IX Physical Education in the College
Lessons for physical education from the world war
The events of the four years between the summer of 1914 and the winter of 1918 have brought us to a full realization of the real significance of physical education in the training of youth. America and her allies have had very dramatic reasons for regretting their careless indifference to the welfare of childhood and youth in former years. Only yesterday, we were told that the great war would be won by the country that could furnish the last man or fight for the last quarter of an hour. America and her allies looked with a new and fearful concern upon the army of young men who were found physically unfit for military service.
With the danger of war past, there is no lack of evidence that we and our allies will make practical application of this particular lesson. It will be fortunate indeed if the enlightened people of the earth are really permanently awake to the importance of the physical education of their citizens-in-the-making.
Governmental agencies have already started the movement to guarantee to the coming generation more extensive and more scientific physical education. Public and private institutions are joining forces so that the advantages of this extended program of physical education will be enjoyed by the young men and young women in industry and commerce as well as by those in schools and colleges.
It is to be hoped that the American college will do its full share and neglect no reasonable measure whereby the college graduate may be developed into the vigorous and healthy human being that the mentally trained ought to be. It must be admitted that our findings by the military draft boards, as well as other evidences secured through physical examinations, are not such as to make the American college proud of the quality or the extent of physical education which it has given in the past. We must express our keen disappointment at the prevalence of under-development, remediable defects, and unachieved physical and functional possibilities in our college graduates.
Aims of physical education
Physical training is concerned with the achievement and the conservation of human health. It has to do with conditioning the human being for the exigencies of life in peace or in war. Its standards are not set by a degree of health which merely enables the individual to keep out of bed, eat three meals a day, and run no abnormal temperature. Physical training is concerned with developing vigorous, enduring health that is based upon the perfect function, coördination, and integration of every organ of the human body; health that is not found wanting at the military draft; health that meets all its community obligations; health that is not affected by diseases of decay; and health that resists infection and postpones preventable death.
Formulations of aims and scope of physical education in official documents—By Regents of the State of New York
Official statements and information from reliable sources indicate that physical education and hygiene and physical training are regarded by authorities as covering about the same general field. The general plan and syllabus for physical training adopted by the Regents of the University of the State of New York in 1916 interprets physical training as covering “(1) Individual health examinations and personal health instruction (medical inspection); (2) instruction concerning the care of the body and the important facts of hygiene (recitations in hygiene); (3) physical examinations as a health habit, including gymnastics, elementary marching, and organized, supervised play, recreation, and athletics.”
By national committee on physical education
In March of 1918 a National Committee on Physical Education, formed of representatives from twenty or more national organizations, adopted the following resolutions:
I. That a comprehensive, thoroughgoing program of health education and physical education is absolutely needed for all boys and girls of elementary and secondary school age, both rural and urban, in every state in the Union.
II. That legislation, similar in purpose and scope to the provisions and requirements in the laws recently enacted in California, New York State, and New Jersey, is desirable in every state, to provide authorization and support for state-wide programs in the health and physical education field.
III. That the United States Bureau of Education should be empowered by law, and provided with sufficient appropriations, to exert adequate influence and supervision in relation to a nationwide program of instruction in health and physical education.
IV. That it seems most desirable that Congress should give recognition to this vital and neglected phase of education, with a bill and appropriation similar in purpose and scope to the Smith-Hughes Law, to give sanction, leadership, and support to a national program of health and physical education; and to encourage, standardize, and, in part, finance the practical program of constructive work that should be undertaken in every state.
V. That federal recognition, supervision, and support are urgently needed, as the effective means, under the Constitution, to secure that universal training of boys and girls in health and physical fitness which are equally essential to efficiency of all citizens both in peace and in war.
By five national organizations
In December, 1918, five national organizations, assembled in regular annual meeting, adopted resolutions which read in part as follows:
First: That this Society shall make every reasonable effort to influence the Congress of the United States and the legislatures of our various states to enact laws providing for the effective physical education of all children of all ages in our elementary and secondary schools, public, institutional and private, a physical education that will bring these children instruction in hygiene, regular periodic health examinations and a training in the practice of health habits with a full educational emphasis upon play, games, recreation, athletics and physical exercise, and shall further make every possible reasonable effort to influence communities and municipalities to enact laws and pass ordinances providing for community and industrial physical training and recreative activities for all classes and ages of society.
