. It is not a question of how many minutes the child shall rightfully spend in play and in general activity: that is a question of hours, and is not solved within the school itself. The kind of exercise which is important to the growing boy or girl is the kind of activity which calls for big muscle work. We do enough of the small muscle work; it is the big muscle work which we must have in mind when we speak of a program in physical education. Having the place in the country for exercise, with the exception, as we have mentioned, of the limitations for indoor work, perhaps the most serious difficulty which must be faced is the obtaining of a suitable teacher to handle that particular phase of education. And here again comes in the question of financing;

and here again comes the objection: Is it the duty of the taxpayer to pay for instruction or service of that nature? Only when we can get the rural communities to realize that this phase of education is as important as the teaching of any and all other subjects, and that it is even more important, if the children are to be taught to live as American citizens should live only then will it cease to be a serious problem to draw to a community a teacher thoroughly imbued with the significance of this phase of education, as she is imbued with the importance of all other phases of her work. Any teacher, rural or otherwise, who has lived with the child on the playground, who has been one of the children, so to speak, in the activities which mean recreation, has found that by doing so she has established a contact with that boy which formerly did not exist, which has taught her to know the boy or the girl; and we do not know the boy or the girl until we have made his or her acquaintance at work on the playfield. It is serious work that they perform on the playground.

Like all other phases of education, physical education is a subject which is divisible into its various parts according to the various ages of the children or youth concerned. A particular activity is suitable for a particular age. I do not mean that in dividing this work the division should be a pedantic one—that is, we should not say that a certain phase of the work should not be touched upon in the first grade or in the second grade. It is not that, but there are certain phases in physical education which belong properly in a specific place, at a specific age, and unless the work is taken up at the right age of the child, it is too late to take it up later. If we ask ourselves why we have not progressed along the line of physical education as other countries have done and as we should have done, the answer is that the real physical education has not had its beginning until the children have reached the high school. This situation cannot be remedied if physical education is started in the high school and is ignored in the previous years of the child's instruction. When we speak of physical illiteracy, or awkwardness, we should realize that this is caused by lack of opportunity for development along that line.

To be sure, in the city, where physical education is more or less an easy matter, where the child learns by seeing others, thereby easily rubbing off certain awkward corners and polishing up simply by socializing, he overcomes a degree, at least, of this physical illiteracy. It is just this lack of bringing together into groups, this lack of socializing, which makes the country boy and girl more physically illiterate than the city child, and the only opportunity there is to overcome this is by bringing to the child at the proper period the things that belong in that period. So we have in early childhood days our activities which mean largely imitation or dramatization. They mean action, stories where we play upon the imagination of the child; and there, in the movements which are not directed, the child gets the activities which we call big muscle activities. When a child is asked to make believe it is a tree and stand up and reach out, it gets the effect that the older child gets when we say, Do this! The child is taught to use its imagination by having its imagination kindled and guided by the teacher in sympathy with that type of education. Now, I have the greatest sympathy with the rural school teacher, because we have constantly added something new to her burden-this thing, that thing, and the other thing-which has to be done by that particular teacher, and I feel satisfied that in many instances the preparation on the part of the teachers along this line has not been sufficient. Sometimes the effort is stifled because of the community objecting to expenditures for this purpose, which means that the community has to be educated. I cannot conceive of a better way of bringing a country community to a realization of the significance of that type of work than by showing the community just what it means. Perhaps there is no better way of having a demonstration showing the value of physical education than by having a field day, and bringing to that festival the parents of the children and all the other people of the community and showing them how the sons and the daughters of the community are handling themselves, how they have their bodies under command. We must show in that demonstration that we have endeavored to teach a curriculum of games and athletic activities