By
these methods the motivation of gymnastics, which now in large measure
goes to waste in enthusiasm, could be utilised to aid the greatly
needed intellectualization of those exercises which in their nature
are more akin to work than play. Indeed, Gutsmuths's first definition
of athletics was "work under the garb of youthful pleasure." So to
develop these courses that they could chiefly, if not entirely,
satisfy the requirements for the A.B. degree, would coordinate the
work of the now isolated curriculum of the training-schools with that
of the college and thus broaden the sphere of the latter; but besides
its culture value, which I hold very high, such a step would prepare
for the new, important, and, as we have seen, very inadequately manned
profession of physical trainers. This has, moreover, great but yet
latent and even unsuspected capacities for the morals of our academic
youth. Grote states that among the ancient Greeks one-half of all
education as devoted to the body, and Galton urges that they as much
excelled us as we do the African negro. They held that if physical
perfection was cultivated, moral and mental excellence would follow;
and that, without this, national culture rests on an insecure basis.
Pages:
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113