CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Date Due m^-^ 011 * - PRINTED IN U. S. a « CAT. NO. 23233 Cornell University Library LB1137 .C98 Education through play, olin 3 1924 032 551 834 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032551834 EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON * CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY BY HENRY S. CURTIS FORMER SECRETARY OF THE PLAYGROUND ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA AND SUPERVISOR OF THE PLAYGROUNDS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA; AUTHOR OF "PLAY AND RECREATION IN THE OPEN COUNTRY"; LECTURER ON RECREA- TION AND OTHER SOCIAL TOPICS QofTV lf*t** Neto fgorft THE MACMILLAN COMPANY \ '9*5 All rights reserved Copyright, iqis, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1915. 1 Norbjouti JPttss J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. fl,V TO THE TWENTY MILLION SCHOOL CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES INTRODUCTION When the author began this work, it was with the intention of treating the entire subject in a single volume, but as the book began to take shape, it became evident that the material in hand was too manifold to be treated satisfactorily in a book of the size that would be appreciated by the reading public. Accordingly the subject of public recreation is scarcely touched upon here, as the author purposes to devote a volume to this subject a little later. The play of the little children in the home also has been omitted for the same reason. A volume on The Practical Conduct of Play, intended spe- cifically for the play workers, has already been prepared and is to follow this at once. The author has avoided the statistical method because play statistics can be had from the yearbook of the Play- ground and Recreation Association of America, and because in a field that is changing so rapidly as that of play, these can have value for a single year only. The author's interest in the play movement began in 1898 with a study of the activity of children which was a part of his thesis work in psychology at Clark University. The same summer he took a position as an assistant director of a playground in New York City under Superintendent Seth T. Stewart. From this position he was promoted to be a director and then a general director in charge of psychological and sociological investigations. The summer of 1902 was spent viii Introduction in investigating the playgrounds of Germany and England, and the intervening years have nearly all been given to some phase of the work. Every play system of any considerable size in this country has been visited, and the work has been organized in some fifteen different cities. Courses have been given in thirty or more different universities and normal schools. This book was begun six years ago. During the interven- ing time, it has been held in solution and presented at many different universities and teachers' institutes. It is written with the conviction that the play of school children is a school problem, that no other city department can deal with it satisfactorily, and that thus far the school has not done so. It is believed, also, that this play problem of the school children is the chief play problem of our cities. PREFACE In giving this book to the public, I wish to express my thanks to the Review of Reviews for the permission to repub- lish the article on Our New National Games, to the Bureau of Education for the privilege of republishing a part of my bulletin on the Reorganized School Playground, and to the Survey, The American City, Education, and The American Physical Education Review for permission to republish cer- tain paragraphs from articles of mine that have appeared in the pages of these magazines. I am also indebted for the photographs here presented to the following people and my thanks is herewith tendered to them: Supt. Edward Stitt, Mr. W. Francis Hyde, Supt. William Wirt, Dr. Edward Rumley, Dr. Dudley Sargent, Mrs. Henry Parsons, Mr. R. E. Hawley, Mr. H. K. Staples, and the Board of Education of New York. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Introduction vii CHAPTER I. What is Play ? . 1 The Theory of Surplus Energy ..... .2 Professor Groos's Theory — Play as a Method of Education . 3 G. Stanley Hall's Emphasis on the Recapitulation Theory 4 Why is Play Pleasant? 5 The Transmission of Games ..... 8 Age Periods in Play 9 Play and Recreation 12 The Play Spirit 12 Is Work a Blessing or a Curse ?..... 14 Play as a Preparation for Work ..... .15 Bibliography 16 II. Play as Physical Training 17 The Physical Period of Life . .... 18 Gymnastics and Physical Development 20 Work and Physical Development ..... 21 Development through Play ...... 22 Physical Development for Women 24 Endurance 26 Beauty of Form and Feature 28 Nervous Stability 29 The Development of Grace 31 A Goid Digestion 35 Sex Strength 37 Strong Heart and Lungs 38 The Establishment of Health 41 Xll Table of Contents The Prevention of Tuberculosis The Avoidance of Colds . Vital Resistance Summary . ... Bibliography III. Play and the Training of the Intellect What is the Object of Education ? . What Material is Educational? The Development of Energy Play Trains for Practical Life Training the Judgment Team Play, the Greatest of all Mental Stimuli Play and Mental Habit .... IV. Play and the Formation of Habits and Character Play and Idleness .... Child a Free Agent in His Play Why not Undirected Play ? Imitation ...... Play and the Expression of Primitive Impul Profanity and Obscenity . Play and the Development of the Will Sportsmanship . A Sense of Justice Play and Honesty Cigarettes . Drinking . Sex . Play Ideals Play is the Most Perfect Democracy Obedience to Law . Team Play and Loyalty . Play and Friendliness Bibliography V. Play in the German Schools Froebel .... The Curriculum of Play . Table of Contents Xlll VI. R PAGE The School Playgrounds. The Elementary Schools . . 87 The Gymnasia . 88 . 89 The University . . . . . 90 . 91 Time for Play . .... . 92 Walking Trips . ... . 93 Bibliography . 95 Play in the English Schools .... 97 . 97 Swimming ... ... . 98 School Football and Athletic Association 99 The Evening Play Centers . 100 Schools for the Aristocracy 100 The Preparatory School . ... 101 The Public Schools . 101 High Schools for Girls 108 Oxford and Cambridge . . Ill Bibliography ... ... . 112 VII. The School Playgrounds of American Cities 113 Necessity for School Playgrounds . . 113 Size of School Yard 114 Location of the School Building . . . . 119 Vines ... 121 The Surfacing of School Grounds . . 121 Grass . ... .... 122 Brick 123 Cement . . 124 Gravel and Broken Stone 124 Cinders 125 Satisfactory Surfacing 125 Keeping School Yards in Condition . . . 126 Fencing . . 127 Trees . 131 The Newer Uses of the School Yard 134 A Director of Physical Training ...... 135 A Teacher at Each Ground 135 xiv Table of Contents PAGE Lighting the School Playground "6 Planning the School Ground 13° Equipment for Games 137 Equipment for Athletics 137 Playground Apparatus 13° The Sand Bin 139 Seesaws ......••• 139 The Slide 140 Swings ..... ..... 141 The Giant Stride ... 143 The School Menagerie 143 Construction or Purchase of Equipment .... 144 Bibliography 146 VIII. Play at the Rural School 148 The Size of the School Grounds 149 Beautifying the Grounds 150 Games for the School Yard . 151 Indoor Baseball ... ... 152 Long Ball, or Long Town 152 Volley Ball . . . .... 153 Tennis . 153 Croquet 153 Tether Ball 154 Athletics 154 Play Equipment .... . . 155 Securing the Necessary Equipment . . . 155 Interschool Sports ...... . 156 School Excursions . ..... 157 Corn Clubs and Fairs ........ 158 The Play Festival . . . . 159 Who is to Organize the Play ? 160 The Consolidated School 160 The Schools of Villages and Towns 161 The Boy Scouts 162 The Camp Fire Girls 163 The Social Center . 163 The Rural Teacher as a Social Worker . . . 164 Bibliography 165 Table of Contents xv IX. The Playgrounds of Gary The Gary System The Jefferson School The Emerson School 166 166 167 168 The Froebel School 170 The Gary System is Very Successful 170 The Gary System Solves the Problem of Attendance . . 173 The Lighting of the Playgrounds 175 Need of More Organization at Gary 175 Baseball in the Curriculum 176 Maximum Efficiency at Minimum Cost ..... 177 Bibliography .......... 178 X Play in the Curriculum The Problem .... Play at the Municipal Playgrounds Play at the School Playgrounds Why Should Play be Required ? Training Must be Given by the Elementary School How Play May be Provided for All Children . Street and Alley Time The School Should Require and Teach and Sports . General Athletics Class Athletics . Relay Races Folk Dancing . Classroom Games Need of Better Games Volley Ball Indoor Baseball Tether Ball Basket Ball Baseball, Soccer Football, and Hockey Tennis Less Organized Games Rules for Games .... Skating . . ... Swimming the Common Games 179 179 179 181 182 183 185 187 190 192 194 195 195 196 196 199 202 205 205 206 207 207 207 208 208 XVI Table of Contents Excursions The Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls Rainy Days The Minimum Requirement of Ground Play Secures Real Efficiency . Who Shall Have Charge ? The Expense of Organizing Play . How Shall We Use Our Municipal Playgrounds ? The Gary Plan Better Suited to Other Cities than How May the Land be Obtained ? . Bibliography to Gary XI. Athletics in Secondary Schools and Colleges The Coaches . Sportsmanship and Honor The Glory of the School . Easing the Sex Strain The Grounds of High Schools Compulsory Athletics in High Schools Swimming and Gymnastics General Athletics . Baseball, Football, Hockey, and Skating Minimum Grounds for High Schools Playgrounds for Private Schools Physical Dangers ... . . Athletics in the American College and University Amateurism .... . Athletics in the University of Wisconsin Summary ........ Bibliography . XII. Recreation at Summer Schools The Training Needed by Summer Students . The Teacher Should Know Life and Things . Social Training .... The Teacher Should Develop Her Motor Side A Program of Recreation .... Games Folk Dancing Table of Contents xvn Story-telling .... General Singing Social Dancing Walking Trips Automobiling and Horseback Riding Swimming Special Excursions . , Entertainments at the School Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls A Week-end Camp A Chautauqua Program . The Moving Pictures The Theater . Lack of Time The Value of this Program to the Students Value of this Plan to the Summer School The Cooperation of the Different Departments A Director of Recreation .... Possible for All Schools XIII. The Summer Playgrounds Which School Yards Shall be Opened ? The Session ...... The Teachers The Janitor . Activities Pfograms Tournaments and Contests Team Games Attendance Discipline Bibliography XIV. The School Camp Existing Camps for Children The Summer School The School Camp . Work for the Boys Work for the Girls xviii Table of Contents PAGE CHAPTER ~ qn The Playtime " " q Educational Advantages The Teachers 292 Existing Experiments Other Uses of the Camp 293 294 Summary . Bibliography 294 XV. The School as a Social Center 295 Educational Activities. The School for Adults . . . 296 The Public Lecture 296 The School Exhibition and Theater 297 Moving Pictures 298 The Civic Center ... 303 Every Facility for Healthful Recreation Should be Open Then 306 Forms of Organization .... ... 309 The Socialized School Building 310 The Socialized Classroom 310 The Social Room 310 Pool, Billiards, and Bowling 311 The Dance Hall 312 The Restaurant 313 The Hartford Experiment 315 The School Dispensary 316 The Auditorium 316 The Branch Library 317 The Art Gallery 318 The School Museum 320 The Gymnasium and Swimming Pool 320 The Public Park 321 Advantages of Such a Social Center 321 A New Sort of Institution 324 Bibliography 324 XVI. The Training of Play Teachers 326 The Normal Course in Play 327 Courses Now Being Given 328 Comparison with Training Courses Abroad .... 330 Table of Contents xix Who Shall Have Charge of the Courses in the Normal Schools ? The Training Needed by Normal Students Play Advantages of Normal Schools for the Training of Play Teachers A Graduate Course for Physical Trainers . Bibliography Appendix Rules for Games . Cat and Mouse . Jacob and Rachel Slap Jack . Whip Tag Drop the Handkerchief Bull in the Ring Three Deep Pom-Pom-Pullaway Prisoners' Base Circle Catch Ball Dodge Ball Captain Ball Ring Toss . Duck on a Rock Indoor Baseball . Hockey Soccer Football . Volley Ball Newcomb . Tether Ball Tennis Folk Dance Equipment Athletics . Potato Race Relay Race The Shuttle Relay . EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY CHAPTER I WHAT IS PLAY? Pictured in the earliest records, standing on the far horizon of history, the children appear, and even as to-day they are play- ing, and much the same games. All down the ages, whether on the hilltop or in the city streets, in the sunlit meadow or in the slime of the gutter, everywhere the child and play have seemed to go together. We go out to a baseball game and see the boy step up to bat. He dashes around the bases and returns to the home plate exhausted. What has he gained by it? Appar- ently he is no richer or wiser, no better clothed or fed. We can but marvel at this useless waste of effort. If we ask ourselves what is play, and how it came to survive in the deadly struggle for existence, we are baffled. Play seems like a useless bit of poetry sadly strayed in the bitter prose of the actual, and we can but wonder in what sort of mail it has clad itself to keep its place in the battle field of the past ; that it was not devoured by the dinosaurus or some other re- lentless gorgon in that deadly struggle to which every useless characteristic of man or beast has succumbed. The only possible answer is that play must everywhere have served some great purpose, or it would not everywhere have survived. There are three theories that have at different times had a wide acceptance. 2 Education through Play The Theory of Surplus Energy. — The first explana- tion of play to receive general following was the theory ad- vanced almost simultaneously by Schiller and Spencer and which is known as the "Surplus Energy Theory." Spencer says that, if at any time the conditions of life become easier, so that an animal does not need to expend all its energy in getting a living, it uses this surplus in play, and that play is in general the expression of the energy left over after the ne- cessities of lif e have been satisfied. The engine that is drawing its train, between stations uses its power on the load; but when it is standing still, it soon begins to blow off steam. Play is this surplus for the boy. He has to find an escape for it, or the boiler will blow up. Excitability is the common characteristic of all nerve cells, and these are built up by the various stimuli which rain in from the periphery of the body and the various sense organs, until they reach a point of unstable equilibrium, when a dis- charge becomes necessary, like the action of an intermittent spring. The baby lies on his back and throws up his arms and kicks up his feet, and in these various ways expends the nervous energy which is being constantly developed in the motor areas of his brain. The bear and the elephant in the cage walk back and forth in endless round. They have nothing to gain by it. Their food is furnished to them, and all that they need to do is simply to eat and sleep. But the accumulating nervous energy demands expression and finds it in this way. The horse that has been kept in the stable during the winter often tries to run away when he is driven, or if turned loose in the pasture, he kicks up his heels and dashes wildly about and often jumps over the fence. College athletics in this country were largely pro- moted in the beginning to keep the students from tearing up What is Play? 3 the sidewalk and carrying off the gates of the houses and doing other similar feats. There can be no question but that surplus energy is a favorable condition to play. The animal or child that pos- sesses it will play longer and harder, will feel a more insistent craving for activity than the animal or child without it ; but no one to-day would accept the theory as an explanation. The child will play until he is exhausted and long after his surplus energy has been used up. The sick children in the hospitals still play upon their cots with whatever meager play material the hospital or their imaginations may provide. Surplus energy is a favorable condition of play, but it cannot explain the form of it. Why does not the boy go out and saw wood? Joseph Lee has said : " Yes, the boy plays on account of surplus energy in the same way that Raphael painted the Sistine Madonna because of surplus paint." Professor Groos's Theory, Play as a Method of Educa- tion. — The next theory to attract general attention was the theory that was advanced by Professor Groos of Gorlitz, Germany. He held that play was i_an mstin_cijhat^came into the world to serve the purpose of education. He says that the~a~riimal~does~ hot play because it is young, but it rather has a period of infancy in order that it may play, and in that play may be prepared for its life activities. In the lower forms of life the animal can do the first day of its ex- istence anything that the adult animal can do, and among these lower forms there is no play. As we go up the biological scale, the conditions become more and more complex, and it becomes impossible for the animal to do without training the things that life requires ; and whenever that occurs in the animal series, there play comes in as the method of education. He 4 Education Through Play gives many examples of this. The kitten springs upon flying leaves and rolling balls, and in that play it gets just the training that enables the adult cat to catch mice. The puppy runs after his fellow and seizes him by the back of the neck ; he wrestles with him, he fights with him, and in this play he gets the training which enables the adult dog to kill his game. In the same way the little girl plays with her doll. Who shall say that this play at keeping house and caring for her baby is not as good preparation for her future life as wife and mother as the lessons in the arithmetic or the geography? The Indian boy plays at tag and hide and seek, and so he learns to catch his game. He shoots and throws at a mark, and so he learns to kill it. His play is directly preparatory to the life that is before him. G. Stanley Hall's Emphasis on the Recapitulation Theory. — Professor Groos gave us the essential elements of the modern theory of play, but he apparently failed to realize the full significance of instinct or how any activity might become in- stinctive. Dr. Hall has supplemented the theory of Groos by saying that all games are remnants of the earlier activities of the race that have come down to us in a somewhat modified form. This is, in fact, only a statement of what " instinct " itself means, for all instincts are activities that have been practiced for unnumbered generations. There is great difference of opinion as to the origin of man and civilization. But we know beyond question that as we go back into history, we go beyond the age of steel to an age of bronze, and back of an age of bronze to an age of stone, and back of this age of stone to an age of wooden and bone implements ; that in the earliest records of man we find no steam engines or telephones, and the conditions of life were What is Play? 5 very simple. Apparently man has been alive upon the earth for a million years; but history gives us a record of only five or six thousand of these. During nine hundred ninety- nine thousandths of the human day, man has lived as a savage and has won his living mostly from the hunt and the chase. In this wild life of the savage there were certain activities that were almost universal. It was necessary to pursue and capture his game, to find it while it was in hiding, to strike it down with stick or stone or to shoot it with bow and arrow. Often he had to climb trees, to vault over ob- stacles, or to leap across brooks. At other times he himself was the hunted, and he had to flee or to hide from the pursuer or to defend himself with such means as lay at hand. These were universal activities of savage man throughout the long days of unrecorded history, and it is these same activities that survive in the play of the child. Dr. Holmes has said : " Man is an omnibus in whom all of his ancestors ride." Back of our inheritance from our fathers and mothers is our inheritance from our Anglo-Saxon fore- fathers, and back of this our inheritance from the Aryan race, and back of this an inheritance which may be called human, and perhaps we may find traces of instincts and impulses in the child which are older than humanity itself. Why is Play Pleasant ? — There is no explanation of the pleasure of play on the basis of modern conditions. Why does a boy like to throw or bat or catch a ball? Why does he enjoy hide and seek and other games of a similar type ? They mean nothing directly in modern life. But if we go back in the past, we find similar activities have a profound sig- nificance. Savage man was often on the verge of starvation. 6 Education Through Play Always the struggle between him and the savage beasts and savage men by whom he was surrounded was bitter and very fierce. To him the pursuit of game meant the satisfaction of hunger. It meant survival in the struggle for existence, and the idea 'of rapid pursuit became associated back in those pristine days with success in the struggle of life. Or perhaps the scale was reversed and he himself was the pursued, when rapid flight or skillful hiding away meant that he saved his life from the hand or claw of the pursuer, and that he left be- hind a progeny. These were the most pleasurable emotions, representing the highest values that life anywhere knows, and these values have survived in the joy of play, although the conditions have utterly changed and the causes from which the joy arose have ceased to be. Dr. Hall says : " The pleasure is always in direct proportion to the directness and force of the current of heredity." The nearer we reproduce the original conditions, the more intense is the pleasure. Take an example. It is more pleasant to throw at a mark than it is merely to throw aimlessly ; but it is far more pleasant to throw at a living mark, and especially one that is moving, than to throw at a dead one. Witness the various devices that are used at county fairs. One of the commonest of these is a darky who sticks his head through a screen as a target for a baseball. I always find it difficult myself to keep my hands off the baseball at such times, although I have no desire to injure the person in question. A few years ago I was walking along a country road, when a bluebird flew up and lit on a fence post. Thoughtlessly I picked up a stone from the wayside, threw, and killed the bird. Immediately I felt an intense joy springing up within me. The savage who occupies the lower story of our earthly What is Play? 7 tabernacle looked out of the window and shouted. He had secured a prize, he had proved his skill. But almost im- mediately, submerging the primitive savage, appeared the conscience of the civilized man and a deep regret for what I had done. The incident was sufficient to prove to me the practical reliability of the theory and to show the savage foundation on which our Twentieth Century civilization is built for every man. Besides the hunt and the chase, there were also in earliest times the crafts of the savage woman and the minor activities of the camp, the building of the wigwam, the setting of snares, the tanning of skins, the making of clothing, and the pottery and weaving of the women. These activities of savage man and woman form the constructive play of children at the present time. Nearly every child loves to hunt and fish, to build a camp fire and sit about it in the woods, to make snares and bows and arrows and pottery. Take almost any activity that primitive man or woman has ever pursued anywhere for a long time and one may be fairly sure that children also will love to do it. The activities that are represented in the play of children were all carried on under an environment of nature in which primitive man lived. The nervous system and all the senses were developed under such conditions, and they respond to them as they do to nothing else. For rest and play we fall back upon earlier activities, because these have become in- stinctive and are done with least effort, and we seek also the environment in which these activities were developed. The noise of factories and street cars and locomotives are wearying to the spirit, but the sound of brooks and rustling leaves and ocean's waves and the songs of birds are restful and soothing. 8 Education Through Play The sight of cities with their traffic and noise and smoke is sometimes stimulating ; but is never restful. But the view of the ocean or the plains from the mountain tops, or the dis- tant sunrise or sunset, or even a bed of flowers, where one can fall back from conscious activity upon pure sensation, and the colors of nature herself, are balm to the wearied mind. The Transmission of Games. — A few years ago when the Playground Association came before Congress to ask for an ap- propriation for the supervision of play for the city of Wash- ington, Representative Gaines arose and said : " Teach the children to play? You might as well talk about teaching the little lambs to skip and gambol on the hillsides." It does seem that if play were instinctive, it should not be necessary to teach children to play. It is not necessary to teach children to play; but the people who speak in that way are confusing play and games. Games are a highly organized form of play, and the individual child does not inherit the game of base- ball any more than he inherits the multiplication table. It took the human race a million years or so to invent the game, and no boy will play this or any other game unless he is taught. There have been two main methods whereby games have been passed on in the history of the world. One of these has been the teaching of the older children. Most of us prob- ably cannot remember to-day the games that we played at five or six ; we have forgotten the rhymes we sang ; we have forgotten how we counted out and counted in, how we deter- mined who was to be " it," and everything else in regard to these games ; and yet many of them have come down for a thousand years, all the time forgotten by the adult popula- tion, transmitted by the older children to the younger children. This transmission, however, requires that there shall be a What is Play? 9 common social inheritance in the community such as is not found in an American city which is made up of the mixed peoples of Europe. A second method has been by the teaching of the mothers. When Froebel invented the kindergarten, he did not think we should have an entirely new set of teachers, but that the mothers should play these games with the little children. But the mothers everywhere are ceasing to do it. When we have opened playgrounds in the great cities, the children have often come in and stood around the edges or sat down in the corners. When we have asked them why they did not play, they have said they did not know what to play ; and observation has often shown that they knew only three or four games and these often were of very little value. Probably play has reached the lowest ebb that it has ever reached in the history of the world in this country in the last fifty years. Nearly all of the conditions have been unfavor- able. But the greatest sinner against the spirit of play has been the school itself. Among all primitive peoples the child has no considerable occupation except play, and it is only within a hundred years or so that study has been the work of most children. We now require the child to go to school for five or six hours a day and often give him tasks to complete at home after his school hours are over. We have taken the time that in all previous ages was devoted to play and have devoted it to study. We have taken the energy out of which play developed and turned it into other channels, and in our great cities, we have built up the vacant places on which the children might play, until we have almost crowded it out of their lives. Age Periods in Play. — There have been many studies of children that have divided childhood into very narrow periods io Education Through Play of time, but there is only one universally accepted division, and that is the division which comes at puberty and marks the beginning of manhood and womanhood. There is a second division, however, which is pretty generally acknowl- edged, which comes at about the period of six, when the child enters school. These two crises divide childhood into three periods which are convenient in the study of play. The first period is the imitative stage of life. Long before science discovered that the child was actually a little monkey, people had called him one from his nearly universal imitation of everything he saw and heard. All the occupations of his seniors, all the things that are going on around him, these are lived over again on the little stage on which the child himself is the chief actor. Froebel took these common activ- ities and gave them an accompaniment of song in the crea- tion of the kindergarten, and in so doing he built upon the universal nature and tendency of childhood. In this first stage, before the child enters school, the elements of play themselves are interesting. The child loves to run and jump and climb and do the simplest things, which at this time have scarcely been organized into games. 'f> The second period, from about six to puberty, corresponds in general to the period of the elementary school. It is the stage which Joseph Lee has called the " Big Injun " stage, the time when the boy and the girl love individual competi- tion, of which tag might be taken as a universal example. In this period the child is too individualistic to organize his own games, and here is the great play problem. The little children are ofttimes content to play by themselves in games that require little or no leadership, and the children after puberty become more capable of organizing them- What is Play? n selves ; but leadership is the great need of the " Big Injun " period. The third period, which comes at about thirteen or fourteen, usually, represents in its first years a stage of development corresponding to the tribal life. It is the beginning of the team game, of the development of loyalty, and of those in- tenser forms of cooperation which come in baseball, foot- ball, and the like. These games may be played at an earlier period, but seldom then with a team spirit. Boys often spontaneously organize themselves into gangs and clubs at this time, and everything shows that there is a development of a new social spirit that comes in with the ripening func- tions of sex. When the matter of sex differences between boys and girls is discussed, there is nearly always some one who says : " But the boy and the girl have two parents, a father and a mother, and the inheritance of the girl is exactly the same as the inheritance of the boy." Unfortunately this argument proves too much, for it would require the girl to be exactly the same as the boy in body as well as in mind. Nearly all of our games have been derived from the activ- ities of savage man. It is to be anticipated, therefore, that they will be somewhat less interesting to girls than to boys. Girls are probably never as much interested in competitions as boys are. They do not take the same interest in running fast and jumping far. They always acquire the coordinations involved with greater labor and are less proficient in the end. A girl can learn to throw like a baseball pitcher, but she must practice more than her brother for the same skill. She can learn to bat like a professional baseball player, but always with much practice. She may become strong, but the 12 Education Through Play same practice will not produce the same strength for her as for her brother. We have no women Samsons, despite the fact that we have many schools for the physical training of women. The boys will play in the city streets in the midst of the traffic, if there is no better place, but conditions must be favorable to secure much vigorous play from girls. Play and Recreation. — There is a very common misun- derstanding of the play of children among adults which arises from their confusing it with recreation. Recreation is relief from toil. It is intended for the rest and rebuilding of wearied muscles and nerves and spirit. It may take any form, but it is always lacking in seriousness and usually has value only in re-creating the mind and body for the more seri- ous work of life. The play of the child does not correspond to the recreation of the adult, but to the work of the adult. Play is the most serious activity in which the child engages. The Play Spirit. — There is no real difference between work and play except in the spirit in which it is done. The play of the children was the work of our ancestors. It has been said that play is an activity that we carry on for its own sake without any ulterior aim. Play is its own reward. But the same is almost equally true of any good work. The lawyer, the doctor, the writer, the clergyman, who are suited to their callings, find no less pleasure in the work they do than they did as boys in baseball or fishing. A little girl plays with her doll, and the mother cares for the baby. If the doll can speak and say " mama," the little girl thinks it is a wonder- ful doll ; but the baby laughs and cries and every day takes on new abilities. It has generally been said that the mother is working when she is caring for her child. But the baby is the most successful piece of play apparatus that ever came What is Play? 13 from the hand of the Almighty. Go down on the East Side to Tompkins Square or any other of those crowded parks on a summer's afternoon. On nearly every bench is a woman, and in the arms of nearly every woman a baby. As you watch them for a time you come to see that the baby is bringing nearly all the joy and play that enters the lives of these women, and you realize that one reason for the large families of the East Side is the need of recreation for the mothers themselves. The little boy draws on the sidewalk, and Raphael paints a Sistine Madonna ; and Raphael finds no less joy in his work than does the boy in his play. The little boy builds his play- house in the yard, and Michael Angelo builds St. Peter's, and Angelo is playing no less than the boy. It has been said: " The value of any piece of work is the amount of play there is in it," and " all good work is done in the spirit of play." If a man were a savings bank, he might be rewarded in money for the work he does ; but so far as he is a spiritual being, he can be paid only in spiritual values, and no amount of money can reward him for a life that is not worth living or for work that is not worth doing. Most of the work of the world might as well be play as work, — it depends entirely on the spirit in which it is done. We all remember the story of Tom Sawyer and how he had the fence to paint. He told the boys there was nothing quite so delightful as painting a fence, and they brought him their tops and their jews'-harps and their jack- knives for the privilege of having a share in the painting. If, on the other hand, he had persuaded them there was nothing quite so disagreeable as painting a fence, he would have had to pay them as much to get them to do it as they were willing to pay him for the privilege. Perhaps the greatest service that play has to render life is to give it the play spirit 14 Education Through Play in which to do its work. The tragedy of child labor is that too often it kills the spirit of play itself. Is Work a Blessing or a Curse ? — From the original play- ground of the race, which was the Garden of Eden, man moves forward to the playground to come, where — " No one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame ; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in a separate star, Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of things as they are ! " Heaven is the place where we drop our vocation and take up our avocation, where each shall have the freedom to follow the leading of his own spirit and do the thing that his soul loves to do. The Bible says that for the sin of our first parents they were driven from the Garden, and the curse that was laid upon them was that " in the sweat of their brow they should eat bread." Ofttimes it is said that work is our greatest blessing, and ofttimes again it is our greatest curse; both of these statements are true. Work that has in it no play has always been a curse. Go to Manchester or Leeds, where for three generations men have worked in soul-consuming factories, and find that they have degenerated three inches in stature ; that moral conditions there are the worst in England ; that in every way men have shrunk to lower levels. The greatest tragedy of modern life, perhaps, is that so many men are employed in factories where from the beginning of the year to the end of the year they repeat a single monotonous mo- tion in which there is no interest. Work of this kind is deadly to all that is best in man, and it seems as though the division of labor and the enormous development of machines, which has furnished an abundance of the material things of life, have too often killed the spirit which should make life itself worth What is Play? 15 while. Perhaps the greatest problem that lies before the play movement to-day is to introduce play elements into modern industry that there may be left still the joy of accom- plishment for the worker. We must all feel, however, that the present stage of the factory which employs enormous numbers of unskilled men is only a stage in the process of machine development, which is to go on until all of these unskilled workers are re- placed by more complicated machines, which will in turn be tended by skilled mechanics. Edison says the time is coming when we shah put the wool into one end of the machine and the ready-made garment with the buttons all sewed on will come out at the other end. The Efficiency Movement also, which is furnishing an incentive to the right kind of effort, is doing much to add interest to the work of the factories. Play as a Preparation for Work. — Whenever a play move- ment is promoted for the first time in any small town or city, there are always a number who say that they do not believe in play for children and that the children ought to work instead. However, there is no work for the boys in the mod- ern city, as we all know, and only a very little for the girls ; and the question of whether work or play is the better for children is not a practical question, for the real question is always not whether the children shall work or whether they shall play, but whether they shall be idle or whether they shall .play. If we choose to examine into the relative value of work and play as a preparation for life, I think we shall find that work during the first years has not, in the main, so much of profit to offer. Certainly we know that child labor stultifies the child and that it checks growth, dwarfs the intellect, and shortens the working years. The farmer who mows a field or 1 6 Education Through Play plows a furrow, or the carpenter who builds a house, has a motive for his work, because he does these things to support his family or to buy an automobile or to secure some reward. But the child is normally supported in the home and gets the things that he requires directly. He has no normal motive for work as the adult has, and work does not appeal to him or stimulate the deeper layers of energy, as play may do. It has been said that if the children only do the pleasant things which are involved in play, they will not wish to do the unpleasant things in work. This is doubtless true. If chil- dren do only the pleasant things in play, they will probably want to do only the pleasant things in work. But no one can become an expert in such a game as baseball without persistent and ofttimes disagreeable practice. Play furnishes an ade- quate motive for this practice. BIBLIOGRAPHY Cabot, Richard C. : What Men Live By. Houghton Mifflin & Co. Froebel, F. W. A. : Education of 'Man. D. Appleton & Co. Mother Play. D. Appleton & Co. Groos, Karl: Play of Animals. D. Appleton & Co. Play of Man. D. Appleton & Co. Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. D. Appleton & Co. CHAPTER II PLAY AS PHYSICAL TRAINING When playgrounds first began to be discussed, the thought in the minds of most people was that the purpose was to keep the children off the streets. But as time has gone on, the ideals have become more and more definite. We now see that, while the playgrounds keep the children off the streets to a considerable extent, this is no more the purpose of the playgrounds than it is of the public schools, which do the same thing ; but is rather an incidental advantage, or by-product of organized play. The aims of the playground are, to-day, nearly as definite as the aims of the public school. I believe they are no whit less important. The first of these that we shall consider is physical development. But we must not think, on that account, that play is a physical activity. Play is the lif e and spirit of childhood, and exercise is only incidental to it. It is no more physical than it is emotional or mental or social. There seems to be a common feeling that physical training in America is in an unsatisfactory state at present. The first years of life, when motor coordinations are being acquired, and when the development of physical robustness is the paramount interest of nature, it is almost entirely neglected. The public playgrounds, which are reaching perhaps five or ten per cent, are offering the first public opportunity that has been given to the children of this period. Physical training c 17 1 8 Education Through Play has been practically confined to the high school and college period of life. It is not continued by the student, as a rule, after his schooldays are over. All the signs seem to indicate that this system will be less adequate to meet the needs of the future. Every year sees a reduction of the hours of labor in one or more states, sees various limitations put on the work of women, sees the age raised at which children may go to work in several states. The number of hours that are thus added to leisure each year make an enormous total. Every freeman has a right to leisure, because the man who has none is little better than a slave. Yet working people in the past have had almost no vacations nor free time except the leisure of unemployment, which is too much complicated with the thoughts of hungry wives and children to be enjoyable. The right to leisure is one of the basal principles in the plea for social justice that is now being generally preached and which has been embodied more or less in the platforms of the three great political parties in the recent campaign. The Physical Period of Life. — The child is born a little animal. His first interests and achievements are almost entirely physical. Never afterward is he estimated among his peers so largely by his prowess as he is in the years up to twelve or thirteen, and this, of course, means that never at any other time is physical prowess so much desired or so in- teresting. The little child spends nearly all of the energy that he develops in motor activity. Witness the ceaseless running back and forth of the three-year-old or the child of five. The motor areas of the brain are the first areas to be developed, the motor fibers are the first fibers to be medulated. Everything indicates that nature intended that the little Play as Physical Training 19 child should be active. In my own studies of the activity of children at Clark University, using American pedometers, I found that where the daily activity of the school children was only eight and five sixths miles, the activity of the chil- dren from three to six years of age was nine and two fifths miles, showing about a half a mile greater activity on the part of the little children. Again, while the average record of the school children was only eight and five sixths miles, their record on Saturday was ten and a half miles, showing again how much the school was repressing their normal activity. The little children who did not like to go to school usually gave as the reason, that they " had to sit still." Repeated tests showed that the little children less than six years old could not sit entirely still for more than thirty seconds ; that when they were required to sit still for a considerable time, they became restless and irritable. This restlessness is only the outward expression of the high nervous pressure that comes from motor energy unused. The association fibers in the child's brain are poorly developed. He has to use the energy of each motor area largely in its own particular muscles, a condition which can only mean that to avoid restlessness the small child must use all his muscles frequently. It is needless to say that this everywhere agrees with common experience. The chief time for physical training is during the first years of life. Almost the only method during this period is play. The children are too young to work and too young for formal gymnastics. Any satisfactory system of physical training must be one that reaches every child during the physical or first period of life, and it must furnish a form of exercise that will be con- tinued after childhood is over, so as to meet the need of exer- 20 Education Through Play cise and recreation for later years as well. There are three forms that may be considered. They are gymnastics, work, and play. Let us see how well each of these meets the funda- mental needs of physical training. Gymnastics and Physical Development. — School gymna- siums have multiplied rapidly the country over, but they probably still reach less than five per cent of the children. We have some calisthenics, but these are usually performed in such a listless manner that they are scarcely to be classed as physical exercise. All systems of gymnastics have been de- veloped for the purpose of military training. Their purpose is to create muscular strength. Gymnastics, thus far, have not met the physical needs of Americans and they probably never will. Gymnastics seem to be play to the German people, but they have never been play to us. I do not suppose that one per cent of us keeps up our gymnastics after our high school or college days are over. They are necessarily impractical here, because of the absence of public gymnasiums and gymnastic associations. This is a lack that may be remedied ; but while we continue to work as hard as we do at present, the exercise we take must be both exercise and recreation. Gymnastics are an unnatural form of exercise. Take the pulley weights, as an example. The motions involved have never been required in human history. They are uninter- esting and soon become a bore. They accomplish nothing. They are physical exercise, but man has never before had physical exercise. He has sought to accomplish certain re- sults, and both physical and mental exercise have been inciden- tal to accomplishment. Gymnastics are mostly indoors, where the air is not the best, and so far as they are done at word of Play as Physical Training 21 command, the strain of voluntary attention is nearly or quite as great as that of the classroom. Many of the muscular movements involved are of the accessory kind. Work and Physical Development. — When I was a boy, I got most of the physical strength that I have to-day on the woodpile. But we have no woodpile in the modern city. In preceding ages children, before their growth was completed, have always helped in many of the activities of their parents. To-day the factory system and our doctrine and laws concern- ing child labor prohibit the work of children. But even so far as they participate in the occupations that are available and in child labor, so called, these do not mean physical de- velopment. A boy will never become an athlete from stand- ing at a loom in a cotton factory or from shucking oysters, or delivering packages, or tying bundles, or picking berries. On the farm, too, there has come an almost complete change. The wheat is cut and bound with the binder ; the hay is cut with the mower, raked and loaded with the loader, and unloaded with the hay fork. Nearly all the work is done by horses and a machine which the boy rides. There has not been so great a change in the work of the home, but a girl cannot develop a perfect physique through washing dishes, making beds, and sweeping. These activities are about the worst ex- ercise that there is in the whole calendar, are indoors, and tend to fill the lungs with dust. Schmidt says that the death rate from tuberculosis is twenty-five per cent higher among the girls in the public schools of Germany than it is among the boys. This is just what we should expect. The work of the girls in the home, while it is less in amount, is of much the same kind as it always was, but the girls for the last fifty years have been getting less and less of outdoor exercise, 22 Education Through Play and it is this that has always been the main source of their strength. While there is little physical development to be found in the tasks that are available for city children, up to about four- teen, almost none of them are doing anything. Go where you will about our cities and you will find that, outside of a few boys who are carrying papers or shining shoes, the boys are loafing, not working. Development through Play. — The only means there is left whereby a child may become strong, is through his play. But if he is to get his physical development in this way, he must have vigorous play ; he cannot do it at ping-pong and marbles. The children who are playing tag and similar games on the street, and roller skating, will develop their legs, and through them their hearts and lungs to a considerable extent, but there is little in street play, except fighting, to develop the muscles of the arms and shoulders and back and chest. At the time I took charge of the playgrounds of Washing- ton, I introduced the test of the Public School Athletic League of New York. Not a boy was able to pass the test at the beginning ; but at the end of four summers of organized play five hundred boys passed the three tests and more than two thousand boys were able to pass one or two of them. We found the records in all our field events went up every year. These children had been playing all their lives before, but, left to themselves, they were as likely to spin tops as to play base- ball, and it took a long time at tops for them to become strong. If play is to develop children, there must be spaces large enough to run in, organization to make the play interest- ing, and games that will use the trunk and arms as well as the legs. Play as Physical Training 23 Training should give the person such strength as will enable him to do with ease the physical tasks required of him. To one who has not thought much on the subject, this is likely to appear as the paramount aim in physical training, and in a sense it is. Every person should have the strength to do with ease his daily work, but our daily work is requiring of us less and less of physical strength. In the days of Greece and Rome, when men fought with broadsword and spear and nearly every man was a soldier, survival depended on physical prowess, as it did, no less, in the savage ages that preceded and in the days of chiv- alry that followed. With the coming of the great industrial development physical strength was needed for industrial efficiency. But in the age of steam and electricity, when the work of the world is rapidly slipping through man's fingers into the maw of machines, strength is becoming less and less important. Old processes of manufacture are becoming more complicated, eliminating the work of men who had relayed the product in its course, and new inventions are coming in constantly to take over old manual arts. The time is surely corning, and coming soon, when, in the doing of nearly all physical tasks, man's work will consist almost entirely in the direction of machines. It costs ten to a hundred times as much to remove a yard of earth with a hand shovel as it does with a steam shovel. There, are, however, other considerations which make strength desirable. We may not need it in our daily tasks, but there may be an accident, a fire, or a runaway ; a drunken person or a bully may assault us. We mean to keep the peace, but we like to feel that we are prepared, that we have built the battleships, even if we are not going to war, that we have 24 Education Through Play the strength to protect a woman or a child if need be. It gives us a sense of security and dignity which we cannot afford to forego and which the weakling cannot well possess. How- ever, the professional man, and more and more all men, need physical strength and endurance only in their leisure time and in activities that may be roughly classified as play. It is in tennis and golf and mountain climbing and swiniming and walking that the modern professional man, and we are all becoming professional men, needs his physical strength. As the future man is to use his strength thus, it seems reasonable that he should acquire the type of strength that will enable him to carry on these activities without undue fatigue. This would seem to mean that it should be strength developed through play. Physical Development for Women. — While the reasons for men's acquiring physical strength have largely disappeared, the reasons for women's seeking a good physical development are stronger now than they ever were before. The work of the men has fallen more and more to machines, but this has not thus far been the case with the work of the home. It is not strenuous physical exercise, but it is not much dif- ferent from what it was fifty years ago ; and more and more women are going from the home to compete with men in out- side employment. This may not be heavy work, but it is al- most always hard upon the nervous system. Health and a good physique are probably a greater asset to a woman in the matrimonial market than a college education or a small fortune. A very large number of married women are not able to be companions to their husbands, because they have not the physical strength to play tennis or golf, or climb mountains or swim or go on walks. They become nervous Play as Physical Training 25 and irritable toward the end of the day from nervous and physical exhaustion. But it is as a prospective mother that women are in most need of physical training and development. There is an in- creasing sterility or one-child fertility among American women. Childbirth is apparently becoming more difficult and more feared. Our birth rate among American born, certainly among our college graduates, is declining. It may be that the mother who has developed herself well through physical exercise will conceive a child no better formed than one who has not thus developed herself. But there is every reason to suppose that a robust mother will bear more and better nourished babies with less effort than an underdeveloped woman will, and that she will be better able to furnish to these children an abundant supply of healthy nourishment. This we have come to see is the prime requirement in the prevention of infant mortality. The greatest problem of physical training of the present is undoubtedly the training of girls. In contrast to this need, women and girls are receiving only a small fraction of the physical training that men and boys are getting. From the first, the girl is handicapped by her clothes. Even when she is little, she is dressed more elaborately than the boy, often in white, and told that she must keep her clothes clean, instruction which is a practical prohibition against play. Her clothes are always unsuitable, for with the white underwear in which she is usually attired, she cannot climb on a fence or into a tree. She cannot run where she may fall down, she cannot even sit on the doorstep and be modest. When puberty comes, and she puts on her long dress, she is still more impeded, and if she is the happy 26 Education Through Play possessor of a hobble shirt, and high heels she might almost as well be put up in a museum, so far as physical achievements are concerned. The result is that the girl comes up to the age of puberty with practically the same weight and only three quarters of the lung capacity of the boy of the same age. Her blood is not in as good condition. At puberty the girl should have a larger lung capacity than the boy, because the next few years are going to be years of physical strain, when her activity will be restricted both by her long dress and her monthly periods. Endurance. — Strength signifies the ability to make a powerful contraction of a muscle ; endurance, the ability to continue this contraction, perhaps in a much lower degree for a long time. The strength of a muscular movement depends largely on the strength of the nervous impulse, as is shown in the great increase of strength in times of excitement and de- lirium. I may raise a pin or a hundred pounds on my hand, but the impulse that was sufficient to raise the pin would not have stirred the hundred pounds. Strength also consists largely in the number of strands in the muscle itself and their condition. The endurance of a muscle depends on three factors: the condition of the muscle fibers, the elimination of the waste products of exercise, and the constant nervous discharge. It is found in many laboratory experiments that if the waste products can be washed out of a fatigued muscle, the muscle will continue to contract as before. It is also found that the muscle that can no more be contracted volun- tarily responds almost as before to the electrical stimulus. These two sets of experiments seem to show that muscular exhaustion comes largely from the clogging of the system with the waste products of exercise and from the exhaustion of Play as Physical Training 27 the motor nerve center, which controls the movement. A simple corollary from these facts is that endurance is de- pendent on the rapid elimination of waste and on the strength of the cortical center that controls the movement. Modern life does not require great physical strength, but it does not seem to require much less endurance than formerly. We do not need to lift great weights or to wield heavy imple- ments, but we do need to keep busy and to be quick at our work. The physical exhaustion that comes at the end of the day does not come from a lack of strength, but from a lack of endurance. It is not because we have had to make any great exertion at any time, but because many movements have had to be made again and again all day. All endurance tests, so far as I know, indicate that the endurance of a muscle is not in direct relation to its strength, if we can properly speak of the strength of a muscle, as the strength of con- traction is always the resultant of the two factors of nervous impulse and muscular response. There are many indications that it bears a close relation to the strength of its cortical center and the relation of that center to the other areas of the brain, or, in psychical terms, on interest. An old hunter says : " I can walk twenty-five miles with a gun on my back ; I can't walk five without one." His speech is good psychology and good physiology. We all know that we can keep on at an interesting task almost endlessly, where drudgery exhausts us at once. A boy can spend three times the energy in play without being weary that it would be possible for him to spend on work. On the physiological side this means that endurance is dependent on the supply of nervous energy; on the psy- chological side, on interest. An activity that keeps the brain aroused apparently continues to generate the nervous energy 28 Education Through Play that is needed for the continued contraction of the muscle. Mechanically, it probably means that interest arouses the brain as a whole, so that all the motor centers are connected and the muscle need not use the strength of its own center alone, but may use the strength of all the other connected centers as well. In other words, any interesting physical activity tends to unify the brain. Whatever the mechanism may be, there is no question about the connection between interest and endurance, and consequently the conclusion is forced upon us that if we want to train endurance, the exercises involved must be made as interesting as possible. This has two very important results in practice. Games will be more valuable than gymnastics in giving endurance in proportion as they are more interesting, and we shall be able to work long hours in our chosen field in pretty direct proportion as we find this work to be play. Nervousness, which is a more or less constant leakage and unregulated discharge of nervous energies, will tend constantly to decrease endurance. Beauty of Form and Feature. — However, the development of physical strength and even endurance can scarcely be a fundamental problem of physical training at the present time. There were two ideals that lay behind the Greek system : they were fitness for service in the army and beauty of form. The Greeks sought to develop a perfect race, and to this end they exposed the defective children to die. As one notices the types on the streets and in the cars of a modern city he is impressed that many of them would not show up well beside the Apollos and Venuses of the Greeks. We have kept the weaklings and defectives alive through our new sciences of child care, and are thus furnishing to the trainer much poorer material than the Greek had to deal with. If, out of Play as Physical Training 29 this imperfect material, we are to make a Greek statue, the necessity for training is more imperative for us than it was for them. Physical perfection is a vital aim because of the sense of worthiness and self-respect that it gives to the possessor. It might appear that the problem of beauty of form is largely a question of the correcting of physical defects, and this is certainly so for a large number of individuals. But if these children had had a proper amount of physical exercise from the earliest years, many of these defects would not exist. For round and stooped shoulders and flat chests, volley ball is as good an exercise as can be prescribed. Exercise is un- doubtedly a powerful stimulus to growth, as the studies at Annapolis and other places have shown. It is said that the Patagonians have lost six inches in stature since they have begun to ride horses. Undoubtedly running has some ten- dency to lengthen the legs, though this may be to a negligible amount. Exercise cannot make small people of small stock, tall ; or tall people, short. It can, however, to a considerable degree, reduce the flesh of the obese and build up the lean. It can straighten the figure and give it a good carriage. It can fill out the chest. It can give animation, grace, and spright- liness to the walk. It can most easily of all give color to the cheek, fire to the eye, and gloss to the hair, provided these exercises are taken in the open air, and lead to the establish- ment of vigorous health. It will be seen that most of the elements which constitute the effective side of beauty are in the gift of vigorous play in the open air. I am inclined to think that they are not largely within the gift of physical exercises in the gymnasium. Nervous Stability. — It is said of us abroad that we have only two saints in this country, and that the only saint of the 30 Education Through Play American women is Saint Martha, and the only saint of the American men is Saint Vitus, and that we all have Ameri- canitis of the worst kind. Certainly we are living fast and getting nervous at an alarming rate. It is said that at the rate insanity is increasing, we shall all be in insane asylums within three hundred years. There have been no fourth and usually no third generation for city dwellers. Our strong men have mostly come from the country. The city youth is generally in advance of the country youth. He has read a great deal more, he has seen a great deal more. He knows many more people, and, as a rule, people who are better worth knowing ; he has had a far larger and more varied experience, but in some way, as the years go by, he is likely to find the farm boy, who was once far in the rear, is forging to the fore. He does not break down. He stands long hours, and, when the crisis comes, " the tide that leads on to fortune," he is ready. There are three well-known sources of nervousness. The first of these is the city itself: its noises; its clanging gongs; its rushing autos and cars; the dangers of its crossings ; its time schedules minutely divided, which must be kept ; the worry of too many and often conflicting duties. Worry means a constant dissipation of energy into unpro- ductive channels. It tends to accumulate from day to day, and, as the person becomes more worried and worn, he be- comes sensitive and is annoyed by a thousand things of which he was scarcely conscious before. The only cure for this condition is to throw off the care and worries of every day in some activity that involves no strain and in which the whole soul is absorbed. Of course the simplest and easiest method is play. A second source of nervousness is the indoor air. It is Play as Physical Training 31 often overheated and nearly always undermoistened. It is the custom of nerve specialists everywhere to get their pa- tients out into the open air as much as possible. The open air has a tonic effect on the nervous system. Those who live out of doors seldom have nervous troubles. The physiologists tell us that we have two sets of muscles. One of these is known as fundamental. They are the large muscles of the arms, legs, and trunk. These are the first to de- velop in the race and in the individual child. They are the last muscles over which we lose control with the coming on of senility, paralysis, or any progressive decay of the nervous system. The other system, the accessory, comprises the little muscles of the fingers and the muscles of speech. These are the late and delicate adjustments of the neuro-muscular mech- anism. They are the last to develop in the race and in the child, and the first to be lost in the loss of nervous control. They all involve delicate nervous coordinations. It requires many times the nervous strain to write my name that it does for me to walk across the floor. The fundamental muscles have, for the most part, only a single motion that they can make, — they respond to a single nervous discharge. We use the accessory muscles constantly in writing, drawing, sewing, embroidery, and the like. On the other hand, nearly all play uses the large fundamental muscles of the legs and trunk. Thus the influence of play is directly in the line of nervous stability. It is in the open air, it relieves nervous strains and worry, and it uses the fundamental muscles. The Development of Grace. — Grace is the beauty of ac- tion, the poetry of motion. It is the quality by which we distinguish the gentleman and lady in the crowd. The lack of it seems to point out the boor. There are two elements 32 Education Through Play in awkwardness, a physical element and a mental element. The physical side of awkwardness is due to an unserviceable machine — muscles that have been stiffened by slow and hard contractions, a body that is muscle bound from the excessive development of certain muscles without the compensating development of others. The peasant peoples of Europe, whose lives have been spent in hard work, too long continued, are likely to be almost the incarnation of the spirit of awk- wardness. The other element in grace is psychophysical. It is the perfect coordination of the muscles. It is action without interference, the greatest motion for the smallest expenditure of energy. It is the perfect efficiency of the human mechanism, a motion that is well within the capacity of the doer and that seems to be done without effort. Grace always depends on unconscious absorption in the thing done. It must spring from its thought as unconsciously as the song from the soul of the bird and be the same sort of an expression of the thought and feeling of the moment. The regulation of movement belongs to the subconscious mind. Anything that elevates into consciousness motions that we are accustomed to do un- consciously tends to make them awkward. The conscious mind knows nothing about the mechanism of its motions. It does not know which string to pull, and whenever it takes over the work that the lower centers have been accustomed to perform, it does the work with vastly greater effort and it does it awkwardly. It is the case of the untrained mistress who dismisses the cook and undertakes to do the work herself. Every physical process, which requires voluntary attention and control, is done at greater nervous and muscular expense than the same process done without voluntary attention, and Play as Physical Training 33 it is never graceful in the same way. Nature intended move- ment to be the unconscious expression of an idea or purpose, that the attention should be on that purpose, and that the lower centers should be left to carry out the movement. It is believed that gymnastics and calisthenics tend to make conscious processes that should never be conscious, because they are much better done by the subconscious activity of the mind ; that these motions tend to make the person awkward and muscle bound, that they are always done with an expenditure of nerve force, which is larger than it should be because of the unnecessary and unnatural consciousness of the motion itself. Professor Ash, in the Journal of Sociology, November, 1913, summarizing Woodworth and Claparede says, " Forms of industry in which the emphasis and attention must be directed to processes rather than purposes are more taxing and require a greater strain of conscious effort than those in which the individual is working toward a definite end, and in which the motive is interest in the outcome." (From " A Study of the Cause of Voluntary Movement.") We all think we know how to walk, but if we are to walk out upon a platform, and we get to thinking about it, we soon discover that we do not know how to walk. In all good play the movements made seem to be the natural expression of the concept in the mind. There is no consciousness of the motion made, the thought is fixed on the end to be secured. Drudgery tends to make the doer awkward, because there is no interest. The movements made are not an expression of either the conscious or the subcon- scious personality. It is not a thing done by a person, but by a machine without a soul. Certain movements become graceful more easily than others. 