MANUAL TRAINING AND SLOYD ion of our art teachers. The pupils may draw very properly and improve in technique, but the interest is gone. This is the condition in which most men re- main all their lives. Their power to appreciate steadily increases. Only a few gifted adolescents about this age begin to develop a new zest in production, rivaling that of the period from five to ten, when their satisfaction is again chiefly in creation. These are the artists whose active powers dominate.
Lukens ^ finds in his studies of drawling, that in what he calls his fourth period of artistic development, there are those " who during adolescence experience a rebirth of creative power." Zest in creation then often be- comes a stronger incentive to work than any pleasure or profit to be derived from the finished product, so that in this the propitious conditions of the first golden age of childhood are repeated and the deepest satisfac- tion is again found in the w^ork itself. At about four- teen or fifteen, which is the transition period, nascent faculties sometimes develop very rapidly. Lukens ^ draws the interesting curve shown on the following page.
The reciprocity between the powder to produce and that to appreciate, roughly represented in the above curve, very likely is true also in the domain of music, and may be, perhaps, a general law of development. Certain it is that the adolescent power to apperceive and appreciate never so far outstrips his power to pro- 1 A study of Children's Drawings in the Early Years. Pedagogical Seminary, October, 1896, vol. 4, pp. 79-101. See also Drawing in the Early Years. Proceedings of the National Educational Association, 1899, pp. 946-953. Das Kind als Kunstler, von C. Gotze. Hamburg, 1898. The Genetic vs. the Logical Order in Drawing, by F. Burk. Ped- agogical Seminary, September, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 296-323.
- Die Entwickelungsstufen beim Zeichnen. Die Kinderfehler, Sep- tei:^iber, 1897, vol. 2, pp. 166-179.
49 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE duce or reproduce as about midway in the teens. Now impressions sink deepest. The greatest artists are usually those who paint later, when the expressive powers are developed, what they have felt most deeply and known best at this age, and not those who in the late twenties, or still later, have gone to new environments and sought to depict them. All young people draw best those objects they love most, and their proficiency should Barnes's Plateau Illusion J I L J I L be some test of the contents of their minds. They must put their own consciousness into a picture. At the dawn of this stage of appreciation the esthetic tastes should be stimulated by exposure to, and instructed in feeling for, the subject-matter of masterpieces; and in- struction in technique, detail, criticism, and learned discrimination of schools of painting should be given intermittently. Art should not now be for art's sake, but for the sake of feeling and character, life, and con- duct; it should be adjunct to morals, history, and lit- erature; and in all, edification should be the goal; and 50 MANUAL TRAINING AND SLOYD personal interest, and not that of the teacher, should be the guide. Insistence on production should be eased, and the receptive imagination, now so hungry, should be fed and reenforced by story and all other accessories. By such a curriculum, potential creativeness, if it exists, will surely be evoked in its own good time. Ut will, at first, attempt no commonplace drawing-master themes, but will essay the highest that the imagination can bode forth. It may be crude and lame in execution, but it will be lofty, perhaps grand; and if it is original in con- sciousness, it will be in effect. Most creative painters before twenty have grappled with the greatest scenes in literature or turning points in history, representa- tions of the loftiest truths, embodiments of the most inspiring ideals. None who deserve the name of artist copy anything now, and least of all with objective fidelity to nature; and the teacher that represses or criticizes this first point of genius, or who can not pardon the grave faults of technique inevitable at this age when ambition ought to be too great for power, is not an educator but a repressor, a pedagogic Philis- tine committing, like so many of his calling in other fields, the unpardonable sin against budding promise, always at this age so easily blighted. Just as the child of six or seven should be encouraged in his strong in- stinct to draw the most complex scenes of his daily life, so now the inner life should find graphic utterance in all its intricacy up to the full limit of unrepressed courage. For the great majority, on the other hand, who only appreciate and will never create, the mind, if it have its rights, will be stored with the best images and sentiments of art; for at this time they are best remembered and sink deepest into heart and life. Now, although the hand may refuse, the fancy paints the 51 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE world in brightest hues and fairest forms; and such an opportunity for infecting the soul with vaccine of ideality, hope, optimism, and courage in adversity, will never come again. I believe that in few departments are current educational theories and practises so hard on youth of superior gifts, just at the age when all become geniuses for a season, very brief for most, prolonged for some, and permanent for the best. We do not know how to teach to see, hear, and feel when the sense cen- ters are most indelibly impressible, and to give relative rest to the hand during the years w^hen its power of accuracy is abated and when all that is good is idealized furthest, and confidence in ability to produce is at its lowest ebb.
