Show THE GOSPEL OF Substance of Lectures by Henry S. Delivered Before the Classes on Playground Training at the Summer School of the U. of U. When the playgrounds were first the general thought in the minds of the people was that the purpose was to keep the children off the Today we have come to see that the playground has a specific training to which is no less and perhaps no less than the training of the schoolroom The First Ideal While it is impossible in the brief time at my disposal for me to take up this training in I may enumerate a few of the ideals of the and leave to your judgment their importance in the life of the The first of these ideals is physical We all know perfectly well if you would have a child grow up healthy and you must keep him in the open air much of the We have learned there is no specific for and that the only cure is the open air All the congresses of tuberculosis has expressed the belief that the playground is one of the most effective means in the prevention of this Not only does it keep the child in the open but it strengthens the so that he is able to throw off the germs if they should find lodgment The congresses on which began to meet in Germany some fifteen years were one of the chief sources of the playground movement Strength from The child today gets practically all of its physical strength from Fifty years ago we were getting strong from the work we but today the of the city boys has The girls wash the dishes and sweep the and perhaps make the but there is not much physical training in work of this We sometimes hear the opinion expressed that children are becoming strong from gymnastics but there is not a system in the country where they have more than fifteen minutes gymnastics a day in the elementary and in most places the work is done in a very listless way which cannot produce physical The only means that is left whereby a city child may become strong his and a child that plays by himself is quite as likely to play marbles as and it takes a long time at marbles to become very Proved by At the time I took charge of the playgrounds of the District of we started the test of the Public School Athletic League This test says that any child under thirteen who can jump five feet nine inches chin a bar four and run the sixty-yard dash in 8 seconds shall have a standard button of the I tried the test myself in twenty playgrounds and did not find a single boy who could do the three After four summers of organized we tried the test There were boys who did the three and there were more than boys who could do one or two of In the same way Ave took the record each year in twenty-two different field and each year we found our records went showing that organized play had built the child up physically as the unorganized play which had preceded it had not But we have two different conceptions of physical The small boy longs to be able to the other he would like to be the strong able to put up a dumb bell but the importance of this type of physical training has largely passed longer get our dinner by running it but by plotting its In lifting the great we touch the button and the machine does the The man who is to stand behind the counter or sit at the the the doctor or the housewife these do not need in their daily work the strength of the Roman If I might have on my shoulders the muscles of the Farnese Hercules by merely for them I had better refuse because these useless muscles are simply a load to be carried and may be a positive detriment in the work I have to do but there is a type of physical strength that is as important today as it ever was in the history of the and that type is vital It does' not matter whether I am to be a a doctor or a I need for any position life may offer a strong good and a healthy Without these I shall not be able to stand the worries and strains of the protracted labor which life is apt to and very likely I not have the strength and buoyancy of spirit that will make life worth Regular Work Not How is this vital strength to be They have been making a study of this subject in Germany during the past few and they find that ordinary work has comparatively litle effect on vital also that general gymnastics have very little effect n I might put up a 50 dumb bell from my shoulder for ten and in the end of that time I would find that I had created immense muscles on upper and but I have produced very little effect on my lung capacity and my heart If I had created muscular mass without increasing my lung capacity at the same I would have lowered my vital But there is a type of physical training which always gives this vital and that is vigorous and the result of the German study was that the best exercise to develop the vital organs is the vigorous plays in which the children naturally take You all realize how a short run causes you to breathe more deeply and quickens the action of your and you must perceive that it Cleans this has been giving the best sort of training to your heart and Habits Are Formed in Children form most of their habits in Perhaps some of you have sometimes seen a boy or girl play in croquet and have seen them cautiously rolling the ball along in front of the There is almost the same opportunity for cheating in every game children play that there is in The child who has formed the habit of cheating in his games has formed the habit of cheating for good and We send the children to Sunday school to learn to be but knowing what is right and doing what is right are very different and it does not follow because a child knows that it is wrong to lie that he will consequently tell the The playground brings into this situation a great new in the shape of a playground who is the umpire of the he insists on and his example is more largely copied than the example of any other person in the In the first years the playgrounds were opened in New the children would often come in from the street with a game that they had dragged through the gutter in the ordinary play until it had assumed all sorts of vulgar expressions and rudeness of one child to The teacher would play this game with the She would drop off the Vulgar she would say you instead of striking the neighboring and within a day or two all the children would be playing the game in the same way the teacher had played and they would even carry it out and play it on the street in its revised When the playgrounds are first opened in any there is always a great competition for the as there are probably children who want to use them and only ten or twelve swings to be A little boy gets into a swing and a big boy comes jerks him and sits down in his The little children do not complain because the law of the street is makes and they have not been accustomed to rights where bigger boys were their After a month or two tills lias largely and the big boy is standing in line with the little boy to use the He has gained a new sense of The language that is heard at a new if it is in a poorer section of the is usually At one time we opened a playground in an unused park in the lower part of There s a gentleman and his wife without children who owned the whole end of the block opposite the and the first week it was opened this man went out with his note book and took down all the bad he heard the children and he certainly got a choice lie sent this in to the commissioner and I have heard all this bad in this playground in one see what a bad dilution it is it ought to be Of f k 5 he had made a collection of street language