college course; nor has it everywhere become an abridged microscopic study of structure and function in the laboratory, as embodied in the new college or university course. It consists rather of a thoro survey of the trees, flowers, insects, birds, and other animals of this country, beginning with those of the immediate vicinity. Whether under the name of nature-study or biology, the attempt is made to delineate in general terms the habitat, habits, and function of each common plant and animal in the general economy of nature. The object of this method of teaching is to place the growing mind en rapport with its environment, to make everything about it significant. A plant or insect may be noxious or beneficial to man, may be of commercial, practical, or aesthetic value. Let the child be taught not simply to relate everything to himself, but to all other things about him; teach him the function of each. It is a well-known principle that success in a commercial enterprise at each succeeding stage of development is dependent upon the most perfect realization of inherent values, and upon utilization of all the natural advantages of location, by adaptation of methods which shall develop these values. The same principle applies to life in general. The man who sees everything in sight and sees with the right perspective does not require a rich uncle to give him a "pull;" he meets the conditions next to him, makes his own place, and rises from place to place. The child who is trained to look with a clear eye into the values of the natural world about him is the father of such a man. For this reason in part, at least, the majority of leaders in the world of business and letters are country-bred. The country boy grows up to work with his hands, to reason from cause to effect, to forecast results; he is both utilitarian and idealist, executive and thinker. Such men are in demand. The great question of the day is how to grow more of them. If the knowledge of practical matters and things in the environment of the country boy mean so much to his development, how much more valuable should an intimate knowledge of himself prove to him. Games, sports, and manual labor during youth and adolescence are responsible almost exclusively for the staying power and physical courage of these leaders of men and movements. But only a few are developed in this school of nature, fewer by our "hit and miss" method of applying gymnastic training. Why not give the child as much interest in his own organism as in that of the frog, the angleworm, or the clam, and secure this interest by those methods which are approved by the exponents of nature-study? Why not have him study the animal called boy, in action, in evolution, as we have him study the caterpillar and butterfly? It might prove an incentive to development out of the horny chrysalis of dirty hands, tangled hair, torn trousers, and general air of defiance or indifference to the influence of the character machine which is termed education. The scope of school hygiene in the main is limited to those agencies which make for the health of children in masses, to the provision of proper environ ment in the schoolroom. Personal hygiene is left to be applied mainly to adults, and to be studied by adults. But the period of life which is most plastic, the period when muscles and nerves are grown, when what is termed vitality, reserve force, constitutional strength, etc., is principally determined, is naturally the period when the laws of health should be taught most effectively and inforced most rigidly, for the result is the forming of permanent and life habits. And how to keep it in order, should be made the most interesting study taught during childhood. On the contrary the average child knows more about the electric car, steam engine, automobile, telegraph, telephone, or almost any intricate but common modern invention than about his own body; most about the manufacture of cotton goods, cutlery, machinery, etc., thru books, drawings, illustrated lectures, and systematized visits to factories than he does about the manufacture of various food products into muscle, nerve, and vital energy; more about the physics and chemistry of various industries than the laboratory of his own body; more about photography, art, and aesthetics in general than about the laws of development by which perfect symmetry, the delight and inspiration of the artist, is attained. In brief, he has been furnished with that intellectual equipment which has immediate commercial value, and which prepares for the ordinary social amenities; according to common acceptance, "he fills the bill," "knows the ropes," "is up-to-date," etc. But he may not be an original thinker nor have the native form of character or of body to win in the long run of life, he has been cast in a mold, rather than he has hewn out his own character from the rough; he has been made initiative rather than creative in his development; he has cultivation but not culture; civility, but not the capacity for strong friendships; gentlemanliness, but not virility; he makes a fair follower, but never a great leader. General debility and indecision of character are close akin. The best cure for both is hard muscular work-football, wrestling, running, mountainclimbing, sawing wood, shoveling coal, anything vigorous, for the demand is put upon the brain for the exercise of will power as well as upon the storage tissue for