At present the regular teachers as a rule have not
the necessary point of view and do not sufficiently value the work.
Special teachers and play leaders need to be employed. Material
facilities should be extended and improved. Some of the school grounds
are too small; the surfacing is not always well adapted to play;
often apparatus is not supplied; indoor playrooms are insufficient
in number, etc. These various things need to be supplied before the
physical training curriculum can be modernized.
In the high schools two periods of physical training per week in
academic and commercial schools, and three or four periods per week in
the technical schools, are prescribed for the first two years of the
course. In the last two years it is omitted from the program in all
but the High School of Commerce, where it is optional. With one or two
exceptions, the little given is mainly indoor gymnastics of a formal
sort owing to the general lack of sufficiently large athletic fields,
tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and other necessary facilities.
Special commendation must be accorded the home-room basis of
organizing the athletics of the technical high schools. Probably no
plan anywhere employed comes nearer to reaching the entire student
body in a vital way.
With the exceptions referred to, it seems that the city has not
sufficiently considered the indispensable need of huge amounts of
physical play on the part of adolescents as the basis of full and
life-long physical vitality.
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