Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and HygieneHall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Science
Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene
Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Adolescence; Children -- Health and hygiene; Educational psychology
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 attitude, is a most salutary contribution to a great and
growing need. In the very act of stretching, and perhaps 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 installation 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 with physiology and inviting the larger fields of medical
knowledge.
D. The fourth gymnastic aim is symmetry and correct proportions.
Anthropometry and 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
shoulders, arms, backs, chests. By photography, tape, and 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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