kinetic energy. There is but one cure for weakness, nervous or muscular, and that is normal physical activity. To the physical director it has been given to strengthen the bodies of our children; to him also it should be given to teach physiology, to teach what their bodies are, how they grow, and why certain exercises and habits of life are wholesome. This is essential to both physiology and physical education from the point of view of securing interest in both, for by the correlation of the two each takes on new life and value. Anyone who has taught botany to children will agree that it would be poor policy for the teacher to turn over the out-of-door excursions and practical observation of flowers and plants to some one else and to retain only the study of classification. It is equally inane for the teacher to let the physical director have all the interesting laboratory work on the children's bodies and to retain the teaching of theoretical physiology. It is a pedagogical waste to divorce the two when each doubles the interest in the other. It is a simpler matter to become convinced that the physical director is inherently best adapted to teach school physiology than it is to outline the scope and method of the teaching, and to plan such reorganization in the teaching-force as will make this practicable. In most city schools where physical training is carried on, the physical director trains the teachers in the exercises to be given by teaching the classes in their presence. He should also instruct the teachers in the best methods of presenting physiology to the children in connection with their physical exercise. Illustrations should be taken from the daily happenings connected with their gymnastics and athletics. Physical training can become the instrument for making theoretical teaching of school physiology of practical value for school life. 1. By a change in the supervision of the teaching of physiology, by changing the responsibility for the teaching of the subject from the many individual teachers and placing it on the physical director. 2. By making the teaching of physiology concrete and personal; by teaching not the physiology of the human body, but of the child's own body. 3. By teaching both functions (physiology proper) and the results attained by normal function in growth and development, that is to say, by laying the emphasis on the physiology of growth. 4. By teaching the relation of sleep, wholesome food, regular habits, and normal muscular activity to perfect development by combining the study of personal hygiene with that of physiology; by giving both the motive for living in a wholesome way, and the means for personal attainment of health and vigor, at one and the same time, and thus securing a permanent interest in health as something desirable. If any discussion of the foregoing statements is needed, let me say further under the first heading, that teachers, as well as physical directors soon find that the thing which gives most influence over the life of the child is immediate personal suggestion and help. This may take the form of advice to the strong as to winning athletic ability, or to the weak as to the correction of defects in development; the result is the same, you are now in a position to teach that child physiology and hygiene, because a bond of sympathy with the teacher is established, because the child has found a use for the information given; you are in a position to maintain respect when you restrain from excessive specialization in games or athletics not adapted to the age of the boy or girl, and from forms of gymnastics also ill-adapted to a given nascent period. Under the second heading, it may be well to recall that the interest in growth and development is universal among children. They look forward anxiously to becoming men and women; long to be actually grown up. The little girl has spells of strutting about the halls of her home, the lawns, and the streets with one of her mother's old dresses trailing along behind; the boy apes his father's ways in a manner equally self-important; the girl early shows her taste for the graceful and beautiful in form and color, the boy his admiration for bigness, symmetry, and strength. This interest in personal development can and should be turned to a good account. The periodic physical examination of children stimulates and increases this natural interest, if copies of the measurements are given to them to take home; it also stimulates teachers to observe physical condition and defects. Only a few vital measurements should be taken, but the examination should occur at least twice a year. It tends to promote emulation in physical development and strength, which in my judgment is much more wholesome than rivalry for percentages in class grades. It tends to call the attention of teachers of physiology to the whole subject of growth and development, and hence to the periods when overpressure thru school work is especially dangerous-namely the period of the second dentition and that of pubescence. The third and last statement, with reference to the combination of the study of personal hygiene with that of physiology is not new in itself, but a change of method or of emphasis is much needed, one which cannot be secured by the simple statement of it. There is involved in it the whole revision of the point of view of the teacher by his or her study of the practical and essential in physiology