34 Education Through Play If the movement is racially old, the coordinations for it exist in tendency and are easily acquired. Such movements may become graceful almost from the beginning. Grace is an accomplishment that lies well within the sphere of training, but it must be natural training. Heavy work and heavy gymnastics, all drudgery, all work or movement where the movement itself rather than the thing to be done requires the attention, all movements where the action is not spontaneous but springs from the mind of another rather than the doer, will train toward large nervous expenditure for a small muscular result, and in general toward awkward- ness. Nature's specifics for acquiring grace are play and danc- ing. Both play and dancing require light, rapid movements of the muscles. There is no consciousness of motion made in dancing after the dance has been learned, nor in play from the beginning. The movement seems to blossom from the idea as naturally as the flower from the stem. Both play and dancing are expressive of life and animation. Dancing has ordinarily been regarded as the easiest way to acquire grace. Dancing, however, is at several disadvantages, as compared with play and games. Very much of the grace of the dance is an illusion, it comes from the music and the moving together of a large number of people, expressing the rhythm and spirit. The individual movements, apart from the music and the other dancers, are not peculiarly graceful. During the process of learning, the movements are likely to be awkward. It takes the dance a long time to become really spontaneous, as natural an expression of the personality as the play of the child. It is hard anywhere to find anything more graceful than a group of little children, completely absorbed in their play, while it is well known that the first Play as Physical Training 35 attempts at dancing are not graceful, and it sometimes hap- pens that even a very graceful dancer is awkwardness personi- fied in everything else. The motions represented in play are very ancient, the remnants of old racial activities. The nervous paths are ready formed, and consequently skill is acquired more easily and the individual is able to do more muscular work with less effort in play than he is in any other activity. A Good Digestion. — If any one wishes to get dyspepsia, I can give him a perfectly good receipt. Ordinarily all that is necessary is for him to stay in the house, not take any ex- ercise, and worry a good deal about the things going on. If, on the other hand, one would not have dyspepsia, I can give him just as good a receipt. All that is necessary, in most cases, is merely to write the other receipt backwards : to live out of doors, take plenty of exercise, and carry the spirit of play into the things he is doing. Certainly people who live under conditions even approaching these are seldom troubled with their digestion. The open air has a tonic effect on all the systems of the body. Ordinarily I cannot drink coffee, but on a camping expedition I can drink six or seven cups a day and live on salt pork for the balance of my diet and never know the difference. The campers, who go off in the woods, live largely on stale bread, canned goods, and things they cook themselves, but I have never heard of any one's getting dyspepsia on a hunting or fishing trip. Exercise is always considered as one of the best ways to secure a good digestion. It increases peristalsis, keeps the body vigorous, and demands so much food to supply its waste that it is difficult to overeat. Throughout history, 36 Education Through Play appetite and digestion have been adjusted to a state of physi- cal activity. Very many students get indigestion when they go away to school. They come from an active life out of doors where they require and can digest a large amount of food. They settle down to an inactive, sedentary life, mostly within doors. They do not require and cannot digest so much food as they have been accustomed to eat. They do not at once realize the change that has taken place and overstoke the engine. The results are likely to be much personal discomfort, a lessened capacity for work, and a mental attitude that makes them unpleasant companions. We have a common expression for the person who is disagreeable : " You must have eaten some- thing that did not agree with you." It has always been one of woman's wiles, from the time of Queen Esther down, when she wishes to get some concession, first to give the person a good dinner, and depend on the feeling of well-being and good nature that follows to secure the concession that she wishes. The mental attitude, however, is quite as important in diges- tion as exercise or the fresh air. If we are blue or depressed or angry or if for any reason we do not enjoy our food, we fail to digest it. It has been found by cutting the taste nerves in the mouth of a dog that the saliva and other juices are not secreted if the dog cannot taste his food, and that the food does not digest. I can give myself dyspepsia any time in a week, by having a fit of the blues. If I ever eat a hearty meal when I am worried or annoyed, it seldom sets com- fortably. A short time ago I was talking with Mr. McMillan, who has recently gone on the polar expedition to Crocker Land. Mr. McMillan accompanied Lieutenant Peary on his dash to the pole. He said that in all polar expeditions up to the Play as Physical Training 37 time of Lieutenant Peary, when the long polar night came on, the men became very blue and despondent, and then they got dyspepsia, and the scurvy attacked the camp and prostrated the men. He said that Lieutenant Peary always took along several families of Eskimos with children ; and the play of the children cheered up the company and then they had neither of these troubles. He said at the time I saw him (six months before starting) that he had already selected his Eskimos and that there were ten children in the families. He had chosen these particular families on account of the children, and the children for the purpose that I have stated. I believe this is good physiology and good psychology alike. It is well known that vigorous prisoners often get dyspepsia of the worst kind from the depression of the prison life. De- pression causes dyspepsia, while joy and happiness always improve the digestion. If one can carry with him into his work the joy of life and the spirit of play, he will not be much bothered by what he eats, if it does not transcend the laws of edibility by wide limits. Sex Strength. — Sex is one of the vital functions. We have been accustomed to think of it as a localized function, but we now know that the erethisms of sex affect every cell in the body, and that it is the secondary sex secretions that cause the development of the virile qualities in the male and the feminine qualities in the female. This is why unsexing is so serious in its effects upon the individual. It causes in the male the loss of or the failure to develop courage, deter- mination, and will, and largely the loss of physical strength and energy. In the female it causes the loss of the distinctively feminine qualities. Just here is perhaps the greatest danger of childhood, that 38 Education Through Play it may fall into abuse or precosity of function and so fail in the full development of those qualities that are essentially masculine or feminine. All recent studies and investigations go to show that this sex problem is a much greater one than we have realized, that it begins much earlier than we had supposed and is far more insistent. At a series of teachers' institutes in the Northwest, I was recently informed that the teacher of one rural school had caught every child in the school, both little and big boys and girls, in self-abuse, and that, at another school, nearly every boy and girl had been found in illicit relations. Freud finds that the shock of early sex experiences is the cause of most of the hysteria of later fife. Strong Heart and Lungs. — When we speak of the vital organs, most people think of the heart and lungs. Life itself is constantly dependent on them. Cut off the supply of blood to the brain for a single instant, and we lapse into unconscious- ness. When our heart ceases to beat, our story is done. We cannot afford to neglect any precaution that might make it strong. Every heart is strong enough to stand its ordinary load, but there are times of strain that enter into every life, when much more is required of it. The heart must be strong enough to bear this unusual strain, or disaster is sure to follow. It is a common rule, in the building of bridges, that the bridge must be strong enough to bear six times its regular load, and surely any ordinary rule of safety would say that the heart must be able to bear much more than the strain of its regular work. The best training that we can give the heart comes from vigorous games in the open air. Nearly all of these games involve running. And it takes only a short sprint to run the heart rate up and to strengthen its beat. Some Play as Physical Training 39 forms of gymnastics secure the same result, but many of them do not. Arm exercises and leg exercises have little effect. A man might practice putting up a big dumb-bell every day for five years, but this would have very little effect upon the development of his heart and lungs. On the other hand, the fundamental muscles of the trunk and the big muscles of the legs all react directly upon the action of the heart and lungs, and most of these muscles are employed constantly in vigor- ous games. The relation between the lung capacity and the body mass is usually spoken of in this country as the vital index. Dr. Montessori, in her latest work, " Pedagogical Anthropology," gives a somewhat different statement of the same principle, though it really means the same thing. She says : " The re- lation of the circumference of the chest to the total stature is spoken of by Goldstein as the index of lif e, in order to indicate that the organic resistance of any individual depends on the proportional relation between the thorax and the whole body ; whoever has a narrow chest is liable to pulmonary tuber- culosis and is in his physiological entirety a weakling." And again: " Whoever has weak lungs is, for that reason alone, a person who receives insufficient nutriment and frequently is also a melancholiac. Melancholia accompanies every form of physiological decadence. On the other hand, persons with ample lungs are generally serene of spirit and joyous. In fact, the emotion of joy is at the same time the cause and the con- sequence of an active circulation of oxygenated blood." " It is a fact that we often rid ourselves of a fit of melancholy by taking a walk in the open air. Persons possessed of good lungs feel within themselves a vital potentiality that percep- tibly aids them to make what we call an " effort of will." 40 Education Through Play When sorrow befalls them or over-exertion has exhausted their strength, persons of this type feel some fresh force springing up within them, which gives them fresh hope and courage. It is their oxygenated blood which neither weariness nor depression of spirit can stay in its luxuriant course. The man of weak lungs, on the contrary, is mentally depressed, because his physiological life is slowed down; and instead of aiding him, it is his physiological life which demands of him a genuine effort of the will to reestablish its equilibrium." "We must remember that healthy exercise of the lungs should take place in the open air." " Anthropological studies made upon pupils have demon- strated that school children rarely attain a sufficient chest development. There can be no doubt that an assiduous ap- plication to the study table impoverishes the organism and above all impedes the normal development of the thorax." Montessori says that so far as the statistics have been gathered from orphan asylums in Italy they indicate that the death rate is pretty closely determined by the chest capacity. Again, " Deficiency of the thorax is one of the stigmata left by the school, which in this way tends to make the younger genera- tion feeble and physiologically unbalanced." " The admonitory fact that neglected, despised, half- starved children have an enormous advantage in the develop- ment of the thorax over the more intelligent children, who are well fed and carefully guarded, and solely because the former are free to run the streets, ought to point the direction in which we should look for means of helping the new generation hygienically. They have need of free movement and of air. The recreation rooms which tend to keep the children of the streets shut up indoors even during recess are taking from the Play as Physical Training 41 children of the people the sole advantage that still remained to them." Any kind of life that does not fill the lungs up well with outdoor air for a part of the day at least is dangerous. For very many, merely to sit in a chair in the open air and sunshine is quite as valuable as the best physical exercise in a gymnasium. A pair of strong lungs is the best safeguard we can have against our two most fatal diseases, tuberculosis and pneumonia, and they are essential to our having a healthy blood supply both for the body and the brain. They fill out the chest and give the person a good carriage. These seem to be sufficient reasons for every one's taking the training that is necessary to give him such a healthy pair of lungs. They are worth what they cost as life insurance alone. Any kind of vigorous game which involves running will give this training. The Establishment of Health. — Health is fundamental in physical training, because it is fundamental to the con- tinuance of life and its enjoyment and to the largest success along every line of endeavor. By health, of course, we do not mean the absence of disease, but rather the active, vigor- ous functioning of every cell and gland, so that the body shall have vital resistance and a sense of well-being. This state of the body is mainly dependent on the state of the four great vital systems of the body : the nervous system ; the digestion ; the blood supply, which means the state of the heart and lungs ; and sex. The person who has these four systems well developed and normal will have vital resistance and a sense of well-being, even though the toothache or a corn may make him at times uncomfortable. He may be carried off by a con- tagious disease, but in general such diseases will be less easily 42 Education Through Play taken and will be more easily overcome. If any of the othei organs should get out of order, it will have the assistance oi the ones we have mentioned to overcome its weakness. We are everywhere to-day taking new interest in health Cities are looking after their water supply and their sewage cleaning up their alleys and tearing down unsanitary shacks, We are establishing milk stations for the babies, hospitals for the tuberculous, and free clinics everywhere. Schools are putting in departments of hygiene, and a new cabinet officer to have charge of health matters is proposed. There is a new interest in the open air, also, which has grown largely out of the movement for the prevention of tuberculosis ; so that we now have stringent requirements of ventilation and open-air rooms and open-air schools, and sleeping porches and summer camps. Our treatment of tuberculosis and pneumonia consists largely of fresh air. More and more all the sick children in the hospitals are placed in open-air wards. The open air and the sunlight invigorate the lungs ; purify the blood and give the whole body resistance against all the ills that attack it. The person who lives much out of doors is seldom affected with tuberculosis, pneumonia, colds, dyspepsia, or nervous troubles. Now these are precisely the troubles which are most prevalent in America to-day. If we wish to keep the children out of doors, we must make stay- ing out attractive. We cannot expect them to stir them- selves, in order to stand on the street corner, especially if the weather is cold. We must remember, also, that there are all kinds of outdoor air, and that the air that is full of the dust of the streets, which analysis shows to be ninety-five per cent horse manure, may be no great improvement over the air inside the house. Play as Physical Training 43 The Prevention of Tuberculosis. — Organized play has a threefold relationship to tuberculosis. It keeps the child in the open air, it develops his lungs, and it gives his whole body resistance against disease. Tuberculosis is very prev- alent among children. Dr. Schmidt, of Bonn, says in au- topsies of German school children the tubercle bacillus is found in more than ninety per cent of the cases. Tuberculosis among school children is variously estimated from five per cent up in this country. Most estimates that I have seen lately place it as high as forty per cent. These estimates mean, of course, that the tubercle is found in the lungs of the children, not that they have the disease in an active form. At the International Meeting on School Hygiene, which was held in Buffalo in August, 1913, it was estimated by our lead- ing specialist on 'tuberculosis that there were one million school children in this country who actually had the disease ; by this statement it is to be presumed that he meant, in an active state, as having the tubercle is not the same as having the disease. More and more the specialists are coming to believe that here in these children, who have tuberculosis in an incipient form or who harbor the germs of the disease without actually having it, lies the great problem. Nearly every international congress on tuberculosis has passed some resolution favoring the playgrounds as an effective means in the prevention of tuberculosis. When I took charge at Washington, there were a number of children who were sent into the playgrounds by the parents because the doctors said that unless they kept these children in the open air and de- veloped their lungs, they would die of tuberculosis within two or three years. The last year I was in Washington, two of these children, to my certain knowledge, won athletic contests 44 Education Through Play over the whole city, showing that they had so built up their lungs that they had entirely thrown off the tubercular tendency, and had become the strongest children we had. The Bureau of the Census estimates that from six to seven thousand school children die of tuberculosis every year. Almost every one of these deaths would have been prevented if these chil- dren from infancy had had a proper amount of open-air play, and at least as many other deaths would have been prevented by building up the constitution and strengthening the phy- sique that comes in the same way. The Avoidance of Colds. — People who live in the open air are very nearly immune from troubles of the lungs and nasal passages. The sailor at the mast wears his shirt open at the bosom in the depths of the winter, but he never " catches cold." The soldiers on the march are subject to constant exposure, — wet feet, wet beds, and hardships, — but accord- ing to General Sternberg, former Surgeon General of the Army, they never have colds. In the camps of the tuberculous, though the tents are open at all times and the patients are much impaired in general vitality, colds are almost unknown. By sleeping on a sleeping porch at home, I avoid colds and acquire a resistance which keeps me immune for two or three weeks after I start on a lecture tour. But after that I be- gin to " catch colds," as I used to do in the days when I slept indoors. Colds and grip are all too prevalent. People do not often die in consequence, but their resistance and work- ing efficiency is impaired by them. Apparently the open air and a general physical develop- ment make the body more resistant to all diseases and reduce the death rate from all. Vital Resistance. — The vital resistance of the individual Play as Physical Training 45 depends on his vital strength, which means, in the main, the strength of these vital systems of the body, together with the will to live and the joy in life which is their psychic side. Of a thousand people exposed to tuberculosis, probably not more than forty or fifty become infected. Those who do not take it have vital resistance. Of a thousand people exposed to the grip, perhaps not more than one hundred will come down with the disease, and of these some will throw it off in a day or two, some within a week, while others will not be able to throw it off for months. Those who do not take the disease or who throw it off quickly are the ones with vital resistance. Such resistance is worth all it costs as life insurance and sick- ness insurance, and apparently it is very largely dependent on enjoyable exercise in the open air that stimulates powerfully the circulation of the blood and the digestion of food. It is exercise that uses the fundamental muscles of the body. Apparently play meets these conditions better than any other form of exercise. Summary. — Play . tends to develop a man of the type of Apollo rather than Hercules. Apollo is the athlete ; Hercules, the gymnast. Play will never put knots and bunches of muscle over the body. Gymnastics undoubtedly has the advantage in building up muscle mass, but it must be said of such muscular development, that there is little place for it in modern life, and that it may well be a veritable vampire feeding on the vitality of the professional worker. Play does, however, tend to give physical efficiency, a good carriage, a full chest, a bright eye, a good complexion, grace, a stable nervous system, a good digestion, a healthy sex development, strong heart and lungs, and robust health. These are the really significant aims in physical training. In the securing of all 46 Education Through Play of these purposes, there are three elements that are of very nearly equal importance : They are fresh air, the joy of the spirit in the activity, and the exercise itself. Gymnastics of the old type has only one of these elements. Of course it must be held in mind that the gymnastics in our gymnasiums is, at the present time, largely basket ball and dancing, and not, properly speaking, gymnastics at all; but no exercise can be wholly satisfactory that is within doors. BIBLIOGRAPHY Burk, Frederick G. : The Influence of Exercise upon Growth. Pro- ceedings of N. E. A., 1899. Dudley, Gertrude, and Kellor, Frances A. : Athletic Games in the Education of Women. Holt & Co. Gulick, Luther Halsey: Physical Education by Muscular Exercise. P. Blakiston's Son & Co. Hall, G. Stanley : Adolescence. D. Appleton & Co. Harris, William T. : The Effect of Physical Education on the Vital Organs. Proceedings of N. E. A., 1898, p. 930. Exercise and Vigor. Proceedings of N. E. A., 1898, p. 948. Hough and Sedgwick : The Human Mechanism. Ginn & Co. Masso: Fatigue. Montessori, Madam: Pedagogical Anthropology. Frederick Stokes & Co. Sargent, Dudley A. : Physical Education. Ginn & Co. CHAPTER III PLAY AND THE TRAINING OF THE INTELLECT There are no two ideas that are more strongly contrasted in the mind of the ordinary small boy than the ideas of play and education. Nevertheless, as we have already perceived, there is no such contrast in fact; for Groos assures us that play is the only form of education in the animal world ; that it is for the purpose of play, and consequently of education, that infancy exists. As we are aware, the child, up to the time that he enters school, spends nearly all of his energy in play, and, it has been said, he learns more in these first six years than he does in all of the years that come afterward. It is in his play that the child gains control of his body, that he acquires accuracy and precision in motion, and in judging distances, sights, and sounds. Among all primitive peoples the education of the child is derived almost entirely from his play, and nearly all early systems followed this method, as will be seen in the systems of athletic training pursued in Persia, Greece, and Rome. Even in the days of Pericles, where a period of forty years in a country with a citizenship of not more than ten thousand produced more great men than any other country has produced in a century, at least half of each school day was devoted to organized games and athletics. The submerging of Greece and Rome brought a period of twilight to Europe, and it appeared for a time that the culture of the classical age had 47 48 Education Through Play been lost. With the rediscovery of the classical learning, it seemed as though a new sun had arisen, and the thought every- where prevailed that all that was worth learning was stored up in these old volumes, and that education consisted in the mastering of their contents. Although it arose out of a peculiar condition in history and did not represent the condi- tions out of which the classical learning and literature itself arose, this idea has largely prevailed up to the present. What is the Object of Education ? — We cannot well pro- ceed in the considering of play as an element in education without first asking ourselves what we mean by the latter term. It is quite obvious that play will not teach us arithme- tic or geography ; we shall not master Latin or Greek by play- ing baseball ; and if education consists in gaining information of foreign countries or languages or theorems, then play will not give us an education. But we may well question this ideal. Is there any considerable object in the barber's, the shoemaker's, or the grocer's becoming a scholar? Is it im- portant that any of them should know the location of all the cities in Asia, or cube root, or Latin, or Greek, or the theorems in geometry? These facts do not seem significant in the fives that they are leading. For those who have made curricula, learning has seemed an end in itself ; but to the great mass of mankind, knowledge is useful only so far as it promotes effi- ciency in the practical affairs of life ; and it would seem that many of the things that we have taught in the schools of the past have little to offer towards the industrial or social effi- ciency of the workman or the housewife, who constitute nine tenths of the product of the public schools. Not only has it been true that the things taught in the schools have had no close relationship to either the business Play and the Training of the Intellect 49 or the social life of the ordinary citizen, but it has never yet proven true that effectiveness has been in direct proportion to knowledge, as there are many other elements besides informa- tion that go to make the effective individual; and self-con- fidence, energy, and a fixed purpose, with a small amount of in- formation, of ttimes accomplish vastly more than encyclopedic knowledge without these accompaniments. In fact, it may well be questioned if encyclopedic knowledge on general subjects adds greatly to the effectiveness of the individual anywhere. Childhood is essentially the motor period of life, and every idea tends to immediate expression in some form of action. From all biological and psychological studies it would appear that the mind was not intended for a bin or granary in which to store a wealth of knowledge, but that it was intended for a workhouse where knowledge should be gathered for immediate use and wrought into action almost as soon as it is gathered. The typical " grind " in school and college often uses his energy so completely in the acquisition of knowledge that he has none left to make this knowledge effective. Probably teachers as a class, who represent the diligent and success- ful scholars for the most part, are less effective in the com- munity in proportion to their knowledge than business men or those belonging to other professions for this reason ; and there are many who have vast power in the acquisition of knowledge who have almost completely lost the power of utilizing this knowledge. What Material is Educational ? — The school seems to have concluded in the past that the knowledge and arts that should be taught to the child are the things that the adult will need to use, that childhood itself may be disregarded as 50 Education Through Play a useless period, having little to offer for life, and that it should be utilized merely to prepare the child to be successful in the affairs which are to come later. Consequently, the things which must be taught to him are the problems and the material for the solution of the problems of adult life. But these things are not at this time interesting to the child, and in an age of such kaleidoscopic progress as the present it is almost impossible to predict to-day what life will require of any one ten years hence. The problems of adult life are not the problems of childhood, and very often have little appeal to the child. Psychology and sociology are perhaps the most significant sciences in regard to human well-being, but we all realize that it would be absurd to teach these sciences to chil- dren. Modern psychology is coming to see that material is educational to a child pretty much in proportion to its interest, and that if it does not stimulate the mind to action, it matters little how important the material may be in itself, it will not be really educational. It is no more possible to make the child think as a man than it is to make him six feet tall, and we must get away from the idea of the school as a preparation for adult life and think of it rather as a preparation of the child for a more successful childhood. It must help him to solve the problems of the morrow, to be more efficient in the things which his life offers, and not to solve the problems of a man of forty. The things that we remember are in general more educational than the things that we forget, because the remembered material is likely to become a permanent part of our personality, while the forgotten material can only linger in the subconsciousness. Judged from this standard, very much that we have given the children in the schools has been far from ideal educational material, as it has not aroused the Play and the Training of the Intellect 51 mind of the child, but has tended to make him sleepy and stupid and for the most part it has soon been forgotten. Play trains the child in the arts of childhood. There have been a number of studies tending to show that the person with a college education stands a much larger chance of success in life than the person who has not this education, and this is doubtless true on the whole ; but it must be remembered that the college student is a thrice- selected individual, that for the most part he is the descendant of capable parents, that he is brought up in a cultured home, and that he probably has an unusual amount of ability and energy in the first place, or he would not have cared to go on from the high school or academy. It does not follow that the college studies have made this individual more success- ful than he would have been had he spent a similar number of years in travel or business or play. In fact, it has been shown recently that there are more than twice as many men in "Who's Who " from the ranks of the athletes, though a smaller num- ber, than there are from the Phi Beta Kappa men. It is to be suspected, also, that the man who has gone through a period of intellectual forcing, such as is often represented in a Ph.D. degree, probably reaches a premature intellectual maturity and does not continue to develop in- tellectually through as long a period as he might otherwise have done. There are very few, I fancy, with the higher uni- versity degrees who have blossomed out after seventy as has Andrew Carnegie and many other men of affairs who might be mentioned, although the college men have gained a wealth of knowledge which can only reach its final syntheses after a long period of years. We may well question, also, the central idea that seems to 52 Education Through Play lie behind our system of education, which is, apparently, that the mind is chiefly developed by the acquiring of informa- tion and the solving of academic problems. Certainly, to no small extent, intellectual capacity comes not through a process of steady growth, but through a series of rapid advancements which follow something that arouses a new instinct or awakes a new area of the mind. A new experience will often give a new point of view and increase the effectiveness of the in- dividual along every line. Such maximal experiences are found more often in the relationships of one individual to another, or in the contests of the playground, I fancy, than they are in the studies of the classroom. The Development of Energy. — One of the most determining things in life is certainly the amount of energy which the person has at his command. There are those who are born tired. After two or three hours of work they are exhausted and find any form of effort painful ; and there are others who can work fifteen or eighteen hours a day and enjoy it. The person with a fifteen-hour energy may do good or ill in the world, but he will do something. On the other hand, those with a three- hour energy are constantly recruiting the ranks of the unem- ployable. The Child Labor Committee states in its various reports that our army of tramps is largely made up of the child workers who have grown up ; that hard work during child- hood uses the energy of later life and leaves the person in adult years without a sufficient supply to make work pleasant or successful; and it has even been stated by certain au- thorities that the work years will be three times the play years ; that if the child goes to work at ten, he will be practi- cally superannuated at forty; if he goes to work at fifteen, at sixty. But of course there are limits to such a theory. Play and the Training of the Intellect 53 There can be little question, however, but play is the great source for the development of energy. A boy can play all day long and expend constantly an amount of energy that would exhaust him in an hour if he were working. Play represents old racial activities for which we have hereditary coordinations. We are able to perform the same feats with less effort in play than we are in work, but we also have the ability to make greater exertion, because the play activities are the ones through which the brain and the nervous system were developed, and play has at its command those deeper layers of energy which are only reached with difficulty through work. It has become a custom among many of the better-to-do families of the South to send their children north to be edu- cated. I believe that this is a wise custom. A hot, moist climate is depressing, and it is much more difficult to be ener- getic in such a climate than it is in a cooler and drier one. Nevertheless, as every one knows, the northern man, who finds the southern climate more trying than the man who was born and brought up there, is more energetic in the South than is the native. But the children of southern parents who have come to the North and played with northern children go back to the South to be as energetic as though their parents had been northern people. This seems to me to mean in part that if we can secure energetic play in childhood, we have solved the problem of an energetic adult life as well. If education is to mean preparation for a life of efficiency and achievement, this surely must be one of the major purposes of education. Play trains for Practical Life. — Play will not produce philosophers! We are coming to-day to see that the best 54 Education Through Play preparation for life is living; and play, representing as it does the life of the past, is much nearer to a life of business or politics or society than is the schoolroom and its studies. If we seek to train for society, it would be hard to find a better method ; for play is social in its nature, and it requires friend- ship for its continuance. While there is rivalry, there is also comradeship as an essential element in all good play. If a boy would prepare himself for politics and affairs, where will he get a better experience than in the leadership and organization of the playground? Nearly all leaders of men have probably been trained in this way. There are those who are like a beam of sunshine in any social group. Their presence is always welcome for their cheerfulness and their optimism ; and there are others who, despite the best of intentions and even the highest of abilities, are generally unwelcome companions because of the depressing view of life which they represent. The joy and hilarity of any group shrivels up in their presence like flowers before a March wind. The spirit of play is that spirit of joyfulness, of alertness, of optimism which we all love to see in others. I doubt if the child who from earliest years has had overmuch hard work to do, even though that work be the lessons in the school, can ever have that joyousness of spirit which makes him or her a really pleasant companion. Our efforts and success are always largely determined by our desires. There are many who come through our school systems, perhaps with a Ph.D. degree, but with a feeling at the end that life is dead upon their hands, that there is noth- ing much which they desire, that they have no motive for any intense effort. Study that is carried on too long and that uses Play and the Training of the Intellect 55 all the available energy kills desire, as it does also the effective working out of ideas into facts. But play is always suffused with emotion and animated by an intense feeling. If this animation, vivacity of mind, and intensity of desire are carried over from childhood's play into adult life, they make possible and even necessary our largest efforts. Training the Judgment. — The school, all the way along, is teaching deferred judgment. It tells us to weigh the evidence on the one side against the evidence on the other, and on that basis to come to a mature conclusion. There are times when the ability to form a judgment of this kind is exceedingly important, but these are the crises of life and not the everyday, every-hour, every-minute judgments which we must make if we are to be practically efficient. It is the ability to make these judgments rapidly and accurately which makes the successful person both in society and in business, and it is just this type of judgment which play everywhere trains. Take a game of baseball as an example. One boy is on first, and another is on second. A fielder gets a liner in the middle field. Shall he throw the ball to first or second or third? Shall he try to touch the runner and make a double play ? He must decide in a quarter of a second and act upon that decision instantly or he will never make a successful ball player. If his judgment is right, handkerchiefs are waved on the grandstand and he is generously applauded; if he makes a mistake, he is hissed and called a fool. There is no mincing of terms on the ball field. Everything in the game is seeking to stimulate him to do his level best and to do it quickly. His accurate judgment is rewarded by in- stant applause, and his mistake by a condemnation that is no less immediate. It is this accuracy and rapidity of forming 56 Education Through Play judgments on minor things that makes most of the practical efficiency in life. Nearly every kind of game gives this same training in quickness and accuracy of judgment and in immediate and forcible response. It imparts to the mind an alertness and vivacity which are essential to any large success either in business or society. Team Play, the Greatest of Mental Stimuli. — Play rep- resents almost exactly those conditions and activities through which the human brain was developed. The primitive mind was lethargic and inert. It was only under the stimulus of peril, hunger, and immediate need that it was forced into ac- tion, and this type of activity has survived in play. The child often becomes sleepy and stupid in the schoolroom, but he always wakes up when he gets out upon the playground. Play is the one universal stimulus to the intelligence of the child. The old adage says, " All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," and observation has everywhere confirmed the statement. But we have not always perceived that the school has often done the same thing, and that a consider- able percentage of the children are made stupid by it and their minds are only aroused to action when they escape into the playground or into some form of activity which appeals to them. I suspect that many a child who has spent seven or eight years in dozing over lessons which meant little to him has probably been crippled for life ; and per- haps the bright boy who has gotten into a habit of doing one hour's work in three or four hours' time, because that rep- resented the average pace of the class, has suffered no less. Probably the team game is offering the most important training that is being given to our boys in any form. Play and the Training of the Intellect 57 The greatest rewards that life ever proffers for a moment's superior ability are offered to the players in our great inter- collegiate games. If one would be distinguished in law or medicine, it will be the labor of years, and then the fame will mostly be of the distant kind. Other learned and able men in various parts of the world will speak well of him and his ability, though very likely those who meet him on the street and live next to him may know nothing about it. But if a man runs the length of the field for a touch- down in a Yale-Harvard game, he will see his picture in all the great dailies the next day and will find himself famous, both among his college associates and in society. He is likely to be a lion among the ladies and to secure that sort of social recognition which is always coveted more than all else by youth. In all such play, there is a manifold stimulus that is acting upon the man: there is the stimulus that comes from himself and his own desire to do creditably and to win. There is the stimulus that comes from the other members of the team and their social compulsion for him to do his best for their sakes as well as his own. There is the coach who must be pleased and justified, the student body whom he represents and who exercise over him all the time the compelling force of their own desires. There is the great audience that fills the stadium, ready to cheer itself hoarse, to wave banners and handkerchiefs, or to hiss and sulk into silence, according as he does well or ill. And still beyond the stadium and its thousands are the millions who are look- ing on through the cameras and pens of the newspapers. If it is possible to awaken a lethargic nature, and make a stupid mind think, here is surely the motive. We may well question if any nervous system is fitted to stand such a series of cumu- 58 Education Through Play lative incitements to effort, and whether it must not almosl inevitably mean an overstrain both of the nerves and of the muscles in such extreme cases where the sentiment of the student body says, " do or die," in a great game. However, there can be no questions of the intellectual stimulation, and, in the playgrounds, there is not so great danger that it will be excessive. Play and Mental Habit. — All educators are agreed that the chief purpose of education is the acquiring of an alertness of mind and right mental habits. The attitude of mind which is found in play is the attitude which represents the greatest efficiency in all mental effort ; for in all good play there is a complete absorption in the thing at hand, entire forget- fulness of self, and that intuitive following of spirit guidance which leads to the largest result with the least effort. Any work done in this spirit becomes an art. The person who goes forward into mature life carrying into his work this same self-forgetfulness, this same absorption in the activity in hand, this same unconscious following of the guidance of the spirit, will be a poet, an artist, a genius ; for these all are essentially grown-up children who have preserved to mature years the simplicity and spontaneity of the child. CHAPTER IV PLAY AND THE FORMATION OF HABITS AND CHARACTER Games and athletics are the activities of our ancestors con- ventionalized and adapted to present conditions. They are reminiscent of a physical age, of the struggle for survival, of the hunt, of the chase, and of war. The world of play is the real world of the child about which the workaday world hovers as an unreal but threatening wraith. The child thinks and acts in terms of play. It is in play and play companion- ships that he gets nearly all his experience. It is in play that he forms nearly all his habits. Play furnishes the ground- work, the apperception center that must interpret all later acquisitions. The forms of training which come from it are as wide as the human soul. We send the children to the Sunday school to learn to be good, but knowing what is right and doing what is right are different things. The children get their conceptions of right and wrong from what we teach them, but it is in their play that they put these conceptions into practice. It does not follow that because the child knows that it is wrong to lie that he will tell the truth. I presume that some of us may even know adults who do not always do that. Here is the practical difficulty that lies behind all system of ethics and all teaching of morals in the schools. I have known a number of Ph.D's who carried over from their child- hood associations a number of ungrammatical expressions, 59 60 Education Through Play which the long period of their education had not corrected. If wrong ways of acting once get into habits, their elimination through precept is a long and painful process. The precept has to be impressed very strongly if it is to have any effect at all, and it is always comparatively ineffective. Precepts are never as effective as positive ideals that may be directly copied, but even the ideals that come through teaching are comparatively cold and lifeless ; they do not have the power or vividness of examples that we see. An ideal character from a book is for most children scarce one per cent as efficient as the same person would be in real life. Play and Idleness. — There are many people who always confuse play with idleness, although the two are almost the exact opposites of each other. The child who is working on his arithmetic lesson is using a few muscles in his fingers and a few cells in his brain, but the rest of him is idle. On the other hand, the boy who is playing baseball is using nearly every muscle in his body and nearly every cell in his brain. His emotional nature is equally active. People will often forbid their children to play with certain other children. There may be reason for the prohibition, but the danger does not come from the play. A boy can play baseball with eight other boys, all of whom belong in a reform school, and, so long as he plays, he will not suffer any harm; but let him loaf around with them for half an hour and the effects of that half hour may mar a whole life. A girl can play basket ball with four loose girls and remain a perfectly good and virtuous girl through any number of games ; but let her spend an afternoon in gossiping with those girls, and it may color her thought for a lifetime. The Devil not only finds things for idle hands to do, but he finds thoughts for idle brains to think and words Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 6 1 for idle tongues to say. All of the vices of childhood are nour- ished in idleness, and almost anything that prevents the idle- ness will also prevent the vice. It is the fact that our city children, at the present time, have nothing to do in the time when they are not in school, that makes the playground problem the great problem that it is. The habit of idleness, formed in youth, grows naturally in the adult into loafing and all that series of crimes that are at- tendant thereto. " The boy without a playground is father to the man without a job," and the man who is not willing to work finds it necessary to make his living in some easier way, which can only come through begging, gambling, stealing, or some other illegitimate method. In the past the problem of idleness has been a great problem, perhaps the greatest problem of our city children. With the shortening of the hours of labor, which is everywhere going on, it becomes a great problem of the adults as well. If increased leisure is to mean increased dissipation, it will be only a curse. The man who has spent his day bending over a desk or in- haling the fetid air of a factory is not going home at four or five to read books or exercise in a gymnasium. It is not best for him to do so. How very much better it will be for the com- munity if we can inspire in the children such a healthy love for sport that this leisure time will be spent in vigorous games. If it is necessary for a free country to educate its citizens in order to protect the ballot, is it not equally necessary to provide for their amusement in order to protect their morals? If we accept the conclusion of Kidd that the survival of countries is not determined by the intellectual or physical standards of the people, but by their moral rectitude, then the question of their recreation should be a prime consideration of lawmakers ; for 62 Education Through Play the formation of evil habits comes almost entirely from leisure hours. Child a Free Agent in his Play. — All play is social conduct. It affects directly the happiness or unhappiness of the partici- pants. It is just as moral or immoral as life itself. In play the child is a free agent. In the schoolroom and the home he is following the ideals of his elders, he is doing the things he is told to do. He is not acting from an inner impulse or follow- ing the leadings of his own spirit. The number of choices are few, and these are accompanied with little emotional arouse- ment. The child is too passive in his seat in school to be able to will strongly if he wished to. Much the same things are true in the home. The child is doing the things that his par- ents order. It is only in his play that he is doing the things that he really wants to do and is acting from the inner law of his own being, and it is hence only in his play that he is a free agent and that his conduct is really moral. The choices of the playground are innumerable, and he has the strongest kind of incentives to carry out his decisions. We will strongly, in proportion to our desire and interest, and it is only in his play that the child has a maximum of desire and interest. The rewards are instantaneous, and the child usually has a suffi- cient motive for what he is about to do. The child not only wills strongly, but he must act at once, if he is to act effectively. A second hence it may be too late. It is estimated that of the men who get safely to first base, they have a margin of not more than a fifth of a second, on an average ; which means that if the fielders had been a fifth of a second quicker, the runners would have been put out. If they had been a fifth of a second slower, probably two or three times as many runners would have got to first. Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 63 Why not Undirected Play ? — There are many who have never been able to see the reasons for directed play. Play, whether directed or not, will be good for children physically. It will tend to make them healthier and stronger. Undirected play, however, is often a bad thing for children morally. The undirected playground is likely to fall into the hands of the young loafers of the community, who are supported, as Mr. Lee suggests, on their mother's washings. These young gen- tlemen are likely to smoke and swear and tell obscene tales. Their ideals of sportsmanship are the ideals of winning in any way possible. Such a playground is not really undirected. It is directed by these young toughs and rowdies and expresses their ideals. Such a ground always becomes a place where loose boys and girls meet each other and is liable to become the source of general immorality. The director of a properly conducted playground does not direct its activities in the sense in which this is usually understood. He starts the pro- cession, he organizes or gets the children to organize the team ; he arranges the tournaments and contests ; but the child is no less a free agent in the directed playground than he is in the undirected one. Imitation. — In the first days in New York, the children would repeatedly bring in a game from the street which had been dragged through the gutter in their ordinary play until it had taken up all the filth of the gutter. The teacher would play the game with the children. She would leave off the vul- gar expression. She would say " If you please," instead of striking the next child. In a few days all the children would be playing the game in the same way that the teacher had played it. They would take it out on the street and play it in its revised form. The Playground and Recreation Associa- 64 Education Through Play tion says in its " Normal Course in Play " that, " No one should be placed in charge of children who is not of pleasing personal- ity." The play teacher who enters enthusiastically into her job sows her personality broadcast as no other person does. The teacher in the classroom does not begin to be imitated as does the popular teacher who plays with them in the play- ground. It would be well worth while to furnish a high-grade person in every playground just for the purpose of establish- ing through imitation the children's conception of right con- duct, even though there were no other object in organized play. In the down-town section of a great city, one can often dis- tinguish the children who have been to the kindergarten by the way they treat each other. They have acquired a habit of politeness. Play and the Expression of Primitive Impulses. — The re- capitulation theory maintains that, with certain limitations, the individual repeats the history of the race, passing up through stages that correspond closely to savagery, barbarism, semicivilization to civilization. The boy is a natural barba- rian. He has the same motor interests and desires. He wants to hunt and fish, to live in the open, and to sit around a camp fire. His interests and ideals are interests and ideals of action. The Boy Scouts have been organized in every country of the civi- lized world in the last five years, because they appealed to this fundamental interest of boys. It is of such activities that boys have always loved to read and hear: The Earl of Meath said forty years ago, " The question of crime in our cities is mainly a question of athletics." The boy cooped up in the schoolroom during the day and set to study his lesson at night is in pretty much the same position that an Indian would be under the same conditions. The motor effective side of him Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 65 finds no expression. The life he leads does not appeal to his inner nature. He grows restless from unused physical energy, and his warrior soul rebels against the sleep-producing and, to him, benumbing curriculum of the schoolroom. If this boy can find in athletics vent for his motor interests and desires, he may be saved to civilization, but if he cannot, he is very likely to become delinquent under the strain. A short time ago I heard a distinguished lecturer, in speaking to an audience, mostly of men, say, " If there is anyone'in this audience who has never done anything that would have brought him before the juvenile court if he had been caught at it, will he please raise his hand ? " There was not a person in the audience who raised his hand. Much, if not most, that we call delinquency in our cities is the following the law of childhood in opposition to the law of the city, and woe to the city in which there is no attempt to make its laws harmonize with the law of a child- hood. Profanity and Obscenity. — Parents often do not dream the kind of language that their children are using on the streets and in the alleys where they are playing by themselves. I am confident, because I have so often observed the language of the children on the streets, and because I have been at the opening of so many new playgrounds. At one time we opened in Washington a playground on what had been up to that time an unused public park. A gentle- man, some sixty-five years of age, owned all the houses on the end of the block opposite the playground. His children were grown up, and he objected to having a playground there. The first week that it was opened he went out with his notebook, and took down all the bad things he heard the children say. He got a very choice collection. He sent these in to the com- 66 Education Through Play missioners of the district and said : " See here, I have heard all that bad language in this playground in one week. It ought to be closed." Of course he had made a mere collection of street language. At another time I sent a young theologue down to open a new playground in the worst section of Wash- ington. He came back after a week and said : " I want to give it up, I don't think it is a proper place for me to be. Even the girls talk worse down here than I have ever known the boys to talk elsewhere." In the slum of the city such language is always found to abound in the beginning, but if you will go back after a few months, if the playground has been well con- ducted, the language will be found to have largely disappeared. The improvement has come from the social atmosphere of the playground and the influence of the playground director and the knowledge that such language is not permitted. I do not say that these children have ceased to use language of this kind, but they have got into a habit of playing without it, and, I believe, they use much less of it on the streets than they did before. It has certainly become a smaller element in their lives and less a part of their ideal of manliness, an ideal which is likely to be absorbed from the corner loafer and bully. Play and the Development of the Will. — The muscles are the organs of the will, and a flabbiness of muscles is apt to be accompanied by a flabbiness of will. Every one needs a strong will in order that he may be able to withstand the temptations of life. I believe the present training of the schools tends to weaken and retard the action of the will and leave the man or woman at the mercy of many temptations. There are two essentially different types of volition. The one is represented by an abiding purpose ; it is the determination to accomplish Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 67 something. The strong will may set itself to such a purpose and order an entire life in accordance with its requirements. Such a purpose may come through study and the training of the schools. The second type of will is shown in our constant innumerable decisions. It is this type of will that must deal with the temptations which seem ever to spring upon us from ambush from the wayside of life. " Come with me to this questionable resort or dance." " Take a drink with us." It is temptations of this sort that, like lions and wicked giants, beset our pathway. In matters of temptation, " he who hesitates is lost." The decision must be instantly made and acted upon, or it is likely to be wrong. If we dwell on the temptation, we yield to it. The school teaches deferred judg- ment and the weighing of evidence. It gives us the sort of a training that would enable us to choose a life purpose, but it often renders us helpless in the presence of circumstances re- quiring instant action. This, I suppose, is one reason that scholars are so seldom chosen to direct great enterprises along the line of their scholarship. The best training that we know for the type of instant de- cision and execution that virtue requires comes from athletics. Briggs finds that they are the best safeguard against the social evil at Harvard, and this is surely true in many of our colleges. A boy is playing baseball. All good play involves a training in instantaneous judgment and in the immediate execution of that decision with all the power the person pos- sesses. The person who acts in this way in regard to tempta- tion will be a moral person, as a rule, because the judgment is usually right in the beginning. It is only when the mind comes to be dominated by the temptation, by letting it dwell upon it, that decisions are wrong and temptations get the upper hand. 68 Education Through Play It is just this type of instant decision that is needed also in the discipline of the schoolroom, in business, and in society. Sportsmanship. — Sportsmanship is primitive ethics. It says that you shall play fair, that you shall try your best to win and work all the harder when the odds are against you, but that you shall accept defeat with a smiling face and come back to try again the next time, that you shall accept the decisions of the umpire and not try to avenge yourself for your defeat by calling your opponents names or throwing stones at them, that you shall treat the visiting team as your guests and give them the advantage of position, if there is an advantage. Boys and girls do not inherit this knowledge ; the custom of the vacant- lot play and unorganized competition is entirely at variance with it. Yet this is really the most fundamental lesson of con- duct and public behavior that these children have to learn. It seems to me that it is well worth putting play into the curric- ulum to require sportsmanship alone. As the experience of the last half century has shown, the children are not going to acquire sportsmanship unless it is taught to them. A Sense of Justice. — In the play of the street, might makes right ; the small boy does not expect to have any rights where big boys are concerned. The easiest way to get the thing you want is often to take it away from some one else. When the playgrounds were first opened in our great cities, there would often be only a dozen or twenty swings, while there would be five or six hundred children who wished to use them. A small boy would come in and sit down in a swing. A big boy would come along, jerk the little boy out, and sit down in his place. Big boys, apparently, had not been accustomed to waiting their turns with the little boys. Should you go back after three or four weeks, if the playground had been well Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 69 conducted, the big boy would be standing in line with the little boy. He had acquired a new sense of justice and the square deal. '■ Play and Honesty. — I wonder if any of my readers has ever seen a group of children playing croquet, and one of them call- ing the attention of the company to something else while he is rolling the ball along in front of the wicket. There is a similar opportunity for cheating in many other games, and the child who has formed a habit of cheating in his play has formed a habit which goes with him into mature life. People will often say, " You must teach the children to be honest in business." But children do not learn to be honest in this way. They have formed a habit of cheating or of honesty long before the busi- ness period arrives. I do not say that every child who cheats in his play will cheat also in business, but I should be very suspicious of it, and I am quite sure on the positive side that a child who has learned to be honest in his play will be honest also in business. I was talking a short time ago with the manager of the great Sears Roebuck Co. of Chicago. He said : " We never employ a man from certain of these great schools around here. We have found that the athletics in these schools are crooked and that we cannot trust the men." This accusation is certainly true of many schools. The ath- letics teach them to be crooked more effectively than the ethi- cal department teaches them to be honest. Under the conditions of street play, might makes right. It is nearly always to the advantage of the big boy to take the thing away from the little boy. It is usually to his ad- vantage to cheat in his play. We cannot expect high concep- tions of honor to grow up under these conditions. No adult community could exist for a week without direction. Take jo Education Through Play away our police and prisons, our judges and juries, and allow every one to do as he chooses, and the strong to take the things away from the weak, and we have essentially the conditions under which the children are playing. When we put the di- rector into the playground, we put the umpire over the game. The umpire makes cheating unprofitable, and very soon there is developed a sense of sportsmanship that says it is unmanly. You are to win games by your own prowess and skill. Cheat- ing is the device of a weakling who " cannot deliver the goods." It takes the victory from the victor and gives it to one who has not earned it; it is unsportsmanlike and mean. Cheating is a constant source of quarrels among children, and the child who cheats is prevented thereby from acquiring skill, because he is not putting his trust in skillful playing, but in dodging the rules. Children have nothing to do with business or financial honesty. Their honesty is that of personal relation- ships, which occur almost entirely in play. Cigarettes. — There is a large amount of cigarette smoking in all of our great cities. Boys are constantly coming upon the playgrounds with cigarettes, until they realize that this is not permitted. The playgrounds largely prevent cigarette smok- ing by giving different ideals. The habitual cigarette smoker is apt to be a pale, anemic weakling and degenerate, who stands on the street corner and makes worldly-wise comments on the girls and women as they go by. He is the opposite in nearly every way of the athletic type of boy. He likes to attend athletic contests, as his prototype in Rome did the gladiatorial exhibitions, but he usually takes no part in them. Cigarettes seem to have a direct action on the heart and the lungs. It is difficult for the cigarette smoker to become an athlete, because cigarettes make the heart irregular and often Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 7 1 cause palpitations. It prevents the development of an ade- quate lung capacity. The physical examinations given at Yale during a long series of years indicate that the smokers average thirty cubic inches less lung capacity than the non-smokers. This result has not been found at some other colleges; but whether this is true or not, it is generally agreed that the action of cigarettes is deleterious on both the heart and lungs of young smokers. It is in periods of idleness that boys form the habit of smok- ing. Organized play prevents a large part of the idleness. The boy smokes, probably, because the corner loafer with whom he associates smokes. The playground gives him dif- ferent ideals of manliness. He soon learns that if he would succeed in athletics, and there are no other laurels quite so alluring, he must abstain from cigarettes, because they " take his wind." Drinking. — Another bad habit which organized play serves to break is the habit of drinking. The well-organized play- ground that is open at night is the most successful rival of the saloon that has thus far been found. In the congested parts of our great cities the saloon is the poor man's club ; he goes there largely for social reasons. With the opening of the play- ground that provides athletics he has another place to go. He has other interests to absorb his thoughts and a whole new set of ideals, which are in opposition to the ideals of the saloon. Saloon keepers have usually complained that the playgrounds and social centers interfered with their business. Athletics are about the most intense interest of adolescents, and the young man knows that it is one or the other, — that he cannot drink much and be an athlete. Some college athletes drink, but they quit it as soon as they go into training, because 72 Education Through Play they know that drinking would jeopardize their chances of success. If there is in the playground a physical director of the right type, these young men see in him a successful athlete who does not drink. He is likely to influence them towards abstinence. In an investigation that was made in New York two years ago, it was found that there were something over fifteen hun- dred clubs meeting on the East Side of the city. A typical club with thirty members and dues of ten cents a week was taken and a meeting place was sought for them. It was found there were almost no desirable rooms for such meetings except in connection with the saloons. These could often be had very cheaply, and sometimes for nothing, but they were always rented on the condition that the " club patronize the bar." A large part of the drinking that does not come from an in- herited appetite springs from a desire for sociability and an attempt to escape from the pressure and oppression of monot- onous work. It is the desire for a new sensation, for something that will stir the spirit and make the person feel alive. This play can do as well as drink. Sex. — Play uses the time that is otherwise ofttimes used for obscene gossip and the planning of questionable adven- tures. It uses the energy that often goes to dissipation. It promotes both a healthy fatigue that does not seek other adventures and a sound sleep. It seems to be also a vicarious expression of the sex impulse. Athletics strengthen the will and form a habit of instant decision. It is believed that the school ofttimes puts the youth at the mercy of temptations by slowing up the processes of judgment. In temptations of sex, " he who hesitates is lost." A habit of deferring decisions Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 73 puts the tempted in the power of the temptation, because a temptation that is dwelt upon is nearly always yielded to. Jane Addams said in her Chicago address at the Play Con- gress : " Amusement is stronger than vice, and it alone can stifle the lust for it. We see all about us much vice which is merely a love for pleasure ' gone wrong,' the illicit expression of what might have been not only normal and recreative pleas- ure, but an instrument in the advance of the higher social morality." In the recent studies that have been made of the white slave trade in New York, it has been found that one of the chief recruiting grounds is the dance hall. More than ninety per cent of the dance halls in New York are over saloons, and the halls are usually furnished to parties without cost, as it is expected that the drinks will pay for their use. Where the girls come from homes which consist of two bed- rooms and a kitchen, we cannot expect them to see their company there. Consequently, they meet them on the street corner, or the park bench, or at the dance hall. The dance hall is a bad institution because the drinking, the un- regulated conduct, and the nature of the people who frequent it, subject the girl to bad influences. The playground that is lighted at night, so that the girls can go there for their exercises and recreation, and that is provided with a field house, so that gymnastics and other sports can be carried on indoors during the winter, offers the most successful alternative to the dance hall that has been tried anywhere. Within one year after West Park No. 2, a small playground on the West Side, was opened in Chicago, four dance halls within half a mile of that playground had been closed. The playground furnishes the social opportunity, exercise, and recreation, which the working 74 Education Through Play girl demands. Where the city makes no provision, almost the only opportunities which she has to gratify these natural desires are by going to the dance hall and the moving picture show, and both of these may be bad influences. It does not matter, however, so very much that we keep the children away from temptations, if their minds are still dwell- ing upon them. The organized play of the playground, where the contest of to-day leads on to the contest of to-morrow, and the interest becomes intense, is one of the strongest influences to hold a boy's thoughts and to keep him from dwelling on morbid fancies. The unorganized play on the vacant lot does not have this power over the boy, because it has no future. The scrub game which is played does not lead to further games, and there is no reason why he should care particularly whether the team of which he happens to be a member this afternoon is successful or not. Play Ideals. — Play represents the life of our ancestors, it is the effective side of childhood ; but it has always been con- sidered as a trivial thing by most adults. It has often seemed to parents quite beneath their consideration to teach the chil- dren how they should play. Consequently, play has been with- out ideals, except as it has observed them from life. The young tough is likely to be a strong athletic fellow. He has become a tough, very likely, on account of a surplus of motor ability that found no expression under city conditions. He can, very likely, run faster and strike harder and play many of the games better than most of the other boys. There is always great danger that he will become the model for the boys to copy. His excellence in the things in hand makes him the natural leader. The alternative to this young rowdy, in very many cases, Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 75 is the playground director. He is more proficient in all of the activities than any of the children. He becomes the natural leader and hero of the boys, if he is the right sort of a man. Children do not learn to write very well without a copy, and they do not learn conduct and sportsmanship any better. If the director cannot set the standards of play for the playground, he should be discharged. If he is able to do it, he becomes the real leader, the character-determin- ing factor. Play is the Most Perfect Democracy. — On the playground there is no rich or poor, high or low. You have " to deliver the goods " if you stay on the baseball team, though your father is a millionaire. There is always an almost complete equality between those who play together. We are accus- tomed to speak of the public school as the bulwark of our de- mocracy, and such no doubt it is, but the public playground is far more democratic than the school. In the playgrounds we have a voluntary democratic organ- ization. The team elects its own captain and obeys his orders. It is necessary for the members to subordinate themselves and take the positions in the field, even if they do wish to pitch or catch. They must obey their captain. In a large number of playgrounds, the democratic principle is carried further and we have an organization like a junior republic, so that the discipline and management is placed in the children's hands. The school is an absolute monarchy. It has in its organization, as usually found, no element that is democratic. It may be said here that directed play makes a monarchy out of the playground also and takes away its demo- cratic values, and it is quite possible for organization to do this if it is along wrong lines or is excessive. J6 Education Through Play Obedience to Law. — It is said that we have laws in America only that we may break them. Our sense of liberty tends to run into license. We have no inherent reverence for laws of any kind, and many that are on our statute books we frankly disregard. There are certain laws that tend to produce re- bellion in children. At the time of the great child welfare ex- hibition in New York a careful study was made of the police records among other things. It was found that out of seven hundred seventeen arrests of children during July of that year about one hundred were for playing baseball in the streets ; one hundred seventy-seven were for playing cat on the streets; eighty were for jumping on street cars and nearly one hundred more for yelling in connection with the games they were playing. Four hundred fifty out of seven hundred seventeen arrests were for playing on the street. These chil- dren were doing perfectly normal things. They were doing the things that they must do if they were to grow up into vigorous men and women, and we were not really dealing with delinquent children at all, but we were dealing with a delin- quent city, for the city that says it shall be against the law to play in the streets and does not furnish any other place where the children can play is conducting a school of crime. It makes it perfectly certain that they will grow up to disregard the law. The laws that are most vital to children are not usually the laws of the city, but the laws of the games they are playing. In the play of the vacant lots they are accustomed to disregard these laws more or less, so that we find in the playgrounds that we have to teach the rules over again. Now the boy who has got into the habit of disregarding the rules of the games he is playing is getting the most fundamental training Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 77 in lawlessness that it is possible to give to a boy. I have always been accustomed to tell playground directors, " You must teach the children that the rules of basket ball are a part of the moral law " ; for to all intents and purposes they are a part of the moral law. The child who has acquired a habit of dodging the rules of the games he plays, who makes fouls when he can do so unobserved, is getting just the sort of train- ing which will make him a lawbreaker later. In the organized playground there is an umpire over the game, and the umpire insists on the rules. It is impossible to hold contests with other grounds unless the games are played according to rules, and the players can usually be brought to see in a short time that it is the part of sportsmanship to play in this way. A few years ago the Sage foundation appropriated $10,000 for a study of juvenile delinquency in the city of Chicago. The investigators took a great wall map of the city and put a pin in the map for every child that had been arrested in the previous eight years, and studied the relationship of these arrests to the different areas of the city. They found that there had been a decrease of twenty-eight per cent in the num- ber of children arrested over an area of one half mile in radius about the South park playgrounds, and that there had been an increase in successful dealing with the children who had been placed on probation amounting to thirty-two per cent, showing that there had been a practical increase in successful dealing with delinquency amounting to about fifty per cent over this playground area. While there is no other city which has stud- ied the conditions with equal care, there is a consensus of opinion, apparently, that the number of arrests of children increases about fifty per cent as soon as the schools close and the children are turned out upon the street, and that this falls 78 Education Through Play off again to about the normal amount as soon as the play- grounds are opened in any quarter. A short time ago I spent a few days in the reformatory of a western state. There were in this reformatory two hundred forty boys on whom the state was spending $60,000 a year. There was another reformatory for girls on whom nearly an equal amount was being spent. This was nearly enough to have supported playgrounds in all the cities from which these children came, and the playgrounds would, undoubtedly, have prevented half or more of all the delinquency which the reformatories were caring for at such expense. Mr. Porter, in his report on the work in Buffalo, tells a story worth repeating. A small boy pointed to a portly policeman and said : " Der goes Old Battles, de cop. He won't arrest us any more, now as yous got a playground for us kids. Die playground is good for him as well as us." " How's that? " asked the director. " Why, can't you see, Old Battles used to be as thin as er match when he chased us kids ; but now he's big as a barrel because he ain't got no work to do." Team Play and Loyalty. — The most important moral train- ing which play gives is in the development of loyalty. Perhaps the greatest need of every country is that its citizens shall acquire a community sense, that they shall be able to think in terms larger than those of their own individuality, and be willing to work unselfishly for the city, the country, or the organization to which they belong. In other words, that they should acquire the spirit of loyalty. Professor Royce says that loyalty is the most fundamental virtue, more elementary even than love in the moral code. A person who thinks only of himself and his own welfare is a bad citizen. A Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 79 person who always conceives of himself as a member of a larger whole to which his loyalty is due is a good citizen. How does a boy get this training ? There can be no question but the eas- iest way to develop in a boy this community sense, this feeling of loyalty to some organization larger than himself, is through team games. But the boy who is playing a game on a vacant lot does not acquire this spirit, for the reason that the scrub team has no permanent organization, no captain, and no future. It is team only in name. There is no reason why a boy should be loyal to a ball team of which he is chosen a mem- ber for the afternoon, and which is dissolved as soon as the game is over. When, on the other hand, the boy comes into the playground, and becomes a member of a permanent team, he takes part in a series of contests with other grounds. Just so far as these contests become important to the team, all of the members are practically compelled to acquire loyalty. A boy who still seeks to play the individual game, to make the long hit or throw to attract attention to himself in playing the game, soon finds that this sort of play does not win applause. The judgment on his play is a social judgment. It is estimated by its effect on the team. He must bat out in order that the man on third may run in. He must take the undesirable posi- tion, he must practice when he wants to go fishing, — in short, he must do many things that he does not wish to do in order that the team may be successful ; and this spirit of loyalty, which the team creates, we call good citizenship as applied to the city, we call patriotism as applied to the country, and, if we agree with Royce, it is the most fundamental of all virtues. I have often taken boys from the East Side of New York City to the parks to play baseball. The space had been 80 Education Through Play too limited for these boys to play games often, and nearly always I have found the same result, they were too selfish to play. Each wanted to be captain, or first baseman, or pitcher, and if he could not play where he wished, he would not play at all. If we look into the social status of a football or a base- ball team, we find that it reproduces almost exactly the condi- tions of tribal life. If the tribal stage was the period when the impulse to cooperation and loyalty appeared, then, if we ac- cept the recapitulation theory in its pedagogic aspects, we must conclude that the place to train the spirit of loyalty and help- fulness is in a team like this. I believe the facts bear out this conclusion. Play and Friendliness. — All play is social in nature. We cannot play alone. In play, while there is rivalry, there is not that intense antagonistic rivalry that is found in business. At the first Play Congress in Chicago, Miss Hariette Heller, of Omaha, said, " The very best training that any girl can have for society comes through the social play of her childhood." She might as well have said it of boys as of girls, for practi- cally all the social training of both boys and girls comes in this way. By this I do not mean, of course, that the children learn in this way to say " Please " and " Thank you," or that they learn to talk, without saying anything, about an infinite num- ber of subjects. Play does not teach society manners, which are the froth of politeness, too often a body without a soul. But play is always, I fancy, the most effective teacher of that kind of good comradeship which makes for political and social success. But this is not true of all kinds of play. The play of the street Arab, whose hand is against every one and against whom is every one's hand, does not beget confidence and Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 8 1 friendliness until he becomes a member of an unsocial gang. But under normal conditions of play, especially where team games are played, the games create a spirit of friendliness and good fellowship, which makes the ideal condition for the de- velopment of the social graces. We doubtless all know " only-children " who have been brought up apart. They come to the playground and stand outside the ring. They do not know how to fall in and become a part of the circle, and unless they overcome this attitude in these early days, it will be a handicap to them during all the rest of their lives. I have always been accustomed to judge of the success of a playground largely by the spirit of friendli- ness that existed among the children, because I have always found that, when there has been much play, a spirit of friend- liness always grew up, and the presence of the friendliness al- ways served as a pretty accurate index of the play. If the children, instead of playing together, have been merely using the apparatus, no such spirit will be found. For a long time on the East Side of New York there was a faction between the Jews and the Italians, and nearly every afternoon they used to get out on the streets and chase each other up and down with sticks and stones and banana peelings or anything they could get hold of. This would go on till the police would come out and stop it. Finally, a playground was opened on the border line between the two sections. The children came into the playground, but the Jews stayed on the one side and the Italians on the other. They would not play together. Seeking to correct this state of affairs, we or- ganized baseball teams with five Jews and four Italians on a team, but the teams would break up in the afternoon. The children would not play together. Then we began to organize 82 Education Through Play games, such as prisoner's base and pullaway, that required a large number of players on a side, and little by little the chil- dren fell in and played with us. After six weeks, they did not know whether they were Jews or Italians. They had en- tirely forgotten in the intimacy of play the racial prejudice that went before. Friendship is a condition of play. You cannot have good play unless the children are friendly; and, conversely, play always tends to produce the friendship that is essential to itself. One reason that play has been so difficult in our cities has been that there has been so little friendship among the children. Everything that makes for disparity and antago- nism works directly against play. Some of the disparities that are most noticeable and most injurious are difference of race. American children often will not play with " Dagos " or " Sheenys." Southern children will not play with " Niggers." Another point of antagonism is difference of religion. Protes- tant children ofttimes do not care to play with Roman Catholic children and vice versa. Around election times even a differ- ence in politics will interfere very materially with the play of the children. Of course a distinction of classes, as of the rich and poor, is ofttimes an almost insuperable barrier. The child who is brought up in a good-sized family with a number of cousins in the neighborhood is very fortunate ; for here, if things are right, are furnished the ideal conditions for play, that produce thoughtfulness, courtesy, and the finest fruits of the spirit. One reason why the street play is so unsatisfactory is because there is there such a mixture of races and creeds and politics ; and there is such antagonism to it on the part of the public, that it is almost impossible for friendliness to grow up. The hand of every one is against the street child and his hand Play and the Formation of Habits and Character 83 is against every one. This makes him suspicious and cunning. He develops a whole series of unsocial traits for self -protection. Most of the sociability and companionship of life comes in its leisure time and in connection with our recreation. We cannot play with people without being better friends on ac- count of the play, if we really enter into the spirit of the game. Grover Cleveland used to say every man should retain through life some form of sport, because that was the only way a man could remain a good comrade. Almost any sort of an interesting game will serve to develop this feeling of fellowship ; but the more interesting the game, the more effec- tive it will be ; and, in general, team games are more effective than individualistic games. Besides games, walking and camp- ing trips have an especial value in this regard. Perhaps friends are the most valuable acquisition of life, and we can- not afford to neglect for either learning or money any means that will deepen and sweeten the relation. We have not thought in general of training in f riendliness and companion- ableness as a part of an education. But is there anything that we are now giving in the school that means more for either success or happiness than the ability to make friends ? There is coming in all over the world a growing sense of human brotherhood, of racial solidarity. All of our great social move- ments are but different expressions of this spirit. Almost anything that will help to train it will be in line with the re- quirements of the new century. For this reason, among others, camping and walking trips should be brought in, be- cause there is nothing like a camp fire to draw a circle together, and develop a new sense of sympathy and fellowship. The one duty that Christianity enjoins is love, which in common parlance means friendship. There can be no ques- 84 Education Through Play tion but play is one of the strongest influences in developing friendship. If the business of the churches is the develop- ing of the spirit of love in the world, then the promotion of play is one of its most sacred duties. It is surely no small reproach to the church that through all the Christian cen- turies it has discovered so little of the pedagogy of love, and that it has left to the modern social movements the develop- ment of the spirit of brotherhood and democracy which its great founder everywhere taught. If we wish the world to be a wanner and more loving place, one of our first duties will be the promotion of play and sociability of the right sort among the children, and the extending of this childhood's necessity to advancing years, until infirmity or death make play im- possible. BIBLIOGRAPHY Addams, Jane : The Spirit of Youth in the City Streets. Macmillan. Davis, Michael M. : Exploitation of Pleasure. Russell Sage Foundation Department of Recreation. (10 cents.) George, William R. : The Junior Republic. D. Appleton & Co. Gulick, Luther : Play and Democracy. Proceedings of the Playground Association of America, Vol. I. Psychological, Pedagogical, and Religious Aspects of Group Games. Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. VI, p. 135. Hughes : Physical Training as a Factor in Character Building. Pro- ceedings of the N. E. A., 1896. Lee, Joseph : Play as a School of the Citizen. Playground Association of America, Proceedings, Vol. I. Royce, Josiah : Some Relations of Physical Training to the Present Prob- lems of Moral Education in America. Chapter V of Race Questions and Other American Problems. Macmillan. CHAPTER V PLAY IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS Although Germany is best known for its gymnastics and England for its athletics, still Germany, and not England, is the source of the present play movement in the United States and the world. We might wonder at this, if we did not consider that most of the educational movements of the last century have come from the same source. There are three notable periods in the development of German physical training. In the first period, which begins with Jahn, there was a strong love of sport and athletic games. In the second, gymnastics occupy the most of the field. In the third, there is essentially a return to the earlier point of view and a reemphasis on the value of play. Froebel. — The English have systematized athletics. It has been the peculiar province of the Germans to form into a system the plays of very young and middle-aged children. The first great modern writer on the educational value of play was Froebel. Froebel saw in the plays of children the perfect expression of the child soul. He perceived that all future developments are folded in play as the oak is in the acorn. The kindergarten games are dramatizations of the occupations of adults, for the most part, such as the child naturally carries on by himself. Froebel has systematized them and given them an accompaniment of song. They are true to the spirit and in- terest of childhood. They involve abundant exercise with deli- 8S 86 Education Through Play cate social and moral training. Froebel, however, left his work incomplete. There is no apparent reason why he, perceiving, as he did, the value of play, should have stopped with the play of the little children. We cannot suppose that, if play is as he says " the germinal leaves of all the later life," that the child's need of it ceases by the time he is six years old . Logically, Froe- bel should have gone on to organize the games of the children through the university. Instead of this, he merely took the first step and stopped. The great work that is before the play movement at present is the completion of this work which Froebel began; in other words, to make the kindergarten in- clude the university. In the German curriculum of games for the elementary school and the athletics in the English public schools and universities, we have a good beginning. The Curriculum of Play. — In 1892 a royal commission was sent to England to examine into the sports of the English Public Schools and report on such games as were suitable for introduction into Germany. This commission made a favor- able report, and through the assistance of the Emperor and the Minister of Education this was officially circulated throughout Germany. Special inducements were offered to English foot- ball and cricket teams to tour Germany and play exhibition games in the different cities, with the result that in the year 1909 there were twelve hundred ninety-five football teams in the different German cities and something over seven hundred cricket teams. The German mind is very systematic, and a curriculum of play was soon arranged for the elementary schools. In the summer of 1902, I visited one of the Realschulen of Heidel- berg at the time of their examinations. Two days were given to examinations in educational subjects and one day was given Play in the German Schools 87 to the examination in games. The games for the small chil- dren were such as cat and mouse. The older children played such games as three deep, circle ball, and hurl ball. At the fifth Congress, which was held in Nuremberg in 1902, some eight thousand children from the schools of the city gave an exhibition of games. The exhibition was on a broad meadow near the city. The first event was by sixty-seven classes of boys. These boys were from the elementary schools, and played the whole graded system of games for boys with three or four extra singing games, introduced to give variety and sound to the spectacle. As no two classes played the same game, there were sixty-seven different games going on at the same time. The report says, " The boys played with the greatest enthusiasm and evident enjoyment." At the end of half an hour, a trumpet was blown and the boys filed off to give place to sixty-seven classes of girls who played in turn the games of the girls' curriculum. Many of these games were the same as those played by the boys, but also many were different. At the end of a half hour the girls in turn gave the higher schools a chance. A feature of the third period was that there were fourteen games of football going on at once. The School Playgrounds. The Elementary Schools. — The play movement of Germany is primarily a school movement. The municipal playground as it is in America is very rare. There are many playgrounds in the parks, but these are nearly always used by the schools as schools under the direction of the teachers. The school movement is both the large movement and the significant one. As many of the schools are almost without grounds, it is difficult for the children to play there, and they must often go to a playground at some distance for 88 Education Through Play a play period, just as they might for a period of manual train- ing. The masters go with them to see to the giving out and returning of the apparatus from the boxes placed on the grounds, to the proper allotment of space, and to the peaceful conduct of the games ; but they do not, as a rule, play with the children. These playgrounds are definitely planned so that they have a separate place for each game. There is no apparatus such as swings, or seesaws, as a rule. The Gymnasia. — Like the English'*system, German edu- cation is divided into primary and secondary, the one for the masses and the other for the classes : the Volkschulen, for the people ; the gymnasia and universities, for the leaders of the people. But the gymnasia, which correspond in a general way with the public schools of England, are day schools, and the school hours and the hours of preparation are so long that there has been very little time for sport. The English gublic schools are mostly located in the country, where thereis an abundance of room. The German gymnasia are nearly all centrally located in the great cities, so that the play problem for them is inherently difficult. Also, there has not been in Germany that parental encouragement of play, which the English parent has given to his son, whom he sends to Eton or Harrow quite as much to learn cricket or football as he does to learn Latin or Greek. There has been less progress made in the gymnasia and uni- versities than anywhere else, but many of the gymnasia now have tennis courts and some have football fields. There is a movement to provide fields, and to require a certain amount of play, but not much progress has yet been made. The difference in the results of these two great systems of education is marked. There is a strong school spirit and in- Play in the German Schools 89 tense loyalty to the school at Rugby and Eton. This spirit is largely lacking in a German gymnasium. The English boy generally looks back to Eton or Rugby as a sort of Eden from which he has been driven by advancing years. The German boy seldom looks back upon his days at the gymnasium with pleasure. The English boy comes through his course with abounding health, the German boy often with shattered nerves. The English boy comes out with a good knowledge of men and an aptitude for affairs, but ofttimes without scholarly habits or methods. The German boy comes from the gymnasium with scholarly ways and methods, with a mind disciplined by severe intellectual toil and accustomed to it. Probably the German school is the most efficient school from a scholastic standpoint in the world. If we must choose between a school which is largely play for the sake of culture, or the school which is mostly study for the sake of learning, I suppose we should choose the German school instead of the English, but there does not seem to be any reason why both of these aims might not be realized in the same school. Until recently there have been no contests between gymna- siums, but for the last twenty years, taught first by the results of athletics in the English public schools and later aroused by the congresses on hygiene and tuberculosis, to the value of leading a life in the open air, the leaders have been working with might and main to make play more popular, and to in- troduce football and cricket. This movement has been largely successful in the introduction of football, but not so successful with cricket. Girls' Schools. — Volume DC of Special Reports on Educa- tional Subjects for Great Britain, 1904, says : " That an effort is now being made to introduce the system of outdoor games 90 Education Through Play into some girls' schools (corresponding to girls' high schools of England). The mistresses are being especially trained for the purpose, and certain afternoons are set apart, when the children meet for games, attendance being voluntary. . . . Many schools have acquired the use of grounds, where the- children go on appointed afternoons." The University. — The ideal of English secondary education is culture, the ideal of the German system is learning. As an outgrowth of this, the English school emphasizes the school life. It gives the man time that he may immerse himself in the school spirit and soak it in. The German school, on the other hand, makes its scholastic tasks so severe that there is little time to develop school life and atmosphere. The stu- dents go from university to university during their course, so there is little tendency to form loyalties to any particular uni- versity. But, as it seems to me, the chief reason for the ab- sence of school loyalty is the complete absence of athletic teams that might represent the university. Dueling takes the place of athletics. I saw fifteen duels in one afternoon at Heidel- berg, and I might have seen five more had I remained an hour longer. Seventy-five per cent of the students take fencing, while only seven per cent take part in any form of athletics. This dueling is an outgrowth of the German military ideal. Officially the universities are not supposed to know anything about it, but in reality they know all about it. There is a building in Heidelberg which is devoted to dueling. The contests are all with narrow swords which are kept sharp. Severe injuries seldom occur, but the countenances of the con- testants are often cut to shreds. The eyes and throat are protected. Thrusting with the sword is prohibited. I was unable to see that there was much skill in the contest, and I Play in the German Schools 91 question if a man would be any better able to defend himself in a real encounter on account of such practice. The wounds are sewed up with heavy thread and are often drawn askew so as to make a broad scar. These scars are regarded as badges of honor, and are sought for as much as was ever court plaster at the French court or a Victoria cross in the English army. The absence of athletic interests is a great loss to the non- studious part of the student body. In the English university the man who goes up to get its culture without its learning gets a liberal education out of the university life. The man who goes up to a German university for its lif e without its learning is likely to get nothing but debauchery. The German univer- sity is the best university in the world in which to work, but it is one of the worst in which to be idle. Courses in Play for the Teachers. — When play was first introduced into the German schools, the teachers regarded it as an added burden. They had never been taught to play themselves, and they did not think that they should be re- quired to organize the games of the children. In order to meet this situation the Central Committee began at once to organize courses and hold play institutes for the teachers. A normal course in play was introduced into the University of Berlin in 1894, and since that date, institutes have been held in increasing numbers throughout the empire. The institute usually lasts one week. The registration fee is four marks, but this entitles each teacher to the annual, Das Jahrbiich fiir Volks- und Jugendspiel, and various subsidiary publications on games, which would regularly cost about six marks. In these institutes, which are in charge of one or two persons, the morn- ing of each day is usually given to the theory and the afternoon to the playing of games and the practice of athletics. 92 Education Through Play During the last few years normal courses in play have been introduced into the public normal schools, and many of the cities are holding one-day institutes at different times during the year, so there is not so great a demand as formerly for the one-week institutes conducted by the committee. It was stated in the Jahrbuch for 191 2 that 60,000 teachers had taken the courses up to that time. In the international congress on physical education, which was held in Vienna in 191 1, it was resolved that a normal course in play should be a part of the preparation of every teacher. Time for Play. — People who know about the curriculum of German schools usually think it is impossible to put any- thing new into them, because they seem much overcrowded. They have found place for play in three ways. They have put organized games into the school recesses, into certain of the gymnastic periods, and a large number of schools have established a special play afternoon. Since 1897 the Volkschulen have given three hours a week to physical training, and there has been a tendency to give more and more of this time to games. Exercises have been taken in the yard whenever possible. As to the frequency of this provision for play, in the Sixth Report on the Public Playgrounds and Open-air Play for the Children of Saxony Dr. von Schenkendorf says, " Among 3616 schools reply- ing, 1958 had public play and gymnastic exercises combined, 1272 conducted play outside of gymnastic exercises, and 359 had as yet failed to arrange for games." The " play afternoon " is not universal in Germany, but is developing rapidly, and the Jahrbuch for 1909 states that the number of these play afternoons doubled during the year. If a school has an adequate playground of its own, the chil- Play in the German Schools 93 dren will usually have a two-hour play period one afternoon a week there, but if the school does not have such a playground, the Superintendent of Parks assigns a playground to the school for one or two afternoons. If a child does not wish to play in most of these schools, he will have to go to the doctor and get the doctor's certificate, saying that he is physically dis- qualified, otherwise he will have to play whether he wishes to or not. There are some systems, however, where the attend- ance at the playground in the afternoon is voluntary. One of these playgrounds, in Berlin, which I visited, was three or four acres in extent. It was assigned to three schools to give each school two afternoons a week. There was a shelter at one end, and there were three teachers organizing games when I was there. Walking Trips. — One of the interesting developments of German lif e which we might introduce with profit is the school journey. These journeys vary in length from walks which are taken on Saturday afternoons with the teacher to expedi- tions three or four weeks in length, which take the children across whole provinces, or even through the Alps in some of the longer trips. These journeys are generally taken on foot, and the school sometimes serves as a bank where the children save up their pennies during the year in preparation for them. They are very definitely planned to illustrate the work in history, geography, geology, and general nature study of the year. They are excellent both for the practical first- hand knowledge they give the children of the things they have been studying about, for the excellent physical exercise in the open air, and their great social opportunities. The Germans feel also that they create in the children a love for the Fatherland. The long trips are taken during the summer 94 Education Through Play vacations, but the shorter ones, ofttimes occupying two or three days, are taken during the school year. It is in these walking trips that the German boy comes to know Germany. He sees the places of interest and visits the parks, public buildings, the great historic castles, battle fields, and the homes of literary men ; but no less he visits the factories and sees men at all kinds of work. He comes to know the common birds and flowers and trees. He sees the sunsets and the distant landscapes and learns to appreciate the beauties of nature. He acquires resourcefulness under all sorts of situa- tions. He meets many new people. As he goes from city to city and town to town, it is customary to give athletic exhibitions and to hold contests with the children of the locality. Perhaps the best thing of all about these trips is that the children develop on them such a close attachment for their masters and for each other. The children usually carry knapsacks, in which they have cooking utensils and certain changes of clothing. They buy bread at the stores and milk and potatoes of the farmers and prepare a considerable number of their meals at the road- side. They are often entertained by well-to-do citizens at night or sometimes they sleep on the hay in the barns, some- times on the floor of the inns. Ofttimes they are entertained at the barracks of the soldiers, but during the last three or four years, in several provinces, they have been taking the desks out of certain classrooms and putting in cots. By this arrangement the children walk from schoolhouse to school- house and stay all night there. They usually pay about five cents for their lodging. The expense of these trips is borne in various ways. Some- times the entire cost is paid by the parents, sometimes by Play in the German Schools 95 the city or the school, and sometimes by private gifts. Oft- times a part of the expense is borne by the city, a part from some bequest, and a part by the children. The expense, however, is not great, sometimes no more than ten cents a day, and ofttimes not more than twenty-five. They are carried for half fare or less on the government railroads when they need to ride, and get special rates at the inns, if they need to stay there. There were 65,000 children who went out from Berlin for walks of a week or more last summer. Walking parties are usually taken out once or twice a week from the playgrounds, and the children go for a half day or a day nearly every month from the schools. One meets these parties nearly everywhere, and is usually impressed with the fact that they are seeing the country, learning a large number of practical facts, and having a good time all at once. There are, at least, five na- tional associations that are promoting walking, and there is a local association in nearly every town. Very many of the turnvereins take an annual walk of a week or more for the annual vacation of the members. Parents also often go with their children in the summer time, sometimes for a walk of two or three hundred miles. These walking trips date back to Turn-Vater John, who sometimes took his students out for a walk of as much as a month's duration. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bolton, Frederick : Secondary School System of Germany. D. Apple- ton & Co. Leipzig : Schreiber Gardens. In Current Literature, Vol. XXV, p. 385. 1899. Russell, J. E. : German Higher Schools. Longmans. 96 Education Through Play Special Reports on Educational Subjects for Great Britain contain the following valuable articles : "Higher Schools for Girls in Germany," Vol. IX, p. 207. "The School Journey," Vol. I, p. 510. "Schools in the Rhineland," Vol. IX, p. 405. "Elementary Schools Code," Vol. I, p. 468. Also under various titles in Vol. III. Teubner, B. G. : Jahrbiicher filr Volks- und Jugendspiele (j8g2-igi4). Leipzig, Germany. Imported by G. E. Stechert. Das Deutsches Wanderjahrbuch. Korper und Geist; Magazine. CHAPTER VI PLAY IN THE ENGLISH SCHOOLS The development of play in the German schools has been largely a matter of promotion, but in England play has seemed to spring more spontaneously from the nature of the people. There are two conditions that have been especially favorable : the climate is such that one can play out doors all the year around with comfort ; and there is a large lei- sured class who have an abundance of time for play. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that for a generation or more play has been organized into the curriculum of the public schools. But it must be remembered that the schools of the masses, which are known as council schools, are almost as distinct from the schools of the classes in England as are the colored schools from the white schools in the South, and that the conditions in these two systems of schools vary greatly. Council Schools. — The council schools were of very tardy organization and have been neglected by the government, chiefly, perhaps, because none of the people who took part in politics sent their children to them ; but there has been a great awakening in the last few years. Physical training has never received the same attention that it has in the public schools ; but all the girls and small boys in London are given instruction in calisthenics and folk dancing. These exercises include free movements and exer- H 97 98 Education Through Play cise with dumb-bells, Indian clubs, and wands. All of the longer drills are always performed in the open air unless the weather is bad. In the crowded sections of London, many of the schools are provided with roof playgrounds, which are used mostly by the smaller children. The legal minimum space for a school yard is thirty square feet of playground to each pupil, but in practice there are nearly forty square feet in the newer schools. One school where I spent most of a day, and which is situated near the Bank of England, has nearly two acres of playground. These playgrounds are covered with gravel, cinders, or asphalt. They are open every evening until sundown, although there is no one in charge but the janitor. The boys often practice cricket in them with a soft ball after school. One of the most interesting developments of some of the London schools is their system of out-of-town playgrounds. Many are not located near available park grounds, and the land near the school is too costly to be purchased. The result has been that some of the schools have purchased or rented playgrounds in the suburbs, and then made arrangements with the tram companies to carry the children out on half holidays for a cheap fare. Swimming. — The ability to swim is an essential part of an Englishman's idea of education. There are public swim- ming baths in all the large cities of England, and swimming is general. There were, in 1903, forty-six public swimming baths in London. To these the children of the upper grades are taken during the spring and fall by their regular teachers. Swimming is encouraged, and medals offered in nearly all the principal cities. Of its special effect one teacher says : " Teacher and pupil are drawn together in a way that hardly Play in the English Schools 99 any other sport can effect. I never feel so much the big brother of my boys as when I am in the water with them. It is a real new bond. Our school reports have several times noted the fact that swimming has improved the tone of the school." School Football and Athletic Association. — By far the most interesting athletic feature in the council schools, how- ever, is the Football and Athletic Association. This is an organization which was originally formed by the teachers of South London to promote interest in and practice of football. Special Reports on Educational Subjects for Great Britain says : " There is now scarcely a town of any size that does not possess an organization of its schools to promote foot- ball and cricket." In many schools, the graduates are also organized into teams of old boys, and, in this way, they are kept in touch with the teachers and the schools in a way that is good for both. These contests begin first between the various classes of the home school. Then the schools of the same district play off the championship of the district. From the best teams, participating in the district contests, a city team is selected to play against teams from other cities until there is practically a championship of England ; though, of course, all cities are not represented. In Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, and Leeds, the "Annual Sports " is the red-letter day of the year, and is eagerly looked forward to by the children and the parents. In some of the towns, the sports are held on a day in the midweek, and a special half holiday given for the purpose. The report says further, "Boys do their work in school bet- ioo Education Through Play ter, and it is a singular fact that nearly all the boys who have won scholarships from the elementary schools are footballers." This is very similar to the Public Schools Athletic League organized by Dr. Gulick in New York in 1905. The Evening Play Centers. — As it chanced, an article of mine on the " Vacation Schools and Playgrounds of New York City " appeared in Harper's Magazine in the spring of 1902, at the same time that Mrs. Humphry Ward was bringing out " Lady Rose's Daughter " in the same magazine. This led her to start, in connection with the Passimore Edwards Settlement of London, the first vacation school and play- ground in England. This soon developed into the Evening Play Centers in the council schools. There are now twenty- one of these centers. They are located in the poorest quarters of London and are intended for the poorest children. They are open from five-thirty to seven-thirty each afternoon. In an article which appeared in the London Times, February 20, 1914, Mrs. Ward says : " Its main object is to save from the streets thousands of the poorest children who have practically no homes to go to between the hour when the schools close and seven or eight o'clock, when their parents come home from work. In each center we have a superintendent and a staff of helpers who direct the games and teach handwork, cobbling, drawing, drilling, dancing, and there are also rooms for the babies from three to five years old." Schools for the Aristocracy. — The schools for the sons of gentlemen existed long before the schools for the people. They are the schools with which we in America are most familiar, thanks to Hughes and Corbin and Kipling. They are all expensive private boarding schools. Athletics are Play in the English Schools 101 compulsory in nearly all below the sixth form. Latin and Greek are the backbone of the course of study. These schools are divided into three classes or grades. The first is known as the preparatory school, which takes the boys at eight or nine and keeps them until they are four- teen or fifteen. These schools are the most recently estab- lished ; the children were formerly sent directly to the public schools, as we see in " Tom Brown." The next stage is the public school, which is a private academy of high school grade, such as Harrow, Eton, Rugby, and Westminster. They now take boys at fourteen or fifteen and keep them until they are eighteen or nineteen. The third stage is the uni- versity, of which Oxford and Cambridge are the prize examples. The Preparatory School. — According to the statistics gathered in 1900 there were three hundred twenty pre- paratory schools in England. The first of these was founded in 1837 in the Isle of Wight, and sent most of its pupils to Dr. Arnold at Rugby. Nearly all of these three hundred twenty preparatory schools are situated in the country. The attendance is small, averaging perhaps fifty boys to a school. They are supplied with the best playgrounds of any schools in the world, unless it be a few private schools of a similar type in America. The rule is that the playgrounds must be large enough so that all the boys can play football or cricket at once. Scholastically, they prepare for the public schools and the Royal Navy. As the ability to play games is generally accounted a necessary part of a gentleman's education, it is not surprising that games are compulsory. However, it may surprise some of us to learn that the reason for this step which is most often given is " the moral value of games," especially football, which so 102 Education Through Play many of us think brutalizing. Another prominent defense is that they promote vigorous health. The reason that is least often given is that they give physical development. It seems a trifle at variance with our theories of play periods and levels, that organized games, such as football and cricket, should be made compulsory for boys of eight or nine years of age, but such is the case. There is generally a gymnasium in connection with these schools in charge of an army sergeant. This does not mean that there is much gymnastics, however. It is used mostly for military drills, boxing, and dancing, and as a playhouse in rainy or inclement weather. One of the masters ex- presses his idea of the value of the gymnasium by saying, "Its chief use is as a sort of a monkey house for the boys to climb about in and swing on the ropes and rings." He says, " This is a necessary training in order to enable them to climb trees." The regular boarding pupils of these schools, who are in the vast majority, spend about twelve hours a week or two hours each afternoon on games. The head master of a school of fifty boys writes, " Com- pulsory games occupied the interval between dinner time and tea time throughout the year." Deducting the time that was necessary for the double change of dress, for our boys invariably wore flannels for all games, the duration of the interval amounted to about two hours in the summer term and somewhat less in winter. The responsibility for the management of the games rested with the field master who happened to be on duty for the day ; others would lend their help to such an extent as their zeal or inclination moved them. He says further, "A person who did not take an interest in Play in the English Schools 103 games would not be a welcome member of a preparatory school staff." The standard games, of course, are football and cricket. Football is played in the fall and winter and cricket in the spring and summer. It would seem quite impossible to an American parent that boys of eight or nine should be able to play football against boys of fourteen constantly, and even adults, without receiving at times serious injuries. Yet out of one hundred nineteen answers to questions on this point, sixty-seven schools say there is no risk of accident, fifty-one say there is an infinitesimal risk, and one school says a boy stands one chance in eight of getting hurt. In football the boys are coached by their regular masters. Out of the one hundred fifteen schools which replied to ques- tions as to how many afternoons a week the masters spent with the boys in the field, the average was four afternoons, though a very large number said the masters were there every afternoon. This is not direct compulsion, but I judge a master who absented himself would not be long in favor. The masters are often the regular captains of the teams. In cricket great skill is required, and very careful teaching is needed in order to make high-grade players. Consequently, nearly all schools employ at least one cricket professional. One of the masters, in discussing the situation, makes the following plea against setting the standard of skill too high. He says, " It is possible that a painful excellence may cost the game some of its light- hearted brightness and that its essential recreative virtues may be lost if it is converted into a business and a most ab- sorbing one." This seems to me to strike to the heart of conditions in America at present and to be quite true of all games. It is supposed to be the distinguishing character- 104 Education Through Play istic of play that it is an activity that is carried on for the enjoyment of it and not for the result, but here we make winning the object of the game. I do not see myself but that it is as much an ulterior object as though the prize were a thousand dollars. It certainly has the same effect in making a business out of sport. An American schoolboy team usually will not play a team by which it is sure to be beaten. It does not seem to make much difference to English boys, provided they have a good game. For instance, Bedford Grammar School, which averages probably the finest Rugby football team in England, has played St. Paul's School, London, for twenty years, though the latter have not won for twelve years. Not the less the annual fixture is always eagerly looked for- ward to by both sides. The coaching of the masters seems to me the best feature in the whole school system. This common life in the field breeds a mutual respect and attachment, such as nothing else can give. The English system may be medieval in its ideals, but there is no other school which trains character as do these secondary schools. There are no other schools where the teacher is so much the companion, friend, priest, and father of his pupils. Hughes remarks in " Tom Brown " in sub- stance : " No custom seems to me more foolish than that of having inferior masters to lead the games of the children. If I were a head master, I would let who might teach their lessons, but I would live with them in the halls and the playground." Besides football and cricket, some schools have compul- sory hockey as