Finally, our divorce between industrial and manual training is abnormal, and higher technical education is the chief sufferer. Professor Thurston, of Cornell, who has lately returned from a tour of inspection abroad, re- ported that to equal Germany we now need: " 1. Twentj^ technical universities, having in their schools of en- gineering 50 instructors and 500 students each. 2. Two thousand technical high schools or manual-training schools, each having not less than 200 students and 10 instructors." If we have elementary trade-schools, this would mean technical high schools enough to accommo- date 700,000 students, served by 20,000 teachers. With the strong economic arguments in this direction we are not here concerned; but that there are tendencies to unfit youth for life by educational method and matter shown in strong relief from this standpoint, we shall point out in a later chapter.
52 CHAPTER V GYMNASTICS The story of Jahn and the Turners — The enthusiasm which this move- ment generated in Germany — The ideal of bringing out latent powers — The concept of more perfect voluntary control — Swedish gymnastics — Doing everything possible for the body as a machine — Liberal phy- sical culture — Ling's orthogenic scheme of economic postures and movements and correcting defects — The ideal of symmetry and pre- scribing exercises to bring the body to a standard — Lamentable lack of correlation between these four systems — Illustrations of the great good that a systematic training can effect — Athletic records — Greek physical training.
Under the term gymnastics, literally naked exercises, we here include those denuded of all utilities or ulterior ends save those of physical culture. This is essentially modern and was unknown in antiquity, where training was for games, for war, etc. Several ideals underlie this movement, which although closely related are dis- tinct and as yet by no means entirely harmonized. These may be described as follows: A. One aim of Jahn, more developed by Spiess, and their successors, was to do everything physically pos- sible for the body as a mechanism. Many postures and attitudes are assumed and many movements made that are never called for in life. Some of these are so novel that a great variety of new apparatus had to be de- vised to bring them out; and Jahn invented many new names, some of them without etymologies, to designate the repertory of his discoveries and inventions that ex- tended the range of motor life. Common movements, 53 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE industries, and even games, train only a limited number of muscles, activities, and coordinations, and leave more or less unused groups and combinations, so that many latent possibilities slumber, and powers slowly lapse through disuse. Not only must these be rescued, but the new nascent possibilities of modern progressive man must be addressed and developed. Even the com- mon things that the average untrained youth can not do are legion, and each of these should be a new incen- tive to the trainer as he realizes how very far below their motor possibilities most men live. The man of the future may, and even must, do things impossible in the past and acquire new motor variations not given by heredity. Our somatic frame and its powers must therefore be carefully studied, inventoried, and as- sessed afresh, and a kind and amount of exercise re- quired that is exactly proportioned, not perhaps to the size but to the capability of each voluntary muscle. Thus only can we have a truly humanistic physical develop- ment, analogous to the training of all the powers of the mind in a broad, truly liberal, and non-professional or non-vocational educational curriculum. The body will thus have its rightful share in the pedagogic traditions and inspirations of the renaissance. Thus only can we have a true scale of standardized culture values for efferent processes; and from this we can measure the degrees of departure, both in the direction of excess and defect, of each form of work, motor habit, and even play. Many modern Epigoni in the wake of this great ideal, where its momentum was nearly spent, feeling that new activities might be discovered with virtues hitherto undreamed of, have almost made fetiches of special disciplines, both developmental and corrective, that are pictured and lauded in scores of manuals.
54 GYMNASTICS Others have had expectations no less excessive in the opposite direction and have argued that the greatest possible variety of movements best developed the great- est total of motor energy. Jalm especially thus made gymnastics a special art and inspired great enthusiasm of humanity, and the songs of his pupils were of a better race of man and a greater and united fatherland. It was this feature that made his work unique in the world, and his disciples are fond of reminding us of the fact that it was just about one generation of men after the acme of influence of his system that, in 1870, Ger- many showed herself the greatest military power since ancient Rome, and took the acknowledged leadership of the world both in education and science.
