Dre Allen

Dre Elbel

Dre Allen.

woe

John Dewey makes the statement: "The idea that the necd
for play can be suppressed is absolutely fallacious, and the
Puritanic tradition which disallows the need has entailed an
enormous crop of evils. If education does not afford opportunity
for wholesome recreation and training, capacity for seeking and
finding it, the suppressed instincts find all sorts of illicit
outlets, sometimes overt, sometimes confined to indulgence and
imagination."

In respect to active play, the Discipline of the Methodist
Episcopal Church published in 1792 makes the following statement:
"We shall therefore inflexibly insist on their rising early in the
morninge e »« this is of vast importance both to body and minde e e«
On the same principle we prohibit play in the strongest termSe e« e
The student shall be indulged with nothing which the world calls
playe Let this rule be observed with the strictest nicety, for
those who play when they are young will play when they are old."

Well, Ed, of course times have changed since then, and so
has the reaction toward playe It is true that our pioneers did
feel that if you played when you were young you would play when you
were old, and play was a rather sinful extravegance of valuable
timc. But your suggestion is to teach them to play when they are
young and they will rcalize its values and play when they grow upe
And that brings us to the next point = a gymnasium and playground
for every school. Would I be hurting anybody's feelings by saying
that all progressive schools have this arrangement?

I imagine that if Comenius, the old Moravian educator,
could hear us he would get a laugh out of that one. You know that
back in the 17th ecentury he suggested a playground around each
school, Naturally, it goes without saying that proper indoor and
outdoor space is essential to the proper physical education prog-
ram, The thoughtful parent and progressive school board now re=
cognize these facts and are insisting upon adequate facilitics.
The mere fact that we have great open spaces is not enoughe A
recent survey showed that many Kansas schools do not have play-
grounds, and as to indoor space, it is a necessity not only for
housing basketball games and the spectators but for active use of
the studynt body and the community at large.e

Some one has said that the real sports promoters of America
are the boards of education of our cities. They have built the
gynmasia in which these sports are developede Now, to the third
point - edusation for leisure. We hear that over and over nowadayso
The biological theory of play is that the animals exercized and
used certain groups of muscles in their activity so that they
could live, The eat played with its tail or a bounding ball so
that it would more successfully catch the illusive mouse. Reduced
to terms of childrons' activities, the child plays games so that
its reactions and responses will be sharpened to avoid injury from
the modern automobiles.