a variation ; and others, lacrosse. About one third of the schools have golf, but this is not compulsory and is played when, for any reason, a boy is not in good condition for the regular games. About once a week or once a fortnight Play in the English Schools 105 there are picnics at some ruin or other point of interest, gener- ally at such a distance that a long walk will be required. There are also trips into the country for specimens and bicycle excur- sions. There are occasional paper runs at hare and hounds. About one third of the schools take exercise on rainy days. One head master says, " If exercise in the fresh air is a daily need, I know of no valid excuse for omitting to insist upon it in all weather." " We had a regular two-mile course for rainy day runs. After changing into their flannels, the boys started in a pre- arranged order, the weaker getting a few minutes' start of the stronger. At least two of us masters accompanied them, one in the van to prevent the procession from degenerating into a race, and one in the rear to insure the requisite minimum of pace, namely, a jog trot, varied by intervals of brisk walk- ing. In about 25 minutes all were home again." About half of the schools have swimming baths, and nearly all the boys learn how to swim. There is usually five minutes for play between the recita- tions. As the classes seldom have more than eight or ten pupils, this does not involve great disorder. The teachers in the public schools testify that there has been a great improvement since the boys came to them from the preparatory schools instead of from the nurseries, as they did formerly. They say the boys are better trained scholasti- cally and physically, and best of all they have learned to love their masters in the preparatory school, and they bring the new spirit of friendliness with them to the public school. If we accept this definition of education which is given by one of the masters in a public school, it is certain that the preparatory school will rank high. 106 Education Through Play " Let them estimate the influence of a boy's school life by the openness of his countenance, the freshness of his man- ners, the courtesy, kindness, and honesty of his conduct; by the clearness of his complexion, and the development of his chest and arms; by his readiness in resource, by the books and parts of a newspaper which he reads, and by the subjects on which he cares to talk. Let games by all means be prominent among such subjects. Talk about games is a great safeguard to English boys. What do French boys talk about?" The one sad thing about the preparatory school is that it takes a boy of nine or ten years away from his parents and keeps him away for nine or ten months a year. The Public Schools. — The next English secondary school is the public school. Through " Tom Brown's School Days " and other similar books, the public is much better informed about these than it is of any other English schools. Of course it must be remembered from the outset that these are not public schools in the American sense. They are really private academies which charge a very high tuition. We used always to hear of the nine great Public Schools, which are Eton, Harrow, Shrewsbury, Rugby, Sher- borne, Winchester, and the three London schools, Westmin- ster, St. Paul's, and Charterhouse, but there are many more than nine now. These schools in athletic lines continue the work of the preparatory schools. So far as I know, football and cricket are compulsory below the sixth form in all, but the enforcement of practice is usually left to the large boys of the sixth form, who do not hesitate even to cane the smaller boys for neglecting their hours of play. Public sentiment, general custom, and the interest of the boys are, however, Play in the English Schools 107 the main force in securing compliance with these rules. There is no fixed requirement for all schools as to the amount of exercise a boy must take. It differs even between the differ- ent houses of the same school, as do also the punishments inflicted for failure to practice. Strange as it may seem, considering their fame and the wealth of the families represented, the playgrounds of the public schools are not in quite as good condition as are many of those of the preparatory schools. By this it must not be understood that these playgrounds are small or ill kept as judged by the American standard. There is no American university or public high school with which I am acquainted that has a playground at all comparable to those of most of the public schools. Westminster, though located next to the Abbey and just across the street from the Houses of Parlia- ment, has a playground of ten or twelve acres which must be worth nearly as many millions of dollars. It is about half a mile from the school. The new playground at Eton seemed to me to contain fully two hundred acres. They have a football field large enough so all of their thousand boys can play at once. They have forty-two acres of cricket fields so that twenty matches requiring nearly five hundred boys may be played at once. Besides football and cricket and rowing there is much practice of fives and raquettes. There are fifty fives courts at Eton, each provided with a high brick wall and partitions so that two hundred boys can play every afternoon. There are paper chases three times a week which take about one hundred fifty boys. There is swimming in the Thames and an officers' " training corps " of over five hundred. There has been a great increase of interest in athletic games 108 Education Through Play in the preparatory and public schools in recent years, and the wave does not seem to have yet reached its height. Every one plays, the interest is moderate but sustained, the mas- ters get a strong grip on the boys in football and cricket. The public schools are splendid schools for the training of men, but the training does not come largely from the class- room. To put their course of Latin, Greek, and mathematics into an American city high school would make one of the worst schools in existence. It is the life of the school that counts, the association with other boys, the obedience to upper classmen, and the control over lower classmen, the life of the dormitories and boarding halls, the [debating societies, the intimate association with the masters, and the games on the campus. The course of study does not matter much; they might teach Choctaw or Hottentot instead of Greek and Latin, and they would still be fine schools. These boys learn to obey and to command ; so far as they aspire to fill any position in life other than that of the sons of their fathers, they fill places of high efficiency. The English games are better adapted for recreation and leisure moments than any other national games. The American game of football is scarcely played at all outside of high schools and colleges. Baseball is little played by men who have reached the age of thirty, but in England, football is played by all classes and largely by people who are not in school at all. Cricket is much more vigorous than golf and is played until a man is fifty or sixty. High Schools for Girls. — The schools for girls that corre- spond to the Public Schools for boys are known as Girls' High Schools. These are of comparatively recent origin, and little has been said about them. However, any one who has Play in the English Schools 109 traveled much in England has probably seen several. These schools are true to English traditions. They are private boarding schools for the daughters of gentlemen. In most of them athletics are, if not compulsory, at least very strongly encouraged. Miss Lawrence, the head mistress of the Rodean school for girls at Brighton, in writing on this subject in Special Reports for Great Britain, says that in her school they re- quired the girls to exercise three hours in the open air in sum- mer and two hours in winter every day. She says further : " There are now very few girls' schools of any pretensions, which do not make some effort in the same direction. Even in the last two years, the advance has been very great." Again, " Physical training for women is receiving far more attention everywhere now than formerly." A girls' school cannot well require the girls to play football. They usually have hockey instead. In the spring, about one third of the schools have compulsory cricket and in the remainder, the girls play tennis and golf. There is also a varied program of walks and runs. Some of the schools require the girls to walk and run a mile every morning before beginning their work. Of her own school Miss Lawrence says : " Our school of about 100 girls has secured the use of a playground close at hand of 9 to 10 acres. It contains three hockey grounds, three cricket pitches, a leveled place for practicing nets, and four lawn-tennis courts. Thus both in summer and in winter the grounds are large enough to accommodate the whole school at the same time. This fact is of importance, and it is here that many girls' schools fail." Of hockey she says : " The time taken for a game is one no Education Through Play hour and ten minutes. It is such hard exercise that usually this is enough for the whole day in the winter months. We choose the most favorable timeof the day from 2.20 to 3.30 p.m., which gives three quarters of an hour after the mid-day meal and half an hour before beginning work again and is the picked time of the day for being in the open air in winter. As a rule there is ' supplementary training ' or a short walk in the morning between breakfast and work. The girls wear a special dress for playing; viz. a sailor blouse and a blue serge skirt worn over knickerbockers and made sufficiently short and full so as not to impede running." Any one who looks at all carefully into the training that is given in these schools must see at once that the ideal is not learning. They are not trying primarily to make these boys and girls scholars. They are trying to make them strong, healthy men and women, first of all, with good common sense and a resourcefulness that will enable them to meet the diffi- culties of life as they arise. They scarcely expect to be able to teach them in school all that they will need to know for the rest of their lives. One head mistress says : " It is always impressed upon the girls by word and practice that fresh air and exercise should take the first place, sleep the second, and work the third." In a number of schools there is a list con- taining the names of the girls and a place for a record of the amount of exercise taken each day. The girls make their own entries. One of the mistresses examines this list at stated intervals, and if any girl is found to be taking less than two hours of exercise a day, some arrangement is made to lessen her studies or arrange some other way for her to get more exercise. • There are two main purposes in the game, health and the Play in the English Schools in training of character. On this point Miss Lawrence says: " But games have another and more important function (than exercise), to fill in the training of character, and under this aspect their importance in school life is second to no other agency we can devise for the children's benefit. All games, whatsoever their nature, require observance of their rules if they are played at all. Hence any game will give this training to its players, a training in obedience to law and in acting together for a common end." "In the moral influence lies their greatest value for girls. Games provide precisely the element in girls' education which has hitherto been lacking." It is a pleasure to consider these schools where the girls get plenty of exercise, are not overworked, and have time to be girls ere they must be women. Their associations with their teachers in excursions and on the playground make the school like a big family. As to how far the women at Oxford and Cambridge take part in athletic games, I have not been able to learn. I pre- sume they still feel too strange there to do anything to bring them into much prominence. Oxford and Cambridge. — Of course games are not com- pulsory at the universities. But play has been wrought into habit for so many years that it does not need to be made compulsory. Probably more than ninety per cent of the men are engaged in some athletic pursuit every afternoon. The same games are prominent, — football, cricket, and rowing. I doubt if the English university is a good place in which to become a scholar in the modern sense, but it is the best university in the world to be idle in. There is more culture floating about in the air than there is in any other university. U2 Education Through Play The fellow who does not care for study and takes little inter- est in lectures still gets a good deal of culture out of the col- lege life and games. While this is true to some extent in the American university also, the American idler probably gets into more than enough mischief from his idleness to compen- sate for all the culture he gets from his college life. BIBLIOGRAPHY Corbin, John : School Boy Life in England. Harper & Brothers. Everyday Life in Eton, Harrow, and Rugby. By various head masters. Hughes, Thomas : Tom Brown at Rugby. The Macmillan Co. Meath, Earl op : Public Playgrounds for Children. Nineteenth Cen- tury, Vol. XXXIV, p. 237, 1898. Rouse : A History of Rugby School. Scribner's. Special Reports on Educational Subjects for Great Britain contains the following : Vol. II : "The Organization of Games out of School for the Children attending Public Elementary Schools in the Great Industrial Centers as volun- tarily undertaken by the Teachers." "Physical Education under the School Board for London." "Physical Education at the Sheffield High School for Girls." "The School Journey." Vol. VIII. Staunton : Great School of England. Stedman : Oxford, Its Social and Intellectual Life. Straats : Sports and Pastimes of the English People. Thornton : Harrow School and its Surroundings. CHAPTER Vn THE SCHOOL PLAYGROUNDS OF AMERICAN CITIES Necessity for School Playgrounds. — " Fifty dollars fine for any one trespassing on this yard after school hours." The foregoing sign was on the side of a school building in a middle-sized city of southern Arkansas, but the sign is not unique in that locality, and it represents an attitude of mind that has been very nearly universal. The school yard has been one of the least utilized of our educational resources. Surfaced with a view to his convenience and used mostly in accordance with his desires, it has practically belonged to the janitor. I do not know that there are any cases where he has used it to raise potatoes and the family vegetables, but he might nearly as well have done so for any advantage that has come to the school or the children. Often the pupils have not been allowed to come to school until fifteen or twenty minutes before nine and have been required to leave the yard immediately after dismissal. The gates, if there were any, have been closed and locked during the summer time. I was told a short time ago by the son of a United States senator that when he was a boy, he and four other boys were arrested for playing in the school yard after school. They were taken to the station house and locked up until their parents came for them. Under the circumstances there is little wonder that our school yards have been generally inadequate in size and often atrocious in condition. i "3 H4 Education Through Play In the past ten years the play movement has burst upon us and has brought with it an illumination as to the educa- tional value of play. The old-time school yard, with its limited space and its restrictive traditions, is entirely unsuited to the new uses demanded by the new ideals, and there is going on everywhere a reconstruction of theory and practice to meet the new requirements. As in all reconstruction pe- riods, however, the facilities and needs are out of harmony. The new activities of the school require a larger yard, which is in condition to be used, with a certain amount of equipment for play and some one in charge. The yard is nearly as important as the classroom in the conduct of the modern school, for it must furnish a place for gardening, for open-air classes, for organized play and physical training both during the school day and after school, on Saturdays, and during the summer vacation. These new uses are creating a new condition, which warrants a far greater expenditure and care than the old-time yard ever received. It is unfortunate that any school needs to be built in the city, because it is often impossible to get enough land for base- ball, football, and the other games that the children should play. The past ten years, however, have seen the invention or introduction of several new games, such as volley ball, basket ball, indoor baseball, and tether ball, which are more economical of space than any games that we have formerly had and which help to relieve the almost impossible condi- tion of a few years ago. It is possible now on a block of ground, if the block is of fair size and the school is not too large, to have a great deal of play that is worth while. Size of the School Yard. — Our schools have had very inade- quate yards in the past, and many of them are so hemmed in The School Playgrounds of American Cities 1 15 by surrounding buildings that the yards can be enlarged only by buying highly expensive property. Nevertheless, there is a strong sentiment all over the country for larger grounds, and yards are being enlarged in many cities wherever there is an opportunity to do so at prices that are not prohibitive. Cities are often paying as much as $10,000 per acre for such land. The movement is noticeable also in the country dis- tricts, but country communities are very conservative. Grounds can usually be purchased for country schools at the rate of $100 per acre or less, but it is doubtful if one per cent of them have playgrounds that are an acre in extent. A city high school requires at least six acres of ground in order to carry on the games that its students should play, because nearly all of these games demand a considerable area, and the growing conception is that every student, not a few athletic specialists, should take part. The girls need a field separate from the boys' field and every encouragement to play. High schools are probably getting two or three times as much ground as they did ten years ago, but it is practically impossible in most cases to buy six acres of ground in the central portion of a well-built-up city. This problem can be dealt with only in three ways, so far as the existing schools are concerned : First, by replacing the space-requiring games, such as baseball and football, by space-economizing games, such as indoor baseball, volley ball, and basket ball ; second, by using the school grounds at different times for different classes all through the school day ; or third, by pur- chasing a good-sized field at some distance from the school. Various standards have been proposed for the city ele- mentary school. The board of education of England requires thirty square feet of playground for each child. A year ago n6 Education Through Play the state of Washington passed a bill requiring one hundred square feet, but this was vetoed by the governor. In a good many of the old schools of New York there is not room enough in the external playground for half of the children to stand in the closest possible order. Where the land on which a school building is erected costs two or three hundred thousand dollars it is not to be expected that much more ground will be secured than the bare needs of light and fire protection demand. But for most of the new schools, in the smaller cities at least, there is at present a workable standard ; namely, one block for each school. This is quite generally adopted in the Middle West and the South at present. In the city of Little Rock, Ark., there is not a school for white children that has not a full block to itself. There are not more than one or two schools that have not a full block in Pueblo, Colo. There are sixteen school grounds of more than one acre in Dallas, Tex., and the last five grounds secured in Houston con- tain from three to eight acres each. In San Angelo, Tex., every school but one has two blocks at least, and two have about ten acresof playspace. The first school built in Gary,Ind.,had two acres of playground, the second had four,the third eleven, and a lot recently purchased for its fourth school contains twenty acres. Since the original purchase, the park board has bought an additional five acres adjoining the Emerson School and ten acres next to the Froebel school, and these areas have been practi- cally added to the school grounds, thus making in all nine acres for the Emerson and twenty-one acres for the Froebel. This is an ideal that cannot be followed everywhere, but wherever it is possible thus to secure a neighborhood park adjoining the school, it should be done. The school is the one public institution that is in every community, and it makes the best The School Playgrounds of American Cities 117 possible location for all the public utilities, because in this way they are furnished for all and not merely for a few, as is likely to be the case where the parks are on the edge of the city. A block ought to be the minimum size of the school yard. Every community has a right to some sort of a park or breathing space. To put one or even two more blocks at each school as a park will not be an excessive amount. This concentra- tion of public utilities around the school cannot fail to empha- size and augment the value of the school in the community. It seems likely that new schools will sooner or later adopt the block standard, and that the yards of many of the older schools will be enlarged to conform to it. Two years ago the city of Houston, Tex., secured a bond issue of $500,000 for enlarging the yards of several of its old schools. The city of Galveston has just voted a bond issue of $100,000 for the same purpose. There are many other cities that should do this at once, and an increasing number of cities may be ex- pected to do so. The blocks of many cities are two acres or less in size, while those in others, as in Salt Lake City, for instance, may be as much as ten acres in size. It can be said in general that a block of two acres or less puts all play at a disadvantage. The lots are so short that the back yards are very small, and there is no space for the small children to play. Such blocks are scarcely large enough for baseball when they are vacant, and they are not large enough for school playgrounds even when the school has an entire block. Schools vary from the four-room school to the one hundred-room city school. The problems of organizing the play for a school with from twenty- five to fifty rooms is much simpler than it is for a smaller school, because such a school can use its space more economically n8 Education Through Play and does not need so large an area per pupil. But it is ob- vious that if the school is large and the block is small, there may not be enough room for the children on a single block ; but the attendance at the yard of the smaller school during out-of-school time may not warrant paid supervision, while there are almost sure to be enough children at the larger school to warrant it. It is, however, less expensive to provide two blocks for a twenty-five room school than it is to provide one block for an eight-room school, and it is probable that the two blocks would make better provision for the play of twelve hundred children than one block would for the play of four hundred children. It is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, under exist- ing conditions to secure a full block of ground. There are few entire blocks within the city without buildings, but sites should be selected ahead as far as possible, anticipating the city's growth, and no new addition should be allowed to come into the city without setting aside a block for a school. Own- ers generally ask more than the land is worth for school sites, and it is often difficult for the school board to get enough money to purchase a block. They often hold that they have no right to condemn land for a playground, and frequently it can be secured in no other way. In most cases all that school boards really need is a modern interpretation of the school laws. They are usually given the right " to condemn land for school purposes," and the organization of play has become nearly as much a " school purpose " as arithmetic. In some cases it may be necessary to have the school laws changed, but that will not usually be difficult in the light of present interest in play. It surely is possible in most places to get land enough to carry on the activities of a modern school. The School Playgrounds of American Cities 119 In hilly cities school sites are often selected that are very uneven. Such sites are usually cheaper in the beginning, but are nearly always dearer in the end than sites that are nearly level. A rounded hill offers a conspicuous position for a school building. But it is much less suitable for the location of a school than a store. No merchant would select such a site, because he knows that his customers will not climb the hill to buy of him. It is just as great an effort to climb a hill to go to school as it is to buy a stick of candy. After you once reach the store you can make your purchases just as well on the top of the hill as anywhere else. But the hilltop is nearly useless as a playground when you get there, as there are few games that can be played on a hillside. A hillside is more appropriate for a private house than a school. The house does not require a large yard, and not much ter- racing is needed to make it nearly level. But for a usable school playground the whole block has to be put into one or two terraces, as nearly level as may be. The grading will probably cost as much or more than the site. A terrace always tends to gully out and is a source of constant expense. The terraces should be sodded or walled at once or covered with honeysuckle or some similar vine. The honeysuckle will add greatly to the beauty of the bank, and it will hold it like a stone wall. The New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad is covering its cuts through Rhode Island and Con- necticut with rambler roses, and it may be that these would be serviceable for school terraces in some localities. If it be found that the school occupies a site that cannot be leveled without a prohibitive expense, the site should be given up. Location of the School Building. — When an appropriate piece of land has been secured and leveled, the next step should 120 Education Through Play be the location of the building upon it. When a city hall or a courthouse is to be built, it has become the custom to place it in the center of a large block, which is treated as a park, after the fashion of the English country residence. This park gives the space needed for the architectural features of the building. There is no conflict in the two uses. The central location is justified by the fact that this is a city build- ing that all are to see, and its architecture is an asset to the city. When we consider the location of a school building, however, the decisive question should be the purpose to be served. If the school is erected to please the passer-by, then the architect should be allowed to place it with a view to securing architectural effects and incidentally advertising himself. The building should be surrounded with grass, and the children should not be allowed to play upon it. If, on the other hand, the school is intended for the education and welfare of the children, the building should not be located in the center of their playground. The architecture has little, if any, effect upon them, while play is fundamental. If the building is placed in the center, and the children are allowed to play on all sides of it, the grass is soon killed off, the ground becomes bare and dusty, and the location is the worst possible. It may be said, too, of most of the buildings so located that they have few architectural features to exhibit, and a vista only serves to set off their ugliness. But even if all the ground is used, and the grass is not respected, it is impossible in most cases to have play that is vigorous and worth while when the school building is placed in the center of the site, because this usually leaves only a fringe of ground that is not wide enough anywhere for ball games. Instead of having the windows on one side to protect, the windows on all sides have to be pro- The School Playgrounds of American Cities 121 tected. If the school ground is to be used, it is better for the architectural effect as well as for purposes of play to locate the building at one end of the block, within fifteen or twenty feet of the sidewalk. This space in front of the building can be parked, laid out to flower beds or ornamental shrubbery, protected with a low hedge or a fence covered with vines, and kept intact for architectural effect. Vines. — Unless the climate is rainy and cold, it will be an advantage to plant vines over the school building. Vines make the building cooler in the warm parts of the year, and the touch of green that they add is generally welcome. Wis- teria will make it a great flower garden in spring. The ivies will furnish a glow of grateful color in the fall. Where a strip of land three or four feet wide about the building is prepared for vines and flowers, it often adds very greatly to the appearance of the school and to its comforts during the warmer months. The Surfacing of School Grounds. — The school yards of many of our cities are a disgrace to the systems to which they belong. I believe that much less than fifty per cent of them are in condition to use. Covered with brickbats and piles of ashes, gullied out by the rains, with the roots of trees projecting in places, they furnish an almost impossible sur- face over which to run. Not more than one quarter as large as it should be in most cases, the space should be utilized to the fullest extent. But in actual fact not more than twenty- five per cent of play efficiency can be secured from many yards on account of their condition. There is many a school yard that has cost $10,000 or more to purchase that has received less than $100 afterwards to makeit available. The school trustees apparently finish the school building and forget all about the 122 Education Through Play playground, leaving the dirt taken from the cellar unleveled and the ground full of holes and hummocks. It seems almost incredible that this should be so frequently true, as observa- tion shows it to be. Yet even if it does cost $1000 to grade and surface a $10,000 yard, it surely is not wisdom to throw away the $10,000 for the lack of the $1000. In many cases all that is needed is to dismiss the school early one afternoon and set the children with rakes and hoes to filling in gullies, raking up cinders and bricks, digging up projecting stones, and cut- ting off roots. Probably half the school yards of the country could be improved fifty per cent by this simple expedient. As in the other features, it is easy to see that the interests of play have been disregarded also in surfacing school yards. In the play of men three surfaces have been approved: grass for baseball, football, and games requiring a large space ; a sandy loam or sand-covered clay for tennis courts; and cinders for running tracks. Where the school playground has been surfaced at all, it has generally been with brick, cement, gravel, or broken stone. The requirements of the case are a surface that is smooth ; that does not get muddy after rains or dusty in dry weather ; that is springy beneath the feet and soft to fall upon ; that does not get overhot in summer or slippery in winter; that does not wear out the play apparatus and the clothes of the children unduly ; and, more than all, that does not wear out their nervous systems from its shocks and bruises. It is not easy to find a surface which meets all these requirements. Probably we shall have to manufacture a surface for the playground as we do for the street before we shall get one that is entirely satisfactory. Grass. — Wherever a school can have grass on the yard and have play at the same time, grass is a good surface but The School Playgrounds of American Cities 123 this is usually possible only in country schools, where there is a large yard and a small number of children. In the South I have seen Bermuda grass that had a good start stand the intensive play of a city school. Perhaps its wider use will be a solution of the problem for the smaller cities of the South, but in most cases play and grass are antagonistic, and the school must choose between them. A school that chooses grass for decorative purposes instead of play might with equal wisdom choose a wall pattern in place of a blackboard for its classrooms. Brick. — Not a few of the school yards in our great cities are surfaced with brick. I suppose that this surfacing must have been chosen by the janitor. It is an admirable yard for his purposes. It does not get muddy after rains or " track " into the school building. It is so hard to run over that the children prefer the street, thus causing the janitor the least possible amount of annoyance. At its best, brick is hard and unyielding, with shocks upon the nervous system at every step or jump. To fall upon it means a bad bruise on the knee and often a hole through the trousers. Most of the bricked yards that I have known have been more or less uneven, or contained soft bricks, where the water would stand after rains. In frosty weather the brick holds the frost, which makes it a very difficult surface to run or walk over. If the members of any school board now providing brick for school yards would go out and play one game of indoor baseball upon it, they would take it out the next day if possible. No company of men ever has or ever would consent to play on a brick play- ground. Brick is better adapted to tennis than it is to most of the games that the children play, but I have not heard of any bricked tennis courts furnished by the tennis clubs. 124 Education Through Play Cement. — Cement is better than brick. It is not so slip- pery or uneven, and it is easier to run over. In very large schools with very small yards, like those of New York City, cement or asphalt may be the only really practical surface now available, but nearly the same objections apply to cement as to brick. Gravel and, Broken Stone. — Both gravel and broken stone, especially the former, have been much used in surfacing school yards and are generally unsuitable, not so much from the necessity of the case as from the materials selected. Any one who has attempted to run over a heap of macadam or a sur- face covered with loose pebbles knows how difficult it is. The loose stones turn the ankle and cause constant slight sprains that weary the runner. To fall upon these sharpened pebbles means a serious bruise. For the children all these conditions are ten times worse, because so many of them go barefoot in the spring and summer, and pebbles mean con- stant bruises on the feet and toes. A yard of this kind will wear out a pair of shoes in a few weeks ; baseballs and volley balls will get ragged with a day's use. The yard probably destroys enough clothing and apparatus every year to pay for surfacing it properly. On a school yard there should be no gravel nor broken stone larger than a small pea or, better, a Number four shot. The small, round gravel that is used in the Chicago playgrounds, known as torpedo gravel, makes a fairly satisfactory surface for play. The dust macadam, such as is used for the finest top dressing of drives and tennis courts, also makes a satisfactory surface. The torpedo gravel costs about $1.50 per cubic yard, and one yard will cover about one hundred square yards of surface. It may be obtained of build- ing contractors. The broken stone will be found to be hard to The School Playgrounds of American Cities 125 run over, to wear out clothes and play apparatus rapidly, and to be generally unsuitable for play, but the objection that school boards are likely to make to it is that for some reason it tracks into the schoolhouse. If this macadam is cov- ered with one or two inches of loam or sand, it furnishes excel- lent underdrainage, and the result is a very good play surface. Cinders. — Coarse cinders, such as are often used on school grounds, will use up a baseball in an afternoon. They also cut the shoes and the clothing if a person falls. Cinders that are well ground and rolled and leveled make a satisfactory sur- face over which to run, but not a very comfortable surface upon which to fall. They have been used in the past almost altogether in making running tracks. Many of the London board schools and very many of our own city schools are surfaced with cinders. At the best, cinders are hot in summer and unattractive in appearance, though fine cinders make a fairly good surface. Satisfactory Surfacing. — Thus far our consideration of surfacing has been mainly a matter of elimination. Some surfaces are more unsatisfactory than others, but there is no surface that is wholly satisfactory. However, there are better surfaces than are generally used. Mr. Leland recom- mends a mixture of clay loam and cinders as satisfactory. On the whole a sandy loam that is well underdrained makes a fairly satisfactory surface also. The most satisfactory surface, however, will be one where the soil is removed to a considerable depth, and this subsurface is graded for drainage, and the ground is again filled in with cinders or broken stone or both to its original level. There should be a fine top dressing of sand, fine gravel, or broken stone for the running surface. 126 Education Through Play Keeping School Yards in Condition. — In the past the school yard has been expected to keep itself in condition. It has been no one's duty to look after it. It may be taken for granted that it will not do this. There are not many enter- prises that can be launched and left to run themselves. Every school yard with anything but a grass or brick or cement surface ought to be leveled and rolled down at least once a year. Often this can be done by the children themselves. Most grounds need much more care than this, but an over- hauling once a year is an absolutely minimum requirement. Generally the school yard needs to be sprinkled at certain times to keep down the dust. In California, it is not unusual to use a heavy asphaltum oil and then spread sand on top, as in putting Tarvia on a road. In Philadelphia glutrin is used on the school playgrounds. This is a by-product of paper making and is said to be " all of the spruce tree but the fiber," and greatly to improve the surface for play purposes. Mr. W. D. Champlin says of the use of glutrin in Phila- delphia : " Glutrin is a thick, adhesive liquor, and in color generally appears not unlike molasses. It is very soluble in water and therefore by proper dilution or by the after effect of rain on treated surfaces can be caused to penetrate very thoroughly and evenly into the ground over which it has been sprinkled. On drying it acts like a powerful adhesive. ... It will not harm anything that would not be spoiled by plain water. The cost per gallon? In quantities of less than a carload the material is sold at fifteen cents per gallon of ten and one half pounds. In carload lots the price is fourteen cents. The cost of spreading is approximately one cent per square yard. As a rule, the amount of glutrin required for the first treat- The School Playgrounds of American Cities 127 ment of a playground will vary from five tenths to six tenths of a gallon per square yard, and the mixture, as a rule, should be two parts of water to one part of glutrin. On succeeding treatments the amount of glutrin required will, as a rule, be from two tenths to three tenths of a gallon per square yard, and about three parts of water to one part of glutrin should be used. For underdrainage the entire plot should be graded to a subgrade of ten inches. This surface so made is to be care- fully, though not accurately, leveled, and is then to be com- pacted by rolling with a steam roller of not less than five tons in weight. All soil or waste material resulting from this grading should be taken away and disposed of. Then spread over this surface sufficient hard-coal cinders so that after rolling with a steam roller of not less than five tons in weight there will be a thickness of five inches. The cinders must be thoroughly wet before and during rolling. The rolling may be done in one layer. Then place on top of the cinders a sufficient depth of stone screenings, so that after wet rolling with a steam roller of not less than five tons in weight and bringing the surface to the grades given by the district sur- veyor, there will be a thickness of not less than five inches of stone screenings. After this surface has been sufficiently and properly rolled the entire surface must be sprinkled with a mixture of glutrin and water until one half gallon of glutrin has been absorbed by each square yard of the surface, the proportion of mixture to be 2 parts water to 1 part glutrin." Fencing. — There is no uniform practice in regard to fencing school yards. In the eastern sections of this country they are generally fenced; in the middle and southern sections they generally are not. There has been a tendency during 128 Education Through Play the past few years to remove fences around parks and pub- lic buildings. Houses and house lots are usually unfenced. This is one expression of the socialistic tendency of our times. We are moving away from the cloister and its exclusiveness. Undoubtedly the removal of fences from most of the large public parks has been an advantage. There never was any reason for fencing them. The same may be said of the fences in front of houses. The strip of parking and grass is often more attractive than the strip broken by fences, as was formerly the case. It is hard to see that the fence ever served any purpose except exclusiveness, and the question in this regard is naturally one of individual preference. However, the tendency everywhere is toward fencing playgrounds ar>d fencing parks used as playgrounds. Sherman Park, Chicago, which is both a park and a playground and contains sixty acres, is fenced, but Washington and Jackson Parks are not. The fence is there in order that the park may be closed at a certain time at night, and the public kept out after that hour. There are certain advantages in having the school yard unfenced : the play space is considerably increased, as the ground is used to the sidewalk, and frequently the sidewalk and neighboring street itself become a part of the school playground at recess and noon intermissions. Some school yards even in small cities are so small that there is literally not room for the children upon them. If they were fenced, there not only could be no play on the school premises, but often the children could not be crowded inside. The fence not only limits the size of the school ground to a space several feet inside the sidewalk, but the fence space and the land next to it are also unavailable for play. In the game of ball The School Playgrounds of American Cities 129 \ the batting of the ball over the fence requires a long detour and interferes with the rapidity of the game. These disadvantages of the fence seem serious, and they are serious for some schools with inadequate yards, but the disadvantages of the unfenced yard are yet more serious. If the school ground is not fenced, the children use the sidewalk and the street for their playground, but the sidewalk and streets were not intended for this purpose. The school, having failed to make provision for the children on its own premises, is plainly trespassing on the rights of the community. No school board has a right to build a school without provid- ing on the school premises a place for the children. If the grounds that have been secured are not sufficient, they should either be enlarged or abandoned. Street play is becoming increasingly dangerous because of the rapidly increasing number and speed of automobiles. Children who are playing in groups are always heedless, and the child who dashes from the school yard in a game of tag is more likely to run into danger than the child who is really playing in the street. There are occasional mad dogs and runaway horses. If the children are in a fenced yard, they are safe, while there is always danger otherwise. However, the urgent reasons for fencing the school yard are more fundamental. It is becoming the custom to put into them a considerable apparatus and to maintain them as playgrounds during the summer. It is difficult to protect the apparatus if the playground is not fenced, and it is still more difficult to protect the neighbor- hood from annoyance. There is frequent complaint from the use of the school yard as a playground, but the complaint nearly always comes from the use of it by rowdies at night after the director has gone. If a school ground is fenced, 130 Education Through Play the children can also be prevented from running by dan- gerous pieces of apparatus where they are likely to be struck. Discipline becomes much easier. The fence also makes of the school yard an institution and helps to create loyalties. There is also an aesthetic incompleteness about an unf enced yard. It does not seem to have the individuality that it should have. Nature puts the bark about the tree and the skin about the animal to separate each from other things, to mark the boundaries of its individuality. The mind seems to demand that things that are distinct in fact should be dis- tinguished by some boundary from other things. In many school yards there is a fence dividing the girls from the boys, and it is the practice in municipal playgrounds to have separate playgrounds for boys and girls. The reasons for it are obvious and sufficient; there are often loose girls and always loose boys coming to the playgrounds, and it is better not to have them together, or where they can corrupt other children. The same is true of the school playgrounds. If the school yards are to be unsupervised loafing places, as they have so often been in the past, it is certainly better that the girls and boys should loaf separately ; but if the school yard is to be a playground and under supervision, it is prob- ably better not to have a division fence in most cases, because the ground is generally not large enough to be divided and because in case of division there must be two play directors in the yard, an expense not always justified by the attendance. It is socially dangerous for older boys and girls to loaf to- gether, but they can usually play together with safety. School fences thus far have not been very satisfactory, as a rule. Undoubtedly in most cities the school yard has been the most neglected and unsightly place in the whole city. If The School Playgrounds of American Cities 131 it has been unfenced, it has generally revealed to the passer-by a stretch of untidy, bare ground. If fenced, it has usually been with rough boards, painted on the outside and unpainted on the inside. The steel picket fence is more satisfactory. It is permanent, difficult to climb over, and reasonably good looking. It is, however, very expensive and less beautiful than hedge or wire. I am inclined to think that, except in the extreme northern part of this country, a hedge of ever- green privet is one of the best fences. It is cheap, beautiful, difficult to climb, and gives privacy to play, and shuts off the ugliness of the bare ground within. It is a protection from storms in winter, and its grateful green is always restful. It will have to be planted in good soil and protected by a wire fence in the beginning. The prettiest fence, and also one of the cheapest, that can be put around a school ground is a woven-wire fence covered with flowering vines. The wire should be close enough, at the bottom at least, so that indoor baseballs will not go through. If rambler roses or clematis or honeysuckle be planted over this, it will be a flower garden set on edge during a considerable part of the year, and often the prettiest thing in the whole neighborhood. The fence at the Jamestown Exposition was eight feet high and completely covered with honeysuckle and clematis. The fragrance could be perceived for several rods, and it was admired by all. It grew within a year or two. Trees. — If a school ground is to be much used in the late spring and summer, in most parts of the country it must have shade. In some parts this is true for nearly the entire year. Trees also add greatly to the attractiveness, if they are well selected and properly placed ; but it is also possible to destroy a school playground for play from bases by plant- 132 Education Through Play ing in it half a dozen trees in the wrong places. If the first tree is planted on the home plate, the second tree in the pitcher's box, and the third tree on first base, and so on around, it will not take very many trees to spoil the available space in most school yards. A large part of the trees that have been planted thus far should be cut out. I have known a small yard to be ruined by planting three trees. In most grounds all trees within the play space should be eliminated. The playground needs shade, but it also needs space. The trees should be planted around the playground at the edge and not within the ground itself. In larger grounds there may also be trees around special features, such as the baseball diamond or the basket-ball or volley-ball court, or along the walks, or along the running track at the side of the ground, but trees should never be planted at random, without a definite plan for the yard and a definite purpose for the trees. One row of trees should be set around the school ground just outside the sidewalk, and a second row just inside or just outside the fence, according to the size of the ground and the width of the space between the sidewalk and the fence. The rule of tree experts is that shade trees should be planted from twenty-five to forty feet apart. It is a good rule to plant alternately cottonwoods and hard maples, or hard and soft maples. Then the soft maples or cottonwoods will grow up rapidly and begin to furnish shade very soon, and the hard maples will come on more slowly. As soon as the hard maples develop enough to give sufficient shade, the cotton- woods or soft maples should be cut out and all the space given to the slower-growing but more beautiful trees. If this method is followed, the trees should be planted from fifteen to twenty feet apart, so that they will be thirty or forty feet apart when u < The School Playgrounds of American Cities 133 the soft trees are cut out. It might be well also to plant a dif- ferent kind of tree in the inside row from those in the outside row. Pauloniajaponica, common in New York City, looks like a catalpa with the blossoms of wisteria upon it, and is very at- tractive. The catalpa itself is a beautiful tree, both in the spring, when it is in blossom, and in the fall, when it carries its long drooping pods. Some of the streets of Washington that are bordered with horse chestnuts are very beautiful in the spring, when the trees are in blossom. Even our common bass- wood or linden is fragrant and attractive in April and May. In the South the magnolia can be used effectively, and in California the beautiful pepper trees are very decorative. Any of these trees will make of the school yard a great bouquet in the spring- time worth coming a long way to see. It might be well at times to select nut trees instead of flowering trees. The hick- ory turns a rich yellow in the fall ; and hickory, walnut, and butternut furnish good shade. Such trees offer an opportunity for nutting festivals in the fall, though it might be that the temptations the nuts would offer to climbing might not be good for the trees. In Porto Rico they say that they cannot have mango trees in the school yards, because the children break them down in climbing for the fruit. The Japanese ginkgo, a tree much used in the streets of Washington, is a beautiful tree, but it is little known outside of Washington. Very many trees that are planted in school yards die. The most common cause is probably that they are not really planted. A tree is dug or torn up from somewhere, a hole is cut in the school yard, the tree is stuck in, earth is thrown on the roots, and the tree is considered to be ready to grow. It is needless to say that such methods do not secure satisfactory results. Trees should be planted late in the fall or early in the 134 Education Through Play spring. If a good many of the roots have been broken, a pro- portional part of the top should be cut off, for there will not be enough roots to feed a large amount of foliage. A tree can- not be planted in the sterile subsoil of a school yard with reasonable expectation that it will live. A space from four to eight feet square and two or more feet deep should be excavated and filled in with good, rich earth. The whole should be well packed and watered down, and the tree should be boxed. The estimated cost of planting trees in Washington was $4 a tree. This price was for the planting and boxing alone, as the trees were furnished by the city nursery. This may seem expensive, but it is scarcely one per cent of what a well-placed tree is worth to a school yard. It is a good thing to have benches around a number of the trees, in order that the children may sit in the shade when they are tired or when they are eating their lunch. Wherever it is possible the games and play should be so planned inside the yard as to keep a grass border from eight to ten feet wide under the trees and along the fence. This adds greatly to the attractiveness of the yard and serves as a pleasant place to sit or he in the shade. The Newer Uses of the School Yard. — Since the school yards are very inadequate, the problem is to get a maximum use of a minimum space, so as to make the small yard meet the needs of the children. One of the rules of efficiency experts is to use the plant as much as possible. There is very little available play space in most of our cities, either for children or for adults. If the school yard is to have its maxi- mum use and efficiency, it should be used from eight o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock in the evening all through the pleasant weather, a possible efficiency of about fourteen The School Playgrounds of American Cities 135 hours a day. As opposed to this, in many school systems the children are not allowed to come to school until just before nine; they are sent home at noon and as soon as school is dismissed for the day, making a minimum efficiency of half an hour to one hour's use each school day, with no use at all on Saturdays or during the vacations. A Director of Physical Training. — For most cities the ab- solute prerequisite of a play system that is worth while in connection with the schools is that the city have or employ a competent director of physical training. This person must plan what is to be done, arrange tournaments and contests, teach folk dances, arrange exhibitions, gala days, and play festivals. As he will deal largely with untrained people, he must also train his teachers. The physical director should have his long vacation in the winter time in most cases and have charge of the playgrounds all through the summer. The position deserves an adequate salary, and a capable man should be secured. If his salary is the same as that of the principal of the high school, it will not be far wrong. A Teacher at Each Ground. — There will be no play on the school grounds that is worth much unless there is a teacher or physical director in charge. This teacher should have charge after school until dark ; after supper until about ten, if the ground is lighted; on Saturday mornings at least; and all through the summer. Where the ground is kept open at night, it is highly desirable that a special playground teacher be employed, but if the playground is open only after school and on Saturday mornings, regular teachers from the schools may be utilized for the work, receiving from $15 to $25 per month additional for it. During the summer time full time and full pay are, of course, needed. 