The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 41, March, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 41, March, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
where a good deal of gymnastic enthusiasm is created among female
pupils, and it may be, after all, that the deficiency lies thus far in
the teachers.
Experience is already showing that the advantages of school-gymnasiums
go deeper than was at first supposed. It is not to be the whole object
of American education to create scholars or idealists, but to produce
persons of a solid strength,--persons who, to use the most expressive
Western phrase that ever was coined into five monosyllables, "will do to
tie to"; whereas to most of us it would be absurd to tie anything but
the Scriptural millstone. In the military school of Brienne, the only
report appended to the name of the little Napoleon Bonaparte was "Very
healthy"; and it is precisely this class of boys for whom there is least
place in a purely intellectual institution. A child of immense animal
activity and unlimited observing faculties, personally acquainted with
every man, child, horse, dog, in the township,--intimate in the families
of oriole and grasshopper, pickerel and turtle,--quick of hand and
eye,--in short, born for practical leadership and victory,--such a boy
finds no provision for him in most of our seminaries, and must, by his
constitution, be either truant or torment. The theory of the institution
ignores such aptitudes as his, and recognizes no merits save those of
some small sedentary linguist or mathematician,--a blessing to his
teacher, but an object of watchful anxiety to the family physician, and
whose career was endangering not only his health, but his humility.
Introduce now some athletic exercises as a regular part of the
school-drill, instantly the rogue finds his legitimate sphere, and leads
the class; he is no longer an outcast, no longer has to look beyond the
school for companions and appreciation; while, on the other hand, the
youthful pedant, no longer monopolizing superiority, is brought down to
a proper level. Presently comes along some finer fellow than either, who
cultivates all his faculties, and is equally good at spring-board and
black-board; and straightway, since every child wishes to be a Crichton,
the whole school tries for the combination of merits, and the grade of
the juvenile community is perceptibly raised.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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