and hygiene rather than the theoretical. The point of view is perhaps best attained by the combined study of such a physiology and hygiene as Hough and Sedgwick's The Human Mechanism, and Tyler's new book on Growth and Education. The correct purpose of the teaching of elementary physiology has not been better stated than in the introduction to Hough and Sedgwick's book: Avoiding that form of physiology which looks chiefly at the organs and overlooks the organism, we have constantly kept in mind the body as a whole, in order that physiology may become the interpreter of the common phenomena of daily life, and find in hygiene and sanitation its natural application to conduct. We believe with Matthew Arnold that "conduct is three-fourths of life," and that this is no less true of the physical than of the moral and the intellectual life. We therefore make no apology for fixing upon this as the keynote of this work, and the right conduct of the physical life as the principal aim and end of all elementary teaching of physiology, hygiene, and sanitation. Because of the presence of a few who will be inclined to doubt the advisability of giving over the teaching of physiology and hygiene to the supervision of the physical director, as outlined in this paper, it is a source of regret that time does not suffice for the discussion of the great breadth of this field and function. Let me quote simply a few sentences from a recent paper entitled, "The Physical Director as a Hygienist." The study of all studies for the physical director is vitality, racial and individual. The modern tendency to congestion of population in our cities means racial degeneracy. This is proven by all comparative statistics of crime and disease for the city and country. It is clearly evident of statistics of human development in this country, in England, and in Europe. The physical director stands almost alone in his attempt to check this racial degeneracy. The sooner we swing away from the conception of the director as a leader of gymnastics or a director of athletics and grasp the ideal of him or her as a hygienist and the right-hand man of the practitioner of preventive medicine, the sooner will our work take on real power and significance. Our business is not to make gymnasts and athletes, Published by The American Gymnasium Co., Boston, Mass. but to make men and women, to give them reserve force and staying-power for their life work. Physical education as a science is a department of hygiene. It is not an end in itself but a means to health and vigor. There is no branch of hygiene with which we are not concerned, no preventive agency which is not our function to use. THE ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF ATHLETICS CLARK W. HETHERINGTON, PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND ATHLETICS, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, COLUMBIA, MO. There is no more serious problem before educators than that of athletics. Articles written on the subject, tho numerous, are fragmentary in character, and give little insight into the complexity of the problem. Complete consideration would go rather exhaustively into three topics, viz.: (1) The nature, functions, and values of athletics; (11) The evils of athletics and their evolution and cause; and (III) The solution thru organization and administration. Hence, we propose to sketch briefly the three topics above, in order to place the questions involved in perspective. I. THE NATURE, FUNCTIONS, AND VALUE OF ATHLETICS There are two and only two classes of athletics: amateur and professional. The first is the flower of one of the most fundamental of animal and human instincts-play; it is the product of the play impulse, with social rivalry added. The second class grows out of an entirely different instinct, the instinct in human nature that creates an interest in spectacular contests, the willingness on the part of some to give favors for the satisfaction of this interest, and the willingness on the part of others to serve as a spectacle-maker and receive the favors. A sharp distinction exists between the motives in the play of boys in their early teens and the motives of professional baseball players, vaudeville acrobats, and prize-fighters. In the later years of youth the lessening gap in power for performance between the youth and the adult professional gives many opportunities for confusion. The contests of the former become interesting to the spectacle-lover. The boy's motives in play are likely to shift. Thru the spectator's desire for amusement and the boy's susceptability to the influence of the spectator, all athletic activities tend to be carried on into exhibitions for the amusement of the public with many unsavory features which often hide the meaning of the boy instincts which create athletic plays. Athletics, then, are created by the play impulse. They are a phase of play, the more strenuous end of play, created by youth's motor-social and self-testing instincts, and play is nature's education. Intellectual power, prolonged infancy, and play all evolved together and are interdependent. During the growth and development of the infant, motor activities are chiefly play activities. But for play there would be no growing up. Thru play nature educates mentally and socially. Education, then, comes largely thru discipline in action, experiment, and experience. In athletics, boys learn their own powers and |