136 Education Through Play Lighting the School Playground. — It is not the school children alone who need to play. In some ways the problem of the working boys and girls is still more acute. Most of the former are engaged in monotonous tasks, and the spirit of youth recoils from them at night, and they go to the dance hall, the saloon, the picture show, or worse places. They must have their recreation at night, because they are working during the day. For two or three hundred dollars, it is possible to light a school playground so that it can be used for basket ball, volley ball, and indoor baseball at night, and also for folk dancing and various forms of athletics. If the school has a swimming pool and gymnasium and audi- torium, these will furnish to all the young people nearly the same facilities as the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. possess, and will make an attractive center for the young life of each community. More and more such ground should attract business men and their wives to come out after supper and play with their children the games that the playground offers. Planning the School Ground. — Very often not more than half of the possible efficiency of a school playground is secured, because the ground has not been properly planned. If the boys wish to play basket ball, they put up the equipment any- where that there is room for it, regardless of whether it is the proper place for the game or not. If a basket-ball court is placed in the middle of half an acre of ground, it takes practi- cally the whole space, though it does not need more than a fifth or a sixth of it. Games should be assigned to spaces where they will fit snugly and where they will not interfere with other games in other spaces. Indoor baseball, volley ball, and basket ball should be provided with permanent locations, as this is the The School Playgrounds of American Cities 137 only way in which the maximum efficiency of a school yard can be secured. Equipment for Games. — When it is determined to have a public playground in a school yard, the first thing to be provided should be the apparatus for playing games. This should consist of the indoor baseballs, volley balls, basket balls, and tether balls, ball clubs, tennis nets, and tennis rackets that are needed. All of this property is for common use and should be furnished by the school. If a boy brings his baseball to the school, he will get no more good out of it than the seventeen other boys that play the game with him. There is no reason why one boy should furnish such equipment to the school. The same argument applies with still more force to volley balls and basket balls. They are useless to the individual child, and they are awkward to carry from place to place. Ade- quate play in games such as these cannot be had unless the school furnishes the necessary apparatus. Equipment for Athletics. — School yards are not well suited for athletics in general in most cases, but there are two or three events that should usually be provided for. It is often possible so to construct a straightaway sixty-yard run- ning track by the fence, that it will take very little room, and the children can practice whenever they please. The different dashes, twenty-five, fifty, and sixty yards, should be laid off per- manently, and the school should provide a stop watch so that the children can be timed. There should be a jumping pit about four feet wide and twelve to fifteen feet long, filled with soft sand to the depth of about eight inches. The take-off board should be set in the ground flush with the surface. Standards should be furnished for the high jump, as this is even better liked than the broad jump. The school carpenters are usually 138 Education Through Play able to make very satisfactory standards. There should be one or two horizontal bars, which may be homemade or purchased outright. Horizontal bars are often installed in school yards without any provision to lessen the force of a fall. Such bars are dangerous; one would not think of exercis- ing in a gymnasium without a mat underneath. The earth should be excavated under each horizontal bar, and sand should be filled in. The horizontal bar can be used for " chinning " and for many exercises in which the boys take pleasure. Playground Apparatus. — School authorities are likely to think that the equipment is the most important thing in mak- ing a playground. In matter of fact, it is the least important element. The thing of first importance is organization; next in importance is equipment for games ; next comes pro- vision for athletics ; and last such apparatus as swings, and slide. It must not be thought from this that the play apparatus should be left out altogether. It is desirable in order to get the children to come to and stay on the playground. A great many cities are now putting equipment into their school yards without consulting any one of experience ; and it must be said that the apparatus so purchased or provided is often temporary in character, ugly in appearance, and dan- gerous in use. It is often set in the wrong places and some- times costs two or three times as much as it should. Very much of this, although of recent installation, should be taken out at once and replaced by equipment that is safe and suited to the needs of the school. It must be remembered always that free play is more important than the best possible use of play equipment, such as swings, and the open spaces must not be destroyed for any kind of apparatus. ' The School Playgrounds of American Cities 139 The Sand Bin. — The sand bin is the mother of the play- ground movement, and out of it have grown the other develop- ments . From the time he is one year old until he is ten or twelve the sand will furnish any child entertainment and delight. As the sand bin is for the little children, it should be placed in the most retired part of the yard, where it will be out of the way of the older ones. It must have shade, or the sand will get too hot and dry in the summer time. It is well to place it under or around a tree. It should have a molding board or seat around the edge, so that the children can mold the sand upon it. This is often used also as a seat when the teacher wishes to tell a story or to give instruction. The sand should be, if possible, the fine white sand of the seaside, as this is pleasant to work with and does not soil the clothes ; but any build- ing sand, such as that used in making plaster, will do. The carpenter of the school board can make the bin. The sand will gradually work out upon the playground, where it will often greatly improve the surface. As it is necessary for the sand to be renewed occasionally to keep it in a sanitary con- dition, this leakage is a good thing. The sand bin does not require a bottom if the ground is level and hard. It should be made either of cement or of twelve-inch planks, with a molding board eight or ten inches wide around the edge. It should usually be painted the color of the ground, so that it may not be conspicuous. Seesaws. — The seesaw is much used in the school yard, but not much can be said in its favor. The children who are using the seesaw are not getting either physical, intellectual, or social training. It is the frequent source of accidents and disputes. If a short seesaw board is placed on a high standard, it is very dangerous, because it then makes an acute angle when 140 Education Through Play the child goes down to the ground. The long seesaw is safer than the short one, because the angle of the plank in its descent is not so great ; but it must be remembered that there will often be five or six children on each end of the seesaw, and there may be danger of its breaking if it is made long and not well strengthened. The principal danger is that the child who is down on the seesaw may slide off and let the other child down with a bang. I have known of half a dozen broken arms resulting in a week from a new set of poorly made seesaws. Another danger appears when the children stand up on the see- saw. One end comes down suddenly and the other child is thrown off on his head. The seesaw ought to have a handle. It should be made so it can be taken in at night and in the winter. It should be placed near the fence in some retired part of the yard. It is best to set it on a steel support anchored in concrete. The Slide. — The slide is one of the most popular pieces of apparatus, and will be used almost continuously by a large number of children. There are likely to be disputes and quarrels over the swing, but the slide offers a natural rotation in office. Sliding represents a universal interest of children, for they have slid down banisters and cellar doors from time immemorial. Almost every place that offers a natural incline in the cities will be found to be used by them. People gen- erally have the idea that the slide is dangerous on account of its height, but in an experience of seventeen years I have never known of a single serious accident from the slide, except from slivers in the early days when slides were made of pine. Rail- ings at the top prevent the children from falling off there, and after they sit down on the slide they cannot well fall unless they try to. There is a general feeling also that the slide is The School Playgrounds of American Cities 141 very hard on clothes. I doubt if this is so, if the slide is in good condition. Even in the schoolroom the child wriggles around constantly in his seat, and the seat or the cushion is not usually very smooth. The children tend to run up the slide if they are not watched at first, and also to slide down standing up. If a slide is scratched and marked with nails, it is much more destructive of clothes. The crucial thing about it is the condition of the incline itself. In the early days these slides were often made of pine. The pine could be made very smooth and safe, but after a rain the grain was likely to come up, so that a child might be impaled on the slivers as he slid down. Most of the machine companies now make a steel slide. This is well galvanized, but the galvaniz- ing is apt to wear through where the children place their feet, causing the metal to rust. A rusty slide both soils and wears the clothes very rapidly. The steel slide is too cold in winter and too hot in summer for much comfort. It is also too ex- pensive to be generally purchased. W. S. Tothill, of Chicago, makes a maple slide that answers all requirements very well. It does not rust or splinter. It is not too hot or too cold ; it sometimes warps, but never seriously. The twelve-foot slide is sold by Marshall Field & Co. for $15 ; and the fifteen-foot slide for $30. The slide needs to be waxed occasionally or dressed with raw linseed oil. It is well to have a carpet mat or two to sit on after rains or after oiling, and it is desirable that the ap- paratus should be made so that the sliding board is detachable, allowing it to be turned over or taken in so as to protect it from the rain. It is difficult to take the slide in, and a board may be chained in it or a chain may be put around it to prevent its use at night. Swings. — The swing is probably the commonest piece of 142 Education Through Play apparatus for the play of small children everywhere. It is also one of the most dangerous, and, as generally made, one of the most unsightly. It probably causes more quarrels than any other one piece of apparatus and more criticism from its use at night than anything else about the playground. In unfenced school grounds the swings should be made so that they can be taken down or chained at night. It is best, as a rule, to make the swing frame of three-inch gas pipe, if threaded ; or of two-inch up- rights and three-inch horizontals, if unthreaded. Two-inch galvanized pipe will cost about sixteen cents a foot, and the three-inch pipe about thirty-two cents a foot. Black pipe will cost about two thirds as much. The swing should be well braced and set in concrete about three and one half or four feet deep. The swings for a school yard should not be over eight or ten feet high. The tall swing takes up too much room, is preempted by the large children, and is too dangerous. The swings should be placed in the most retired corner of the yard and parallel with the fence, where children will not be struck by them. People are apt to fear that the children will be hurt byfallingoutoftheswing. This rarely happens. The real dan- ger is to the child who is running by. If two children are stand- ing up in a swing and swinging hard and another child runs by and is struck in the side of the head, he will certainly be seriously injured and may be killed. In some places the swings are fenced off so as to prevent this. A piece of rubber hose is sometimes nailed to the side of the swing board so as to deaden the blow if a child is struck. For the school yard it is best to have as light a swing as possible, because its momentum is not so great in that case, and it is easier to put out and take in. A wooden board and ropes are to be preferred to an iron seat and chains or links. The steel hook that supports the swing The School Playgrounds of American Cities 143 is a crucial point, as it is likely to wear through. It should be made of hardened steel and should wear on a steel thimble around which the rope is spliced. Girls should not be allowed to stand up in swings, as their dresses tend to fly up. Boys should not be allowed to swing girls for still more obvious reasons. It is best for children to swing themselves, as that is the only way they get any exercise from swinging. The pipe fittings can be purchased of any of the machine companies. The pipe can be secured of local dealers, and all should be erected by local men. The swings can also be made satis- factorily by any ingenious carpenter. The pipe should either be galvanized or painted green. The concrete blocks should be sixteen to eighteen inches square. There should be about twenty swings in the yard of a good-sized city school. The Giant Stride. — The giant stride is often put into school yards. It is always enjoyed by the children and has some value as exercise. It is a rather expensive piece of apparatus, however, and the steel ladders are rather dangerous. For the school yard I prefer the rope and wood ladder with wooden rungs. This is lighter and does not bruise where it strikes. It is also much easier to take in the ropes when that is desired. The giant stride should be placed in the corner of the yard, if possible, so that it may be out of the way of the games and that the children upon the ground may not be struck by those who are flying around upon it. The School Menagerie. — Children are nearly always fond of animals. It is they who are the chief patrons of the zoologi- cal gardens everywhere. The opportunity to see the pigs and the cows and the chickens constitutes one of the chief charms to them of the trip to the country. It would be well if there were animals to feed and watch in every school yard. It 144 Education Through Play would be still more delightful if rabbits and squirrels could run about on the playgrounds among the children and not be harmed. There is a " coon tree " in the yard of the Emerson School, at Gary, Ind. There is a house at the foot of the tree into which the raccoons may descend and where the children may go to make their acquaintance. In the yard of the Froebel School there is a large fountain that will be stocked with fish. It would be well to put bird and squirrel boxes in the trees and to encourage the children to feed the birds and squirrels if the attitude of the children makes this practicable. Construction or Purchase of Equipment. — A school play- ground may be satisfactorily equipped for about $200, if most of the equipment is made and set up by local men. The slide can probably be purchased as cheaply as it can be made. Other pieces of apparatus will cost considerably^more from the machine companies. It is difficult to estimate just what it will cost to construct play equipment in the different cities, because this depends so much on local conditions, but dealers are nearly always willing to give special prices on material to be used for the play of children. In Washington, we were accustomed to put the following equipment into each school yard : twelve swings, two teeter ladders, two seesaws, two tether poles, one giant stride, and one sand box. This equipment was all steel, with rope swings, no less serviceable than a five hundred dollar equipment of the machine companies. It cost us $150. If to this a slide at $30, a horizontal bar, and a pair of jumping standards be added, and the teeter ladders are taken out, the cost should be about $200 ; though I think these materials are somewhat higher now than they were then. The steel framework for the twelve swings, two seesaws, The School Playgrounds of American Cities 145 and two teeter ladders set in concrete cost us about $80. Of this cost, $34 was for the steel pipe, $20 for fittings, $9 for sand, cement, and gravel, $1 for uprights for teeter ladders, and $16 for labor. We painted this framework red to protect it from rust, and afterwards black or green. The two seesaws, of Georgia pine, twelve feet long, fitted on steel pipe, cost us $1.50 each, $3 for both. We furnished the materials, and the twelve swings cost us $1 apiece delivered with seat of Georgia pine, four thimbles where the rope works in the hook-and-eye bolts, and the best Manila rope used. (Hemp would undoubtedly be better, but it is difficult to get.) It is usually possible to find some carpenter or otherwise ingenious person who can make swings during the winter and at other odd moments at a very reason- able price. There should be two or three extra swings or- dered for each playground, so that these can be used when others are out of repair. Children always tend to dig up the earth beneath the swings, so that water stands there after rains. Often platforms of Georgia pine, about three feet wide, are needed. The tether poles we made either of spruce or Georgia pine. They were four inches in diameter at the bottom, tapering to two and one half inches at the top, thirteen feet long, and square for three feet at the bottom. These, painted with one coat of white paint with a black ring six feet from the ground, cost approximately $3 each. Three inches from the top an eye screw was turned into the pole to hold the string. These rather large wooden poles are better than the small steel pole because the large pole makes the game faster and enables more children to take part in a given period of time. 146 Education Through Play The sand bin, eight by twelve feet in size, of Georgia pine, with a molding board around the edge, cost $5, and the sand about $2 more. It is comparatively easy to manufacture all this equipment except the giant stride. For the giant-stride post five-inch steel pipe should be used. The taller the pipe the better the children like it, but also the more room it takes, and more danger from one child striking another as he flies around. The heads of the giant stride with ladders may be had from any of the machine companies. The head with steel ladders is more durable, but it is also expensive and causes a good many more bruises. In a number of cities, the labor unions have erected the play equipment without cost except for the materials ; this applies especially to the carpenter work and the like. They usually insist, however, as the condition of their giving their assistance, that all the work shall be union work. In most of the schools of Washington the cost of installing the appara- tus was met by entertainments given by the schools. BIBLIOGRAPHY Addams, Jane : Recreation as a Public Function in Urban Communities. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XVII, pp. 615-619, 1912. Bowen, Wilbur : The Teaching of Play. F. A. Bassette Co. Curtis, Henry S. : Playground Attendance and the Playground Director. American City, Vol. IX, pp. 127-132, 1913. Playground Equipment. Playground, Vol. VII, pp. 301-329, 1913. Johnson, George E. : Education by Plays and Games. 234 pp. Ginn & Co. $.90. Leland, Arthur, and Leland, Lorna Higbee : Playground Technique and Playcraft. 284 pp. Bassette, 1909. $2.50. Nolen, John: Preplanning Small Cities; Six Typical Studies. 218 pp. Illus. Huebsch, 191 2. $2.50. The School Playgrounds of American Cities 147 Proceedings of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, Vol. I-II. Public Recreation Facilities in the United States. Annals of the Ameri- can Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. XXVX, 1010. Robeson, J. S. : Playground Detail; An Ideal Surface. American City, Vol. V, pp. 150-151, 1911. CHAPTER VIII PLAY AT THE RURAL SCHOOL Probably the rural school has been the most neglected of our whole educational system, and the yard has been the most neglected part at the rural school. Inadequate in size, often unf enced, with unmowed grass, it shows at once to the passer- by that to the school boards, play has not seemed important. The American farmer has been the strength of the republic, and from the farm homes have come most of the men who have made American life. But the farmer as a class is the most complete materialist of a very materialistic nation. A very large proportion of them have always devoted them- selves to the work of the farm with such perfect absorption that they have forgotten all of the other values of life. If one will go to a farmer anywhere and ask that his boy may have Saturday afternoons in order to play on the baseball team, he will probably say that his boy does not need to play baseball because he gets plenty of exercise on the farm. Play has not much more to do with exercise than it has to do with religion. It is the life of the spirit, and the farm boy needs play for its social and spiritual values far more than the city boy does. It must be remembered, also, that the work of the farm has almost completely changed in the last generation. The farmer no longer cuts his hay or wheat with scythe or cradle, but with mowing machine and harvester. He no longer 148 Play at the Rural School 149 holds the handles of his plow in a single furrow, but to a large and increasing extent plows his fields with a gang plow which he rides. More and more he is becoming the operator of machines rather than a worker with his hands. The farm boy to-day is not getting at all the physical training from his work which the farm boy got forty or fifty years ago, and such work as he does have is likely to be of a kind that involves stooping and tends to give him round shoulders and a forward slanting head. Whenever the test of the Public School Athletic League has been introduced into a rural community, it has been found that farm boys find it quite as difficult to pass this standard test as do the boys in the city, and all the indications are that the training of farm work cannot be depended upon to give the boy the sort of development which he should have. Farm work will develop certain muscles, but it will probably give the boy round shoulders and a flat chest, and will do little to develop his heart and lungs. The Size of the School Grounds. — From decade to decade the farms are growing larger throughout the United States, and the families are growing smaller. In the days of the pioneers, while the houses were of ttimes far apart, the f amilies were so large that there might be a good deal of play at home. To-day, with increasing farms and decreasing families, this is becoming more and more difficult, until it is now necessary for the children to have nearly all their play at school. My work takes me through nearly every state in the Union, and I am convinced there are less than five per cent of the rural schools in the United States that have grounds large enough to play baseball upon. In the county in which I live, out of some one hundred and forty schools, there is not one 150 Education Through Play that has a playground one acre in extent. As a boy in a rural school in Michigan, I always had to play baseball with the others either in the road or in a neighboring field, and this is pretty much the fate of the country boy everywhere. It is impossible to set any arbitrary standard for the size of a school ground in the country, but it certainly should be large enough for baseball. Very often a neighborhood park and picnic ground should be made at the school also. This should always be done, if the site offers the facilities, and there is no better place in the neighborhood. The minimum size for the ground of a country school should be two acres. Noth- ing less than this will do for baseball, and if the tract is to be used by the older people evenings and Saturdays, as it ought to be, nothing less than three acres will be adequate. Ten acres will not be too much for the general athletic field and picnic grove for the consolidated school. There is no advan- tage in the large yard, however, unless it is kept mowed. City children need a good-sized school yard because there is no other place to play. Country children need a large yard because there is no one to play with except at school. The State Boards of Education in Pennsylvania and Virginia are dealing wisely with this problem by requiring the plans of all buildings and grounds to be submitted to the State Board for approval and by not approving any plans for new schools that do not have adequate playgrounds. The school laws of North Dakota now provide : " The School Board of any school district may take, in the corporate name thereof, any real property, not less than two acres, nor exceeding five acres in area, chosen as a site for a schoolhouse." Beautifying the Grounds. — In the past the ground of the country school has been not only inadequate in size, but it Play at the Rural School 151 has been very often in a wretched condition. It is frequently evident from its appearance that this particular site was selected because it was of no value for any other purpose, and the school building has been so located that it is almost impossible to have any organized games upon the ground. Generally the grass is unmowed. For the most part there are no trees nor vines nor flowers, and very often there is no fence. There is no attempt to make it seem homelike and pleasant. I remember, as a boy, that we once persuaded the school directors to plant trees on our school ground, but they planted the first tree on the home base, the second tree in the pitcher's box, the third on the first base, and so on around. These trees did not last very long, and it is well that they did not. There should be a double row of trees around the edge of the school ground, but no trees in general within the play space. A good fence is of woven wire covered with some kind of flowering vine, but it is not wise to plant shrubbery in school yards, as many landscape architects are seeking to do at the present time. Places of concealment of this kind are not good anywhere that children play. Games for the School Yard. — We have always been in- clined to regard baseball and football as our national games, and every boy aspires to play them. This is right and proper, but baseball is not adapted to at least nine tenths of the rural schools of the United States, for the very obvious reason that there are not enough older boys to play. Baseball is not played much before the age of thirteen, and there are probably not half a dozen boys of that age in the average rural school. It also is not usually played in the fall and there is only a very small part of the time when school is in session that it can be played even if there are enough players. Baseball is 152 Education Through Play not well adapted to the rural community, because it is diffj cult to get enough players. Rural communities are overserious, and it is necessary tha the spirit of play should be introduced into country life. I is the lack of recreation, probably, more than anything else that is driving the young men and women and even the adul farmers to the city. The country school must teach the game that are adapted to country life. Indoor Baseball. — Indoor baseball is in every way mud better adapted to the country school than is the regula game, because a boy will begin to play indoor baseball a eight or nine instead of at thirteen, and the girls play th game nearly as much as the boys. Also, while baseball i played only in the spring, indoor baseball is played botl fall and spring, and while the sting of the hard ball is in sufferable in the colder months, the same is not true of tin large, soft, indoor ball; so that the season for play ii indoor baseball is probably four times as long as is the seasoi in baseball. Also, as the ball is large and the diamond small the game may be played fairly well with less than nine players so that by utilizing the girls it is usually possible to have a garm of indoor baseball at any school that has a dozen to fifteei pupils. If the children are small and there is a goodly pro portion of girls who are playing, it is probably best to use th twenty-seven-foot diamond, but with larger boys, the thirty five-foot diamond will be best. (See appendix.) Long Ball, or Long Town. — Long ball is really a variatioi of indoor baseball. It is best played with the seventeen-incl ball. There is only one base and this corresponds to secon< base in position, but is usually made about five by eight feet i) size. There are no fouls, and the player may be put out b Play at the Rural School 153 catching the ball or by touching him or striking him with it as he runs. There may be any number of players on long base so long as there is one left to bat. If, however, the whole side gets on long base, the side is out. Volley Ball. — In a good many ways, volley ball is the best game for the rural community, because it is a natural corrective of all of the bad postures both of the school and of farm work. It is often the only team game that can be played at a rural school, because, if there are only four children who are over nine years of age, they can still play a fairly good game of volley ball. (See Chapter X, p. 199 and appendix.) Tennis. — We have seemed to think of tennis as a city game, but it would be almost impossible to secure the space if any considerable proportion of city people made up their minds to play. Tennis is a country game of England and is in every way adapted to country conditions. It requires a considerable space for only two or four players, and the country needs games that can be played by two, because there are often only two to play at the country home. For this reason there should be a tennis court at every country school in order that the children may learn to play there, in the hope that they will continue it after their school days are over. (See appendix.) Croquet. — Croquet does not rank high as physical train- ing, but it is a good social game, and a game that is adapted to country conditions. During much of the year the farm furnishes abundant physical exercise, and the games played should not require a large expenditure of muscular energy. The children should learn to play at school, in order that they may continue to play for the rest of their lives. 154 Education Through Play Tether Ball. — Tether ball is the most vigorous game that can be played in a small amount of space or can be played by two players. In some of the smallest of the rural schools, it is the only organized game possible except tennis. Athletics. — There ought to be a horizontal bar, a jumping pit, and a set of standards for the high jump at every rural school. Along the side of the yard or along the country road, if it is level and in good condition, there should be marked off the sixty- and one-hundred-yard dashes. The children will take much more interest in these events if they have a stop watch, so that the runners can be timed, but they will like to run against each other, even if there is no way of keeping a record of their speed. The long races are to be avoided. I have known teachers to urge the children of a rural school to take part in the half-mile run, but I suspect that nearly every boy who did so was injured by the strain involved. A hun- dred yards is about the extreme limit for a real race for the children of the rural elementary school. It will be a decided advantage if children can be got to train for the standard test of the Public School Athletic League of New York. This test offers a beautiful bronze button for every boy under thirteen who can run sixty-yard dash in eight and three fifths seconds, jump five feet nine inches standing, and " chin " a bar four times. The buttons can be obtained from the Playground and Recreation Association of America at i Madison Avenue, New York City, for fifteen cents. At the time the test was first instituted in Ulster County, New York, there was a general feeling that country boys were strong and could easily do these things ; but it was soon found that scarcely any boy was able to pass the test, and many began to train in order to do so. It is a good thing Play at the Rural School 155 to have a standard by which our attainments may be measured and toward which we may strive, for no boy will willingly fall much below in physical prowess the achievement that is expected of him. Play Equipment. — There has been a considerable amount written about play equipment for rural schools, and there is a decided tendency in a good many quarters for the in- stallation of such equipment at the present time. But it must be remembered that the swing, the seesaw, the slide, and the sand bin are for individual rather than for communal use, and that an only child in the isolated farm home can use these things nearly as well by himself as he can with others. This equipment belongs in the yard of the home rather than in the school yard. But it is probably worth while to install a sand bin, a slide, and a few low swings if they can be afforded ; though the chief reason why it is worth while is in order that they may be later found in the yards of the houses as well. Almost the only opportunity which farm boys and girls have for social play is while they are at school, and this time should not be largely devoted to swinging and sliding and other things which can be done at home. Securing the Necessary Equipment. — It must be taken for granted that in most rural communities the school boards will not be ready at the present time to purchase the equip- ment that is necessary for the play of the children, and that the school itself will have to do this in some way. Every school should start out the year with three or four indoor baseballs, with a couple of volley balls, with a half dozen tennis balls and tennis racquets, and perhaps a half dozen tether balls, a pair of jumping standards, and a croquet set, and, as I have said, it is probably worth while also to have a sand bin for the 156 Education Through Play little children, and -perhaps a few swings. It will be necessary for the school to furnish these things if there is to be much play that is worth while, but no teacher should be discouraged on account of the expense involved. In Winnebago County, Illinois, there were held last year entertainments at forty- seven rural schools, the proceeds of which averaged a little more than $35 per school. With this amount of money, it is possible to furnish all the equipment which has been rec- ommended and even to save a small amount to replace material that is worn out. For even so little as $12 the fol- lowing may be obtained : one volley ball outfit, $ 4 ; four indoor baseballs, $4; four bats, 50 cents; one croquet set, $1.50; one sand bin, $2. If the children get the pole in the neighboring woods and furnish their own racquets, tether ball need cost only the 65 or 70 cents which must be paid for the ball. Interschool Sports. — Competitive athletics in this country have been subject to many serious criticisms. Probably the chief of these is that the practice has always fallen to a few athletic specialists, while nine tenths or more of the pupils have looked on from the bleachers. Probably the rural school is the best place for competitive athletics, because, if it gets up a contest in almost any series of events, it will be necessary for it to use and consequently to train its entire student body. The country boy is diffident on account of a lack of experience and acquaintance with other children, and almost anything that takes him out of his home setting to another school and makes him acquainted with other children will be a valuable experience in itself. The farm boy has no knowledge of sportsmanship. He cheers his opponents' mistakes and tries to interfere with Play at the Rural School 157 them in their play. It is not surprising, however, that he does this, because we have not done much better in our colleges and high schools, and the knowledge of sportsmanship is not hereditary. There ought to be competitions in country schools in order that the children may learn what sportsmanship is. The country school is without loyalty, and the easiest way to develop loyalty is to hold a contest with another school. A contest always serves to make play more interesting and to raise the standard of achievement. School Excursions. — We must regret that walking trips, which are almost universal from German schools, have not become popular in America. Of course we have not the same number of interesting places to visit in the immediate vicinity that are likely to be found in any community of the Old World, where history has had time to accumulate. But there are dozens of things within walking distance of nearly every rural school that are quite as interesting and educational as anything that the children are studying about in their school books, and they are likely to be much more important to them because they are nearer home. I have taken a great many parties of school children out on such expeditions, and I am convinced that they will often learn more in an afternoon spent in this way that they will remember and that will be influential in their lives, than they will in a whole week spent in school. I believe the school could well afford to give Friday afternoons during the pleasanter part of the year to walking trips to neighboring places of interest. One of the saddest things about country life is that so very few of the farmers love the country. They have never learned to see the glories of the sunset or the distant horizon, to admire the beauty of the flower or the song of the bird. Children 158 Education Through Play have a spontaneous appreciation of beauty and love to pick flowers and look at colored pictures. It has been merely a case of starvation that the adult farmer has ceased to care for them. It is this nature environment which is the sovereign advantage of the country, and a real appreciation of nature is one of the strongest ties to hold a capable population. This is perhaps most easily acquired through walking trips. The German teacher always makes it his business to point out the beautiful scene and to make the children acquainted with the different birds and flowers. Corn Clubs and Fairs. — Corn and other industrial clubs have developed very rapidly over the entire country during the last four or five years, and there are probably four or five hundred thousand children now taking part in the contests involved. These are furnishing practical instruction in agri- culture and domestic economy such as the rural school has not been able to give. They are making country life more interesting and giving at the same time a social opportunity to the children which is greatly needed. They are also furnish- ing a basis for a type of cooperation which we may hope will give the farmer of the future greater influence in the com- munity and put him less at the mercy of middlemen the country over. Wherever it is possible to develop the social side of these industrial clubs, so that they may perhaps have athletics or the Scouts or the Camp Fire Girls as one of their activities, or, if the boys' and girls' clubs may sometimes meet together for social occasions, it will be worth while. During the last few years there has been a very large de- velopment of the school fair. In the states of Virginia, and Kentucky there is now a county organization in a large num- ber of the counties, and a county fair, which represents wholly Play at the Rural School 159 the work of the children at school and in their various outside activities, such as cooking, and corn and chicken raising, is held each year. In a number of other states, there is a town- ship or school district organization of such fairs. All of them, I believe, are making farm life more interesting and bringing the school nearer to the community in ways that will be help- ful to both. The Play Festival. — Probably the first rural play festival in this country was organized in Ulster County, New York, in 1905. In this case it was the work of the Normal School of New Paltz, and was carried out under the leadership of Prin- cipal Scudder of that school. He sent the girls out from the normal, in the first place, to teach the games at the different rural schools and to get the teachers and pupils interested. They came together in June in a play festival which brought out a large percentage of the people of the country. This play festival has been carried on ever since. There are several other normal schools which are now holding a similar play festival each year. There are at the present time eighty-nine counties in the United States which have county secretaries of the Y. M. C. A. In nearly all these counties there is some organization of athletics, usually with a play festival or general picnic, at some time during the year. In a number of cases these play festivals and contests are held during the county fair, but in many they are held in the spring. There are probably fifty or more counties in the United States where athletics are organized under the county superintendents and where a play festival is held each year. One of the easiest ways of organizing such a play festival is to have the matter presented to the teachers and the games taught during the county teachers' institute. 160 Education Through Play The play festival serves to interest the whole county in play as few other things do and to set the children to practicing in all of the rural schools. It is therefore very helpful, espe- cially in the beginning, in getting the play movement under way. Who is to Organize the Play ? — In many country sections of Germany there is an official who is known as a Spiel In- spector, or Play Supervisor, who has charge of the organiza- tion of play. In Hamilton County, Tennessee, three years ago a similar official was employed, and it is possible that in time American communities will see the need of a play organizer. The great weakness of the rural communities every- where is the lack of leadership, and it does not seem likely that the country will be able at once to organize its own play and social life as it should be organized without such a leader. A play director has been found absolutely necessary to the city. The problem of organization is more difficult in the country, and the play director is perhaps even more necessary there. The Consolidated School. — The whole tendency of edu- cational progress in rural communities at the present time seems to be toward the consolidated school. A large pro- portion of our rural schools now have only ten or fifteen children, and it is expensive to maintain an up-to-date school for so small a number. More and more we are requiring agri- culture and domestic economy, and it is almost impossible to have these properly taught by a teacher who has all grades and all subjects to teach. It has been found in very many places that it is considerably cheaper to bring the children to the consolidated school than it is to maintain a large num- ber of one-room schoolhouses throughout a township. The country boy is diffident and backward from the isolation Play at the Rural School 161 in which he lives. More than any other child he needs to go to a large school, in order that the social life there may com- pensate for the lack of social opportunity at his home. Every boy should play baseball. The rural school often does not have enough children. To me, however, the strongest reason of all for the consolidated school is that the community needs it both as a center for its social life and its educational life. In the state of Iowa, the minimum-sized ground for a con- solidated school is four acres, and this is probably not above the average of the entire country, for a very large number of these schools are getting ten or fifteen acres. In a number of cases, there are picnic groves also in connection with them, and at some there is a township playfield where matched games are played on Saturday afternoon. If, now, the princi- pal of this school may be paid a certain amount extra, in order that he may organize social activities, such a school may well furnish a real center for community sociability and play. The Schools of Villages and Towns. — Probably rural villages are the worst places in the world to bring up children. The great city with its art galleries and museums and factories and endless traffic is a constant exposition of all the world is doing, and the farm with its varied industries offers an opportunity for training which makes the farm boy at fourteen practically the master of a trade. But there is no place in the world where there is quite so much idleness as in a country village, and there is no place where it is more dangerous. I am inclined to think that the villages need the play movement as much or more than any other part of the country. In the village it is usually possible to secure an adequate amount of ground without the price being prohibitive, and 162 Education Through Play this may be so secured that it will furnish a playground for the adults as well as the children. The play problem is made difficult in the great cities by the fact that many different groups of foreign peoples are mixed together there and there is too much disparity in race, religion, and traditions to make possible a real community spirit. On the other hand, the town usually does not have a large foreign population, or if it does, it is a foreign population of a single race. It is probably possible to have more ideal play conditions in a city of four or five thousand than it is in a larger city. The village and the small city are especially suited to the organization of the Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls, because the young people have the time, and the surrounding country is available for " hikes " and nature study and similar purposes. The Boy Scouts. — At first thought, it seems that the coun- try is the place for the organization of the Scouts, and it does have many advantages which the city has not ; but, in actual fact, there are almost no Scouts there. The reasons for this are not far to seek. Country boys in their teens are busy, they are scattered over a wide territory and do not often get together. Farmers have not yet developed a spirit of social service, and it would be almost impossible to get Scout Masters. The country boy does not need so much to be a Scout as his city cousin does, because he already has an op- portunity to observe nature. Of his own accord he camps more or less, mostly less, but he hunts and fishes, roams the woods, and learns to be resourceful and self-reliant. He has many useful things to do which correspond to the arts and crafts for which the merit badges are given. He has no surplus idleness, which is the bane of the city and village boys alike. Really the best place for the organization of the Scouts and Play at the Rural School 163 the place where it is most needed is in the country village. The country and usually the woods and streams are accessible. There is an opportunity to go for week-end camps, and for several weeks during the summer to go on long walks and excursions. In short, all the arts of scouting can be practiced most easily from a village headquarters. There is also very often in the villages some young lawyer or doctor, whose practice is not yet a burden, or some young minister, who can give the time that is needed to organize the troop and direct its activities. The Camp Fire Girls. — Pretty much the same arguments may be adduced for the organization of the Camp Fire Girls in rural villages and cities. There are special advantages which come from the nearness of the country, and the girls can easily find the time and the guardians. The Social Center. — In Europe, the farmers for the most part live in rural villages. They go from these villages in the morning to their farms and return to them at night. Thus they have the same opportunity for sociability in the evenings that city people have. The American farmer, on the other hand, lives apart in an isolated dwelling. During his work in the field he usually has no opportunity to converse. It is more necessary that he should have some place where he can meet socially with others than it is that the city dweller should have a social center. Also, the work on the farm is heavy during the summer ; but there are usually five or six months during the year when farm work is slack, and there is time for social meetings. In the early days the country schoolhouse was this common meeting ground. In it were held the spelling matches, the singing school, and the rural debate, and here came the stroll- 164 Education Through Play ing magician and the itinerant pastor on Sunday. But all of these social uses of the country school have fallen away. The social center is needed in the country for social reasons. It is needed no less on educational grounds. A comparatively small proportion of the farmers have had any instruction in the principles of scientific agriculture. Within the past generation the work has been completely transformed, and it is almost impossible for him to-day to be successful without a knowledge of the more recent discoveries and improvements. The best place there is for the extension lecture is in the rural community, and the social center which is equipped with a modern moving-picture machine and the newest type of a phonograph should be able to secure the attendance and to give just that instruction which is needed in order to make the farmer successful in his work. The great need of the present time in rural communities is organization. A smaller proportion of farmers, perhaps, is organized than any other industrial group and for this reason, although the largest single class in the country, they have had comparatively little influence in politics and have been almost completely at the mercy of the buyers or commission men in the sale of things that they have raised. Denmark has shown how a sterile, sandy peninsula may become wealthy by rural cooperation, and this the American farmer must learn. But it cannot well happen unless there be some common meeting ground where farmers may come together to discuss their problems. The Rural Teacher as a Social Worker. — Commissioner Claxton says that there should be " a teacherage " with five or ten acres of good ground attached to every rural school. The teacher should thus become a fixture in the community Play at the Rural School 165 and should conduct a model farm as well as a school. Cer- tainly the great lack of the rural communities is leadership and social organization, and almost anything that the rural teacher can do in the way of organizing athletics or games, or picnics, or sociables, or entertainments, or play facilities, or other social occasions, will be for the welfare of the rural community, and he may well feel himself a missionary of the higher life in doing so. We are taking the spires off the churches; we must put them back upon the schoolhouses, that the rural community may learn that life does not con- sist in what we have, but what we are and what we enjoy. BIBLIOGRAPHY Alabama's Country Schools and their Relation to Country Life. State Board of Education, Montgomery, Ala. Btjttereield, Kenyon L. : Rural Recreation. The Association Seminar, March, 191 2. Curtis, Henry S. : Play and Recreation in the Open Country. 265 pp. Illus. Ginn & Co., 1914. $1.16. Eastman, Feed : Redeeming Rural Recreation in a Big Red Bam. Sur- vey, Vol. XXXI, pp. 195-197, 1913. Gillette, John M. : Constructive Rural Sociology. 301 pp. Sturgis, 1912. $1.60. Hetherington, Clark W. : Play for the Country Boy. Rural Man- hood, Vol. II, pp. 139-142, 1911. McKeever, William A. : Farm Boys and Girls. 362 pp. Illus. Mac- millan, 1912. $1.50. Parker, S. Chester: Rural School as a Community Center. Tenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, University of Chicago, Chicago, 111., 191 1. $.75. Quick, H. : Social Center and the Rural Community. National Educa- tion Association Book, 191 2. Report of the U. S. Commission on Country Life. Sturgis, 191 1. $.75. Rural Recreation; Special Numbers of the Playground. Vol. V, pp. 181- 216, 1911; Vol. VI, pp. 267-308, 1912. CHAPTER IX THE PLAYGROUNDS OF GARY The most interesting city in this country from an educa- tional point of view is the city of Gary, Ind. Gary has made an important contribution to the solution of many problems of modern pedagogy, and she has perhaps come the nearest of any city to a real solution of the play problem of her children. She has solved the question of a very nearly maximum and uniform attendance at her playgrounds at all hours of the day and evening. The play features in Gary are a part of a school system that is notable in many particulars. The man behind the system is William A. Wirt, the Superintendent of Schools, a man alike of great poetic insight and rare admin- istrative efficiency. The Gary System. — There are so many things that are distinctive at Gary that it is not easy to seize upon any one or two of them and say that these are the fundamentals, but the feature which has made many if not most of the other developments possible is that it is a departmental system from the first grade up. All the teachers are specialists, and all the children go from room to room for their recitations as they do elsewhere in high schools and colleges. There are unusually large shops and laboratories and an auditorium, so that at least half of all the children are always in them instead of in the classrooms, and each school is designed for twice as many children as its classrooms will hold. This permits of special 166 The Playgrounds of Gary 167 teachers of such subjects as physical training, carpentry, cooking, without any extra expense, as there is only one teacher to a class, even including the principal. One quarter of all the teachers are physical trainers. The schools are in session twelve months a year and for seven days a week for certain features, six days a week for all features. The Jefferson School. — The Jefferson is the smallest of the schools. It contains only six classrooms, but it was thought by the Steel Corporation that it would be adequate for the needs of the city for many years. In this school there are, however, twelve classes and nearly six hundred children. There is a principal who does not teach, three physical trainers, and eight classroom teachers, so that there is under this ar- rangement actually one less teacher than there would usually be under the old plan. The twelve classes represent the first six grades of the elementary school. There are no recesses, but each class has two one-hour periods of play or play appli- cation of a regular lesson in the playground if it is pleasant, in the gymnasium if it is not, each day. One of these periods is naturally in the forenoon and one in the afternoon. They are put into the program like any other school periods, so that organized play is going on at every period of the day. There is also a period of thirty minutes each day of more formal physical training. The playground of this school is the smallest in Gary, only about two acres in size. There is a school gar- den of about half an acre and there is perhaps an acre and a hah of play space. The playgrounds were expensive to make, as the whole city has been built on the soft sand dunes of Lake Michigan in which one sinks ankle deep. It was impossible to have a playground without covering the sand ; so it was covered with the ground slag from the mills to a depth of 1 68 Education Through Play about ten inches. It was thought that this would make an admirable surface, and it is, in dry weather, but it gets muddy after rains; so this in turn has been covered with a layer of cinders from the furnace. These cinders, however, were much too coarse, and are difficult to run over, and wear out the balls very fast. These must be raked off, and it is now pro- posed to put in a grinding machine, so as to grind the cinders as they come from the furnace and surface the ground with these. The gymnasium is the old attic of the school which has been made over for that purpose. It is very large and serves for all sorts of musical entertainments and exhibitions as well as for gymnastics and play. The Emerson School. — The Emerson School was the sec- ond school built. It is similar to the old-time English Public School or the German Gymnasium, inthatit has all grades from the kindergarten to the college. Although the equipment is less complete than that of the Froebel, it is more complete than that of any other school that I know. The four-acre playground is surrounded and divided into two nearly equal parts by an inexpensive fence. On the boys' side there is an equipment of all-steel apparatus next to the building and running parallel to it. This consists of five or six swings, two seesaws, a giant stride, and a merry-go-round. There is against the side of the gymnasium a very good hand-ball court, and between that and the apparatus there is a large concrete sand bin and a wading pool about thirty feet square. The equip- ment is practically the same on the girls' side. Beyond the apparatus is a good circular running track without a curb, a straightaway track, a jumping pit, and a place for the high jump and the pole vault. The central space is reserved for baseball The Playgrounds of Gary 169 and football, though it is not large enough for a full-sized diamond or gridiron. It is lighted at night, and at one time when I was there, there was a matched game in soccer football going on between two night-school teams. This playground is undoubtedly modeled after the boys' playground in the South Park System of Chicago, but the substitution of play space for the outdoor gymnasium seems to me a decided advantage. On the girls' side, there is less space, probably too little, given to general play. There is a tennis court, a basket-ball court, and a coon tree, with a small house around the base, so that the children can go in and play with the animals if they wish. The ground is badly surfaced with coarse cinders. The school contains two gymnasiums, one for the girls and one for the boys, and a good-sized swimming pool. The boys have two periods a week for swimming, the girls one period a week. The boys go in nude. The girls wear a white one- piece suit, which they make in the sewing room, where they also make their bloomers for their gymnasium work. The girls have not been required to wear white suits until the past year, and the order is the result of the discovery that the color came out of the other suits more or less, thus throwing con- siderable of the dye into the water. This was found to be irri- tating to the eyes and generally injurious. I have not heard of any such requirement of undyed bathing suits elsewhere, but, I doubt not, the conditions are no different in Gary in this regard from what they are elsewhere. Practically all of the boys learn to swim and learn all of the common strokes. Many of them swim and dive very well indeed. Not so large a percentage of the girls learn to swim, as many of them have not been able thus far to afford bathing suits or to change from the old to the new kind. There are no life savers, of course. 170 Education Through Play The children seemed to me much more proficient in swimming than they are in Chicago. The water is kept in a sanitary condition by continuous filtration and the use of alum and hypochloride of lime as sterilizing agents. Under this treatment the water is rendered almost absolutely free from bacteria. Hair and dirt from the body, which are likely to accumulate in the bottom of swimming pools after a short time, are removed by a vacuum cleaner without emptying the pool. The water is changed only once in five weeks. This is a great saving, as the water to fill the pool costs about $3.50, and the heating as much more. There are four physical trainers at the Emerson School, and each class has two periods of physical training a day up to the sixth grade, and one period a day after that. The Froebel School. — The Froebel School is very nearly the last word in school construction. It has a community park in front and perhaps seven acres of playground. It has two, or, perhaps better, three gymnasiums, as the stage is some eighty feet square and is used for basketball and other games, and for gymnastic and dancing drills and exhibitions. It also has two swimming pools. The Gary System is very Successful. — The Gary play- grounds are open from eight a.m. to five p.m. and during the evening every day and all day on Saturdays and on Sunday afternoons and evenings. They are also open all through the summer vacation. Thus there is always a place where the children can go to play, when they have time to play. The playground of the first school was two acres, of the second four acres, of the third eleven acres, and the site of a fourth school contains twenty acres. The park board has recently purchased a five-acre addition to the Emerson and a Boys' Day at Emerson School, Gary. Isd. The Wading Pool and Sand Bin at Emerson School, Gary, Ind. The Playgrounds of Gary 171 ten-acre addition to the Froebel School grounds. The ground for the Froebel School cost $7000 an acre. It was a long fight to get two gymnasiums and a swimming pool in the Emerson School, but when they came to build the Froebel School, they put in two gymnasiums and two swimming pools as a thing of course. It is estimated that a city school will cost about $8000 per classroom. By this system half the number of classrooms are saved. This would mean a direct saving of nearly $100,000 on a building for twenty- four classes. This saving covers the cost of the extra large playground. The expense of the Chicago school system per pupil enrolled is $43 ; the expense of the Gary system is $40. The children in Gary are entering the high school nearly a year younger than they are in other cities, on the average. Mr. Wirt says the graduates of Gary are generally given advanced standing in the universities, so that he thinks that they are very nearly covering the Freshman and Sophomore years of college, in science at least, in the twelve years of their school course. Physical training in this country has not been properly ad- justed to the individual. Our general practice has been to begin in the high school or college and to require exercise dur- ing a whole or a part of these years. Gary puts physical training into the first grade and has two hours a day for the first six grades, one hour a day from the sixth to the eleventh grade, and makes it voluntary after that. In this she follows almost exactly both in time and grades the requirement of the English preparatory and public schools. I doubt if this is enough time in the first three or four grades, but it is cer- tainly better than the common practice. The work is, however, 172 Education Through Play so adjusted that it is possible to give children more time for play, if, for any reason, it seems desirable. Putting play thus into the curriculum is not so great an educational innovation as it may appear at first. We have already seen what is being done abroad. In our high schools and some of our elementary schools, we have put two or three hours of gymnastics into the weekly program. If gymnastics in the curriculum can be defended, we need no defense for play. The gymnastics are indoors where the mats are often dusty, and the air is never as good as it is outside. Gymnastics are likely to be physical exercise, with comparatively little interest or relief from the conditions of the classroom. On the other hand, play is in the open air. It is as good or better exercise than gymnastics. It is an almost complete relief from mental strain, and it is quite as good a training of the social, emotional, volitional, and intellectual faculties as it is of the body. There are many who think that if play is put into the pro- gram of the school, it will straightway cease to be play and will become work. This is doubtless a possible result, but not one greatly to be feared. It has never been said that play in the school recesses became work because it occurred during the school day. It is possible to have the organized play merely an organized school recess, with a physical trainer in charge. In fact, that is practically what they now have at Gary. If the master of any school should say to his pupils, " Well, boys, instead of having arithmetic this morning, we will go out and play baseball," there are not many who would regard baseball as work because it came in school time, and I am not sure but its play value would be enhanced by that fact. The Playgrounds of Gary 173 The Gary System solves the Problem of Attendance. — In many of our cities magnificent play systems are lying idle. The children are at school and may not use them, or they are playing in the streets and alleys and are not using them. If children must go home from school and come back a half mile to the playground, only a small proportion of them will ever attend. We believe to-day that play is essential to the development of the child ; that it is nature's method of education that has come down through the centuries. We believe that every child should play and that he should play every day. It is certain that no system of park playgrounds has ever secured the daily attendance of any considerable proportion of the children, and it is almost equally certain that it never will. The children will largely play in the street rather than make the effort to go away to a playground where they may be molested by other children who are strangers to them. For the past ten years the German Play Association has been working to secure a compulsory play afternoon each week for all the German schools, and a very considerable proportion of the cities have this. If we are really going to furnish organ- ized play to all the children, the only way it can be done is to put it into the curriculum. There are several other well-nigh unsolvable problems in the attendance at the municipal playground. One is that it is very irregular, and facilities that would be adequate at nine in the morning may not meet ten per cent of the need at five o'clock in the afternoon. No two hours will have the same attendance, and the difference in numbers will be very great. If supervision is furnished on the basis of the smaller attend- ance, it will be entirely inadequate for the larger attendance. 174 Education Through Play If supervision is provided on the basis of the larger attendance, the slack hours will be oversupervised. If supervision is fur- nished on the basis of an average attendance, this will be exces- sive part of the time and inadequate at others. When it is realized that the numbers vary at different hours from twenty- five or thirty to five hundred or a thousand, it will be seen how difficult this problem is. On the equipment side, this means that there will be a great deal of equipment and many game fields lying idle at certain hours ; while at others, the equip- ment and facilities will be insufficient for the children. The Gary system not only secures the attendance of all the children every day, but it secures an approximately equal attendance of children each hour during the day, so that the equipment and play fields are always in use, but are never over- crowded. The municipal playground secures the minimum use of play facilities at the maximum expense. The Gary system secures the maximum use at the minimum expense. The Park Playgrounds of Chicago have, I should estimate, at most not more than five per cent of time efficiency, while the grounds at Gary have at least fifty per cent of time efficiency, and with the growth of the schools and the development of athletic interests in the neighborhood, they may well have one hundred per cent efficiency. Every play facility furnished at Gary may well be used every school period by the pupils, and after school and in the evening by the community. This makes easily possible ten times the use that park grounds in general are likely to have, as these are idle as a rule during school hours and at night. The lengthening of the school day at Gary has been an ad- vantage in itself, because the extra hours have been taken from the idleness and " the street and alley time " of the children. The Playgrounds of Gary 175 It has thus removed the chief source of dissipation and vice and given a great positive advantage at the same time. The Lighting of the Playgrounds. — Thus far it has not been possible to play baseball anywhere at night. It is possible to play soccer football, basket ball, indoor baseball, volley ball, and tennis. Perhaps with the new artificial daylight which is coming in it may be possible to play even baseball. Night is, of course, the pleasantest time in summer to play all the games that can be played then. The Emerson School makes its own electricity at a cost of from one cent to one cent and a half a kilowatt, and it costs one dollar and a half a night to light the playground. The electricians promise us that pro- cesses already discovered will cut the prices of electric lighting in two. The evening playground is always the cheapest playground, when its use is considered, and the cost of lighting is estimated against the purchase of ground to secure such use. As the playground is used each hour during the school day, at the noon intermission, probably half an hour at least before and after school, and for about three hours in the evening, there is a total use of twelve hours a day. Municipal playgrounds that are not lighted are used during the school year only after school and for not much more than an hour a day on an average. One acre of playground at the Emerson would provide the same play facilities as twelve acres of municipal playground that is used only one hour a day. But if our cities were to lengthen their school day as Gary has done, it would not then be possible to use the municipal playgrounds at all during the majority of the school year, unless they are lighted at night. Need of More Organization at Gary. — The weakness of the Gary system is not overorganization, as some might be inclined 176 , Education Through Play to think, but the lack of adequate organization, as it seems to me. Gary has put playtime into the curriculum, but it has not, properly speaking, put play into the curriculum. The Gary play periods are the old recesses taken at different times during the day with physical trainers in charge. There is less of idleness than there is in most school recesses, but it is still present. In the German and English schools, certain games are required. I believe that Gary should do the same, because this will secure better and more vigorous play, and because there are certain games that every boy and girl ought to know. Baseball in the Curriculum. — The park baseball fields are nearly always sodded. They cannot stand more than one game a day, as they are usually laid out. They are used by adults after work hours and children after school, so it is usu- ally possible to have only one game a day except Saturdays and Sundays. Baseball requires about two acres of ground. Approximately twenty per cent of the men and boys of any city are of baseball age, about twelve to twenty-two. If Gary with her forty thousand inhabitants were to seek to furnish baseball facilities in her parks for all these people, it would re- quire eighty acres of ground, if each of the, four thousand people involved should play once a week and the ground be used five times a week. Not all of baseball age will wish to play, but many will wish to play more than once a week, and there will be especial demand on Saturdays, so this provision will probably be about right. If, on the other hand, base- ball is put into the curriculum of the school, the same ground can be used seven times a day by the school children and once after school by the adults of the community. This would make eight times as great use as is possible in the park grounds ; The Playgrounds of Gary 177 or in other words, ten acres or five baseball diamonds would meet the need of a city of forty thousand people. In actual fact the ground would have much more than eight times the use of the park ground, because play might be required of the schoolboys, and because the grounds are central in all communities and not in inaccessible suburbs where much time and carfare is wasted in going back and forth. There are a great many times when the day is cold or threatening when it would not seem worth while to go to a distant park ground, though these conditions would not prevent the use of a school ground. This should lead to their having a much larger use by the adults during the evening as well as by the children during the school day. Maximum Efficiency at Minimum Cost. — The daily attend- ance at the different facilities of the Emerson School, includ- ing the showers, swimming pools, and such equipment, is at least six thousand children. This would be the at- tendance of four of the South Park Playgrounds of Chi- cago thrown together. To maintain four of the South Park Playgrounds costs from $100,000 to $130,000. To main- tain the recreation facilities of the Emerson School requires the following expenditures : Supplies, $1500 ; two men physi- cal trainers, $3000; two women physical trainers, $2500; one pool and gymnasium attendant, $780 ; one grounds attend- ant, $780 ; for heat, light, and water, $1000 ; making a total of $9560. As the physical trainers take the place of regular teachers and one janitor is the regular school janitor, only $3280 is properly chargeable to the playground. The exercise and the social influences emanating from the school, and the activities carried on, are in every way superior to what it is possible to furnish in a municipal playground where everybody 178 Education Through Play comes and where there is no existing organization of the patrons. The Gary Schools have nearly the same combination of features that the South Park system has. There are twenty acres of ground at the newer buildings devoted to a park and playground, swimming pools, showers, a branch library, an auditorium for public meetings and entertainments. There is also a lunch room at noon and an opportunity for all sorts of constructive play and gardening, domestic science, and manual training. As a recreation center the Gary School and playground is thus more complete than the Chicago park and field house, and it has, of course, its whole scholastic and techni- cal plan besides. As has been seen, the cost of the recreation per person served cannot well be more than ten per cent of the cost in Chicago. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bobbitt, J. F. : The Elimination of Waste in Education. The Elemen- tary School, Vol. XII, pp. 259-271. Gibson, David: The Wirt School System. Common Sense, June, 1012. Hendricks, Burton : Children of the Steel Kings. McClure's, 41, pp. 61- 69. Keeping the Children in School. Hampton's, July, 1911. Roberts, Herbert F. : Bolstering up the Bulwarks. Kansas Magazine. (Reprinted by the Gary Schools printing department.) The Gary Public Schools. First Annual Report. Wirt, William : Utilizing the School Plant. National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1912, pp. 58-62. The New Public School develops Individuality and Efficiency. World To-day, 191 2. CHAPTER X PLAY IN THE CURRICULUM The Problem. — Nearly all students of childhood have come to believe that play is the most fundamental thing about the child, that it is nature's school for his phys- ical, social, and mental development. It follows as a cor- ollary that every child should have a place and time to play. Yet there probably is not a municipal play system in this country that is securing the daily attendance of more than ten per cent of the children, and, for the most part, it is reaching this ten per cent in a very unsatisfactory way. A proper play life is as fundamental to child welfare as the school. We would not rank the school system high that secured the attend- ance of only ten per cent of the children ; there is no reason for regarding the play system with a similar attendance as more successful. It is believed that the only way that play can be furnished to all children, during the school year at least, when it is most needed, is to put it into the curriculum of the school. This method not only secures the attendance of the children, but it obviates nearly all the objections that have been raised to playgrounds in different places. Play at the Municipal Playgrounds. — In many ways, the conditions in the municipal playgrounds of America are un- satisfactory. Play systems have been created largely to keep the children off the streets, but often a fine play system will be found to be almost deserted, while the adjoining streets are 179 180 Education Through Play thronged. During the school year it is almost impossible for the children to attend the playgrounds for more than an hour a day. Probably not more than twenty per cent of them attend that much. The playgrounds he idle for seven out of the eight or nine hours of the daytime, thus securing a time efficiency of twelve and a half per cent. During this time, they have an attendance efficiency of not more than forty per cent, giving an actual efficiency of five per cent, but, at least half of this use is by children who are loafing as much as playing, which would give an actual play efficiency of two and a half per cent for ten months of the year for our expensive municipal playgrounds. These figures do not overstate the actual con- ditions in most of our great cities. This lack of use of municipal grounds is, however, only half the problem : while the play is better than the play of the streets, it is far from being satisfactory as play or under satis- factory conditions. There is some profanity, obscenity, and smoking in all, and there is a great deal in some. It is likely to become the resort of the community loafers, and if the boys and girls make use of the same ground, it may become a place where loose boys and girls get together. It is likely to be a place, also, where cadets and procurers go to seek young girls. There are many careful parents who refuse to allow their chil- dren to attend. They are almost never centrally located as to child population, and generally their use requires a double trip from the school home, and from the home to the play- ground. This arrangement secures a minimum use for a maxi- mum expense, and, at the same time, the least result for the greatest effort. All the problems of the municipal playground are made difficult from the fact that many of the children are unknown Play in the Curriculum 181 and consequently irresponsible. Children are much more likely to steal or smash up equipment than they are at the school. Consequently a larger number of paid helpers are re- quired. Pupil monitors can be of great assistance on a school playground where they are regarded as a part of the school, but this is less true at the municipal playgrounds. There are likely to be feuds among the children of different sections of the city, and when these children come together on the play- ground, they are not well enough acquainted or friendly enough to organize easily into teams or worth-while activities. The children change from hour to hour, and it is almost im- possible to have a schedule of play by regular teams, and noth- ing else secures the training that the team should give. The municipal playground brings almost inevitably a di- vided loyalty for its regular attendants, or it may displace the loyalty to the school altogether. One hour of competitive baseball will do more to create loyalty to the institution repre- sented than a year of classroom work, and it is a serious thing for the school to lose thus the chief means of securing the loyalty of the children. Play at the School Playgrounds. — If the park and munici- pal playgrounds are not securing adequate results, the condi- tions are equally unsatisfactory at the school playgrounds. For the most part, they are open only during the summer time, leaving the school year, when organized play is most needed as a relief from the strain of the classroom, unprovided. There is sometimes an hour or two after school, but the supervision is nearly always unskilled and the attendance is always vol- untary. The larger part of the students, including nearly all of those who are overstudious and need the play most, do not stay. All the natural team combinations are broken up by 1 82 Education Through Play the going home of a considerable part of the children, and the ones who remain are of such different ages and so mixed to- gether that team games are difficult. A playground of this kind will always have much idleness, and its use will be largely the use of apparatus, which always makes a playground of second grade. The school playgrounds are small and quite inadequate for play when all the children use them at the same time. Why should Play be Required ? — There is every reason to suppose that the problem of the physical welfare of the child is growing more serious from year to year. In Germany and England the percentage of young men who are fit for military service grows less and less with each decade. The same forces of city growth and increased use of machines and soul- and body-destroying factory labor are at work here as they are in England and Germany, and there is reason to suppose with the same result. The school should give them a robust physique to combat these conditions ; but instead of doing this, an ap- palling number are weakened or broken down by the school itself. The need of furnishing organized play to the girls is greater than it is for the boys, because the girls do not have much encouragement from their parents or from the community. Their life at home is more indoors, and they cannot well play on the streets as the boys do. Their clothing is always unsuitable, and they need to have most of their play at school, where they can wear bloomers. All over the civilized world at the present time the birth rate is going backward. Have- lock Ellis says this lowered birth rate is due both to increased sterility and a growing disinclination to motherhood. Dr. Montessori speaks in her " Pedagogical Anthropology" of "the Play in the Curriculum 183 laborious modern childbirth, and the dangerous childbirth in the case of women who have devoted much time to study." The daughters of the peasant women of Europe who have settled in New York are often unable to nurse their children, a trouble almost unknown to their mothers. Dr. Newell, in a report to the Park Association of Providence, says : " There is going on in this country, especially in large towns, a gradual physical degeneracy of the race. Each generation is becom- ing less able to bear the wear and tear of life. It is well known that the large town would soon be depopulated if it were not for the country." The Earl of Meath, in speaking of " The Decay of Bodily Strength in Towns," says, " If we could isolate the city and prevent all intermarriage with the country, the degeneracy in the physique of the inhabitance of the former would prob- ably be so marked as to horrify the public, and would arouse a sense of national peril ; it would command the attention of the parliament and the country." He says again: " It will be found that the denser and poorer the neighborhood, the lower will be the physique of its children. A competition in drill takes place annually between the Board Schools of Lon- don, and upon these occasions the above fact becomes dis- tinctly apparent." Havelock Ellis says there is no fourth and usually no third generation from the families reared in London. A larger and larger proportion of our population are becoming city dwellers. If our city population is not to reproduce itself, and the families in the country are to continue to become smaller and smaller, we shall soon become a nation of immi- grants at the mercy of the ideals of South Europe. Training must be given by the Elementary School. — Phys- ical training and the establishing of health is the paramount 184 Education Through Play business of early childhood. The physical training of the child begins in the spontaneous movements even before birth. The baby lies upon his back and kicks up his heels and waves his fists in such a way as to give almost ideal development to the muscles of the arms, legs, and back. The child of two or three finds in running and walking and climbing constant use for every muscle. In pioneer days this training was naturally continued by the hunting, and the fishing, the felling of trees, and the other activities of the frontier. To-day, for the great majority of children, these activities have ceased. The daily life no longer furnishes the necessary exercise, and the school must do it. In my investigation at Clark University, we asked a large number of children whether or not they liked to go to school, and, if they said they did not, in nearly every case they gave as the reason because they " had to sit still," or some other reason that implied inactivity. I can remember myself, in the days of the water pail, how eager I was to pass the water, or to collect the waste paper, and, if there had been spittoons that I could have cleaned out, I would gladly have done it in order to get out of my seat. Everything seems to say that the time for physical training is in the elementary school. It is then that there is the greatest interest in physical achievement. Health and life itself are dependent upon establishing a strong physique at that time. Physical development in childhood builds the foundations on which all later success must be erected. If the child is anasmic and puny, he is likely to be carried off by sickness. He cannot stand the worries and labors of school life. As soon as puberty comes the girl puts on her long dress, and her physi- cal activity is greatly limited thereby and by the periods of dis- ability that come with it. She must get most of her physical Play in the Curriculum 185 training, if it is to be really a general training, before this period. In the days of Pericles, the boy up to fourteen years of age went to the playground in the morning, and to the school in the afternoon. In Germany to-day there are from three to six hours of physical training a week in all grades of the ele- mentary school. In the English schools that prepare for the public schools, such as Eton and Rugby, there are about twelve hours a week. In contrast to this we have scarcely any in the elementary schools of this country. There is, how- ever, a strong movement in this direction at present. State requirements are being established, and curriculums of games are being introduced. The time to train along any line is surely the time of greatest interest in this activity and the ripening of the faculty which it is to use. The intellectual development of the race has followed its physical development. The physical is the first side of the individual to come to matu- rity. All of these arrows indicate that physical training should, in general, precede intellectual training, and should be com- pleted long before the intellectual training can be finished. How Play may be provided for all Children. — The only solution of the play problem of our cities that I can see is to put play into the curriculum of our schools. It is not difficult to do this, but we shall have to use somewhat different methods from those which we have used in the past. Gary has shown us the way. The time after school is being wasted in our cities. There are two methods that are open to us in order to furnish all the children with an opportunity to play at a reasonable expense. We may either take an hour from our present scholastic day and devote this hour to play or we may add an hour or more to our school day and devote these hours to play. I doubt if there is any other satisfactory solution. 1 86 Education Through Play There is no serious objection to taking the time needed out of the school day for the younger children at least. We have undoubtedly kept these children at scholastic tasks for much longer periods than they were able to give attention. It is well known that the child of five or six cannot attend to any one subject for more than fifteen minutes at a time, and normally, he flits from task to task. We have made them stupid by lessons in which they were not interested and which had no relationship to their experience. In a study of twenty thousand children in New York, it was found that the children who had been on half time had made considerably better prog- ress than the children who had been on whole time. Lee says our present method is devised to teach a child how to do one hour's work in five hours' time. When a child once gets into a habit of doing one hour's work in five hours' time, it is al- most impossible to educate him. Hutchinson says, " A child can read over in thirty hours all that the school requires him to master in 3000 hours, and to suppose that it takes a child a hundred hours to master what he can read over in one, sup- poses an excess of stupidity, which the ordinary child does not possess." Colonel Parker said that if you would give him any normal child at fourteen, who had never been to school at all, he would put him through the high school in four years. Most of our ablest men were educated on four months a year. The country children have not suffered greatly as compared with city children, because they have had a shorter school year. We now know that there is no advantage from teaching the child to walk while he is very young. When his time comes, be gets on his feet and walks. If we succeed in teaching him much earlier than this, we merely make him bow- Play in the Curriculum 187 legged by the process. The same is true of much that we are teaching the children in the school. The children would learn it anyway, and we are merely making them spiritually bow- legged, and dulling the keen appetite of interest by giving these subjects before the psychological time. These consid- erations seem to me to justify taking an hour from the school day for play, for the younger pupils at least, but it would doubtless be easier to add the play hour on to the present school day. Street and Alley Time. — Superintendent Wirt says he has taken the street and alley time of the children and devoted it to education. He says that in the early days, there were chores to do and the regular industries of the home, the children must leave school by four or earlier in order to help their parents. These activities in and about the home have disappeared and left nothing for the children to do. The hours before nine and after four are spent largely about the shops and streets, unlearning the work of the school. I have observed the chil- dren in many cities, and nearly everywhere, if organized play is not furnished, they are loafing. In an observation of two hundred and twenty-nine children in the city of Houston, Texas, in the time after school, I found them to be doing the following things : One was studying, five were reading, two were looking at pictures, two were caring for the baby, four were going on errands, one was watering the lawn, two were swinging, two were roller skating, three were playing with pets, four were playing catch, five were playing at keep- ing house, seven were carrying papers, forty-six were playing ball, forty-one were strolling on the street, and ninety were merely loafing. Thus it would appear that one hundred and thirty-one out of two hundred and twenty-nine children 1 88 Education Through Play were doing nothing of any value to any one. The forty-six who were playing ball were all within four blocks of the one organized playground, where a series of contests in base- ball was going on. Children were not playing ball much anywhere else in the city, so we may reasonably conclude that this play was due to the playground. If we take these children out, it leaves only fifty-two out of a total of two hun- dred and twenty-nine who are, on their own initiative, doing anything of value, and of these fifty-two, the activities are not on a high plane so far as child development is con- cerned. Nearly the same results would be found in any other city where no organized play is furnished. It is generally a relief to the parents to have the children away until nearly supper time, and it is always a relief to know that in this time they are not being subject to undue tempta- tions or bad influences. It is the idleness of the children in the cities that is the greatest danger, because it is in this time that nearly all vices are acquired. The lengthening the day in itself is a very great advantage and it makes possible a number of other advantages. It was not possible to have these long hours in the old scholastic type of school without injuring the children, but in a school that joins together work and play and study much as life itself has always done, the harness can be adjusted to the child so as to avoid strain. Mr. Wirt has taken the time that heretofore was worse than wasted and devoted it to highly educational uses. Nearly everywhere on the continent of Europe the school day is at least an hour longer than it is here, and the Montes- sori schools for little children have seven- or eight-hour sessions. The Gary system is being much copied and there is a growing sentiment for a longer school day the country over. I believe Play in the Curriculum 189 that a longer day that made room for play would be wholly advantageous. It would or should remove much of the strain of the school day for both pupils and teacher. The German records show that there will be less absence on account of sickness. There will, of course, be less breakdowns of the pupils. It will tend to make the school life more pleasant and to keep the children in school. It will largely solve the problem of street and alley loafing of the children, which is, perhaps, the greatest menace of child welfare in the city, and it will produce a more vigorous race. Personally, I believe we should be justified in adding to the playtime of the children from both of these sources. Physi- cal development and health is the paramount consideration for little children. Early childhood is the physical period of life. At least half of the time of children should be devoted to physical activities. By our present precocious forcing on them of scholastic tasks and knowledge, for which they have no use, we are accomplishing little except to stultify their minds and make them despise books. If an hour were added to the school day, it would keep the teachers at the school for an hour longer, but each teacher would have one free period in which she could correct papers or prepare work for the next day. This should enable her to leave her work and her cares at the school, when she goes home at night. But the great relief would come be- cause the children would be less restless if they had not been so closely confined in the classroom, and had had an oppor- tunity to use some of their surplus energy on the baseball instead of the teacher's nerves. For a generation or more, play has been required in the pre- paratory and public schools of England. In the council schools 190 Education Through Play of England physical exercises and games are in the program of the school and take place in the yard during the regular school hours. For more than twenty years the Germans have been putting more and more play into the curriculum of their schools. There are many American cities that have done something in this direction. To put play into the curriculum of our schools will be in accord with the educational tendency throughout the world. The School should require and teach the Common Games and Sports. — Our whole curriculum has been determined in the past from the interest and considerations of adults. We have not put in a single subject because the child as a child needed to know these things or because it corresponded to a natural interest of his. We have left out of consideration most of the things that he needs to know and to be able to do that he may be successful in the little world in which he lives. It is no wonder that the child, despite the estimate that is con- stantly forced upon him by adults, has always, himself, held a low estimate of the school. The Greeks and the Romans were not far from having a nat- ural system of education. The first interests of the child are physical and his first education should be physical. He should learn to manage himself in the various environments in which he may be placed, to walk, to run, to jump, to swim, to skate. These are a part of the knowledge that makes him the master of himself in relation to his environment. This is the ability that he has always craved and this is the ability that he will most readily acquire in his earliest years. His muscles are plastic. He sees the value of these accom- plishments, because his status in the child world is largely determined by them. He thus has a natural incentive to Play in the Curriculum 191 effort, and an effort that is not half hearted, in acquiring skill in these activities. There are also certain games that belong to our civilization. It is quite as necessary that a boy should know these games and be able to play them, if he is to be at home among his fellows, and especially if he is to be a leader among them, as it is that a society girl should be able to dance. They also have a specific training on the physical, social, and moral side. Gary, I think, has made a mistake in putting playtime into the curriculum without putting play. Games are of very dif- ferent value physically, mentally, and socially. We cannot train athletes from marbles, nor can we train intellect or social f eeling. Many games played by the children have little value, but, where there is no schedule, they often do not play at all, but merely loaf about during the play periods. Our school recesses are not accomplishing much except to give relief from study and indoor air, because only a small part of the children play anything that is worth while. We cannot secure definite results from haphazard methods. If we want our school recesses to give a valuable training, we must have a plan for the activities to be pursued. I shall not attempt to make out a curriculum of games for the little children. Such curriculums are available from New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and from many German cities. But I believe that all boys should be taught to skate, swim, run, to practice the high and broad jump, to go on excursions, to be scouts, and to play the games of baseball and indoor baseball, soccer football, tennis, volley ball, and hockey. I be- lieve that all girls should be taught to skate and swim and walk and dance and run and be Camp Fire Girls and to play the games of indoor baseball, tennis, hockey, and volley ball. 192 Education Through Play These games require almost no equipment except the balls and bats with which they are played. These activities belong to the curriculum because of the training and culture they give, because they supplant vicious interests by wholesome ones, and because if they are not taught and required, they do not reach those who need them most, nor do they yield to the player their full spirit which is the best training we have for citizenship, business, and society. We must get away from the idea that the object of education is to make scholars. It is not true. The object of education is to make men, men of loyalty in civic affairs, and men of efficiency in business affairs. In both of these par- ticulars, the training of athletics and games may be rightly compared, not with any one subject of the school curriculum, but with that of the rest of the course. The activities out- lined, not arithmetic, are the really significant things in the world of childhood. General Athletics. — Athletics in this country have been subject to two general criticisms. They have reached only a small per cent of the student body and, in general, the strong- est and best-developed part of it, who had the least need of the training ; and, there have been no standards. The A. A. U. has had almost absolute control and, under the guise of promoting amateur athletics, has been interested only in the specialist in sport, who has been practically a professional, whether he has been paid or not. It has not been interested in general educational athletics for the student body. The sort of sportsmanship and courtesy that have been shown at our great college games often has been a denial of all the social and moral standards of our civilization. The movement for reform has also two essential directions. Seeing in athletics Play in the Curriculum 193 a valuable physical, mental, and social training, it deems that they should be provided for all, and that they should be recognized as one of the great educational forces of the country. The reformers are unwilling to let our standards be set entirely by the sellers of athletic goods or by semi- illiterate coaches, who are hired to win games. Dr. Luther Gulick has probably done more to reform athlet- ics in this country than any other one man, through two devices, which he introduced into the public school system of New York and has since promoted about the country. The first was the forming of the Public School Athletic League of New York City, which is similar to the Schools Athletic League of London, but was probably a new invention with Dr. Gulick. The essential contribution of this league has been the intro- duction of a non-competitive standard test, which sets the children to competing not against each other, but against a standard accomplishment, which any well-developed boy should be able to perform. In competitive athletics, children soon learn their relative place. It becomes perfectly certain that Johnnie Jones can beat everybody else in the hundred yards, and consequently no one else cares to run. Competi- tion among individuals tends to the selection of a few winners, toward the specialization of the most capable. This is not the kind of training that the school should give. The small child needs not specialization, but general development, and all, not a few, should get the benefits. The Public School Ath- letic League issues a handbook, which sells for ten cents and contains its standards. The secretaries of this league in New York City are paid by the Board of Education. There are about a hundred other cities that have adopted these tests from New York. The common standard is that the boy 194 Education Through Play under thirteen shall be able to run the sixty-yard dash in eight and three fifths seconds ; jump five feet nine inches standing ; and chin a bar four times. These tests have two great advan- tages : that they get a large number of pupils into training, and that they set a standard of accomplishment. Children always tend to come up to a standard. To practice for these tests does not require much space, and if there is not room in the school yard, the children can run in the street. Class Athletics. — The other form of athletics promoted by Dr. Gulick is the type which is known as class athletics. Class athletics were invented by Dr. Ballard, assistant director of physical training for New York City. The class competes as a unit, and the average record of the members is the class record. At least eighty per cent of the children must compete. The competitions are usually in the same events as the standard test. In some ways it is simpler in practice than the individual test as the record of a class can be taken in a dash without a stop watch. If thirty boys in one class are to compete against thirty boys in another class, they are lined up at the starting line, one behind the other. The starter stands with an ordinary watch at the finish line. When his second hand stands at sixty, he brings his hand down, thus starting the first runners. When the first boy crosses the finish line, he brings his hand down again, thus starting the second boy. After the first start, a second starter gives the signal to the second boy in the second line, as soon as the first boy has crossed. When the last boy of each class has crossed the line, the time is taken. This constitutes the time of the class. If this time is divided by the number of runners, it gives the average time of each runner. One of the great advantages of this system in New York has been that it Play in the Curriculum 195 has set the strong to training the weak, and has brought up the average largely by improving the weaker ones rather than by further training of the strong. In the chinning contests this method has brought up the record of whole classes to twelve and thirteen times per pupil in the upper elementary grades. The following incident is told of one of these contests : A small boy, after much wiggling and pulling and redness of the face, managed to chin the bar three times. When he came down exhausted, the boy who stood next him patted him on the back and said, " Good for you, Johnnie, you never did it but twice before." Relay Races. — There is an almost infinite variety of relay races, nearly all of which are interesting to children. Where there are a large number of children in the relay, this is one of the easiest ways to interest children in running, and the wildest enthusiasm is sure to result. (See appendix.) Folk Dancing. — There is a great new interest in folk danc- ing at present, also largely due to Dr. Gulick. The folk dances are the old racial dances that have been practiced by peasant peoples in the market places or on the green for generations. They are nearly all vigorous, offering the best sort of physical training. They are done to music, thus adding the charm of rhythm. They are too vigorous to be suggestive and leave the dancer too tired to concoct mischief. For the most part, the women dance with the women and the men with the men. They are one of the best antidotes we have for the dance hall with its well-known evils. They are being introduced into the public schools quite generally about the country. In cer- tain places, there will be prejudice against them, because of the name, but there will be little if any prejudice arising from the exercise itself, and what there is, is rapidly disappearing. Folk 196 Education Through Play dances lend themselves peculiarly to festival occasions, where they usually form one of the chief charms. Folk dances have the advantage of giving both physical exercise and grace. While they are ordinarily learned in a gymnasium and thus are not directly in the open air, some may be learned in the yard instead and are often practiced there. Folk dancing is especially adapted to the physical training of girls. (See ap- pendix.) Classroom Games. — There have grown up during the last few years a series of games suitable for classroom use. These may be played in place of having recess on a rainy or disagree- able day, or to liven up the class whenever it gets dull. They are carried on between the desks or over them and are practi- cal for any classroom. If the windows are thrown open during the period, such games may meet the requirements of exercise, recreation, and fresh air. Need of Better Games. — One reason why the play situa- tion has been so difficult in our American cities is that our games have not been adapted to city conditions or to adult life. In England the man plays cricket until he is sixty or seventy, but here we stop playing baseball by the time we are twenty-five. Any game that is to meet the needs of our schools must have at least the four following characteristics : It must be one where there may be a large number of players in a small amount of space ; it must be reasonably safe ; it must be good exercise ; and it must be one which children will begin to play while they are in school and will continue to play for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the greatest problem before the immediate future is the securing of a curriculum of games. There are a number of our larger cities that already have such a curriculum on paper, Play in the Curriculum 197 but they are all tentative in nature, have been drawn without sufficient study or experimentation, and are not followed very closely. As has been shown, there is a rather extended curriculum of play in Germany, and a very meager and rigid one in the Preparatory and Public Schools of England. During the last two or three decades, several new and excellent games have come in, and it is now possible to name from six to a dozen games at least which every child ought to learn to play as a part of his education. But very much study and experimentation and investigation and gathering from all sources will be needed before we may have a really satisfactory curriculum of games. We have an abundance of passive recreation, but the think- ing world is agreed to-day that it is better to play yourself than it is to watch other people play. It is all right to go to the theater, and professional baseball, whether in the Ameri- can League or the American college, serves a real purpose; but it must be evident that it has not the power to renew and recreate the body, mind, and emotions that active play has. We as a people do not play enough. We loaf too much, and work too much, but of real play of the energy-producing kind there is a dearth. We get dyspeptic and anaemic and nervous from lack of exercise and despondent from brooding over things that we ought to throw off in recurring periods of joyous play. When we have a holiday, many of us find our way to the saloon or some worse place, because we do not know what to do with our leisure. It is scarcely possible that baseball or football should meet this need. Girls or women do not play either of them. Both are practically confined to boys and men between the ages of twelve and twenty-five. In this limited period of 198 Education Through Play thirteen years not more than two or three per cent are playing football on regular teams, and probably not more than twenty per cent could safely play the American game. I doubt if more than ten per cent of the boys and men of even this favored age are playing baseball regularly. The lack of grounds within the city sufficiently large makes baseball almost impos- sible for the average city dweller, and the lack of players makes it equally difficult for the denizen of the country. After one settles down to his life work in business, or shop, or office, or farm, he does not get enough general exercise as a rule, and his muscles stiffen along the grooves of his accustomed tasks. Baseball is too violent a break with indolent or specialized habits after twenty-five or thirty. Cricket is too slow for the American temperament. It takes too long to play a game. It will be far more important for the coming generation to have an enthusiasm for some form of sport than it was for the past generation, because leisure is becoming a larger part of life. We have a dawning consciousness that the inspirations and maximal experiences of life come mostly in those times when the spirit is free to follow its own guidance, that wisdom or money cannot compensate a persistence in toil that gives not time to live. When it comes to a twelve-hour day in the steel mills or ten hours of monotonous work in a factory, such a life is not worth living. Every year sees one or two states reduce the hours of labor for men and restrict and reduce the hours of work for women and children. The number of new hours that are thus given to leisure each year make an enor- mous total. It is becoming the habit of our people to take vacations from their own business and to demand them from their employers. Witness the tremendous growth of summer resorts throughout the country. According to Josiah Strong Play in the Curriculum 199 our national wealth is now doubling every fourteen years, and the rate is accelerating with each decade, owing to the great increase in machinery, power, and labor-saving devices. That we have a new conscience for a more equable distribution of this wealth is shown by a hundred and one movements having in view industrial insurance, safety appliances, the " minimum wage," " standards of living," and the like. Of this same feeling, the rapid increase of the socialist party all over the world is another expression. Just now we seem to be standing on the verge of what may well be a new era in regard to leisure. The efficiency movement is upon us. Through th e economizing of motions in the things done and efficient administration at the top, it promises that the work that the world has taken ten hours to do may now be done in five. A second factor no less important is the enormous development of water power that is going on throughout the country. This will mean inevitably that much that has previously been done by human hands will now be done by machines, that the output and wealth will be greatly increased, and that many new opportu- nities for leisure will result. Ten years hence the work this country is now doing in ten hours may well be done in four or five. Leisure that comes upon a man or a people that are unprepared to use it usually causes dissipation . We must begin to prepare for this coming leisure. We need games that the people will play. Volley Ball. — Volley ball has great advantages over any game that we have previously had. In the first place, it is a thoroughly good team game. In Washington, where we in- troduced basket ball and volley ball into the playgrounds at the same time, we found that we could get four or five teams in volley ball as easily as we could get one team in basket ball. 200 Education Through Play The skill of the game consists in passing the ball from player to player on your side until you can knock it into an open space on the other side. Sometimes the ball will be passed back and forth over the net twenty times without its ever touching the floor or ground, something which rarely happens in tennis, which is a similar game without the team combina- tions. The net is seven feet and a half high, and the ball is often twenty feet in the air. It is the best corrective we have for the round and stooped shoulders and the flat chest so often engendered in the schoolroom and office and on the farm. One has to keep his head up and shoulders back in order to play the game. It would be hard to devise in the gymnasium any better series of movements to straighten out the shoulders and stretch out the chest than the natural movements in play- ing the game. There is also a certain exhilaration that comes from the mere fact that the head is held high and the glance is directed upward. Another great advantage that volley ball has is that it is equally well adapted for play out-of-doors or in a gymnasium. It is usually played out-of-doors during the warmer parts of the year and in the gymnasium in winter, but it is a type of game that may well be played out-of-doors all the year round. The game is peculiarly adapted to the city because it is more economical of space than any other team game. The court is only half the area of the basket-ball court, and on this space twice as many players may have a good game, so that it requires only one fourth as much space for each player. The ball is soft and light ; it does not break windows or hurt passers- by. The game can be played in the back yard, on a vacant lot, or in almost any kind of school yard. There is room for thirty-five courts in volley ball on an acre BHiBJ ..... sn P filH ■ffM ;'%~ BE vj - '" 9 - ; ^|^M v"f SB:- • 1 4* -/ 1 faM^ sfl teLi "Wk o to The Summer Playgrounds 273 systems the children are not allowed to take the books home. There are a considerable number of cities where there is a more or less extensive system of gardens under the playground authorities. The children are assigned small individual plots at the beginning of the season. They are furnished with seed, usually of five or six different kinds of vegetables. If the child attends to his plot, he is allowed to have all he can raise upon it, but, if he neglects it, it is taken from him and given to another child. In some cases there is opportunity to use the manual train- ing and domestic economy departments of the school in con- nection with the summer work. Where there is no opportu- nity for this, there is still in most cities a certain amount of in- dustrial work. This is usually sewing, crocheting, raffia, and basketry. This so-called work is really constructive play for the children, and they will often forsake their games for it. It has come into the playground chiefly from three causes, — first, because the children get tired of playing active games after a time and want to sit down and do something more restful ; and second, because the older girls often come in with a small child and have nothing to do themselves ; and third, because there is considerable hot and rainy weather when the children cannot play outside. In some cities there are considerable dramatics; in some there is a period of singing ; and in not a few, there are chil- drens' bands or orchestras. During the first years, excursions were a feature in most of the large playground systems. Some of these were very am- bitious, as the trip of the Philadelphia children to Atlantic City in the summer of 1902, and the trip of the Chicago chil- 274 Education Through Play dren to Milwaukee by whaleback steamer. Such trips are becoming less frequent, but there is more and more attention being given to walking and camping trips. Programs. — The program is the course of study of the playground, but it seems inconsistent with the idea of play, and, in a sense it is. Play demands freedom as its vital spirit. If it be forced into a rigid time schedule, there will not be much play left. Nevertheless, a program is essential to achieve- ment. If we do not know what we want to do, we are not likely to do it, and, on the other hand, definite ideas always tend to become facts. It has been said we should always have a program, but we should never use it. If we will say instead, we should always have a program, but we should never be bound by it, we shall not be far wrong. Four different kinds of programs are necessary. First of all, there must be a general program for the season, which will be made out very likely by the supervisor of playgrounds. This will determine in general what is to be done, what games are to be played, what dances danced, what athletics there will be. It fits the time of the playground specialists, the story tellers, the teachers of industrial work and the others into the plan of the day for the different playgrounds. This is neces- sary in order that the children may be there when the specialist comes. Many children come to the playground only for cer- tain things and at certain times, as when the older girls come in for the industrial work only, or for the folk dancing, or for some other special feature. Unless they know when these things are to be given, they probably will not be present. In order to keep up the interest and get the children to prac- tice, it is almost necessary to have exhibitions of the work about once a week. It is well to make this something of an The Summer Playgrounds 275 event ; to invite the parents to come and to have the papers send representatives, if they will. These programs serve as the best advertisements that the playgrounds have. They interest the parents and tend to increase the attendance. A third is what may be called a special program. It is a program for rainy days, or for holidays such as the Fourth of July or Labor Day, with a little pageantryif possible. At some time there may be a school excursion or picnic. There must also be a schedule or program for the different teams, as there will not otherwise be any regular play. But by far the most important program is the daily program, which is made out each day by the director to cover the work of the day. Tournaments and Contests. — The playground that is a loafing place of children is not a great advantage. If it is to be an educational force, it must be made interesting and it must secure training. The most effective way to do this is a series of tournaments. Children who are playing listlessly are not getting much out of it. It needs a social incentive be- hind the individual incentive. The first tournament that should be organized is always the tournament on the home ground. The purpose should be to make play more interesting and victory more desirable. Every boy and girl should be got into some contest or other so far as possible, and tourna- ments should be run in each game and athletic event. These will do several things. They will increase the interest, adver- tise the playgrounds, and bring in new children who had not been coming. They will set a new standard of achievement and get the children to practicing. They will develop loyalty to the playground and to the teams. In short, the tourna- ment serves as an incentive for all those sorts of training which 276 Education Through Play the playground should give. In order for them to be success- ful the various events should be early listed that the children may understand just what to train for. Great care should be exercised in the events chosen, as the contestants are mostly young and inexperienced. It is very easy to do harm by set- ting races that are too long and by strenuous games of basket ball for half-developed girls. After a series of home tourna- ments have been run off, it is well to have a few contests with other playgrounds, in order to keep up the enthusiasm and set new standards of excellence. Team Games. — On nearly all playgrounds there will be room for basket ball, indoor baseball, and volley ball at least, and these games are likely to be the most important activities carried on there. But it must not be thought that these or any other games are necessarily team games. A team game is a game 'that is played with a team spirit for a social victory. But the players in any game under the sun may still play a perfectly individual game, seeking all the time individual distinction. In order to have real team games, the teams must be permanent, for team play involves leadership, loyalty, and friendship, and these cannot be secured from scrub teams. The scrub team has no permanence. There is no reason that a boy should be loyal to it and he never is. The scrub team secures no practice and teaches no rules. It is utterly unre- liable and may not be trusted either with supplies or in its conduct. It has no record to maintain. The permanence of the teams, therefore, serves as one of the best measures of the success of the playground. In order to secure permanent teams, the members of the teams must be friends or at least agreeable to each other. They should have a captain with some qualities of leadership, and they should have a name and The Summer Playgrounds 277 some regalia. A uniform is best, but a button or a ribbon or a cap will do. The team game offers the surest and easiest train- ing in loyalty and many of the social graces, so that it is well worth while to put a good deal of effort and ingenuity into getting as large a proportion of the children as possible on per- manent teams. All of the training of the team games is in- tensified, as the team becomes permanent, and it begins to take part in tournaments and contests with other teams. Attendance. — As the attendance at the playground is voluntary, it serves as one of the best measures of its popular- ity and success. It might appear that if the city furnished the playground, the children should furnish the attendance without more ado about it, but, in matter of fact, they do not. The playground has to be made attractive and to furnish to the children the things they want or they will not come. The very largest element in this attendance is likely to be the personality of the director and his ingenuity in organizing interesting activities. It is necessary to keep as accurate an account of the attend- ance as possible because this serves as the best basis of an ap- peal for funds. It is the proof whether or not the playgrounds are reaching the children. It is difficult to do, as the children come and go, and the attendance at five o'clock may be almost entirely different from the attendance at three o'clock. The teachers are apt to think that the children come nearly every day and that they stay for several hours each time. There are always certain children who do, but the majority do not. The attendance in almost any playground will be largely differ- ent on Tuesday from the attendance on Monday, and the at- tendance in the afternoon from the attendance in the morning. The children do not stay much over an hour and a half in 278 Education Through Play general and there is always a large proportion who do not stay that long. They are usually counted at the time when the numbers are the greatest both forenoon and afternoon, and the two counts added together. The numbers given will seem like an exaggeration to any one who passes the playground at any particular time, but they may in fact be much less than the actual number of different children who have been in the playground during the day. In most cases there is no attempt to register the children. This is always difficult, because they vary so greatly from day to day. But it is necessary to register those who are entered for contests at least in order to be sure of their eligibility, and in order that they may be sent for if they do not appear when they are supposed to take part. A child also feels a new sense of responsibility, as soon as his name and address are taken. It is often a great help in discipline. There have been a number of studies to show how far the children come to the playgrounds. They all show, of course, that this depends largely on the age of the child. The small children do not come much over a block unless they are brought by older children. The effective range of the school play- ground in general is not more than a quarter to one third of a mile. Just how far the children will come is also an almost direct measure of its attractiveness. The successful playground director labors constantly to build up the attendance. He must do this by making it in- teresting, by keeping something in the papers, by arranging tournaments and contests and play festivals. Discipline. — The conditions of discipline are difficult on the summer playgrounds, because there are large numbers of children who are mostly unknown to the teacher. They The Summer Playgrounds 279 come and go as they please, and there is no punishment that can be inflicted. Discipline is absolutely necessary, however, if the playground is to do good rather than harm. If it be- comes a mere loafing place, if the ideals and conduct of the bully and loafer prevail, it will always be a dangerous place for children. The only way that the play leader can establish standards and enforce them is through discipline. Conditions are, however, very different from what they are in the school- room, and schoolroom methods will either drive the children or the teacher from the playground. There are three general principles of discipline which are essential to the larger success on the playground, just as they are also to the highest success in the classroom. The first of these may be called preventive discipline. It consists in keeping the children so busy and happy that disorder does not arise. We have come to see that the only effective method of dealing with the problems of health is the preventive method, we now know that the only effective policy in regard to the criminal is to create social conditions out of which crime does not arise, and it is no less true of discipline. One of the es- sential conditions is that the children must like the teacher. She must take a personal interest in them and be friendly with them. The teacher who looks down upon them as " Sheenies" and " Dagos," or who holds herself aloof, will have her hands full all the time. A second method of discipline is what we may call the sug- gestive method. For the most part we follow their own sug- gestion in the treatment which we award others. Certain people expect to be obeyed and that expectancy gets into their voice, their gesture, the whole attitude of their personality, and the children obey this unconscious suggestion. There 280 Education Through Play are others who apparently have an equally strong conviction that they are not going to be obeyed. They give every com- mand with a question mark after it. Their whole attitude suggests disobedience, and the children obey this suggestion without realizing what it is. These teachers usually have a constant problem of discipline in the schools. The third form of discipline is discipline through the student body. Public opinion is always the only really effective check on conduct in a democracy. The great difficulty with the discipline in the schools has been too often that the child made himself a hero by being disorderly, and the other children " egged " him on. When the other children begin to tell him to " cut it out," it ceases to be any fun to be naughty. If the -teacher succeeds in getting the full cooperation of the children, so that they take an active interest in the affairs of the play- ground, this will reduce active discipline to a minimum and will create a spirit which is itself the sort of attitude toward law and the public welfare that is the basis of all good citizenship. No teacher can create this spirit unless she is popular and the children think she is personally interested in them and is working for their welfare. Sometimes a system of student discipline similar to the system commonly known as the '' school city " is used. This organizes the playground like a real city with a mayor, council, judge, jury, and policemen. The policemen arrest the violators of the rules, and they are tried by their peers for the offense. The penalty is usually exclusion from the playground for a longer or shorter period. This is excellent training in debate and in weighing evidence. It often gives the children a new sense of ownership in the playground, and a punishment inflicted by his peers is often felt more keenly by the child than a punishment inflicted by The Summer Playgrounds 281 the teacher. Where there are a considerable number of capa- ble older boys and girls, it is well worth while, but it must not be thought that the system will run itself and the playground. There has to be a deus ex machina as of old. Exclusion from teams or the ground is almost the only form of punishment practiced in the summer playgrounds, but it is always possible to consult the parents or even to hale the children before the juvenile court if their conduct exceeds the limits of endurance. BIBLIOGRAPHY Angell, Emmet D.: Play. Little, Brown & Co. $1.50. Bancroft, Jessie : Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gym- nasium. Macmillan. Burchenal, Elizabeth : Dances of the People. Schirmer. Paper, $1.50; cloth, $2.50. Burchenal, Elizabeth: Folk Dances and Singing Games. 92 pp. Schirmer, 1910. $1.50. Burchenal, Elizabeth, and Crampton, C. Ward : Folk Dance Music. 54 pp. Schirmer, 1908. Paper, $1.00; cloth, $2.00. Crampton, C. Ward: Folk Dance Book. 81 pp. Barnes, 1910. $i.S°- Crawford, Caroline : Folk Dances and Games. 82 pp. Barnes, 1909. $1.50. Curtis, Henry S. : Vacation Schools and Playgrounds. Harper's, Vol. 105, p. 22. 1902. Gulice, Luther Halsey : Healthful Art of Dancing. 26 pp. Dept. of Recreation, Russell Sage Foundation, 1912. $.05. Hall, G. Stanley : Story of a Sand Pile. Scribner's, 3 : 690. 1888. Hemenway, Herbert D. : How to Make School Gardens. 107 pp. Illus. Doubleday, 1903. $1.00. Hofer, Mari R. : Popular Folk Games and Dances. 56 pp. Flanagan, 1907- $-75- Johnson, George E. : An Educational Experiment. Ped. Sem., 6: 513. 1899. 282 Education Through Play Langdon, William Chauncy : Celebrating the Fourth of July by Means of Pageantry. 55 pp. Dept. of Recreation, Russell Sage Founda- tion, 1912. $.15. Leland, Arthur : Playground Technique and Playcraft. F. M. Bassette & Co. List of Good Stories to Tell Children under Twelve Years of Age. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. $.05. Mackaye, Percy : New Fourth of July. The Century, July, 1910. Mero, E. B. : American Playgrounds. Baker. $2.00. Miller, Louise Klein : Children's Gardens. 235 pp. Appleton, 1910. $1.25. Parsons, Henry Griscom : Children's Gardens for Pleasure, Health and Education. 