Second: That this Association shall make persistent effort to influence state boards of education, or their equivalent bodies, in all the states of the United States, to make it their effective rule that on or after June, 1922, or some other reasonable date, no applicant may receive a license to teach any subject in any school who does not first present convincing evidence of having covered in creditable manner a satisfactory course in physical education in a reputable training school for teachers.
Third: And that this Association hereby directs and authorizes its president to appoint a committee of three to take such steps as may be necessary to put the above resolutions into active and effective operation, and to coöperate in every practical and substantial way with the National Committee on Physical Education, the division of physical education of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, and any other useful agency that may be in the field for the purpose of securing the proper and sufficient physical education of the boys and girls of to-day, so that they may to-morrow constitute a nation of men and women of normal physical growth, normal physical development and normal functional resource, practicing wise habits of health conservation and possessed of greater consequent vitality, larger endurance, longer lives and more complete happiness—the most precious assets of a nation.
By the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board
In January, 1919, the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board suggested the following organization of a department of hygiene for the purpose of establishing such a department in at least one normal school, college, or university training school for teachers in each state of the Union.
Suggested Organization of a Department of Hygiene
I. Division of Informational Hygiene. (Stressing in each of its
several divisions with due proportion and with appropriate
emphasis, the venereal diseases, their causes, carriers, injuries,
and prevention):
(a) The principles of hygiene. Required of all students at least
twice a week for at least four terms.
(1) General hygiene. (The agents that injure health, the carriers
of disease, the contributory causes of poor health, the
defenses of health, and the sources of health.)
(2) Individual hygiene. (Informational hygiene, the care of the
body and its organs, correction, and repair, preventive
hygiene, constructive hygiene.)
(3) Group hygiene. (Hygiene of the home and the family, school
hygiene, occupational hygiene, community hygiene.)
(4) Intergroup hygiene. (Interfamily, intercommunity, interstate,
and international hygiene.)
(b) Principles of physical training. (Gymnastics, exercise, athletics,
recreation, and play.) Required of all students. To be given at
least twice a week for two terms in the Junior or Senior
Years.
(c) Health examinations—
(1) Medical examination required each half year of every
student. (Making reasonable provisions for a private,
personal, confidential relationship between the examiner
and the student.)
(2) Sanitary surveys and hygienic inspections applied regularly
to all divisions of the institution, their curriculums, buildings,
dormitories, equipment, personal service, and surroundings.
II. Division of Applied Hygiene.
(a) Health conference and consultations.
(1) Every student advised under “c” above (health
examinations) must report to his health examiner within a
reasonable time, as directed, with evidence that he has
followed the advice given, or with a satisfactory explanation
for not having done so.
(2) Must provide student with opportunities for safe,
confidential consultations with competent medical advisors
concerning the intimate problems of sex life as well as those
of hygiene in general.
(b) Physical training.
(1) Gymnastic exercises, recreation, games, athletics, and
competitive sports. Required of all students six hours a
week every term.
(2) Reconstructional and special training and exercise for
students not qualified organically for the regular activities
covered in “1” above. It is assumed that every teacher-
in-training physically able to go to school is entitled to and
should take some form of physical exercise.
III. Division of Research.
(a) Investigations, tests, evaluating measurements, records, and
reports required each term covering progress made under
each division and subdivision of the department, for the
purpose of discovering and developing more effective
educational methods in hygiene.
(b) Provide facilities for the sifting, selection, and investigation of
problems in hygiene that may be submitted to or proposed by
the department of hygiene.
(c) Arrange for frequent lectures on public hygiene and public
health from competent members of municipal, state, and
national departments of health, and from other appropriate
sources.
IV. Personnel requisite for such a department.—Men and
women should be chosen for service in the several divisions of
the Department, who have a sane, well-balanced, and
experienced appreciation of the importance of the whole field of
hygiene as well as of the place and relations of the venereal
diseases.
(1) One director or head of department. Must have satisfactory
scientific training and special experience, fitting him for
supervision, leadership, teaching, research, and
administrative responsibility.
(2) One medical examiner for men and one medical examiner
for women. There should be one examiner for each 500
students. Must be selected with special care because of the
presence of extraordinary opportunities to exercise a
powerful intimate influence upon the mental, moral, and
physical health of the students with whom such examiners
come in contact.
(3) One special teacher of physical training (a “Physical
Director”) for each group of 500 students. There must be a
man for the men and a woman for the women students. The
physical training instructors employed in this department
should be in charge of and should cover satisfactorily all
the directing, training, and coaching carried on in the
department and in the institution in its relation to
athletics and competitive sports. The men and women who
are placed in charge of individual students and groups of
students engaged in the various activities of physical training
(gymnastics, athletics, recreation and play) should be
selected with special reference to their wholesome influence
on young men and young women.
