After observing tumbling stunts, I felt that each stunt was a little more
difficult than the other and that a table of difficulty could be worked out.
However without some statistical procedure, I was unable to prove or find the
correct grading of stunts as to their difficulty. A few studies have been made of
the difficulty of stunts, based chiefly on observation and judgment. McClow has
reported on the difficulty of « great number: of stunts and rated the range of
difficulty from 1 to 15. The Cotteral twins have done a fine piece of work in
rating difficulty and appear to be on the right track, but they have limited
their research to the performance of girls and have ohly classified the stunts
up to the handwalk. They are also a little indefinite in their nomenclature.
Probably everyone feels that he could rate the difficulty of stunts, but will
find himself considerably inadequate when confronted with the task. A table of
difficulty will not be found absolutely satisfactory because of physiological
reasons (some boys being supple and capable of doing a certain type of stunts)
however, it is a tool that he well worth usinge

Teachers of physical education, if they are to continue in existence, must be
able to prove that the material for physical education is graded, and that it ad-
vances in natural steps. A large number of administrators come from the time be-
fore the age of our informal education, and their general attitude is that all boys
can carry on the same activities: that is, the Sixth grade boy and the high school
boy are capable of the same difficulty of performancee If we are to stop having
the physical education classes made a dumping ground where all boys are placed
regardless of their relative age and skill, we must be able to prove to the admin-
istrator that the work in the gymnasium has natural steps just as there are levels
of advancement in arithmetic, English, or history. Most of us know that these
natural steps exist in physical education; and while we have been accused of teach~
ing the same thing to the same boy, day after day, year after year, we are con-
stantly teaching on a higher level. For instance, an instructor developing the
game of football to a freshman class would teach entirely different material to a
senior class; however this fact would be difficult to proves The day is rapidly
approaching when we will be forced to go to the administrator and prove to him that
we have a graded scientific program built on the basis of difficulty. Our problem
is largely to organize these natural stepse The large mass of material and activi-
ties present an arduous task to formulate the steps of difficulty as they are
shown in arithmetic problense A boy may throw a baseball so far this month, and

Qe