226 pp. Sturgis, 1910. $1.00. Partridge, E. N. and Partridge, G. E. : Story Telling in School and Home. 323 pp. Illus. Sturgis, 1911. $1.25. Playground Reports from the Different Cities. Stevens, Thomas Wood and Goodman, Kenneth S. : Pageant for In- dependence Day. The Stage Guild. $.35. Wyche, Richard T. : Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them. 181 pp. Newson, 1910. $1.00. CHAPTER XIV THE SCHOOL CAMP The school playground for the school year seems to be an ultimate thing, but we may well question the vacation play- ground as final. The fact is, that we adults do not wish to spend our summers in the city when our work does not make it necessary. Our attention is constantly distracted from the heat and the discomfort by the work we have to do, but for the children with nothing but idleness on their hands it is ten times worse. The summer playgrounds have come as a great relief but not as a real solution, because the children do not stay in them for more than an hour or two a day, and for the bal- ance of the time, conditions are as they were. They are on the hot, dusty, and increasingly dangerous streets. The good effects of the school year are ofttimes dissipated by the influ- ences of the summer. Civilization has grown away from the life of nature, but we all seek to get back to it to rest. During the long summer vacation, the heat in the tenements makes them well-nigh un- endurable, and the streets are like ovens owing to the reflec- tion from asphalt and brick. The surplus of idleness always leads toward delinquency. Rest and quiet growth, the great- est needs of the children, are difficult under these conditions. Neurologists generally hold that such a life leads to degenera- tion in two or three generations. The child is being injured by these adverse conditions, on the one hand, and, on the other, he is missing his natural birth- 283 284 Education Through Play right of field and stream and meadow. He is failing to get that touch with nature that alone can awake the old racial memories and stabilize his nervous system. Existing Camps for Children. — For the average parent it is often not possible to make suitable provision for his children during the summer. The summer hotel is expensive, and children are unwelcome there. The artificiality of the life and the attention they receive are both bad for them. If the family have a country home, there is little fault to be found, ex- cept that for part of the summer at least it would be better for the parents and children to be separated, in order that the parents may rest, and the children may gain the self-reliance that comes from a more independent life. During the last two decades, the number of camps for school children have been increasing rapidly, and during the last three years, the Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls have given this tendency a new impulse. In Germany and Denmark, many thousands of children are sent to the country every year at public expense. There are a few municipal camps in this country, and sixty-five cities report camping as one of their playground activities for the summer of 19 13. There are also camps that are conducted by a number of private schools. However, all of these are but a drop in the bucket so far as the children are concerned ; probably less than one per cent of them are reached. The municipal and playground camps are very new and more or less experimental. They are usually located on ground leased for the season, and all of the equipment and arrange- ments are of a temporary nature. It is not feasible to erect permanent buildings or to construct swimming pools, tennis courts, and such apparatus on leased ground. Children who The School Camp 285 are to camp out together should be friends, otherwise they get homesick and do not enjoy themselves. There are various special problems that grow out of such an absence from home and ordinary restraints. The people who are in charge should know the children well. These conditions cannot be ade- quately met where the children are selected from the summer playgrounds. But the most serious trouble is that the play- ground camp usually keeps the children for two weeks only, and, for the balance of the summer, the child is still in the city. It is worth while having a bite if you cannot have a meal, but we must remember that it is only a bite. Judging from a very limited experience, it has seemed to me that the children are not at their best in the fresh-air camps. They feel terribly homesick at first because they are not merely away from home and their parents, but very likely away from all their friends and acquaintances as well. Fully half of them would go back to the city the first night if they could. Then, too, they feel irresponsible. They realize that they are not known. They are aware that this trip and this camp have no connection with anything else in their fives. In the institutional camp the children usually know each other, and are under the direction of people whom they know. They have a good time, but the camp is usually for two or three weeks only. The camps of the private schools, the Boy Scouts, and Camp Fire Girls are all fine and are doing a real service to the children whom they reach ; but the Scout Masters and the Camp Fire Guardians often cannot afford the time or money to go out and camp with the children. The Summer School. — We are living in the era of the summer school. Nearly all of our universities and normal 286 Education Through Play schools now have their summer session, and there are the summer conferences of the Y. M. and Y. W. C. A's., and sum- mer Chautauquas in many cities. Nearly all of our larger cities now keep at least a part of their schools open during the summer as vacation schools. These numbers are increasing rapidly, as is also the sentiment for a longer school year. The summer vacation is only about five weeks in length in England and on the continent. Gary now has a four-term school year with a regular summer session. The city un- doubtedly needs to make some more lasting provision for the children than it has thus far done in most cases. However, to immure the child again in the old type scholastic school- room would be to effectively cut him off from having any experience and to prevent his education. The summer ses- sion should be supplementary to the work of the year and should train those qualities that have been neglected. If the summer session might be in the country and devoted largely to industrial and social training, it would be ideal. The School Camp. — As every one knows, the English ideal of a school is a boarding school in the country. From the time he is nine until he finishes the university, the son of an Eng- lish gentleman lives at the school and sees his parents only in the vacations. The English educator claims that this life is necessary in order to secure the social and moral training which comes from a many-sided contact of the pupil with his masters and fellows. We in America do not accept this ideal. We believe that such an extended separation of parent and child is bad both for the home and the younger children ; but it does produce manly, self-reliant young fellows. Schools of the English type, such as Groton, St. Paul's, and Lawrence- ville, are rapidly springing up in this country. We regret The School Camp 287 the absence of social life in our public schools. We regret the slender opportunities for friendships between pupils. We regret the absence of traditions and a special spirit, such as distinguishes the boy at Eton or Harrow. We regret, most of all, the lack of intimate contact between pupil and teacher. The summer camp offers an opportunity for the union of these two kinds of training. It may well take up the social, moral, and athletic work which is so important in the English school. Certainly to me, the school seems to be the best attachment for the camp idea. I should like to see each of our large city schools possess a farm in the country as a part of its regular equipment. On this farm, there should be dormi- tories or cottages sufficient to provide for all the older pupils. Soon after the schools have closed, children should be sent out to these farms for the summer, either at their own or public expense, as the circumstances demand. Work for the Boys. — This would furnish an opportunity for training in all of those old industries which the home once had, but which it has lost with the growth of the factory and the narrow specialization of fife. The child who has never had this training has missed much. Of all kinds of work that are available, perhaps farm work is the best. It is the oldest trade or business of civilization. It has far the largest number of workers. It deals with simple fundamental things. It is almost endlessly varied in things to do, and each change of the season and the weather means a change in occupation. These are characteristics which every educational work should have. We all regret that the children no more have the training which they once had from the work and duties of farm life. Our systems of domestic economy and manual training are 288 Education Through Play but feeble attempts to restore to them the fundamental edu- cation which they once got from the farm home and its duties. As we all know, children may become actual wage earners and a source of profit on the farm, especially in the raising of vegetables and fruits, at an early age. The labor unions al- ways object to anything that looks like competition with the workers by any public institution ; but they are all interested in the schools, and they probably would be willing that the school should run a truck and fruit or a chicken farm and greenhouse in the edge of the town, or better a few miles out, and become a regular source of supply for these stable articles. This might help to reduce the high cost of living on the one hand, and it would make it possible to furnish this training to all children at little expense. The doing of actual things is always more educational than manual training. There are a good many children who are spoiled by their parents, and there are a good many parents who are spoiled by their children. They are so tied down that they never have a new and stimulating experience. If the children are to learn self-reliance, they need to be away from home a part of the time. If they might all go out to the school farm about the first of June, it would enable them to work more or less profitably there, and would give them most of the advantages of having been brought up in the country. The food of fresh vegetables and fruit raised by the children would not be expensive, but it would be the most wholesome sort of a diet. If the children also do most of the work about camp, the ex- penses will be reduced to a minimum. Children from nine years of age on are perfectly competent to care for chickens, to tend and gather fruit, flowers, and vegetables. Four or five hours of work a day would be advantageous to the older chil- The School Camp 289 dren, though the hours might be a little shorter for the younger ones. There would be difficulties in getting efficient farm work out of children brought up in the city, but these difficulties are not insuperable. On the farm that is conducted by the Gary schools, the children are charged four dollars a week for their board and room and paid fifteen cents an hour for the work they do. At the Interlaken School at La Porte, In- diana, the children do the farm work without pay of any kind. But it must be remembered that, even if the work of the children did not yield any profitable return, it would not be much more costly to board them on a farm of this kind than it would to board them at home, and it would be sure to be vastly better for the children. There is a great humanizing influence in the care of animals. Children always personify them, so that it has almost the same effect as though the child were caring for a dependent human being. All children love to feed pigs and chickens and gather the eggs and do other similar tasks ; the care of an animal is an ideal type of duty to develop a sense of responsi- bility and reliability. If the pig is not fed, he squeals. He is an accusing conscience for all neglect. The person who has never in childhood had definite duties of this type to perform less often grows up wholly dependable. Work for the Girls. — Such a camp would offer an almost endless variety of practical occupations for girls of just the kind that girls ought to have. Girls can feed the chickens and gather the eggs as well as boys. They can pick strawber- ries and raspberries quite as well. For a good share of the gar- dening, they are at no considerable disadvantage ; and they would have the whole domestic work of the camp to them- selves. There would not be a better place to learn about 290 Education Through Play vegetables surely than where you raise, gather, and prepare them yourself. Doubtless there must be a head cook of experience, but the children could prepare the things, set the tables, wash the dishes, sweep, and make the beds, and the older girls should be able to do a considerable amount of the cooking itself under the supervision of the cook and the teacher of domestic science. Even the waiting at table should be a valuable training in gracious service. It might not be best for the boys and the girls to live at the same camp. But the two camps might well be on the opposite ends of the same school farm. Perhaps the girls might mend the boys' garments as well as their own. There might be some objection to this, but it would be a valuable training both in sewing and in a sense of service. The boys might in return be expected to do various things for the girls. The Playtime. — If the afternoon were left free for recrea- tion, the greatest varieties of activities would be available. If the farm were properly placed, it should have somewhere on it a natural swimming hole, where the boys could go in naked. Very likely there might be some opportunity for fishing. There should be ample fields for baseball and ample courts for tennis, volley ball, basket ball, and croquet. A sum- mer tournament in each of these games could easily be ar- ranged and a high degree of enthusiasm maintained. Occa- sionally one camp should walk over to a neighboring one for an all day's tournament in all the games and events in which they have been training. This would furnish a splendid opportunity for teaching the spirit of hospitality and the social graces. For those who did not wish to devote themselves to athlet- ics there would be the possibility of all kinds of scouting, of The School Camp 291 making nature study collections, taking long walks to places of interest, bicycle trips, and so on. For the girls there would be the opportunity of having Camp Fires. At several times during the summer there should be picnic suppers and a real camp fire around which stories might be told and songs sung. Story-telling after supper should be a regular feature three evenings a week at least. It would be very desirable if there might be at the camp a simple auditorium or theater where entertainments could be given in the evening. It is good for the children to take part in amateur dramatics. It makes them realize events and life more vividly than anything else can do. There might well be some good music on the phonograph or victrola one or two evenings a week and on one or two evenings there should be moving pictures. Educational Advantages. — The development of the hand has been closely associated with the development of the brain, and the child who has grown up without any work to do is greatly handicapped. Most of the men who have ever amounted to much in later life have done a good deal of man- ual work in their early years. At the Interlaken School and the various similar schools that are scattered over Europe, manual work is made compulsory for the sons of the rich purely for its educational value and its training in democracy. The educational value of a summer so spent may not be lightly estimated. If a small library of children's books were sent out from the city circulating library at the beginning of the season, it would give a practical opportunity to read, such as most children do not have during the school year. It seems likely that on rainy days, Sundays, and evenings, a large amount of 292 Education Through Play reading would be done. This should contribute greatly to the interest in the camp life and the school work during the year. The Teachers. — The school camp should always be in charge of a regular teacher from the school who knows the children and their antecedents, and it should also have a number of the other teachers, because such a camp would furnish an opportunity for a real personal influence such as the school year had not given. Such camps would furnish the sovereign opportunity for normal students and college men and women both to get experience with children and to spend their vacations in the country. It would offer at the same time sport and a sort of training that every young man and woman should have whether they are to be teachers or parents. It might well be required of all normal students as a part of their preparation. Under this arrangement, with a few strong disciplinarians from the home school, it would be possible to run the camp largely on volunteer or, at any rate, low-paid help. Existing Experiments. — This plan was outlined more than ten years ago and without knowledge that anything similar to it had been undertaken anywhere, but there have since sprung up a number of camps which are similar to it. The Interlaken School at La Porte, Ind., is an example of a school in which farm work is the basis of the educational scheme. At Gary, Ind., the school system owns a farm, and a summer camp is also maintained. The plan in Dubuque, la., which is known as Park Life, and which has been pro- moted by one of the school principals, Mr. Horsheim, is also of a similar nature. All of these schemes have worked well and have attracted wide attention. InTERLAKEN SCHOOL STUDENTS, CUTTING ICE ON SILVER LAKE Boys' Cabins, on Interlaken School Grounds, Rolling Prairie, Ind. The School Camp 293 Other Uses of the Camp. — The camp of the school might also have a wider use during the year that would be no less important than its summer use by the school children. It might well be a week-end camp for the Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls, the haven for the brief vacations of working chil- dren, or clubs from the social center, or others who wished to go out of the city for a few days' outing. It would be a con- venient terminus for walking parties from the city and would make it possible to promote walking trips of several days' duration, as is done in Germany. There would be difficulties in the way of turning such a camp into a hotel on a moment's notice, but the difficulty should not be insuperable. It would offer almost the only kind of vacation that it is pos- sible for working people to have, for it would often be possible for them to pay for their vacation by working a part of the day on the farm or in the kitchen. It would thus furnish an opportunity for the development of a real neighborhood life through having their vacations together. There would, of course, need to be a capable family in charge all the year round, and there would need also to be certain regular helpers, for it should be possible to send delicate or insubordinate children out there at any time during the school year, as they do in Gary. If parties wished to come for an evening or a week end, they must, of course, notify the camp in advance of their numbers and the length of time they wished to stay. It might be necessary to require that all guests should do a certain amount of the work themselves, which would help rather than hinder the development of sociability and a com- mon spirit. A part of the camp might be used during the school year as a home for convalescents from the hospitals or as a sani- 294 Education Through Play tarium for those who needed the fresh air, but its most impor- tant service might well be as a cheap hotel for working people, who had a few days to spend in the country. Summary. — The activities that have been outlined would not necessarily involve a great increase in expense. The school camps would take the place of the vacation schools, summer playgrounds, and the fresh air and institutional camps. The parents would be saved the expense of the chil- dren's board and would be given a new freedom that all par- ents need at times. For the child who is now sent to the country, it would be a great saving in money, and for the child who ordinarily has to remain in the city, it would be a great saving of life's energies and a great awakener of its interests. The children from the poorest sections would attain a normal growth, the nervous children would become less so, and nearly all would come back in a more robust state of health. The experience of the summer merely as education would be quite as valuable as anything the school year had to offer. The only really serious impediment to the scheme is the idea that public institutions must not produce anything at a profit, which might prevent the profitable marketing of any excess production of such farms. In actual fact a series of such farms might well offer an effective method of dealing at the same time with the problem of the unemployed and the exces- sive charges of local grocers. To say that a city has not a right to do this, is to deny it one of the most fundamental of human rights. BIBLIOGRAPHY Reports of the Interlaken School, and the Gary Schools. The Playground Camps of Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Buffalo. CHAPTER XV THE SCHOOL AS A SOCIAL CENTER When the term " social center " is used, it is the adjective that usually appeals to people as significant. The social center is a place for sociability or social endeavor, but in actual fact it is not the adjective but the noun that carries the cen- tral thought. The social center is to be the focus of com- munity interest, whether these interests be social, educational, political, business, or what not. Neighborhood or community center is really a better name. The community must be organized if it is to carry on community undertakings, and social life is to be made attractive. It is impossible to have this organization unless there is some common meeting place. Of course it must be admitted that this ideal of the social center is not at present wholly realized anywhere. But it is believed to be in line with the development which is now tak- ing place throughout the country. There is, however, a very great difference in the use of the term in different cities. In one city perhaps a parents' association meets at the school every other week, and this school is spoken of as a social center. These meetings are legitimate social-center activities, but they are scarcely sufficient to justify calling the school a social center. The Sage Foundation and the Playground Associa- tion make the distinction that a social center must have one or more paid workers besides the janitor. This does not seem to be a vital distinction, as the social center is supposed to 29s 296 Education Through Play represent the activity of the community in its own behalf. Ideally all the service should be volunteer service, but under existing conditions this is generally unreliable, and some paid service is necessary. This does not really tell us, however, anything about what a social center is. The activities as organized at present are of three chief kinds, educational, social, and civic. Educational Activities. The School for Adults. — The old- time school sought to furnish us in childhood information and skill enough to last us through life ; the school of the future will seek to furnish us the information and skill, like our meals, as we need them, and each period of life will have its own education, that is adapted to the needs of the period. Pro- fessor Barnes has said, " The period of compulsory education should be from six years old to eighty." It is not easy to distinguish between certain activities of the evening school and the social center, and it does not seem important that this distinction should be drawn. The evening school for adults should be an important part in every social center. To the immigrant, it should teach English and the requirements of naturalization; to workmen, it should give the instruction that would make them more efficient; to the working girls, it should teach the science of the home ; to all women, it should give instruction in the care and feed- ing of children ; and to men and women, both for their own sakes arid for the sake of their children, it should give instruc- tion in the hygiene and physiology of sex. The Public Lecture. — The public lecture is perhaps the simplest way of bringing the latest information in every field to the public. There were, in 1914, one hundred seventy- seven lecture centers in the public schools of New York City, The School as a Social Center 297 where they have been under Dr. Henry P. Leipziger from the beginning. Many of the lectures are illustrated with the stereopticon, or, if they are musical, by song or piano. The centers are mostly in the midst of immigrant populations who do not understand English well, but they are usually well attended. There are more than four thousand lecturers. The idea has spread from New York, until there are now more than fifty cities where public lectures are carried on under the board of education. These lectures are not as a rule con- sidered a part of the social center activity, although they quite obviously belong to it, as they are for the community and the community as a whole. In a number of places the social centers have lectures of their own, depending largely on un- paid local talent. The public lecture should become in time a feature at each of the centers, but the lecturers should be paid by the board of education. The School Exhibition and Theater. — A semi-educational feature of many social centers is the school exhibition and theatrical. Every child is a little actor. He always imitates everything he sees that interests him. It is his way of com- prehending what the thing is really like, to get on the inside of it and sense its real nature. The kindergarten is built on this dramatic impulse. The readers that are now being intro- duced into many of our most progressive school systems are dramatic readers, and acting is coming to have a larger and larger place both in our schools and playgrounds. This furnishes an opportunity for the schools to give a valuable entertainment to the community, and to make school work more interesting, to bring the school and community together, and ofttimes to raise money for specific purposes at the same time. The children's theater as a separate institution is also 298 Education Through Play being promoted in several quarters and is finding increasing realization in such theaters as the one in the Washington Irving High School of New York and others. The theaters of Greece and Rome were public institutions, and at present many of the best theaters of Europe are sub- sidized. The dramatic form of representation is the one that is nearest to having the experience. It is a form of expres- sion neither good nor bad in itself, but good or bad in its effect, according to what it has to say. So also there is probably no other way in which the taste is so rapidly de- praved as by attendance at low theaters. The Shakespearean performances of the Ben Greet Company have shown how easy it is to give the great dramas without elaborate scenery. The time should soon come when every classic play studied by students will be represented by or for them on the stage. Shakespeare's plays are acted very extensively by children in the Council Schools of London. Moving Pictures. — But to the credit of Thomas A. Edison be it said that he has brought the theater to every man's door. In Boston there is a moving picture machine at each of the social centers, and there are now a large number of cities where the moving picture exhibition is a regular feature. Nearly everything that has to do with the study of geography, history, biography or the processes of industry can be rep- resented more perfectly through the moving picture than in any other way. Ofttimes a historic event can be portrayed in fifteen minutes by the moving picture so that it will never be forgotten, while the mastering of the lesson from the geography or the history is a laborious and time-con- suming process in the first place, and the record is likely to be written upon the sand. The full-sized moving picture The School as a Social Center 299 machine costs about $300 and the films are rented usually at about a dollar each per night. The great difficulty, how- ever, is in securing suitable films, as the great majority that are furnished to the common picture theaters are mere dramatized dime novels. If, however, a number of accept- able films are marked in the film catalogue of any company, and they are requested to furnish films from this fist, it is cer- tain that good films can be secured from almost any company. There has been a great deal of criticism of the moving picture as a vicious influence in the community, but in the study that was made of the various forms of theatrical enter- tainment being offered in New York, which was made by Dr. Davis for the Russell Sage Foundation, it was estimated that something over ninety per cent of the burlesque shows being given in the city were vicious and immoral in their influence; that thirty to forty per cent of the vaudeville shows were of the same nature ; that ten or twelve per cent of the supposedly best shows being given in the high-grade theaters were of similar kind ; but that only eight or ten per cent of the moving picture shows were objectionable, — thus placing the moving picture at the head of the list in regard to its moral influence. In actual fact, the moving picture films that are being pre- sented in our cities are very carefully censored for the most part. The National Bureau of Censors in New York City censor a very large proportion of all the films, but many of the cities have also a censoring bureau of their own. So far as the moving picture theater is a bad influence, this does not come to any considerable degree from the pictures, but from the vaudeville acts that are run between the films. It does not seem to be appreciated, however, that the great menace of the moving picture just now is not on the moral 300 Education Through Play but on the intellectual side. The moving picture is prob- ably our most effective means of instruction, and at least one third, and possibly one half, as many people are attending the moving picture show each day as are attending the public school, and these people are getting pretty much their whole plan of life and instruction in regard to every sort of subject from these films. It is vital to our educational system that the films presented should not only be moral, but that they should also be accurate, so far as they undertake to represent life. A short time ago I saw a film representing the story of " Ivanhoe." There was scarcely a detail in the picture that was true to the story of Scott; and there are many supposedly historical scenes that are likewise inaccurate. The impres- sions imparted through the moving picture are so much more vivid than those imparted through the printed page, that it will be difficult to correct the wrong impressions that are given in this way. It is well known that the profits on the moving picture business at the present time are nearly one hundred per cent a year; and if there is any business which might well become a government monopoly, it seems to me that it is the making of moving pictures. It is highly appro- priate that the government should at least regulate very closely this business, because it is reaching the people and impart- ing ideals and sentiments and instruction to the adult masses more effectively than any other agency. It is possible through the moving picture to throw upon the screen anything that can be seen through the microscope, so that we may follow the internecine struggles of the micro- scopic world and see far better than through the microscope itself the minutest forms of life. It is also possible to set the moving picture machine so that it will move so slowly that The School as a Social Center 301 a series of pictures will show a flower opening before us, and a building arising and being completed as if by magic in ten or fifteen minutes of time. Some of the newer films show life under the sea and the resplendent fishes of tropical waters swim- ming among coral forests. Recently a film has been brought out under the tile of " Cabiria " which gives a wonderful picture of the Temple of Moloch in Carthage, shows a caravan crossing the desert, Hannibal bringing his elephants through the snows of the Alps, and a wonderful picture of the storming of a great city. It is said that this picture cost two hundred fifty thousand dollars to produce and that there are more than seven thousand people in the cast. It is certain that it must have been expensive and that it gives a picture of life, cus- toms, and war in the time of Hannibal such as it would be almost impossible to present in any other way. Under the Brooklyn Institute some six social centers have been maintained during the past year, and these have been supported almost entirely from the proceeds of the moving picture exhibitions which have been given in connection with the social centers. The charge has been only five cents, and a superior grade of pictures has been shown. We must realize how great is the possibility of progress in this direction. In a free auditorium that will seat a thousand people it would be possible to pay forty dollars an evening for the film and still furnish an entertainment at five cents to the public. The moving picture solves the problem of attendance at the social center. Mr. Edison has recently placed on the market a small machine, the home kinetoscope, which is intended for use in private houses and in individual classrooms. He has a large number of men at work adapting the lessons in the geography, 302 Education Through Play history, and even the arithmetic for this machine. He expects that this is to revolutionize the teaching methods of our schools and make it a delight for the children to attend. He says there will be no truants from a moving picture school. The Home Kinetoscope with attachments costs $75 and can be used with either acetylene or electric light. The films are rented at twenty cents to one dollar per night, or sold for from two to twenty dollars. The mechanism is so simple that it can be handled by any intelligent child of twelve. The film, containing the same number of pictures as the regu- lar thousand-foot reel, is only eighty feet long. It is non- combustible, and the machine is cheap enough, so that almost any social center or school can afford one. However, it has more flicker than the larger machine, and is not altogether satisfactory, but it can be used to advantage in a hall that will seat from one to two hundred people: Doubtless all of the defects of this machine will be corrected, however, before this appears in print, and it may be perfectly adapted for educational ends. The films for the small machine are of a much higher order than the ones for the large machine. There should be a separate exchange for the schools and another for the churches, in order to avoid the dime novel films. The large school systems and the state departments must soon own their own films and send them around from school to school. The new Edison phonograph or disk machine is so nearly perfect that it is difficult to distinguish the voice from the machine from the voice of one speaking. The disk machine and the new victrolas make it possible to have very accepta- ble concerts at the social center at a trifling expense. A good moving picture and phonograph program very nearly solves the question of attendance. The School as a Social Center 303 We are accustomed to speak of the school as a preparation for life. Every period of life is preparatory to the period that comes after, but to think of any particular time as only pre- paratory is to degrade it. Education is a process of intellectual digestion, and it is no more possible for us to learn enough during childhood to last us for the rest of our lives than it is for us to eat enough . The world is forging ahead so fast that he who ceases study for five years becomes a back number. Many of us have suffered from intellectual dyspepsia ever since our college days from our overeating at that time. The mind has a very limited capacity for mental assimilation, and the psychological time to digest any mass of knowledge is when we feel the need of it. This cannot come at any one period of life, but must come in about equal degrees through all. The social center is making it possible through its evening classes, its educational theater, and its public lectures for the adult to continue his education to the most advanced years and to acquire the information when he has need of it. The Civic Center. — The City of Rochester has become associated with the idea of the social center organized for civic ends. This work as organized under Professor Forbes and Professor Ward consisted of a series of neighborhood civic clubs, which met at the schools. The city officials were in- vited to tell of their departments, and out-of-town speakers to discuss various civic problems. Mr. Ward holds in his book, " The Social Center," that its real meaning is that it is the meeting place of the electorate, that it shall be the vot- ing headquarters and the place where all sorts of political questions are discussed, to the end that the people may have a genuine part in the government and the boss may be elimi- nated. 304 Education Through Play Our present forms of democracy remind one of the great image which is described in the Book of Daniel. " His head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms were of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, and his feet part of iron and part of clay; and a stone smote the image upon the feet that were of iron and clay and brake them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold broken in pieces together." This image might represent America nearly as well as the empire of " the great king." In the original democracies of Greece, the freemen met together in the market place to elect from their friends and acquaintances the officers to be chosen and to determine the policy of the state. The logical democracy is the one that combines these primitive units into larger and larger wholes until the world is included. The weakness of the American democracy is that we have not organized this primitive ele- ment or demos on which it is supposed to stand. Politics in our cities have been corrupt, because there have been no meetings of the community to discuss community affairs. The last few years have seen a rapid advance through the initiative, referendum, and the recall, through the presidential primaries and other measures ; but the fundamental unit is still unorganized. The feet are still of miry clay. To secure the popular rather than the boss control of the community or district is our great political problem. This demands that some agora, forum, or neighborhood center shall be provided. Perhaps the most important feature at the Rochester centers was the civic debate. The debate was once a feature at the meetings at the country schoolhouse nearly every- where. These debates were on academic subjects such as Free Trade and Protection, capital punishment, and the like, The School as a Social Center 305 subjects which were not the practical problems of the people who discussed them. We know how to select more practical themes now, and to make the debate lead to results in the community. The debate that is likely to result in some action is likely to be much better merely as a debate than the one that is merely academic; and the civic debate which will cover the practical problems of the community should be a feature at every social center. The Center for Sociability. — We have thus far had no city communities and no general method of meeting people or organizing the social life. The individual has often been reck- less in conduct, because he was not acquainted in the section in which he lived and had no social accountability to public opinion. Foreigners have come among us and drifted in and out of the city slum, bearing with them their racial antipathies, and casting no anchor in the community, because at no time have they become a real part of it. If they have sent their children to church schools of their own race, the second gener- ation has often found them nearly as foreign in language and customs as the first. In the country sections the situation is little better. In the days of the pioneer, the early settlers were drawn together by the common dangers and necessities into a brotherhood of the wilderness. The schoolhouse was the common center, where the Sabbath services, the debates, the music school, and the spellings down were held. These conditions have undergone an almost complete change. The farmers are no longer united by common dangers. The specializing of in- dustry and new machinery has made them independent of their neighbors. The community uses of the public school have fallen away, and there has resulted an almost com- X 306 Education Through Play plete isolation, which has made industrial organization difficult and the country socially unattractive. The working part of the population must take their recre- ation at night. It is then that the theaters, the dance halls, the pool rooms have their chief patronage, and it is then that temptation most assails the boys and the girls. The evening center of sociability is needed much more than the day center. Every Facility for Healthful Recreation should be Open Then. — There has been the largest development of recreation fea- tures in New York City. In the winter of 1914 there were sixty-seven recreation centers open largely for five evenings a week and with three to ten paid workers at each. In visiting the centers, one enters a large and noisy room, designated as the " quiet game room." Here are checkers, dominoes, crokinole, and authors, and a desk supplied with papers, maga- zines, and books. This room is usually crowded. The visitor passes through into the gymnasium, where there is likely to be basket ball and tumbling with occasional calisthenic drills. Upstairs are several classrooms used for study by children who have no opportunity to study undisturbed at home. These rooms, usually two, are in charge of a regular teacher who gives such assistance to the children as is needed. Then there are usually three or four rooms used as the meeting places of clubs. These clubs are of great variety, with the gymnastic, debating, and dramatic clubs somewhat in the lead. They elect their own officers and usually have from ten to twenty members. There is a paid club leader in charge of the clubs. There are only three centers in New York where the boys and girls are admitted together. The others are either boys' or girls' centers. At the girls' centers there is much the same organization as at the boys' centers, with the The School as a Social Center 307 exception that there is more dancing and perhaps somewhat more attention to literary and dramatic clubs. For the last three or four years, a number of these centers have been opened one or two nights a week for mixed dancing. During the summertime, a number of the school roofs are kept open for concerts, dancing, and games. These roofs are about the coolest and most comfortable places that can be found in the lower city on a hot summer night. Of ttimes the doors have to be closed early because there will be on the roof as many people as it will hold with safety. The centers in New York are in general spoken of as recre- ation centers rather than social centers, and the roofs in sum- mer are called recreation roofs or roof gardens. There are, however, four centers in New York where the management is largely in the hands of local committees, and these are known as social centers. The workers are all, however, paid by the board of education, and the supervision is under Superintendent Edward Stitt, who has charge also of the va- cation schools and playgrounds. The centers in Boston are interesting and more or less dis- tinctive. There are probably no others with so much music, as there are choral clubs and orchestras in nearly all. These are often mixed clubs of girls and boys and furnish, with their intervals for conversation, a very wholesome social oppor- tunity. In all of the Boston centers the girls and boys are admitted together. This seems to me to be an advantage. There are too few opportunities for a wholesome social life between the sexes in the crowded parts of the cities. It has been said that " Every girl has a right to be courted under decent conditions," but the tenement bedrooms and kitchens do not furnish such an opportunity. 308 Education Through Play They keep close track of the attendance in Boston, as each person has a membership ticket which is punched at the door. This enables the young people to prove from their cards that they went to the center rather than else- where. There is also a gatekeeper, who sees that no in- toxicated or objectionable people come in. There is an employment office, at at least one of the centers, which is suggestive of the way the problem of unemployment might be adjusted in a socialistic community. The social center offers a good opportunity for the organi- zation and meeting of the Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls. A club with a definite purpose is always better than a club which is merely a club with nothing definite in view. It should usually be possible to have a special room for these activities, and the social center should develop the spirit of service which would provide the Scout Masters and the Guardians. The social center offers the best possible opportunity for the organization of various community celebrations such as Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The social centers are attempting different things in the different cities, but in most the gymnasiums at least are kept open, and largely for games and dancing. In places where social dancing is not permitted, it is often possible still to have folk dancing, and the girls always enjoy this. Singing is one of the most popular features. In Philadelphia where the cen- ters are under the auspices of the Home and Parents' Associa- tion, and a number of other cities, tea and sandwiches are often served at some time during the evening. In the centers in New York, those in attendance are nearly all in their teens, but in a number of cities, the social center The School as a Social Center 309 takes nearly the whole family, or at least all of the older members. This undoubtedly furnishes the most wholesome social life that may be found. There is not likely to be any- thing very objectionable where the fathers and mothers meet with their children. Forms oj Organization.— -In New York, the social centers are organized by the board of education and all of the workers are paid by them. But this plan does not seem democratic. It is best, where possible, for the general management to be in local hands, even though there are certain services paid for by the school board and supervised by it. A parents' association often furnishes an excellent nucleus for a beginning, or it may be a school improvement association or a mothers' club or a woman's club or a recreation or social center association. When the social center is once under way, the management is often vested in a council to which each of the senior organiza- tions elects a representative. Professor Ward advises that the principal of the school be employed as the civic secretary of the social center and voting precinct. The social centers are at present usually under the super- intendent of the playgrounds, and may be said in general to constitute their winter activity. In the park playgrounds of the South Park System, the work is out of doors from the first of May to the first of November and indoors in the field houses or social-center buildings during the remainder of the time. This is a great advantage, as it enables the work to be carried on continuously and the workers to be retained for the year. In each playground and field house in the South Park System there are from fifteen to thirty-seven employees. The school is usually able to handle as large or larger an attendance with from five to ten employees. 310 Education Through Play The Socialized School Building. — In order for the school to become the real center of the community life, it is neces- sary to have a somewhat different type of building. The social end must be held in view. The Socialized, Classroom. — Most classrooms are not suited for the meeting places of adults, because the desks are fastened to the floor, and they are too small. The high school has peculiar advantages for a social center because the desks are larger and better suited to adults, and the young men and women prefer to go to the " high school " at night rather than to an elementary school, from which they may have graduated. The high school usually has a good gymnasium and auditorium and sometimes a swimming pool also. In many places the kindergarten room is being used, because it is not permanently seated, and the kindergarten chairs are easily moved out and larger chairs brought in. But some of the classrooms in the new schools are likely to be seated with the Multhrop or other movable desk, that can be moved out at once if the floor is needed. The Social Room. — If the school is to be the center of the social life of the community, the people's club, it should have certain rooms that may be used for social purposes. I am not sure that there should be smoking rooms as there are at the clubs, but at any rate there should be rooms that are open evenings and suitably seated for general conversation and social purposes. In Houston, Texas, some of the new schools contain rooms especially constructed and furnished for the mothers' clubs. These rooms are usually adjacent to the domestic science room, so that it is possible to have tea and sandwiches or to serve some other light refreshment. The School as a Social Center 311 Most of our new school buildings contain teachers' rooms, and some of these are very fine and commodious. There might be objection to using these as social rooms for the neigh- borhood, but such objections are likely to be selfish ones. These rooms are admirably adapted for committee meetings at least and for the council that will determine the policies of the social center. Pool, Billiards, and Bowling. — If the school is to be the people's club, the simplest and most direct way to begin is to copy the existing institutions of like nature rather than to wait for a wholly new social institution to be developed. Features that are found at nearly all men's clubs and boys' clubs are billiards and pool, and, at some, bowling. The sort of simple billiards that is found at the boys' department of the Y. M. C. A. and in the boys' clubs is found also in the social centers of Boston, where the tables are laid down on top of the regular desks in the classrooms. The evening that I visited these centers was Ash Wednesday, and the cen- ters were in Roman Catholic communities, but all of the classrooms devoted to billiards were full. The tables were of the folding kind that were put away in the closet as soon as the games were over. But it is easy to seat a classroom with movable desks, which would make it much more suitable for such use. The billiard and pool halls about town are generally connected with saloons and are used as a means of promoting drinking and smoking. They often become the resort of the gang where neither the talk, the conduct, nor the moral atmosphere is elevating. Billiards at the school would be the easiest way to meet this situation. There is a prejudice against billiards and pool in many church quarters on account of the company they have kept, but no one can well object 3i2 Education Through Play to them as games. They are games of pure skill with no element of chance. Bowling has the added advantage, that it is also good exercise and that men and women, boys and girls, can play together. It has the disadvantage of being noisy, but it may be so placed that it will not disturb much. The Dance Hall. — Undoubtedly dancing is coming in. The opposition of the church and of all the social organiza- tions has apparently served only to promote it, and the dances to which there have been most objections have apparently been the ones that have become most popular. Heretofore, the dancing in most cities has been largely in saloon dance halls and all the conditions have been bad. Dancing has a social appeal that cannot well be escaped, it breaks down the reserve between people and helps to make them acquainted. It offers the charm of intimate personal relationships with the other sex. It appeals to the love, the adventure, and ro- mance of youth. There is always the possibility that in the dance you may meet the prince or princess that the Lord in- tended for you. But the saloon dance halls of the city are run to promote drinking, and the drinking lets down inhibi- tions, just as the dancing tends to promote sexual desire. The most objectionable dances are likely to appear and the place tends to become the resort of the prostitute and the cadet. All too frequently there are private rooms available either at the hall or near by. There are certain dangers that are in- herent in the dance. All of these the dance hall emphasizes and preys upon. What is a socially minded community to do? If it becomes certain that dancing is going to be, it seems the part of social wisdom not to attempt to dam Niagara, but to find some easy way over the falls. The young people in the years immediately before us are going to dance The School as a Social Center 313 whether we believe in it or not. It is our part to make dancing as safe as possible. There can be little doubt but the safest place is where the parents and the children meet together, and also, as Professor Ward has said, " where dancing is only one item on the program of the evening." Dancing is a feature at many social centers throughout the country, but there are also many where it is not allowed. In a number of cities dancing is conducted by other city departments, as noticeably in Chicago, where it is the chief winter activity in the field houses ; in Cleveland, where municipal dances have recently been conducted in the parks; and in Philadelphia, where municipal dance pavilions have recently been built. These are not connected with the schools, and it can scarcely be hoped that conditions will be as good as they might be in the schools. In the Washington Irving High School in New York there is a municipal dance hall. The city may well take this seriously. If the young people are to dance, they should learn the right kind of dances, not the turkey trots and the grizzly bears, and they should learn which styles of dancing are permissible and which are not. The Restaurant. — If people can sit down around a common table, the meal serves to draw them together. The school already sells lunches to the children. It would be no very great departure for it to serve simple refreshments to the people of the social center in the evening. This would allow clubs to meet for supper and to have light spreads for dances. In many of the schools of Houston, Texas, the Mothers' Clubs have been serving each day at noon a five-cent luncheon to the children. This luncheon usually consists of a thick soup, a vegetable or meat, and bread and butter. It has been sold regularly at five cents, and out of the profits of these 314 Education Through Play luncheons they have made all sorts of improvements at the school in the way of purchasing play equipment, pianos, victrolas, stereopticons, and the like. In the city of Portland, Ore., also, a noonday luncheon has been furnished at a number of the schools which has been on the whole perhaps somewhat more elaborate than the one in Houston. It has been sold at a commutation rate of four cents a luncheon, and the profits have been two or three hundred dollars a year. It must be seen that where there is no rent to pay and the service is furnished gratis, it is possible to serve meals at a very much lower rate than would be possible for a private firm. There is also a municipal restaurant in the Washington Irving High School and at least the Emerson School in Gary. There are numerous municipal restaurants in the parks of Chicago and originally there was one in each of the field houses. These did not prove financially profitable in Chicago, but they were at a distance from the residences, and the attendance at the field houses is much less than it is at the school centers. There might be objection from commercial interests to the starting of a restaurant by the school, but the school has at least as good a right as a private club and there is no reason for thinking that it need to be unprofitable, especially as the school has to have the restaurant anyway for the lunches of the children. This would furnish an op- portunity to correlate the domestic science of the school and the center with practical cooking and the serving of meals in ways that should be helpful to the girls and young women. Even the waiting on table in such a community restaurant would be a valuable training in social service, such as every girl should have. This would make it possible to operate such a restaurant very cheaply. The School as a Social Center 315 The Hartford Experiment. — Of their very interesting exper- iments in making the parks of Hartford self-supporting, Super- intendent George A. Parker says : " I started in with the as- sumption that there should be no profit, that the refectory was truly park service, and that all money received should go back into that service. I improved the quality of the supplies, increased the quantity, added to the wages of the waiters, doubled the pay of the head waiter, and employed a manager. I also made certain restrictions as to the use of the service, and thought I had done everything necessary to eliminate all possible profit. Imagine my surprise at the end of the year when the profits, even under these conditions, were something over $1200. " My second experiment along that line was tried at the park skating house last winter. There was an old sheepfold near the pond. I lighted and heated it, made paths to the ice, in one corner put in a checking system and a short counter where we sold articles, at a cent apiece for the most part — - the highest was five cents for ' hot dogs ' and coffee and chocolate. We had no expectation that the thing would pay. It is true that we had a very favorable skating season. Yet you can imagine my surprise again, at the end of that season, to find that that little ten-foot counter had paid for all the service rendered, as well as for heating and lighting the building, for a hockey rink, for a double-headed curling rink, and in part for keeping the ice free from snow. " Moving pictures are an important feature of recreation work. We had a plan for showing moving pictures in the Colt Park pavilion in the late afternoon and evening, using the same room for other purposes at other times. If the charge were three cents admission on weekdays, with free admission 316 Education Through Play on Sunday afternoon and evening, however we figured, and even after paying the fee to get into the League so as to get films, it seemed as if we could not avoid making $150 a week, try as we would. Should we charge five cents admission, the profit would be almost double." " One of the saddest things is that recreation, which is absolutely necessary for the life of human beings, is being so largely exploited for private gain. The tendency is to exploit all recreation, and especially through that to exploit the chil- dren. I cannot see how the city can avoid taking up a certain class of recreation, using it as a municipal function for the protection of its rising generation. Even then, we leave four fifths of the recreational expenditure for private enterprise." Mr. Parker says the city can furnish all of these things more cheaply than the individual can because it has no dividends nor interest to pay, and is able to buy very cheaply, because it is such a large purchaser. The School Dispensary. — Undoubtedly in the poorest parts of the city, the school is the best place for a dispensary for non-contagious diseases and especially for clinics for eye, ear, and throat, and for the care of the teeth. This would place these in each community where they could be found, and it would then be possible to give the children in the school, who need attention, the attention at once. The Auditorium. — The auditorium is the one room in the school that makes possible a school spirit, because it is only in the auditorium that all the pupils may be assembled at once. The auditorium is necessary also to the social center, where it makes possible the public lecture and the public debate, the school entertainment and exhibition, the municipal theater, concert, and picture show. The School as a Social Center 317 The Branch Library. — Our public schools and especially our summer schools are greatly hampered by the lack of library facilities. The school in order to be successful must create a love of reading, and a library is quite as necessary to it as it is to a university. At present many of the people of New York do not know where the libraries are, or they are deterred from reading by the effort required to secure a reference and draw out and return the books. In taking up the study of geography and history, the children miss half the culture of the subject unless travel and historical stories and the lives of great men of the period are read in connection with them. It is these that make geography and history real and give them their great value for children ; but how many schools have the books necessary for such study? When the summer vacation comes, the only form of health- ful recreation open to many is reading. Through it the child can leave behind the city's dirt and noise, to live in the land of dream and romance which books create. But we have denied the fairyland of story to him if the books are not within his reach. At present only a small proportion of the children have access to a library, and this is often so distant that little use is made of it. The reason is simple ; the library is a strange place, and its methods are unknown. If the child, despite this, manifests a desire to draw out books, he must first get some one to be his security for their return, and this is not always easy for a child of laboring or foreign parentage.. The library is not to blame for this. If it lets out books to unknown children without safeguards, the chances are not good for the return of the books or the continuance of the library. The school may safely trust the child because he is 3 l & Education Through Play a member of the school, known and responsible, when it would not be at all safe for the public library to give out a book to him. Parents often have little time or inclination to go to li- braries, but depend on their children to provide them with reading. If the library were a separate building in the school yard or a part of the school, it would be no task for the children to take out and return as many books as might be desired in the home. The growing use of the school as a social center makes it increasingly important that the branch libraries should be connected with the school. It will help to bring the people together both to read and to use the other facilities of the center, and the children should learn to use the library as a part of their education. The Art Gallery. — If there is to be any art for the com- munity, the school is the place for it. There it will be seen by the children by day and by the public at night and will perform a maximum service. There are at least two places where this is already carried out successfully. The first is at Richmond, Ind., where they began several years ago with holding loan collections in the schools. Then they set aside a certain amount each year for the purchase of pictures, until they now have a fine permanent collection. The second in- stance is in the Washington Irving High School in New York, where the main corridor of the school is hung with a loan col- lection from the best American artists. But the best solution of the problem seems to he in a circulating collection of pictures that should be sent around from the central art gallery in the same way that books are from the central library. After a picture has hung on its peg for a time, we cease to notice it. If art is to be effective, it has to be fresh. The School as a Social Center 319 I understand that there is only one picture in any Japanese room, and that is changed every week, in the wealthy families. The state library commissions are furnishing loan collections of pictures to the schools in a number of different states, and it is quite in line with the general theory of development that the art galleries should do the same. The schools themselves are also purchasing many fine photographs and prints of old pictures and are fast becoming art galleries on their own initiative. But at the rate money is going into art collections in this country at present, it will soon be utterly impossible for the galleries to house the collections they are acquiring. The picture does not wear out as the book does, and the gallery gets bigger and more meaningless from year to year; for there is really not much sense in an art gallery at best; pictures and statuary were intended to decorate buildings, not to be jumbled together in a vast art morgue such as our museums represent. The larger the art collection, the more bewildering it becomes. If it be desired not to create a great museum, but to have an art department for the city and to promote a love of the beautiful, the present method of housing all this beauty in a single great gallery is about the least effective method possible. A dozen good pictures make more impression upon any one than a thousand, and if a dozen were placed in each public school of New York, a hundred times as many people would see them there as would at the Metro- politan Art Gallery, and they would also see them more effectively. Of course there might be danger of their being stolen. I suppose the Mona Lisas would have to remain in the central gallery, but there are many pictures that would not be in great danger. There can be little doubt but the 320 Education Through Play community center, if there is one, is the place for the com- munity art. The School Museum. — City children who do not go out of town for the summer know very little of birds and animals except as they see them in the zoological gardens. It is diffi- cult to teach children about bluebirds and robins if they have never seen them. Every school should have a small collection of birds and animals, which might be in part gathered by the children themselves, and in part furnished by the central museum. The Museum of Natural History in New York City is already furnishing cases of selected birds and animals to the schools under certain conditions. It would seem as though, in the course of time, it should be possible to greatly extend this service, as these collections are being enormously increased from year to year, and with the proper care there is not much destruction of the specimens. The Gymnasium and Swimming Pool. — A number of cities are now building municipal gymnasiums and swimming pools. But as the children want to use the gymnasium and swimming pool during the day and the adults want to use them at night, it is not evident that two sets of gymnasiums and two sets of swimming pools are necessary. A gymnasium and swimming pool is a part of the equipment of nearly all our new high schools and many of our new public schools. The schools need these facilities for their own work. If they are furnished at the schools, they are furnished to every community and to all the people at a minimum expense of installation and care. If they are furnished as separate municipal undertakings, they are furnished to certain communities only, are used mostly during the evenings, and have a minimum use for a maximum expense. The School as a Social Center 321 The Public Park. — A public park in an outlying district is often inaccessible to four fifths of the people. It is paid for by all, but used almost exclusively by the few who live in the neighborhood. But it seems to be a fundamental principle of civic ethics, that if public improvements are to be paid for in the tax rate, they should be furnished to all the people. The objector may say that the parks at present belong to all the people, and every one may visit them. But when can a laboring man find time or how can he get the money to take his wife and four or five children to a park that is some miles distant ? The carfare alone would be from 50 cents to $1 — a sum which he very often cannot afford. In questioning the children in one of the playgrounds on the lower East Side, I found that very many of them had never been in Central Park, and most of those who had been had visited it only once or twice. I suspect if the parents had been questioned, the proportion would have been much smaller. With a small park in every community, there would be a place to which every mother could take a delicate child and keep it for a considerable part of the day in the open air. There is such a park in connection with each of the new schools of Gary. Advantages of Such a Social Center. — In the plan pro- posed we have an extension of the school to include the private club, the dance hall, the restaurant, the dispensary, the library, the art gallery, the museum, the municipal gymnasium and swimming pool, and the public park. The school is the ideal location for all of these, because it is centrally placed in each community, and each individual would thus secure the ad- vantages that are at present enjoyed only by a few. All of these features are either educational or recreational, and 322 Education Through Play justly belong to the school. Most of us feel, at times, that a great city is but a dreary place — that it lacks in warmth and human sympathy. We are strangers to most of those who live in the same apartment house with us. Out of this life with strangers grows an attitude of indifference to people in general. The higher social and moral graces can never flourish in such an atmosphere. There is a complete lack of social responsibility. The atmosphere of friendly interest and sympathy by which one is surrounded in a small town seems to be non-existent. Such a concentration of public utilities in each community would tend to strengthen the community life. It would facilitate acquaintanceship. It would moral- ize the community by reducing the influence of the saloon and the dive. It would develop a new patriotism and civic pride, because every one would feel that he was a vital member of the community. If the people be brought together for various social occasions, dances, music, school entertainments, we shall have in this center a real rallying ground of the people ; we shall restore to the city a community life, and to the in- dividual a social responsibility. Such a center would do much to conquer the " city wilderness " and to moralize individual conduct. We may well ask ourselves if the school is competent to take this great responsibility. The answer must be that at present the average principal is not competent, but new oc- casions produce new men. These new relations would bring the school and the home together, would give the pupil a new set of associations with his teachers and with study, and in every way would redound to the good of the school and the community. This would not necessarily mean a great increase of expense. Already we are getting the larger playgrounds, The School as a Social Center 323 the auditoriums, the gymnasiums, and the swimming pools in our new school buildings, but the cities are also building municipal baths and gymnasiums, small playgrounds, and public libraries in places that have no relationship to any defi- nite community. It is mostly a question of locating without duplication the facilities that all need in places where they will be accessible to all. With such a neighborhood center in every school district, the social and intellectual life of the community would be- come organized and directed to higher ends. The school period would be only the beginning of an education that would be carried on to old age. Vicious resorts would be largely killed by the counter-attraction of the school center. The citizen would become such a vital member of the community that civic pride and loyalty would be developed, and he would not consent that his city or ward should be misgoverned. It may be said that this chapter is only an appeal to copy Gary. The most of it was written a number of years ago before so many of our educational ideals had been realized in the new Steel City on Lake Michigan. But undoubtedly Gary furnishes the best example that may be anywhere found of this combination of features. The new Gary schools have classrooms with movable desks, auditoriums, gymnasiums and swimming pools, branch libraries, a public restaurant, and a park and playground twenty acres in area. The Washington Irving High School in New York, which has also been referred to a number of times, has been much written about. Its principal, William McAndrew, is probably the best-known high school principal in America. He is one of the most original of our school men, and one of the best- known speakers on educational platforms. The Washington 324 Education Through Play Irving High School is probably the largest high or elementary school in the world, as it has six thousand five hundred girls in regular attendance. Besides being a regular high school, it has also a children's theater, a municipal dance hall, a municipal art gallery, and a municipal roof garden, and is a practical realization of many of the things that have been spoken of in this chapter. A New Sort of Institution. — We have spoken of the " school as a social center," but in actual fact the institution that has been described is not a school, but a community center devoted to community purposes, of which the education of children is only one. It should be in use seven days a week for fifty- two weeks a year. It should be open for adults as well as children, by night as well as by day. Besides the build- ing, it would represent the playground and park and the sum- mer or school camp for the children, and be the center for all community enterprises, many of which have little, if anything, to do with education. It may not be necessary that these activities should be at the school, but the school is at present the one piece of public property that is central to each com- munity. It may be said that this plan would require the tear- ing down and reconstruction of most of our school buildings. To give an education for twentieth-century needs requires a twentieth- century school, and the twentieth-century school already contains many of these features, and a rapid de- velopment along nearly all of these lines is already taking place. