Why do we teach gymnastics? / by Jakob Bolin.

  • Bolin, Jakob, 1863-1914.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Why do we teach gymnastics? / by Jakob Bolin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    trained; other parts also. But they are never really put to working all together in a hearty all-sided, simul- taneous co-operation with each other. The brain is used to guide the hand, the eye is called in to help, but when is the boy as a whole, with head and arms and legs and trunk, called upon to launch himself as a unit at something,against something, for the purpose of making it yield by the whole force and weight there is in him? | When is the boy encouraged to pit himself against some- thing that is really offering a formidable obstacle to his will? When is he required to do something by which he may come to an understanding of his ability to over- . come difficulties by putting his whole mind and body upon it? Our civilization demands the strictest atten- tion to details. This, I believe, the present school strives admirably to secure. But the present time demands something more than that. Fifteen-dollar-a-week clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen, artisans, people who “fill” their places by attending to the details immediately demanded of them are numerous enough. But the complaint is heard everywhere that ambition to rise, and ability to rise beyond mere drudgery, are rare. We need more than anything else people with enthusiasm for their vocations, with an eye open for their mani- fold relations to everything around them, with ability not only to do the task allotted to them in their little pigeonholes, but ready to widen out, to grasp new op- portunities, to assume greater duties, to do work outside the exact limits for which they are immediately com- pensated, to become leaders. ‘There is always room at the top,” because so few are really willing to work hard to gain the top. Everybody is inclined to think that what is not immediately prescribed as his particular duty should be left for somebody else to do, and the result
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