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.

    45/66 page 41
    fore. The Germans were, of course, interested in this matter and assisted its progress. During this period of budding life there arrived in the country two Swedish gymnasts, Posse and Enebuske. They immediately threw themselves into the fight. They worked with all their might to convince Americans that the system of Swedish gymnastics was the one which should be adopted in this country. Nothing could have been more suitable to stir the Germans into life. It behooved them now not only to help in the good work of introducing physical training into the schools, but to prevent if pos- sible the introduction of a sham, a system, which, many years before, had been proven false in Germany, which had unceremoniously been killed by Du Bois Reymond and Virchow, but which now rose as a ghost from times past. And thus we had, at all the meetings of gym- nastic teachers, inevitable discussions regarding the merits and demerits of the respective systems. These discussions, of course, led to no result. The Americans listened to them, took part in them, observed the prac- tical demonstrations. A few of them became converts to one system or the other. The great majority, how- ever, considered that neither party was in possession of the whole truth, and that a system for America could be founded by borrowing ideas and gymnastic forms from both and modeling them into a whole, held together by new ideas born of the study of the physiological and psychical development of the child. A conference of physical directors was held under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A. in 1891. A report of this was published in the “Physical Education,” a monthly edited by Dr. Luther Gulick. In this report acknowledgment was made to both the Swedish and the German system. Mr. Wm. Stecher, in behalf of the organization of German gym-
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3