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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    development. We must catch his nascent periods. The long period in the racial development, when most of life was physical activity of a large kind, hunting, warfare, corresponds to a long period in the ontogeny. The interests arising then must be cared for and guided. If suppressed in their nascent periods, they will disap- pear forever. And these interests are mighty forces to create will of a wholesouled, overpowering kind. We cannot afford to let the growing tendencies die from lack of nutrition. We cannot afford to let the fertile field lie fallow. It must be cultivated. And from it shall grow strong will, fine characters, useful citizens, men in a true sense. To supply the large activity which I thus find neces- sary for character formation I hold to be the true and most important office of sports. Nothing can equal them as agencies for the development of the desire “to be in it,” to take part, to lend a hand. No agency exists, so far as I know, which is so powerful to develop pres- ence of mind and courage, physical courage, in which we are so sadly deficient, and which is a breeder of moral courage and right doing. Last summer some young men were out for a lark. One of them, a nice young fellow, had during the previous winter been thrown much with men not in the habit of weighing their words so very carefully. He used various expletives not allowed in the most select parlors. A forceful “Jack, stop that!’ soon came from one of the others, a college ath- lete. I do not know who was the better man of the two, I do not pit one against the other in Sunday-school book fashion. This athlete may, for all I know, have been in- ferior to “Jack” in many respects. But this I do know, that when the former found that the latter did not be- have in accordance with his ideas of what was proper,
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