Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene

by G. Stanley Hall

II.—THE MUSCLES AND MOTOR POWERS IN GENERAL

Muscles as organs of the will, of character, and even of thought—The muscular virtues—Fundamental and accessory muscles and functions—The development of the mind and of the upright position—Small muscles as organs of thought—School lays too much stress upon these—Chorea—Vast numbers of automatic movements in children—Great variety of spontaneous activities—Poise, control, and spurtiness—Pen and tongue wagging—Sedentary school life vs. free out-of-door activities—Modern decay of muscles, especially in girls—Plasticity of motor habits at puberty

III.—INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

Trade classes and schools, their importance in the international market—Our dangers and the superiority of German workmen—The effects of a tariff—Description of schools between the kindergarten and the industrial school—Equal salaries for teachers in France—Dangers from machinery—The advantages of life on the old New England farm—Its resemblance to the education we now give negroes and Indians—Its advantage for all-sided muscular development

IV.—MANUAL TRAINING AND SLOYD.

History of the movement—Its philosophy—The value of hand training in the development of the brain and its significance in the making of man—A grammar of our many industries hard—The best we do can reach but few—Very great defects in manual training methods which do not base on science and make nothing salable—The Leipzig system—Sloyd is hypermethodic—These crude peasant industries can never satisfy educational needs—The gospel of work; William Morris and the arts and crafts movement—Its spirit desirable—The magic effects of a brief period of intense work—The natural development of the drawing instinct in the child

V.—GYMNASTICS

The story of Jahn and the Turners—The enthusiasm which this movement 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 physical culture—Ling's orthogenic scheme of economic postures and movements and correcting defects—The ideal of symmetry and prescribing 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

VI.—PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES

The view of Groos partial, and a better explanation of play proposed as rehearsing ancestral activities—The glory of Greek physical training, its ideals and results—The first spontaneous movements of infancy as keys to the past—Necessity of developing basal powers before those that are later and peculiar to the individual—Plays that interest due to their antiquity—Play with dolls—Play distinguished by age—Play preferences of children and their reasons—The profound significance of rhythm—The value of dancing and also its significance, history, and the desirability of reintroducing it—Fighting—Boxing—Wrestling—Bushido—Foot-ball—Military ideals—Showing off—Cold baths—Hill climbing—The playground movement—The psychology of play—Its relation to work