before the Playground had a chance to correct If you will go back to any playground after it has been opened a tew if it has been well you will imd that this sort of language has almost entirely Perhaps the children have not ceased to use language of this but they have ceased to use it on the and it has become a smaller element in their In the same I might show how almost all habits are trained mostly in the play of but this example will serve as an Friends Made in Children form most of their friendships in It has been said that the best training a girl can have for society is the social play of It is certainly true that friendship is essential to play and is always the product of the better type of If a playground does not make the children better friends with each other because they go you can set it down as a failure at I used to teach a sixth grade class in New York City where the children came from sections in which they were not well acquainted at They remained almost strangers through the school year until we began to play baseball or take walks on Saturday They became better acquainted in one or two of these afternoons than they had during the entire year which had In the lower part of New the first year the playgrounds were opened there was one where there were Irish living on one side and Italians on the They would come on the but would have nothing to do with each We could not make up teams in which the two races would take We racked our brains to find games in all the children would be called We played prisoner's base and pull-away and other games of this After six weeks the children did not know whether they were Irish or The race feeling has almost entirely died out through the companionship of Play Cures A few years age the Sage Foundation appropriated for the study of juvenile delinquency in the city of They had a great wall map of the city in which was placed a pin for every child that had been arrested during the past eight They studied these arrests in relation to the different sections of Chicago and they found as a result that there was no relationship between the large parks of Chicago and the delinquency of the but over the area one-half mile in radius around the public playground there was a decrease of 28 per cent in the number of children who had been and there had been an increase in the successful dealing of about the same amount with the children who had been thus showing a substantial improvement in regard to delinquency of nearly 50 per This corresponds closely to the experience of other People of the great cities often say to their must not play with children certain feeling that if they play with these vicious children they will acquire many bad The fear is well but the danger is not from the A boy may play on a baseball nine with eight other boys all of are thieves and immoral and not suffer much harm so long as he but let him idle with these same children for half hour and he may suffer incalculable It is in periods of idleness that children learn to smoke shoot tell vulgar stories and learn that which children so often The playground idleness a child by giving him something interesting to A Boy Without a Joseph Lee has said that boy without a playground is father to the man without a by which 1 he I that if a child loafs through his he goes on loafing during his adult life from mere force of and the same person who has formed a habit of finds it necessary to earn his living by some easier way than He may may he may but strenuous labor is not to his The habit of idleness is the mother of most There are many people in this country They have only enough energy to run them an hour or two of and work soon becomes There are others who are human to whom confinement and inaction are Their overflow of nervous vitality compels ceaseless How is this energy to You all know that a boy can run faster he is playing tag than he can in going on He will an amount of energy for hours a time in his play that would exhaust him in an hour of It is not that the boy likes to play and does not like to but it is a fact that he has at the command of play an amount of energy which he has not at the command of and this is because the human brain was developed by activities of just the type which the play of the child and these deeper fountains of energy are easily sounded by the play motive where they are untouched by the work t Organized I The organization of play makes it more interesting and doubles the energy that is put into If you will watch the boys playing on vacant you will often see the first baseman sitting down on his base and the fielder lying down in the field but if you get a permanent team with a captain and and the play of this team into a you will not these If the first baseman sits the other members will get him up pretty He has not only his own interest but the social interest of the group acting upon him and stirring him to the action of which he is I believe the problem of development of the maximum amount of energy lies almost altogether with the of childish Honor in the The essential virtue which we demand of a citizen is that he shall not be wholly but shall have some sort of group consciousness and be willing to the the the in which he How work for the good of the In other he shall have a spirit of loyalty toward the is this spirit to be acquired the spirit of loyalty is first developed where men gather together in the It gains its greatest intensity for it is absolutely essential to the survival of the tribe that the members stand together in their defensive and offensive operations against surrounding The tribe that not develop this spirit among its members is annihilated by internecine The team game almost exactly resembles these tribal and is the easiest way for the initiation of the boy or girl into We often hear baseball and football spoken of as team but in actual fact baseball or football may be either team or individual according as they are The boys playing baseball on a team which has been chose to play against another chosen in the same are not playing a team In order to have team must be come individuality in the and there must be some loyalty of the members toward There must be for the success of the Each of these is trying to distinguish himself individually he has not acquired a group consciousness he is not playing a team In order to have team it is essential to have a permanent team with a regular a regular that the team play be organized so that victory seems to the members If the boy becomes a member of such a team and still continues to play an individual seeking only to win the applause of the grand stand for his individual he will soon find that the whole social force of the team is bearing down upon him and demanding of him that he gain a group and play for the success of the team as a whole and not individual He must come out and practice when he wants to He must bat out so the man on third can run He must do what he does not want to in order that the team may be and just so far as the team becomes a permanent and the victory seems to the team it practically compels the boy to acquire group consciousness and play for the success of the as against individual This is the same spirit that we call loyalty as applied to the or patriotism as applied to the The team game is the easiest way to develop this and with permanent teams on the playground it can be done almost It is a question whether there is any other training that the school is giving today that is more |