EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY

Two decades ago physical education was not an integral part of the
educational program of our American colleges. Up to that date it was given
time in the school activities rather grudgingly. It was the best that
education could offer, to meet the growing demand for some type of hygienic
training.

The progress of physical education was suffering a twoeway block. Educators
were frowning upon a system which lacked a welle-erganized body of thought to
support it. The men and women who were leading the cause of Heian) education
had received their professional training in special physical training normal
schools, outside of the life and atmosphere of general education. Consequently
they were partially ignorant of the general educational tendencies.

The earlier system was primarily structurally minded and thought only in terms
of anatomy and muscular physique. The whole plan was lost in a single groove, -
that of atrus tural vigilance and care of the physical body, with no thought of
functional relationship to education in general.

The main function of education is to train the human mechanism toward
efficiency as an instrument of self-expression, with reference to the various
opportunities and responsibilities of life. All agencies of education should
aim at these common ends.

One contiary of American pioneer work in physical education showed the place
of motor activity in the sehool curriculum, and, despite the incompleteness of
the plan, kept the idea alive until educators ena present a program which was
physiologically and psychologically sound and pedagogically acceptable. The
new type of physical education maintains an organic relationship with the /
educational program. It stands foursquare as a neuromuscular program to aid
education not only in rounding out the physical, mental, social, and ethical

being in its care during the four years of college life, but in sending the