These theorizations even in their extreme forms have been not only highly suggestive but have brought great and new enthusiasms and ideals into the educational world that admirably fit adolescence. The motive of bringing out latent, decaying, or even new powers, skills, knacks, and feats, is full of inspiration. Patriot- ism is aroused, for thus the country can be better served; thus the German Fatherland was to be restored and unified after the dark days that followed the humilia- tion of Jena. Now the ideals of religion are invoked that the soul may have a better and regenerated somatic organism with which to serve Jesus and the Church. Exercise is made a form of praise to God and of ser- vice to man, and these motives are reenforced by those of the new hygiene which strives for a new wholeness- holiness, and would purify the body as the temple of the Holy Ghost. Thus in Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation training schools and gymnasiums the gospel of Christianity is preached anew and seel^ to bring sal- vation to man's physical frame, which the still linger- YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE ing effects of asceticism have caused to be too long neg- lected in its progressive degeneration. As the Greek games were in honor of the gods, so now the body is trained to better glorify God; and regimen, chastity, and temperance are given a new momentum. The physical salvation thus wrought will be, when ade- quately written, one of the most splendid chapters in the modern history of Christianity. Military ideals have been revived in cult and song to hearten the warfare against evil within and without. Strength is prayed for as well as worked for, and consecrated to the highest uses. Last but not least, power thus developed over a large surface may be applied to athletic con- tests in the field, and victories here are valuable as fore- gleams of how sweet the glory of achievements in higher moral and spiritual tasks will taste later.
The dangers and sources of error in this ideal of all- sided training are, alas, only too obvious, although they only qualify its paramount good. First, it is impossible thus to measure the quanta of training needed so as rightly to assign to each its modicum and best modality of training. Indeed no method of doing this has ever been attempted, but the assessments have been arbitrary and conjectural, probably right in some and wrong in other respects, with no adequate criterion or test for either save only empirical experience. Secondly, hered- ity, which lays its heavy ictus upon some neglected forms of activity and fails of all support for others, has been ignored. As we shall see later, one of the best norms here is phyletic emphasis, and what lacks this must at best be feeble; and if new powers are un- folding, their growth must be very slow and they must be nurtured as tender buds for generations. Thirdly, too little regard is had for the vast differences in in- 56 GYMNASTICS dividuals, most of whom need much personal pre- scription.
B. In practise the above ideal is never isolated from others. Perhaps the most closely associated with it is that of increased volitional control. Man is largely a creature of habit, and many of his activities are more or less automatic reflexes from the stimuli of his environ- ment. Every new power of controlling these by the will frees man from slavery and widens the field of freedom. To acquire the power of doing all with consciousness and volition mentalizes the body, gives control over to higher brain levels, and develops them by rescuing activities from the dominance of lower centers. Thus mens agi- tat molem} This end is favored by the Swedish commando exercises, which require great alertness of attention to translate instantly a verbal order into an act and also, although in somewhat less degree, by quick imitation of a leader. The stimulus of music and rhythm are excluded becaiLse thought to interfere with this end. A somewhat sophisticated form of this goal is sought by several Delsartian schemes of relaxation, de- composition, and recomposition of movements. To do all things with consciousness and to encroach on the field of instinct involves new and more vivid sense impres- sions, the range of which is increased directly as that of motion, the more closely it approaches the focus of attention. By thus analyzing settled and established coordinations, their elements are set free and may be organized into new combinations, so that the former is the first stage toward becoming a virtuoso with new special skills. This is the road to inner secrets or in- tellectual rules of professional and expert successes, such 1 Mind rules the body.
57 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE as older athletes often rely upon when their strength be- gins to wane. Every untrained automatism must be domesticated, and every striated muscle capable of direct muscular control must be dominated by volition. Thus tensions and incipient contractures that drain off energy can be relaxed by fiat. Sandow's '' muscle dance/' the differentiation of movements of the right and left hand — one, e. g., writing a French madrigal while the other is drawing a picture of a country dance, or each playing tunes of disparate rhythm and char- acter simultaneously on the piano — controlling heart rate, moving the ears, crying, laughing, blushing, mov- ing the bowels, etc., at will, feats of inhibition of re- flexes, stunts of all kinds, proficiency with many tools, deftness in sports — these altogether would mark the extremes in this direction.