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bulletins published by the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis., through its Bureau of Civic and Social Center Development. Curtis, Henry S. : Play and Recreation in the Open Country. Ginn & Co. $1.25. The School as a Social Center 325 Mayer, Mary J. : Our Public Schools as Social Centers. Review of Re- views, Vol. 44, pp. 201-208. 1911. Parker, S. Chester : City School as a Community Center. Tenth Year- book of the National Society for the Study of Education. Edited by the secretary, University of Chicago, Chicago, 111. 1911. Price, $.75, postpaid. Perry, Clarence Arthur: Wider Use of the School Plant. 423 pp. Illus. Survey Associates, 1010. $1.25. Ward, Edward J. : Social Center. 359 pp. Appleton, 1913. $1.50. CHAPTER XVI THE TRAINING OF PLAY TEACHERS The decisive factor in the success of the playground is always the teacher or director. He is no less necessary than the teacher to the school. With the right view point and purpose, he may be the determining factor in forming the social ideals of the children. There is no school in this coun- try, at the present time, where an adequate training for play- ground positions is being given, and while the conditions are steadily improving, this question of an adequately prepared force of workers is still the crucial one to the whole movement. Can young people afford to take a course of training in order to prepare them for this work? What are the chances of a permanent position at a fair remuneration ? According to the Year Book of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, there were, during 1913, in this country 6318 workers employed in the playgrounds of this country, of whom only 774, or a little more than twelve per cent, were employed by the year. These numbers are increasing at about the rate of twenty per cent a year. The social centers are also now furnishing many opportunities for all-the-year-round employ- ment. As to salaries paid in the summer playgrounds, the schedule of Philadelphia may be taken as a fairly high average. It is as follows : According to their ability, the principals, teachers, assistant teachers, and janitors are divided into three classes, namely, A, B, and C. The salaries paid for these classes are : 326 The Training of Play Teachers 327 (a) Principals, per month ... A 100.00, B 95.00, and C 90.00 (ft) Teachers, per month .... A 85.00, B 80.00, and C 75.00 (c) Assistant teachers, per month . A 65.00, B 60.00, and C 55.00 (d) Janitors, per month .... A 55.00, B 50.00, and C 45.00 (e) Caretakers, per month, 25.00. The salaries of substitutes per day are as follows : Principals, $3; teachers, $2.50; assistant teachers, $2.35; janitors, $1.70. The outlook from these facts alone would not seem to justify a person in taking a two years' course of training to prepare for a play position. However, these do not seem to me to be the really weighty facts in the matter. Play is coming into the program of our schools. The movement at Gary is only an index of a world movement. There are many cities that are making a beginning. To put the Gary plan into the schools of this country would require at least fifty thousand play teachers. There seems every reason for thinking also that less special preparation for play positions will be needed as the appli- cants come to the schools, after having had a full play lif e themselves. The English master is probably the most suc- cessful play organizer in the world. He has played the games he teaches from childhood, but he has had no special training. The Normal Course in Play. 1 — ■ There are certainly fifty and there may be one hundred institutions in this country in which normal courses in play are now being given. These courses have nearly all been started since the issuing of the " Normal 1 A list of fifty schools giving courses is given in a recent bulletin on Sources of Information on Recreation, recently issued by the Russell Sage Foundation. 328 Education Through Play Course in Play," which was published by the Association in the fall of 1909. Most of the institutions that have given courses have followed the syllabi of this course directly. Courses now being Given. — Playground courses are being given at present in at least the following schools of physical education. The Sargent School at Cambridge, The Posse School of Boston, The Springfield Training School of Springfield, Mass., The Savage School of New York, The Physical Education Department of Teachers' College, and the School of Physical Education of Battle Creek, Mich., The School of Physical Education of Chicago, The School of the North American Gymnastic Union of Indianapolis, and the University Department of Physical Education at Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oberlin, California, Utah, Leland Stanford, and the University of Southern California at Los Angeles. Besides these well-known schools there are many others that are less known which are also giving courses. A considerable number of these schools send nearly all of their students into the summer playgrounds. In criticism of the work, it must be said that in all of them it is insufficient for a real preparation. The school which is merely a school of physical education is likely to attract people who care merely for the physical side. They often have an inadequate general education and a narrow outlook on life. None of these schools have adequate op- portunities to practice in a real playground with children, and most of the students have no opportunity at all except in the summer time, when they are away from the school and cannot be supervised by it. Nearly all kindergarten schools are giving some sort of a course on the playgrounds, though it is usually a very brief one. These courses offer little that may be regarded as a prep- The Training of Play Teachers 329 aration for general playground activities, though they are an excellent preparation for play with the little children. But the people who are giving the courses have not as a rule had experience, and there is almost never an opportunity for the students to practice in a playground. The Schools of Philanthropy, in New York, Chicago, Boston, and St. Louis, give playground courses. They bring to the work one element that should be found in all, that is, the social viewpoint, which is almost as necessary as the technical train- ing in games and activities ; but the courses at these schools are too short to be a real preparation. They are usually weak on the side of the activities given or perhaps not given, and they all lack adequate opportunity for practice. Besides these courses given during the school year there are also a large number of summer courses, and it may be very nearly taken for granted of any large summer school, that a course of some kind in play activities will be given. These courses are of necessity brief, but furnish an opportunity for many teachers to learn the games and folk dances that are ap- propriate to their playgrounds at home, and there is filtering out into the community in this way a large amount of informa- tion on the general subject. The normal course committee prepared also for institutes in play for the training of the untrained workers of a city system. The Playground Association of America has arranged for a number of these play institutes each year. Usually some general play demonstration has been given by the city at the same time. These institutes have usually lasted for about a week. While I was Supervisor of the Playgrounds of Washington, we always had a regular meeting of the play workers once a 33° Education Through Play week for a two-hour session. These were devoted to a dis- cussion of the practical problems of the hour and a demon- stration of the activities that were just then requiring attention. This was for the workers during the time the playgrounds were in operation. In Philadelphia there is a very practical training course on a somewhat different basis. This is a preparatory course for those who wish positions in the summer. The course begins in the latter part of November and lasts for twenty weeks. The meetings take place every Friday night at 7.30 and last until 10.00. There are one theoretical subject and two practice subjects presented each evening. The course lasts for two years, and is open only to regular teachers and those who have had at least two years of training at the city normal. There are thus fifty hours of training each year or one hundred hours in all. A fee of one dollar each year is charged for the city teachers and five dollars for outsiders. There are far more applicants than there is room for each year. All ap- pointments to the playgrounds are made from this training class. Mr. Stecher regards this work as a great advantage to his teachers, not only for the summer, but in their work for the year as well. This is, it seems to me, one of the most practical courses now being given in this country. Comparison with Training Courses Abroad. — When we compare the work that has been done in this country with what has taken place abroad, we find that it has followed much the same lines of development. A normal course in play was introduced into the University of Berlin in 1894. In the Jahr- buch for 1 91 2, which is mostly of the papers given at the annual meeting in Heidelberg, a course is spoken of at that university, and it seems probable that something is done at most of the The Training of Play Teachers 331 German universities at the present time. The most common and important courses, however, in Germany have been play- institutes of one week which have been held each year in all the principal cities under the auspices of the Central Com- mittee. Some sixty thousand teachers have taken these courses. During the last few years, courses are being given in all the public normal schools, so that there is now less demand for these institute courses. So also a great many cities during the last five years have been giving courses similar to the one in Philadelphia. There is no regular training for play positions in England because the masters have already had the training in their own school days which enables them to play the games successfully with their pupils. The range of activities in these English playgrounds is not as wide as it is in ours, but within their own limits, the English masters are undoubtedly the best trained play leaders in the world. They are skillful in the games, have imbibed the spirit of sportsmanship, and love to play. They have developed the good comradery in play which is so essential to real success. Who shall have Charge of the School Playgrounds ? — This is the question that is fundamental to the whole situation. There are three possible answers. All the teachers during the school year may have certain of their periods in the yard. Thus play will come in on the same basis as drawing and arithmetic and the other regular subjects. It is this place that play holds in the kindergarten. In the German, and the Eng- lish systems also, play is mostly under the regular teachers rather than special teachers. There are certain advantages in this. The teachers need the play as much as the children, and out of their playing together is sure to grow a more inti- 33 2 Education Through Play mate relationship and a more effective and helpful personal influence. Unless we are to have the departmental system throughout, as they have in Gary, this is the natural method if play is put into the curriculum. Most of the public school teachers have not had training for play leaders, and many of them are too old to enjoy play. But normal students are now receiving a better preparation, and we may not take it as a fore- gone conclusion that the playground teacher is to be a special teacher. For the older children, just as soon as the depart- mental work is begun, they will naturally have special teachers in playground or physical training activities, as they do in other subjects, but it may still be a question if the regular teacher is not to be an assistant in the play, as she is likely to be in the drawing and music lesson where a special teacher is employed, and as the English master still takes part in many of the cricket games despite the professional teachers of cricket. But beside the question of play in the curriculum, which may be considered as doubtful, we already have in a large and increasing number of cities the organized play recess and the supervision of play after school and during the summer. Every indication that comes from a well-nigh universal tend- ency and direction of development seems to indicate that in some of these forms the organization of play by the school will soon be universal. There can be little doubt but that there are to be two classes of play leaders. The one class are to be the professional play directors or physical trainers who will give all their time to this work, and the other teachers who will have play as one of their activities only. This indicates that a longer and a shorter course are needed. The Training of Play Teachers 333 From all of these points of view it appears that the training of the play teachers should be undertaken by the public normal schools. If the play teacher is to be a regular teacher, then the training should become a part of the preparation of every normal student. If the play teacher is to be a special teacher, it appears still that she is one of the school specialists whom the normal school should train. The very large number of teachers who are already taking these courses at their own expense during the summer shows that they already appreciate this need. Courses in the Normal Schools. — There are probably at the present time twenty or thirty normal schools that are giving a normal course in play. Cedar Falls writes that they have a twelve weeks' course during the year and a six weeks' course during the summer. These courses are mostly given at the present time by people who have been very inadequately trained. They are mostly brief and superficial, but on the whole they are the most hopeful courses being given. Physical training is a department of teaching, and there does not seem to be any reason why the physical trainer should be prepared by special normal schools. It is impossible for the schools to get the sort of physical trainers that they need unless they will themselves train them. It must be remembered, moreover, that the physical side is only one side of play, and that it is really no more physical than it is mental and social and moral. Play is the spirit and activities of an earlier age brought down to the present. To have the play teacher trained only on the physical side is to have her very inadequately trained. The play movement has everywhere been promoted not primarily for physical but for social and moral reasons. 334 Education Through Play The playground director has constant opportunities to influence conduct and character, and he should be first of all a person of refinement and personal worth. It is essential to his having anything but a very superficial success that he shall have a social spirit. He has almost unlimited oppor- tunities to shirk, because he can never be closely supervised in an isolated playground. It is better to have a fifty per cent director with a hundred per cent conscience than a hundred per cent director with a fifty per cent conscience. The person who is determined to be a good influence in the lives of the children may be inefficient in many of the playground activities and yet be a far larger influence for good in the com- munity than the idle and indifferent director of whatever technical accomplishments, and furthermore the person who has the social spirit has the motive which will naturally lead him to acquire the requisite proficiency in the regular activities. We are more likely to get people of this type from the public normal schools than we are from schools of physical training. The Training needed by Normal Students. — We already have in practically every normal school a department of physical training, and a certain amount of physical work is usually required. It would appear from the study of the catalogues of the different schools that the work is on a very different basis in the different ones, and that apparently the traditional training of other schools has simply been taken over by the normals, without any definite attempt to fit the work to their own specific problems. It is believed that the training which will really meet the needs of normal students will also give them the best sort of a preparation to have charge of the play activities of the children. In order to meet the needs of normal students, a system of The Training of Play Teachers 335 physical training must satisfy at least the four following requirements : It must be recreation and a real relief from the work of the school. It must be real normal work, or, in other words, the training received must fit the student to carry on similar activities in the public schools. It must strengthen the teacher to bear that specific sort of worries and strains, to succeed in that type of activities that her profession will require of her later, and the activities practiced should be of such a sort that they will be continued after the student has finished her course. We cannot consider any person fully educated who has not acquired an enthusiasm for some form of sport. The muscles are the organs of the will. The teacher needs a strong will in order that she may be a good disciplinarian or rather that discipline may be unnecessary. It is undoubtedly true of the men teachers as a whole that they are not of the strongest type and that they are relatively ineffective in the communities in which they live. If we wish to raise the teach- ing profession and make the teacher more influential, we must produce a more forceful effective type of a person. Athletics are a commonly accepted method of training the will. The person who is nervous is nearly always irritable. She does all her work with the utmost wastefulness of life's energies, because she is always putting into the task more enervation than is called for. She is especially dangerous in the schoolroom, because nervousness is peculiarly communi- cable. This problem is a grave one in the American city, because of the constant overstimulation of the nervous system from the noise and the smoke and the speeding up of the ma- chinery of the factory and of life, and because the American seems to be naturally of an active nervous temperament. 336 Education Through Play Teachers are especially liable to nervous breakdowns. Every normal student should be examined at entrance and at periodical intervals afterwards by a neurologist to deter- mine her nervous condition. If he or she is of a nervous temperament, he or she should be advised not to choose teach- ing as a profession. A common specific for avoiding nerv- ousness is open-air recreation. Teachers are especially subject to indigestion. Open-air play is the best specific against it. Tuberculosis is twice as prevalent among teachers as it is among people on the average, and, again, the best specific is open air. Play. — There are some school boards that will not employ a homely teacher. A handsome woman merely as art is a far more effective decoration of a schoolroom than a five-hundred- dollar picture, and the teacher will set the standards and im- prove the appearance of all her children as the picture cannot do. It is considerably easier for a handsome woman to control a schoolroom than for a homely one. Her teaching also will surely be more effective when clothed in a beautiful face and form than they would have been without this accompaniment. The most fundamental thing about beauty is that it is an expression of vigorous health. It is health that gives the color to the cheek, the fire to the eye, and the vivacity to the features that make the charm of the countenance. Plenty of exercise in the open air is a commonly accepted specific for the glow of health and a good complexion. If this exercise also has the joy of play, it will bring the snap to the eye and vivacity of feature as well. Grace is always an advantage to the teacher. The teacher who cannot stand or walk or run properly before her children The Training of Play Teachers 337 ought not to stand or walk or run before them. The young child is the person to whom these accomplishments mean most, and he is probably more critical of these deficiencies than his seniors, even though he does not express his criticism in words. Grace is developed from unconscious play and dancing. One needs only to get a company of normal students out to play a game of baseball to see how many of them need this training. There is an advantage in the teacher's possessing physical strength even though she may never need to use it. The children have a great respect for physical prowess, more in the elementary period than they ever will have again. It is a good thing to be able to thrash an unruly boy even though we may not intend to do it. The consciousness of our ability gets into the confidence of our command, and that often makes the thrashing unnecessary. The unruly boy also is conscious of our ability and does not take so many liberties. It is the case of the armed peace, of building the battleships when there is no war. The teacher will exhibit her strength and skill mostly in games, and the strength that will be most ef- fective is the strength that is so developed. More important than physical strength, is the physical endurance which will enable the teacher to go through her day without weariness, that will leave her as fresh at four o'clock as she was at nine. Strength the teacher needs for prestige and a sense of ability, but endurance, a strong will, the ability to form easily relationships of good fellowship with her pupils, and a knowledge of the laws of sportsmanship, she needs constantly in her daily work. The training of endurance comes only through activities with a play spirit. To most people physical training means gymnastics and a 338 Education Through Play gymnasium, but it must be seen at once that no system of training that requires a gymnasium or an expensive equipment to carry it on can be either normal or a practical training for our schools at present, for the reason that probably less than one per cent of them is provided with gymnasiums. How- ever, most of the physical training which the women are taking in the normal schools is gymnastics inside the gymnasium ; almost the only outdoor activities are occasional walks and tennis, which only a small per cent is playing. In general, the whole or nearly the whole athletic field is given over to a men's team, which represents the school. It would look, on the whole, as though the woman physical director had merely selected for her students the forms of exercise in which she hap- pened to be most interested. It is evident that there has been no attempt to satisfy the specific needs of normal students. Scarcely any of the work that is being given can be used by the students in their schools after they become teachers. I have been unable to find a sentence anywhere that in- dicated that the school was seeking to give the specific kind of training that would enable the teacher to be effective in her profession, or that the fitness of the exercises to meet the needs of life which would consist much more largely of the years of maturity than the years of youth, was even considered. The athletics are on no higher plane than they are else- where. But how are we to have sportsmanship in schools if the teachers themselves do not know what sportsmanship is? Every teacher should be required to play enough, so that she can tell whether the play of her pupils is good play or a disgrace to public morals, and, at present, the average teacher does not know. It is believed that the only activities that can give the train- The Training of Play Teachers 339 ing that seems necessary must have at least three fundamental characteristics. It must be in the open air. It must be recreation as well as exercise. It must be fitted to give the specific training that is required. Gymnastics, in general, are physical exercise, but man has never in history had physical exercise; he has done certain things, and development has been incidental to achievement. To focus the attention on movements instead of purposes is nearly always to secure a large effort for a small result, and to throw out of joint the psychic factors on which all efficient physical accomplish- ment is dependent. The only forms of activity that can meet this need for normal students are games, athletics, and dancing. It is believed also that these are just the accom- plishments that will enable the teacher to get into sympathetic relationship with children and that will give her prestige in the children's eyes. The English teacher is the most success- ful play teacher in the world because he has acquired in his schooldays both the technique and the spirit of play. It is also this same ability for the most part that makes him a strong personal influence in the lives of the children. The coaches in our private schools and universities may not always be high-grade men, but they are likely to be the most influential men on the faculty. Practically all the students of our normal schools go into the elementary schools. During the elementary period, physi- cal training is the most important subject, and during this time physical training comes mostly through play. The reasons for requiring the teacher to become proficient in the physical activities of the elementary period seem to me much more adequate than the ones that would require her to study methods in arithmetic. 340 Education Through Play I shall not presume to say definitely just which games and activities should be required, but it seems certain to me that they should be activities and not motions and that they should at least include the following : Games for little children: baseball and football, basket ball, hockey, tennis, croquet, volley ball, indoor baseball, walking, swimming, skating, dancing, camping out, and the activities of the Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls. It is prob- able that election should be allowed to some extent from these activities, and that certain others should be added, but a two years' normal course should furnish the time for an elementary acquaintanceship with all these activities. There should also be some practice in running and jumping, for the men at least, and the gymnasium should be used at such times as it is not possible to get out of doors. Every normal student should be required to have a general acquaintance with these activities, and for the ones who wished to specialize as play directors a higher degree of proficiency and more practice with children should be required, as well'as some careful study of playground management and organization. Value of This Training to the Teacher. — There are few things that will give a teacher more prestige than the ability to play a good game of baseball or basket ball or volley ball, and there is probably no other way in which she can establish so soon an intimate personal relationship with her children. What- ever games she is able to play will be directly helpful to her. I have given play courses in twenty-two different normal schools, and I find that many normal students and teachers in the summer schools do not know what to do when they have struck the ball in baseball. When they get the ball in the field, they do not know where to throw it. They do not The Training of Play Teachers 341 know when they are out, or when they have made a score. These teachers are ignorant of one of the most fundamental things in American life, one of the most determining things in American character, and probably of the very largest interest on the horizon of the public school boy. Baseball is our com- monest theme of summer conversation among men ; it occu- pies a page in nearly all daily papers. It is described in numer- ous magazine articles. It is called our national sport. It plays a far larger part in the common life of our people than the whole geography outside of a few local names, than the whole arithmetic outside the simplest operations, and the whole history of the United States. The teacher who is com- pletely ignorant of baseball will complain bitterly if the boy does not master the rivers of Africa or the cities of Asia Minor, which are of no particular importance to anybody in this country, which do not enter into talk or literature once where baseball appears a hundred times. Surely the teacher who comes to her school in such a state of information is more fundamentally ignorant than her pupils. Can she expect to inspire much interest in her world of books if she is so ignorant of their world of everyday facts? Much the same things might be said of the other activities mentioned. They are the large things in the child world. They represent the skill that is coveted. Such knowledge and skill add dignity and even heroic qualities to the teacher. They represent also the spirit and desire of the child, and the teacher who is completely ignorant of them cannot speak the language in which the child thinks and aspires. Training in these activ- ities is training a child to lead the life of a child, which is possible, instead of training him to lead the life of an adult, which is impossible. 342 Education Through Play Advantages of Normal Schools for the Training of Play Teachers. — Most of our new normal schools have the physi- cal equipment to give these play courses more effectively than they are being given anywhere at present. They have excel- lent gymnasiums, and many of them have a good-sized campus for games and good swimming pools. They have a corps of physical directors who are of a good and improving quality. But the great advantages that they have over all the other schools for playground work especially is that they already have adequate facilities for teaching kindergarten games and industrial work, raffia, basketry, story-telling, dancing, swim- ming, dramatics, and pageantry, and most important of all they usually have a training department where there is an opportunity for all the normal students to get practice in play activities under actual playground conditions. A normal school must be prophetic. It is training not for to-day or to-morrow, but it must train the students of to-day along the line of educational progress and fit them to lead the movement. They must be prepared for conditions that are to prevail five or ten years hence. All the indications are that the time is not distant when we shall require the teachers to organize the play of the children during the recesses at least. The teacher of the future must be a good physical type, a healthy, robust, wholesome man or woman, with large sym- pathies and large acquaintance with life. Her main business will not be to teach arithmetic, but rather to train individuals. She will teach arithmetic, but she will also teach baseball. She will see that the relationships of the children to each other and the spirit of helpfulness and friendliness are quite as important as anything that she can teach them, and she will not seek to so monopolize the child's time with the set sub- The Training of Play Teachers 343 jects of the curriculum that he has no time to be a child and gain the experiences of a child. A Graduate Course for Physical Trainers. — There is also a demand for physical trainers of a more adequate preparation and for a new graduate school comparable with the law or medicine in its requirements to fit men to be the heads of university departments of physical training, to have charge of the physical work of school systems, and of the super- vision of playgrounds. There is a demand for competent men in each of these fields, and almost no men available. It is the fact that there are almost no such men that makes the administration of university athletics so difficult, as it is also the great weakness of the play situation. If we might have a competent play supervisor in each city, he would in time be able to train the workers. The material for such a school is available. There is a large play literature in this country and a much larger one in Germany. The literature of physical training and school and sex hygiene is growing with leaps and bounds. When to this are added certain courses from the medical school and certain others from the departments of sociology and pedagogy, all of which are essen- tial to an adequate training, it will be found that there is an abundance of material for three or four years of hard graduate work. BIBLIOGRAPHY The Normal Course in Play. Playground and Recreation Association of America. Terman : The Teacher's Health. Houghton Mifflin & Co. APPENDIX RULES FOR GAMES In submitting these few rules for common games, there is no attempt to give an exhaustive list of games, or detailed rules ; but merely to furnish a general view with the simplest of directions. Every teacher who is interested in play should have either " Games for the Playground, Home, School, and Gymnasium " by Jessie Bancroft, or " Education by Plays and Games " by George Johnson, or " Play " by Emmett D. Angell. These books give a large number of games suitable for playground use. In general nearly all the kindergarten games are adapted to the play of the little children on the playground as well as in the kindergarten room. Of all of these, probably Soldier Boy is the most popular. There are also a great many singing games for children in the kinder- garten and early primary grades. Excellent books for teach- ers who wish games of this kind are " Fifty Singing Games " by Mari R. Hofer, and " Folk Dances and Games " by Caro- line Crawford. For the more highly organized games, such as volley ball, indoor baseball, and tether ball, books of rules can be obtained from the Spalding Athletic Library at ten cents each. These rules are not very satisfactory, but at present are the only rules explicit enough to serve in the umpiring of matched games. There is no attempt in this book to give rules full enough so that they can be used for the settling of all disputed points. 345 346 Education Through Play Cat and Mouse. — Cat and Mouse is a popular game with little children the world over. In this game the children stand in a ring. The mouse in the beginning is inside the circle and the cat outside. The cat rushes around the circle and dashes through in order to catch the mouse. The players try to help the mouse by raising their arms or letting go hands in order to allow the mouse to pass through, but prevent the cat from passing with equal ease. When the mouse is caught, he in turn becomes cat and chooses his mouse from the ring. Jacob and Rachel. — The children stand in a ring. One child is blindfolded, and if a girl, she must select a boy from the ring to be Jacob. She then says, " Where are you, Jacob ? " and he replies, "Here I am, Rachel; " or they merely repeat the names, until Jacob is caught, when Rachel must recognize him from the tone of his voice or in some other way. After he is recognized, he is in turn blindfolded and choses a Rachel from the ring. Slap Jack. — The children stand in a ring. One child runs around the outside and touches another child. This child immediately runs around the ring in the opposite direc- tion in an attempt to reach the place from which he started before the other child can do so. The game has a number of variations, but when they meet they often bow or shake hands or give each other some form of a salute. The child who reaches the original place first becomes a member of the ring, and the other child must touch another Jack, and the process is repeated. Whip Tag. — The children stand in a ring with their hands behind them. One child goes around the outside with a knotted handkerchief, or a knotted towel, or something of this kind. He lays this whip, or " beetle " as it is often called, Appendix 347 in the hands of one of the children, who immediately pursues the child to his right and seeks to strike him with the beetle before he can get back to the place whence he started ; when the second child in turn places the whip in the hands of a third child, and the process is repeated. Drop-the-Handkerchief . — Drop-the-Handkerchief is one of the commonest of our games, though it is played in some- what different ways in different places. The children stand in a ring, and a child passes around the outside with a handkerchief which he endeavors to drop behind one of them in such a way that it will not be seen. If he succeeds in pass- ing around the ring and back again to the child behind whom the handkerchief was dropped before he has discovered it, this child is required to go into the ring. If, on the other hand, this child should instantly discover the handkerchief and be able to touch the runner with it before he can pass around the ring to the place where it was dropped, then the runner must go into the center. Sometimes it is played so that a large number of children may be in the center at the end, and sometimes the child who is in the center comes out as soon as another child goes in. Bull in the Ring. — The children stand in a circle holding hands. One child in the center is the bull. He dashes across the circle as hard as he can and seeks to break through the ring, while the children hold each other's hands as tightly as possible so as to prevent this. If the bull should break through, the children pursue him, and whoever touches him first becomes the new bull. Three Deep. — The children stand in two circles, one inside the other, so that the whole circle is two deep. One of these couples now steps out of the ring and one becomes chaser and 348 Education Through Play the other runner. Whenever the runner is hard pressed, he may step in front of any couple. The line then becomes three deep and the outside man must run. If he is touched before he can get started, then he becomes the chaser, and the former pursuer must run. If it is played rapidly, it may become a very exciting game. Pom-Pom-Pullaway. — Pullaway is one of the commonest of all of our games. There are two bases or goals at the oppo- site ends of the yard. One child, who is " it," stands in the center and calls, " Pom-pom-pullaway, come away, or I'll fetch you away," when the children are required to run across ; or he may call the name of a particular child, if he chooses. As soon as a child is caught he goes into the center and helps to catch the others. This continues until all are caught, when the first one caught becomes " it " for the next game. In some cases the catching consists merely in tagging ; in others it is required that the child be touched on the back three times. Prisoners' Base. — ■ There are two goals at the opposite ends of the yard, and in the back of one of these goals or bases is a prison. A child from one side " gives a dare " by going as near to the goal of the other side as he thinks safe. A runner pursues him. If he succeeds in touching him, the first child becomes a prisoner and is placed in the prison at the back of the goal. But as soon as a pursuer starts after the child who gave the dare, a second child starts from the goal of the first party and seeks to touch the pursuer of the first child, and in turn a second child starts from the second goal to pursue him. It is only allowable to tag another child who has left his base earlier than the runner. After a prisoner has been made, his captor and he may return to the prison without being tagged. Appendix 349 When the child is placed in prison, he can be released by a child from his own side touching him while he has one foot inside. To enter your opponents' prison when there is no one of your side there, or to make prisoners of all your oppo- nents, wins the game. It is customary to post a guard at the prison to prevent rescues from being made. When there are several prisoners, they are allowed by some rules to take hold of hands and stretch out from the prison as far as they can. Circle Catch Ball. — The children stand in a circle with one child in the center. A volley ball or basket ball is thrown across from one child to another. If the child in the center succeeds in touching the ball while it is held by a child, or touches it while it is in the air, then the child holding the ball, or the child who last threw it, must come into the center, while the one originally in the center returns to the ring. Dodge Ball. — Dodge Ball is played in many different ways, but a common way is to divide the company into two equal groups, one group forming a circle about thirty-five or forty feet in diameter, and the other group going inside. The game is to strike with the volley ball or basket ball the ones who are in the ring. Sometimes there is a time limit, and the side will secure as many points as there are children left at the end of the time chosen. When the time is over, the sides are reversed, the ones who formerly constituted the ring going into the center. The side having the largest number of chil- dren who have not been struck during the time agreed upon wins the game, or if all are struck, the side will win that held out longest. It is often played merely for the fun of dodging without making it competitive. Captain Ball. — In Captain Ball, almost any number of players are divided into two teams. The ground, also, or 350 Education Through Play play space is divided into two parts. Circles about three feet in diameter are drawn upon the ground or the pavement. Inside of each of these circles is a baseman, and just outside of it is a guard of the other side, so that each half of the ground contains an equal number of basemen and guards, but the guards belong to the opposite teams from the basemen. Each side has a captain who usually has a somewhat larger circle than the others. The ball is thrown up in the center of the field much the same as in basket ball, usually between the guards of the captains' circles of the opposite sides. The game now is to throw it to one of the basemen in order that he may throw it to the captain. According to some rules, this is the only score. In others a score is made every time a baseman is able to catch the ball, and there is a much larger score if the basemen are able to pass it around to all the different basemen and finally to the captain; but the rules for the game differ considerably in different places. The basemen are not allowed to play outside their circles, though they may put one foot out. The guards are not allowed to enter the circle, but try to prevent the basemen from catching the ball. The violation of this rule by the guard gives a score to the baseman, by the baseman gives the ball to the guard. Ring Toss. — Ring Toss, or Ring Quoits, is very popular in most city playgrounds. It is played with rope quoits and scores the same as regular quoits. Duck on a Rock. — One child is " it." A stone, or block, or bean bag, or some other similar object, is placed on a stone or block. The other children throw, from a line marked off at some little distance, stones or bean bags in a way to knock off the duck. The child who is " it " endeavors to tag these players before they can pick up their ducks and get back to Appendix 351 their goal, but if the duck has been knocked off, he must replace it before he is allowed to tag any of the players. The child who is tagged takes his place. Indoor Baseball. — Indoor Baseball is similar to the regu- lar game, but the ball must be pitched underhanded, and the base runner is not allowed to leave his base while the pitcher is in position until the ball has been caught or has passed the catcher. With girls and small boys, it is usually played on a 27-foot diamond. With older boys and girls, where the game is played out-of-doors, it is best to use the 35-foot dia- mond, or even a diamond 50 feet on a side, for high school students where the 14-inch ball is used. It must be remem- bered, of course, that a baseball diamond is a perfect square. The front edge of the pitcher's box is thirty feet from the home plate, and the box is three by seven feet in size. The pitcher is supposed to start the delivery of the ball while both feet are on the back line of his box, but may take one step for- ward in the delivery. There are five sizes of balls, which are 1 2 , 14, 15, 16, and 17 inches in circumference. Of these, the chil- dren usually prefer the 12- or 14-inch ball, but the 17-inch is more serviceable in a small yard or in any place where chil- dren are likely to be hit by it. The 17-inch ball also serves as an excellent volley ball in a windy country much better than the regular ball, and is better than the smaller ones for dodge ball and long ball. Hockey. — Hockey is played on a field one hundred yards by fifty or sixty in size with a ball similar to baseball. There are eleven players on a side, five of whom are forwards, three halfbacks, two fullbacks, and a goal keeper. The goals are twelve feet apart with a cross bar seven feet from the ground. The ball is put in play in the center of the field, as it is in foot- 352 Education Through Play ball, each player standing with his left side toward the goal he is attacking. The object is to drive the ball down the field and between the goal posts under the cross bar. A net or wire screen is often fastened back of the goal posts in order to be sure whether the ball actually goes between the posts or just out- side of them. Soccer Football. — Soccer Football is very popular in England and Canada and is becoming more and more so here. It is well adapted to elementary and high schools. The ball is a round leather ball about the size of a volley ball. The game differs from regular football in that there is no rush line, and a person is never allowed to touch the ball with his hands ' or arms. It is passed down the field with the feet for the most part, though expert players will sometimes pass it for a con- siderable distance on their heads. The only person who is allowed to touch the ball with his hands or arms is the goal keeper, who may catch it and throw or kick it in defense of the goal. The skill of the game consists largely in passing the ball with very short kicks known as " dribbling," so that the person keeps possession of it. When he is attacked so that he can no longer hold it, he seeks to pass it to a player on his own side. In American Football every player is under the direction of the captain, and almost every play is planned by him and the coach ; in Association Football, on the other hand, the player must use his own brains. The player may get his shins kicked occasionally, but there is almost no danger of a serious accident, and the slight but active player is at no considerable disadvantage with a fellow who is much larger and stronger. Volley Ball. — Volley Ball is usually played on a court 25 by 50 feet in size over a net 7I feet high. The ball may be Appendix 353 of sheepskin, horsehide, or canvas. It is a little smaller and about half as heavy as a basket ball. There may be any num- ber of players, but matched games are usually played with from five to ten on a side. Before beginning the game all the players on each side should be numbered. Each player serves the ball over the net in turn. The server stands on the back line and bats the ball over the net with the palm of his hand. If the ball strikes the ground on the other side, it scores for the server ; but if the receiving side bats it back and it hits the ground on the server's side, he is out, and a player on the other side serves. If the player fails to get the ball over the net or bats it out of bounds, he is also out. As usually played, twenty-one points are taken for a game, but it is sometimes played with fifteen-minute halves, the same as basket ball. Newcomb. — Newcomb is similar to volley ball, but is played over a rope instead of a net, and the players throw the ball instead of striking it with the hand. Otherwise the two games are almost the same. Tether Ball. — In Tether Ball there is a pole two and a half or three inches in diameter, thirteen feet tall which is set three feet in the ground. Six feet from the ground there is a black mark drawn around the pole. About three or four inches from the top of the pole, a screw eye is turned into it, and to this is attached a strong cord, on the end of which is tied a tether ball, which is a tennis ball in a sack made of fish cord. The ball should hang about two feet and a half from the ground. A ring six feet in diam- eter is drawn around the pole and a line twenty feet in length bisects it, so as to divide the space into halves. The ball is struck with tennis rackets. The player who gets the 354 Education Through Play choice of sides receives, while the other child serves. The game is won whenever the ball is wound up around the pole above the black line. To strike the pole with the racket, or to step over the line or inside the circle are fouls which give your opponent a free hit at the ball. It is an exceedingly vigorous game which requires only two players, but may be played with teams of three or five on a side. It is especially well adapted to small schools and country communities. Tennis. — Tennis is played on a court 36 by 78 feet in size for doubles, and 27 by 78 feet for singles. Eighteen feet from the back line, a line is drawn across the single court at each end, and a third line is drawn through the center perpendicular to these lines and the net. This divides the play space into four service courts. The server stands back of the back line of the court and must serve the ball in succession into the serv- ice courts diagonally opposite to the one where he stands. Folk Dance Equipment. — There are a number of folk dances that can be given in the school yard. The books of both Miss Burchenal and Dr. Crampton are specific enough so that the dances can be learned from the directions. The chief trouble comes from the music, but there are now a num- ber of excellent victrola records for folk dances. The play- room is a better place for many of the dances than the yard, and there are some that cannot well be given in the yard. Athletics. — In each school yard there should be a hori- zontal bar with sand underneath, a jumping pit full of sand, with a take-off board, and with jumping standards for the high jump. At the side of the ground or along the road, 50, 60, and 100 yard dashes should be laid off. It is best to have a stop watch whenever possible, in order that the time in races may be taken. Appendix 355 Potato Race. — The potato race is popular nearly every- where. As usually run, each child has five potatoes or pieces of chalk or stones, or any other convenient objects, which are placed in a straight line about six feet apart, the first potato being a similar distance from the basket or circle from which the race begins. The runners must gather each potato sepa- rately and place it in the basket or the circle, the one who gets the last potato in first winning the race. Relay Race. — ■ Relay Races are always popular and offer an excellent opportunity to get a large number of children interested in running. As usually run, the children who are to enter the race are lined up in two lines back of some fixed starting point. They then run to some object which should not be more than thirty or forty yards distant, touch it or pass around it, and return to touch the hand of the next one in the line. Sometimes they carry a flag or stick which they pass to the next child, but ofttimes they merely touch hands. The race is won by the line whose last runner first gets home. The Shuttle Relay. — In the shuttle relay two or more groups of children are arranged at opposite ends of the running space. At the signal the child at the starting point of each line rushes across and touches the hand of the child of his own line at the opposite end, when this child in turn dashes back to touch the hand of the next child at the starting point, which con- tinues until every child has run. The line whose last runner first gets home wins the race. INDEX Air, fresh, 31, 35, 40. 4L 42. 44. 339- Amateurism, 240. Art Gallery, 318. Athletic League, in English schools, 99; Public School, 149. Athletics, relation to crime, 64 ; standard test, 123, equipment for, 137, 354; gen- eral, 154, 192, 229, 338; class, 194; i Q secondary schools and colleges, 220; at private schools, 234; in colleges and universities, 237; expense of, 238; in- jury from, 238; at University of Wis- consin, 242 ; amateurism in, 240. Attendance, 274. Auditorium, 316. Automobiling, 257. Baseball, 150, 151, 176, 206, 230, 290, 341- Basket ball, 205. Beauty, relation to physical training, 28; 33<5- Benches, 134. Billiards, 311. Bowling, 311. Boy Scouts, 162, 209, 258, 284, 290, 308. Bull in the Ring, 347. Camp, school, 283, 286. Camp Fire Girls, 163, 209, 258, 284, 291, 308. Camping, 259. Captain Ball, 349. Cat and Mouse, 346. Chautauquas, 260. Cigarettes, effect on play, 70. Cinders, 125. Civics, school of, 3°3- Coaches, 221. Coaching, 104. Colds, avoidance of, 44. Consolidated schools, 160. Courses for playground directors, 328, 333. Cricket, in German schools, 89; in Eng- lish Preparatory Schools, 103; in Eng- lish Public Schools, 107. Croquet, 153. Dance hall, 312. Dancing, 34; folk, 195, 253; equipment for, 354; social, 254. Delinquency, juvenile, in Chicago, 77. Democracy, training for, 75, 76, 304. Director of physical training, 135, 343. Discipline, 278. Drink, in relation to play, 71. Drop the Handkerchief, 347. Duck on a Rock, 350. Duelling, in Germany, 90. Dyspepsia, 35. Edison, Thomas A., 301. Education, purpose of, 48; meaning of, 106, 303 ; limit of, 186. Ellis, Havelock, 182, 183. Endurance, 26, 337. Energy, surplus, 2 ; development of, 52. Entertainments, 258, 297. Equipment, 138 ; construction of, 144. Excursions, 258. Fencing, 127. Flirting, 255. Football, 222, 230, 238, 240; in England, 99, 103, 104, 107. Friendship, development through play, 80. Froebel, 9, 85. Games, transmission of, 8 ; for class room, 196; rules for, 207; at summer schools, 253; team games, 56, 276; area re- quired for, 210. Garden, school, 167; roof, 307. Gary, System of, 144, 166, 216, 292, 323. 357 358 Index Giant stride, 143. Girls' schools in Germany, 8g : in England, 108. Glory of the school, 225. Glutrin, 126. Grace, development of, 31, 336. Grass, 122. Gravel, torpedo, 124. Greeks, physical training of, 28. Groos, Professor, theory of play, 3. Gulick, Dr. Luther, 193, 194, 195. Gymnasium, 102, 168, 169, 320, 338. Gymnastics, 20. Hall, G. Stanley, recreation theory, 4, 226. Health, 41. Heart and lungs, 38. Hedge fences, 131. Hockey, 206, 230, 351; in Preparatory Schools, 104, 109. Horseback riding, 257. Indoor baseball, 152, 202, 340, 351. Intellect, training of, 47. Interlaken School, 292. Jacob and Rachel, 346. Janitor, 271. Judgment, training of, 55. Kinetoscope, 301. Labor unions, 146. LaCrosse, English schools, 104. Law, idea of, 76. Lectures, 296. Lee, Joseph, 3. Leisure time, 61, 198. Leland, Arthur, 125. Library, 291, 317. Lighting, 136, 175. Long Ball, 134. Loyalty, development through team play, 78. Meath, Earl of, 64, 183. Menagerie, for school, 143. Montessori, 39, 182. Motherhood, relation to physical develop- ment, 25. Moving pictures, 261, 298, 300. Muscles, accessory, 31; fundamental, 31. Museum, school, 320. Nervous stability, 29, 335. Newcomb, 353. Normal Course in Play, 327. Phonograph, 291, 302. Physical strength, significance of, 23, 337. Physical training, 17, 171; work as, 21; for women, 24 ; of Greeks, 28 ; relation of beauty to, 28; director of, 135; in elementary schools, 183. Play, theories of, 1 ; constructive, 7, 273 ; age periods in, 9 ; sex differences in, n ; distinguished from recreation, 12; dis- tinguished from work, 14; as a prep- aration for work, 15; physical devel- opment from, 22; as preparation for life, 49; spirit of, 58; forming character through, 59; distinguished from idle- ness, 60; voluntary choices, 62; di- rected, 63 ; imitation in, 63 ; relation to the development of the will, 66; relation to the formation of habits, 6s, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72 ; ideals of, 74; democ- racy in, 75; social training through, 80; in German schools, 85; time for, 184, 290 — in Germany, 92; at Gary, 167; at summer schools, 262; who is to organize, 160, 213, 269, 292, 326, 330, 331, 339; number of teachers required, 327; in English schools, 97; teaching of, 103; rural, 148; equipment for at rural school, 153 ; compulsory — in Germany, 92, in Preparatory Schools, 101, in Public Schools, 106, in high schools for girls (Eng.), 108, for high schools, 228, 232, reason for, 182; cur- riculum of, 86, 191, 196; space for, 209; expense of organizing, 213; value of — for summer students, 263, for summer school, 264; activities, 272; programs, 274; tournaments and contests, 27s; Normal Course in, 327. Play centers, 100. 306. Play Congress, in Nuremberg, 87. Play Festival, 159, 275. Playground directors, 334; courses for, 328, 333; graduate course for, 343. Index 359 Playgrounds, school, of Germany, 87 ; of England, 96, 107; of American cities, 113, 181; how secured, 217; size of, 114; leveling of, 119; apparatus, 138; beautifying of, 150; size of, rural, 149, in Gary, 170; lighting of, 175; attend- ance at, 173, 179; municipal, 177, 179, 213; for high schools, 228; summer, 267; session in, 268; planning of, 136; out of town, 98. Play spirit, 12. Pom-pom-pullaway, 348. Pool, 311. Potato race, 355. Preparatory Schools, English, 101. Prisoner's Base, 348. Public School Athletic League, 193. Public Schools, English, 106. Recreation, distinguished from play, 12; at summer schools, 247 ; program of for summer schools, 252; director of, 266; self-supporting, 315, 339. Relay races, 19s, 355 ; shuttle relay, 35s. Resistance, vital, 44. Restaurant, 313. Ring Toss, 350. Roof gardens, 307. Running, in English schools, 105. Sage Foundation, 77. Sand bin, 139. School building, where located, 119. School day, length of, 174, 186, 187. School dispensary, 316. Schools, English Preparatory, 101, Public, 106; for girls, 109; consolidated, 160; village, 161 ; summer, 267, 285. See-saws, 139. Sex, problems of, 37, 72, 225. Shuttle relay, 35s. Singing, 254, 307. Skating, 208, 230, 340. Slap jack, 346. Slide, 141. Soccer football, 206, 352. Sociability, 80; at social center, 305, 322. Social center, 163; school as, 294. Social room, 310. Socialized class room, 310. Spencer, theory of play, 2. Sport, in a school, 156, 220. Sportsmanship, 68, 156, 192, 222, 224. Story telling, 254, 291. Surfacing, 121. Swimming, 98, 105, 208, 229, 258. Swimming pool, 169, 208, 320. Swings, 141. Team games, 56, 276 ; as mental stimulus, 56- Tennis, 153, 207, 212, 290, 340, 354. Tether ball, 145, 154, 205, 353. Theater, 261, 291, 297, 298. Three Deep, 348. Three "R's," decreasing importance of, 249. Training, of play directors, 326; graduate course for, 343. Trees, 131. Tuberculosis, prevention of, 43. Umpiring, 224. Universities, German, 90; English, in; American, 237 ; of Wisconsin, 242. Victrola, 291, 302, 344. Vines, 121. Vital index, 39. Volley ball, 133, 199, 34°. 352. Walking trips, 93, 157, 208, 256. Washington Irving High School, 318, 323. Whip Tag, 347. Wirt, William A., 166. Work, as physical training, 21; training of, 148 ; 287, 289. '"PHE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. The Cyclopedia of Education Edited by PAUL MONROE Complete, with index, in five quarto volumes. Price per set, $23.00. Special terms to members of the teaching profession and Boards of Education The Cyclopedia of Education has been prepared, under the direction of the recognized authorities and experts in education, especially for the members of the teaching profession and for those who are interested in questions of public welfare intimately connected with education. It is a most satisfactory textbook on the history, the philosophy, the psychology and the sociology of education, on school administration, teaching methods and on educational theory and practice. It provides in itself a complete reference library on every division of education, with index of topics, cross references and bibliography — a key to the vast library of educational literature. It is an authoritative guide, the only one in the English language, to the sanest theories and the soundest practices of the profession. It contains information so much needed and so long desired by teachers for the preparation of tests, examinations and discussions, for effective aid in the solu- tion of everyday educational problems, and for the many duties which the teacher, superintendent or school administrator is called upon to perform, in school and out, as a member of the teaching profession. It gives to the teacher the best help toward intelli- gent self -direction in the study and practice of the profession. The Cyclopedia of Education makes the best possible basis for a complete and inexpensive pedagogical library. It is a most desir- able addition to the private library, indispensable to the public or professional library. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Pifth Avenue, New York BOSTON ATLANTA PALLAS CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO TEXTBOOK SERIES IN EDUCATION EDITED BY PAUL MONROE Textbook in the History of Education By PAUL MONROE, Ph.D. Cloth, 8vo, illustrated, xix+ 772 pages, $i.go The merits which the author has sought to incorporate in this book are : (i) To furnish a body of historical facts sufficient to give the student concrete material from which to form generaliza- tions. (2) To suggest, chiefly by classification of this material, interpretations such as will not consist merely in unsupported generalizations. (3) To give, to some degree, a flavor of the orig- inal sources of information. (4) To make evident the relation be- tween educational development and other aspects of the history of civilization. (5) To deal with educational tendencies rather than with men. (6) To show the connection between educational the- ory and actual school work in its historical development. 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