DISCUSSION E. G. LANCASTER, professor of psychology and pedagogy, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colo.-I do not agree with the speaker as to the definition of the adolescent period. It is not merely the high-school age, but begins during the last two years of grammar grade and continues thru college life. It is the period of growth in which the child develops out of the stage of primitive man into the modern civilized man. This growth means, first, development in size; second, differentiation. The tadpole which is kept in the dark will grow to be a large tadpole of the size of the frog, but will never develop into a frog. There are men and women tadpoles, morally and intellectually undifferentiated. The adolescent period ends, for the girl, at about the age of twenty-five; for the boy, at twenty-eight. The hope of the race depends on the lengthening of the adolescent period, say, until forty. As to the question of the fitness of high-school studies to adolescents, the speaker has implied that they do and that they do not fit, and agree with him. Rather than prepare a high-school course of study, I recommend to the audience the paper by President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University, in the School Review for September. Adolescensce, as the speaker said, is the time of ideals. We should use those ideals for discipline, and should discipline only thru ideals. Practical considerations are not so important in the high school. The average age of the inventor is thirty-three. The old psychology laid down the three fundamental principles of mind-knowledge, feeling, will. This is not the order of the unfolding of the human mind. Feeling comes first. Nothing is done without enthusiasm. In the properly trained child the emotions are not very prominent until adolescense, and then they come in a flood. We must take account of this emotional life. Any subject that lays hold of the emotional life is a good subject. Is it Latin, geometry, physics? This depends on the teacher, on the way in which the subject is taught. We need teachers who understand adolescent psychology. The dull teacher, without enthusiasm, is unfit for adolescents. DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION SECRETARY'S MINUTES FIRST SESSION.-WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 1902 The meeting was called to order in the Exposition Auditorium at 2:30 P. M. by the president, Dr. William O. Krohn, of Chicago. After an overture by the Danz Orchestra, Director D. H. Painter conducted a class in tactics, uniform rank, Adams School. The president's address followed, on "Educative' Physical Education." Dr. Krohn thanked the large audience that had assembled for their interest in this branch of education, and said: "Not only is this the largest session this department has ever had at any annual association, but the largest attendance any department has ever had." Six thousand people were present at the meeting. The remainder of the afternoon was devoted to the exhibition work of the Minneapolis public schools, given by pupils and teachers under the direction of Mrs. Louise Preece, director of physical training, city schools, Minneapolis, Minn. The program was as follows: Holmes School: Director, Agnes L. Robinson. Harrison School: Director, Agnes M. Price. Teachers' Class: Director, Mrs. Louise Preece. The president appointed the following Committee on Nominations: Mrs. Louise Preece, Minneapolis, Minn. SECOND SESSION.-THURSDAY, JULY 10 The meeting was called to order at 2: 30 P. M. in the Exposition Auditorium by the president. A violin solo was given by Miss Verna Golden, of Minneapolis. A paper on "Requirements for Physical Education in our Public Schools was read by Dr. Henry Hartung, member of the board of education of Chicago, and delegate from the North American Turner Bund. After another solo by Miss Golden, discussions were led by Dr. E. A. Lyttle, state inspector of New York, and by Miss Jean L. Gowdy, principal of the Washington School, Minneapolis, Minn. Mr. Henry Suder, director of physical training, Chicago public schools, then gave an exhibition on his new combination apparatus to be used in schoolrooms. The Committee on Nominations reported the following officers for the ensuing year: President-Dr. William O. Krohn, Chicago. First Vice-President - Baroness Rose Posse, Boston, Mass. Second Vice-President-Mabel L. Pray, Toledo, O. Secretary- Alta Wiggins, Buffalo, N. Y. The report of the Nominating Committee was accepted without dissent, and the nominees declared elected. The department then adjourned. MABEL L. PRAY, Secretary. PAPERS AND DISCUSSIONS PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS—“ EDUCATIVE" PHYSICAL EDUCATION WILLIAM O. KROHN, CHICAGO, ILL. It is not my purpose in this brief address to discuss the merits of the various methods or schools of physical education, but it is my purpose to call attention to the one quality that must characterize all methods of physical education in order that they may be worthy of a place in our schools, and that all physical exercises under the direction of the special teacher may be educative in character. In the discussion of any educational topic we find ourselves compelled to consider at least three factors: (1) The object and aim of education; (2) the methods by which this aim can be attained; (3) the raw material the child whom we are seeking to develop into the product which we have in mind as the object of our school work. I believe that most that passes for physical education is of such nature as to be a real and vitalizing force in the development of the child; the development of his brain, of his mind, of his muscles. But I also recognize that there is much that is called physical education that is only indifferently educative, in fact is of little positive value in promoting the child's development. It is also true, tho happily in a less degree, that there are some exercises given at the direction of a few teachers of physical training that are not only uneducative, but are deleterious to the child's growth and the unfolding of his powers of mind and body. The object and aim of all education, especially as applied to our American school system, is to develop the best type of citizen possible— best physically, best mentally, best morally. I say best physically first because without a sound body it is impossible to have the highest type of intellectual development, and without these two-the sound mind and sound body-it is absolutely impossible to have the best quality of moral and ethical development. Some teachers are still laboring under the delusion that the function of the