This, too, has its inspiration for youth. To be a universal adept like Hippias suggests Diderot and the encyclopedists in the intellectual realm. To do all with consciousness is a means to both remedial and expert ends. Motor life often needs to be made over to a greater or less extent; and that possibilities of vastly greater accomplishments exist than are at present real- ized, is undoubted, even in manners and morals, which are both at root only motor habits. Indeed consciousness itself is largely and perhaps wholly corrective in its very essence and origin. Thus life is adjusted to new en- vironments; and if the Platonic postulate be correct, that untaught virtues that come by nature and instinct are no virtues, but must be made products of reflection and reason, the sphere and need of this principle is great indeed. But this implies a distrust of physical human nature as deep-seated and radical as that of Cal- vinism for the unregenerate heart, against which mod- 58 GYMNASTICS 58 GYMNASTICS ern common sense, so often the best muse of both psycho- physics and pedagogy, protests. Individual prescription is here as imperative as it is difficult. Wonders that now seem to be most incredible, both of hurt and help, can undoubtedly be wrought, but analysis should always be for the sake of synthesis and never be beyond its need and assured completion. No thoughtful student fully informed of the facts and tentatives in this field can doubt that here lies one of the most promising fields of future development, full of far-reaching and rich re- sults for those, as yet far too few, experts in physical training, who have philosophic minds, command the facts of modern psychology, and whom the w^orld awaits now as never before.
C. Another yet closely correlated ideal is that of economic postures and movements. The system of Ling is less orthopedic than orthogenic, although he sought primarily to correct bad attitudes and perverted growth. Starting from the respiratory and proceeding to the muscular system, he and his immediate pupils were con- tent to refer to the ill-shapen bodies of most men about them. One of their important aims was to relax the flexor and tone up the extensor muscles and to open the human form into postures as opposite as possible to those of the embryo, which it tends so persistently to approximate in sitting, and in fatigue and collapse attitudes gener- ally. The head must balance on the cervical vertebrae and not call upon the muscles of the neck to keep it from rolling off; the weight of the shoulders must be thrown back off the thorax; the spine be erect to allow the abdomen free action; the joints of the thigh ex- tended; the hand and arm supinated, etc. Bones must relieve muscles and nerves. Thus an erect, self-respect- ing carriage must be given, and the unfortunate associa- 59 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE tion, so difficult to overcome, between effort and an involuted posture must be broken up. This means economy and a great saving of vital energy. Extensor action goes with expansive, flexor with depressive states of mind; hence courage, buoyancy, hope, are favored and handicaps removed. All that is done with great effort causes wide irradiation of tensions to the other half of the body and also sympathetic activities in those not involved; the law of maximal ease and minimal ex- penditure of energy must be always striven for, and the interests of the viscera never lost sight of. This involves educating weak and neglected muscles, and like the next ideal, often shades over by almost imperceptible gradation into the passive movements by the Zander machines- Realizing that certain activities are suffi- ciently or too much emphasized in ordinary life, stress is laid upon those which are complemental to them, so that there is no pretense of taking charge of the totality of motor processes, the intention being principally to supplement deficiencies, to insure men against being warped, distorted, or deformed by their work in life, to compensate specialties and perform more exactly what recreation to some extent aims at.
This wholesome but less inspiring endeavor, which combats one of the greatest evils that under modern civilization threatens man's physical weal, is in some respects as easy and practical as it is useful. The great majority of city bred men, as well as all students, are prone to deleterious effects from too much sitting; and indeed there is anatomical evidence in the structure of the tissues, and especially the blood-vessels of the groins, that, at his best, man is not yet entirely adjusted to the upright position. So a method that straightens knees, hips, spine, and shoulders, or combats the school-desk 60 GYMNASTICS 60 GYMNASTICS attitude, is a most salutary contribution to a great and growing need. In the very act of stretching, and per- haps yawning, for which much is to be said, nature itself suggests such correctives and preventives. To save men from being victims of their occupations is often to add a better and larger half to their motor development. The danger of the system, which now best represents this ideal, is inflexibility and overscholastic treatment. It needs a great range of individual variations if it would do more than increase circulation, respiration, and health, or the normal functions of internal organs and fundamental physiological activities. To clothe the frame with honest muscles that are faithful servants of the will adds not only strength, more active habits and efficiency, but health; and in its material installa- tion this system is financially economic. Personal faults and shortcomings are constantly pointed out where this work is best represented, and it has a distinct advantage in inciting an acquaintance Avith physiology and invit- ing the larger fields of medical knowledge.
