But the school must go even further than this and include in its curriculum physical education of a very definite kind if it is to meet all the needs of the children it is serving. Taking as an example of all mission lands, China, whose system of education antedates by many centuries all our western civilization, let us observe through the eyes of the former physical director of the Shanghai Y. M. C. A. what the real situation is.
Physical training.
Physical training should be dignified by giving it an equal place with the sciences, philosophies, and languages in the curriculum, and the same careful provision of means and trained men to direct it. No educational system is adequate which does not aim at the whole man, which does not recognize the physical basis of intellectual and spiritual efficiency. Professor Tyler of Amherst says, “Brain and muscle are never divorced in the action of healthy higher animals and in healthy men. They should not be divorced in the education of the child.”...
It is clear that physical training, in the largest sense, must play an important part in the making of the “New China.” The questions involved in her uplift are most largely physical questions. The personal, domestic, and public observance of the laws of health and life is a physical question; the combating of that terrible scourge, tuberculosis, is a physical question; the checking of the fearful infant mortality is a physical question; etc....
The progress which has been made in physical training in China must be viewed in the light of the fact that physical exercise for its own sake has had no part in the national life of China for centuries. It has been considered improper for a Chinese gentleman to indulge in it. The popular conception of a Chinese scholar has been that of a man with a great head, emaciated body, and hollow chest, sitting and contemplating the problem of life by thinking dissociated from doing. Until ten years ago athletics were almost unknown. When foreigners were seen playing football the Chinese were greatly puzzled, and wanted to know how much these men were being paid for cutting up such foolish antics, conceiving it as out of the question that any one would work so hard without being well paid for it. All that is rapidly being changed. Physical training is changing China’s conception of a gentleman. The ideal of all-round manhood, well-balanced in its physical, mental, and spiritual aspects, is rapidly gaining ground.[67]
Could all China’s children today be taught this ideal, the task would be far easier than it will be when they have reached adult life.
“The athletic method in Kashmir.”
The story of the Missionary School for Boys in Srinagar, Kashmir, is as thrilling as a novel, and illustrates to a remarkable degree how body, mind, and soul must be trained and disciplined and developed in order to realize the ideal of the Principal, the Rev. C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe, who says, “We are making citizens, of what sort remains to be seen. But we hope without wavering that these citizens will be Christian citizens, for Christ is our ideal.” Some of the difficulties are thus described:
“To teach the three R’s in Kashmir is easy work. The boys are willing to squat over their books and grind away for as many hours a day as nature makes possible. To get an education means sedentary employment cum rupees. And that to the Kashmiri is living.
“But to educate is a very different matter. To make men of a thousand or more boys who care nothing for manliness; among whose ancestors for hundreds of years, chicanery, deceit, and cruelty had been the recognized and honored paths to success, while generosity and honesty had been the mark of a fool; to try to quicken and develop the good in such boys,—boys coming from impure homes, squatting in unclean rows, with bent backs and open mouths—was flatly pronounced folly by many a visitor to Kashmir.”[68]
The story tells how boxing, swimming, rowing, and gymnastics are required of the students as a most necessary and vital part of their education, and how they are trained to be proud of using these accomplishments in helping others. By the time a Brahmin boy,—they are almost all Brahmins in this school,—has saved a child from drowning, rescued a family of despised sweepers from the roof of their flood-swept house, delivered a poor woman from being beaten, and helped clean up the streets and alleys of a city during a cholera epidemic, he has received an education such as no books in the world can give him, and Kashmir is one step nearer to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Building a “great personality.”