a month Scien, alee a satiatuctory amount of practice, he is able to throw it
much farther. These increases are the natural steps, put it is our problem to
show figures bina these stepse We have convinced some administrators that
physical education material is graded, and in the Soldan High School of St. Louis,
all the physical education class sanigunente are made first, and the academic sub-
jects are unde to comply with those assignments.

There are several methods of presenting tumbling stunts to physical education
classes. Probably the most common practice is to divide the class into squads, and
assign a certain stunt or a nunber of stunts to cach mate All members of each
squad do the same stunt, whether the boy is good or bad, fat or lean, tall or
-short, bright or stupid. After they have gone through one stunt the teacher blows
the whistle, and the squads rotate; then they do another stunt at the next mat and
follow that procedure until the class period ends. This limits the range of stunts
that can be taught in a given class period, and is very dangerous to the safety of
certain boyse A clumsy boy of heavy stature finds it very difficult and very un-
safe to do a forward somersault with a run, so when this stunt is presented the
tendency off the teacher is to look in the other direction while a boy of this type
is performinge Probably the best that boy ever does is some sort of a forward roll.
On the other hand the nervy type of boy will try stunts far above his capacity while.
the lazy or timid boy will refuse to do the more difficult stunts, and will earely
ever get past the forward roll stage.

This method of presenting tumbling activities is unscientific and nonprogres-
sive. I knew one men vho worked on the theory that all stunts could be learned if
every boy in the class could learn a nes, so he spent most of his: tumbling
time teaching the boys to do the snap-upe This meant that the gifted boy probably
learned the snap-up in one short period and then spent the rest of the year prac-
ticing it, while the slower boys never learned it and therefore became discouraged.

Another method of presenting stunts is to put a line. of mats crosswise in the
gymnasium, and have the boys come up six or eight at a time, and all do the same
stunt on their mate This is an excellent method to introduce new material or to
correct errors in performance, but it will limit the amount of instruction to a
very small number of stunts. Practically all the criticisms given against the
squad method — applicable to this method alsoe

The gifted boy is held back by either of the two previous methods, and it is
the slow and awkvard boy that sets the pace for the whole classe Either of these
two methods will take the thrill out of tumbling for the gifted boy for he is

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