D. The fourth gymnastic aim is symmetry and cor- rect proportions. Anthropometry an4 average girths and dimensions, strength, etc., of the parts of the body are first charted in percentile grades; and each individual is referred to the apparatus and exercises best fitted to correct weaknesses and subnormalities. The norms here followed are not the canons of Greek art, but those established by the measurement of the largest numbers properly grouped by age, weight, height, etc. Young men are found to differ very widely. Some can lift 1,000 pounds, and some not 100; some can lift their weight between twenty and forty times, and some not once; some are most deficient in legs, others in shoul- ders, arms, backs, chests. By photography, tape, and 61 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE scales, each is interested in his own bodily condition and incited to overcome his greatest defects; and those best endowed by nature to attain ideal dimensions and make new records are encouraged along these lines. Thus this ideal is also largely though not exclusively remedial.
This system can arouse youth to the greatest pitch of zest in watching their own rapidly multiplying curves of growth in dimensions and capacities, in plotting curves that record their own increment in girths, lifts, and other tests, and in observing the effects of sleep, food, correct and incorrect living upon a system so ex- quisitely responsive to all these influences as are the mus- cles. To learn to know and grade excellence and defect, to be known for the list of things one can do and to have a record, or to realize what w^e lack of powder to break best records, even to know that we are strengthening some point where heredity has left us with some short- age and perhaps danger, the realization of all this may bring the first real and deep feeling for growth that may become a passion later in things of the soul. Growth always has its selfish aspects, and to be constantly pass- ing our own examination in this respect is a new and perhaps sometimes too self-conscious endeavor of our young college barbarians; but it is on the whole a healthful regulative, and this form of the struggle to- ward perfection and escape from the handicap of birth will later move upward to the intellectual and moral plane. To kindle a sense of physical beauty of form in every part, such as a sculptor has, may be to start youth on the lowest round of the Platonic ladder that leads up to the vision of ideal beauty of soul, if his ideal be not excess of brawn, or mere brute strength, but the true proportion represented by the classic or mean temperance balanced like justice between all ex- C2 GYMNASTICS tremes. Hard, patient, regular work, with the right dosage for this self -cultural end, has thus at the same time a unique moral effect.
The dangers of this system are also obvious. Na- ture's intent can not be too far thwarted; and as in mental training the question is always pertinent, so here we may ask whether it be not best in all cases to some extent, and in some cases almost exclusively, to develop in the direction in which we most excel, to emphasize physical individuality and even idiosyncrasy, rather than to strive for monotonous uniformity. Weaknesses and parts that lag behind are the most easily overworked to the point of reaction and perhaps permanent injury. Again, work for curative purposes lacks the exuberance of free sports: it is not inspiring to make up areas; and therapeutic exercises imposed like a sentence for the shortcomings of our forebears bring a whiff of the atmosphere of the hospital, if not of the prison, into the gymnasium.
These four ideals, while so closely interrelated, are as yet far from harmonized. Swedish, Turner, Sargent, and American systems are each, most unfortunately, still too blind to the others' merits and too conscious of the others' shortcomings. To some extent they are pre- vented from getting together by narrow devotion to a single cult, aided sometimes by a pecuniary interest in the sale of their own apparatus and books or in the train- ing of teachers according to one set of rubrics. The real elephant is neither a fan, a rope, a tree nor a log, as the blind men in the fable contended, each thinking the part he had touched to be the whole. This inability of leaders to combine causes uncertainty and lack of confidence in, and of enthusiastic support for, any system on the part of the public. Even the radically different 63 YOUTH: ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE needs of the sexes have failed of recognition from the same partizanship. All together represent only a frac- tion of the nature and needs of youth. The world now demands what this country has never had, a man who, knowing the human body, gymnastic history, and the various great athletic traditions of the past, shall study anew the whole motor field, as a few great leaders early in the last century tried to do; who shall gather and cor- relate the literature and experiences of the past and pres- ent with a deep sense of responsibility to the future; who shall examine martial training with all the in- spirations, warnings, and new demands; and who shall know how to revive the inspiration of the past animated by the same spirit as the Turners, who were almost in- flamed by referring back to the hardy life of the early Teutons and trying to reproduce its best features; who shall catch the spirit of, and make due connections with, popular sports past and present, study both industry and education to compensate their debilitating effects, and be himself animated by a great ethical and human- istic hope and faith in a better future. Such a man, if he ever walks the earth, will be the idol of youth, will know their physical secrets, will come almost as a savior