teacher is to impart instruction, as if knowledge could be given to the child in the form of ready-made packages-so much instruction each day which the child will absorb and assimilate. The true idea, as you all recognize, is that education, from the very derivation of the term "educe," means to lead out of or draw from the child certain of the latent powers and ideas into expression and activity. Knowledge must be "educed" by the child's self-activity if we would have education that is at all worthy of the name. Modern method in education is insisting on the necessity of self-activity on the part of the child as essential to his development. This self-activity in its most decided and satisfactory evidences is found in actual self-expression thru the child's motor ability. Just here is where the teacher in the department of physical education can accomplish the most for the child under his care and tutelage in making possible the largest number of definite lines of expression so that his whole physical being will respond quickly, correctly, and gracefully withal, to the thoughts and ideas arising within his rapidly developing brain. There is no fundamental principle more vital than this, which is being more and more recognized by us all, namely: That the child grows by periods, by epochs, by stages. All capacities of the mind are not unfolded at the same time, but there is a growth period for each of the faculties, a period in which each unfolds with rapidity and makes its great lunges of growth. Thus we know that the first mental unfoldings are a child's sensation capacities. The first experiences of the child are sense experiences, and the first days, months, and early years of his child life are concerned chiefly in gathering a large fund of sense experiences that may be later elaborated into memory and thought experiences. All of the raw material of thought must come thru his senses, and it is a wise dispensation that makes it possible for him to gain a whole mass of raw material thru his early sense experiences. We know that the second faculty that the child's mind unfolds is memory; the third, imagination; the fourth, judgment and the power of comparison; curiosity comes next; and last of all, reasoning. We will find these same periods of growth even more marked when we come to consider the child's physical being. We know that all parts of the body do not grow at the same time, but growth focuses and centers itself upon one set of organs for a time, and then upon another set, and so on. Each group of muscles has its period of most rapid growth. For a time, as we know, the child grows in girth of chest, of head, length of arm, and length of body, a regular order of growth being established; and we know that the time to educate any of these groups of muscles is at the time of most rapid growth. The muscles of the upper arm and shoulder are capable of being educated months before the smaller muscles of the fingers. We must fit and adapt our exercises to this law of growth periods that nature has written in the very constitution of the child. All children grow in the same order, tho they do not all grow at the same rate. Thus, one child at twelve may be much farther advanced physically, as we all recognize, than another child of the same age or a child a year older. Nourishment, his previous physical education, may have occasioned lunges of growth that the less fortunate pupil, tho he be older, may not have experienced. Just here we find a better basis for the classification of our pupils with reference to class work in physical education than age or grade. Because certain groups of pupils happen to be reading in the same reader, or working the same problems in arithmetic, or because a certain group of pupils happen to be of the same age, does not give us warrant for putting them thru the same physical training, for the reason that of a given number of pupils of the same age, or of the same school grade, many will be much farther advanced in their physical education than others. A better basis of classification than age or grade is weight. A still better basis of classification would be weight and height. I have seen in the public schools of one of our cities a class of boys of the same grade taking their lesson in physical education. The difference in weight between the lightest and heaviest boy taking the same routine of exercises was forty pounds. The difference in height between the shortest and the tallest boy was thirteen inches. If the exercises were adapted to the heaviest boys in the class, they were certainly not adapted to the lightest; if they were adapted to the tallest boy in the class, they were certainly ill-adapted to the shortest boy. Roughly speaking, the difference in physical development, as represented by the two extremes in this particular class that I have in mind, was at least two and one-half years, the best-developed boy in the class being at least two years and a half farther along in his physical development than the leastdeveloped boy. If the exercises of this particular lesson that I have in mind were educative for the average child in the class, they were certainly not educative for the best-developed or least-developed boy. There are three characteristics that should mark each lesson in physical training First, quickness; second, grace; third, precision. If any fact has been established as a result of modern researches in physiological psychology more plainly than any other fact, it is that of the reciprocal relation of mind and body. The mind acts upon the body, and the body acts upon the mind. We know that any change in the quantity or quality of blood supply acts directly upon the brain cells, and thus influences. our entire range of mental activities. We know that certain drugs, such as phenacetine, accelerate those activities, while other drugs, as the bromides, inhibit these activities. On the other hand, while we all admit that body acts upon mind, we must also recognize the fact that mind acts upon body, that every thought we think, every emotion we feel, registers itself upon the organism; that there is a different rate of heart-beat, a different kind of pulsation, during the solving of a mathematical problem from that accompanying the reading of a poem; that intellectual activity directly affects the blood supply; that grief, melancholia, and other emotional states affect many of the secretions. It is just as true that anxiety, grief, melancholia, or any state of mental depression, causes loss of appetite, retarding the flow of the secretions, as it is that the improper action of the digestive organs may cause melancholia. The relation between |