Starting thus among young adults in the people’s high schools and rifle clubs, the newer gymnastics has made its way into the elementary schools and the _Seminarier_ and thence into the higher schools and the university. In contrast with what one sees in Sweden, the instruction is almost wholly in the hands of civilians, regular members of the teaching staff who give only a portion of their time to this branch; the average number of pupils in a class is only about 30, instead of the 150 or even 200 sometimes led by a single teacher across the Sound; and the rooms provided for exercise are smaller and more numerous—so frequently two for a single school that this may be considered the rule. On the other hand the Danish teacher receives at most a ten-months’ course of special training, in contrast with the two years usually spent at the Stockholm _Centralinstitut_. It is now more than a hundred years since Denmark made gymnastics an essential part of the curriculum of its public schools, antedating Prussia in the step by over a quarter of a century; but her German neighbor, on the other hand, takes precedence in the matter of systematic efforts to foster games among school children. Minister von Gossler’s playground order was issued in 1882, fourteen years before its Danish counterpart, and the German “Central Committee for the Promotion of Games,” formed in Berlin in 1891, was six years old before a corresponding body was organized in Copenhagen. The beginnings of the movement, in each country, reveal the influence of English customs, and the ball games of the English schoolboy were among the first forms introduced. In certain of the higher schools of Denmark, particularly in boarding schools located in the country, open-air games were already firmly established when in 1891 the Copenhagen Playground Association (_Legepladsforening_) first undertook to bring them within the reach of children in public elementary schools (_Folkeskoler_), by opening playgrounds in various sections of the city and organizing the play-life there. This attempt suddenly took on national proportions when Wilhelm Bardenfleth, Minister of Church and School Affairs, on August 31, 1896, sent out his “Circular to all school authorities regarding the introduction and regular use of games for children in the public schools.”[153]