(4) One coördinator (this function may be covered by one of the
personnel covered by “1,” “2” or “3” above). Will serve to
influence every teacher in every department on the entire
staff of the institution to meet his obligations, in relation to
the individual hygiene of the students in his classes and to the
sanitation of the class rooms in which he meets his students.
The coördinator should bring information to all teachers and
assist them to meet more satisfactorily their opportunities to
help students in their individual problems in social hygiene.
(5) Special lectures on the principles and progress of public
hygiene and public health. A close coördination should be
secured between this department and community agencies
like the Department of Health that are concerned with public
hygiene.
(6) Sufficient clerical, stenographic and filing service to meet the
needs of the department.
In February, 1919, the field service of the National Committee on Physical Education issued a tentative outline for a state law for physical education, suggested for use in planning future legislation. The purposes of physical education as stated in the preamble of this law read as follows:
1. In order that the children of the State of.... shall receive a quality and an amount of physical education that will bring to them the health, growth and a normal organic development that is essential to their fullest present and future education, happiness and usefulness; and in order that the future citizenship of the State of.... may receive regularly from the growing and developing youth of the Commonwealth a rapidly increasing number of more vigorous, better educated, healthier, happier, more prosperous and longer lived men and women, we, the people of the State of.... represented in the Senate and Assembly do enact as follows:
By Legislative Committee of National Committee on Physical Education
In February, 1919, the legislative committee of the National Committee on Physical Education prepared a bill for federal legislation for the purpose of assisting the states in establishing physical education in their schools. This proposed federal law stated the purpose and aim of physical education as follows:
The purpose and aim of physical education in the meaning of this act shall be: more fully and thoroughly to prepare the boys and girls of the nation for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship through the development of bodily vigor and endurance, muscular strength and skill, bodily and mental poise, and such desirable moral and social qualities as courage, self-control, self-subordination and obedience to authority, coöperation under leadership, and disciplined initiative. The processes and agencies for securing these ends shall be understood to include: comprehensive courses of physical training activities, periodical physical examination; correction of postural and other remediable defects; health supervision of schools and school children; practical instruction in the care of the body and in the principles of health; hygienic school life, sanitary school buildings, playgrounds, and athletic fields and the equipment thereof; and such other means as may be conducive to these purposes.
An analysis of these several authoritative and more or less official documents indicates very clearly a unanimity as to scope and aims of physical education, for they all seek to promote and conserve, in the broadest sense of the term, the health of the nation.
Poor type of physical education in secondary schools intensifies problem in the college
The problem of physical education in the college is intensified by the fact that freshmen come to their chosen institutions with a variety of experience in physical training, but unfortunately this experience is, too often, either inadequate or ineffective. The natural physical training of the earlier age periods produces whatever neuro-muscular development, whatever neuro-muscular coördination, whatever neuro-muscular control, and whatever other organic growth, development, or functional perfection is achieved by the young human concerned. A program of physical training wisely planned with reference to infancy, childhood, and early youth would include types of exercises, play, games, and sports, that would perfect the neuro-muscular and other functions far more completely than is commonly accomplished through the natural unsupervised and undirected physical training of those early age periods either in city or in rural communities. The force of modern habits of life has led to the destruction of those natural habits of work, play, and recreation that gave a proportion of our forebears a fairly complete natural program of physical exercise during the plastic or formative periods of life. As a result, many students reach college nowadays with stunted growths and with poorly developed, poorly trained, or poorly controlled neuro-muscular equipment. Some of these matriculates are physically weak. They lack alertness; their response is slow. Others are awkward and muscularly inefficient, though their physical growth is objectively—height and weight—normal or even above normal.
The College Department faces these problems through special provisions made for the purpose of supplying a belated neuro-muscular training to such cases. It often happens that successful training along these lines is possible only through individual instruction of a most elementary sort, taking the student through simple exercises that ought to have been a part of his experience in early childhood.
Individual needs of students augment problem of department of physical education
For the same reasons that are stated above, the College Department of Physical Training finds it necessary to concern itself with individual students who need special attention directed to specified organs or groups of organs whose training or care could have been accomplished ordinarily far better at an earlier period. These students present problems of posture, lung capacity, and regional weakness.
Supervision of athletics and recreation adds further to its problem
The College Department of Physical Training finds also a significant opportunity and an urgent duty in the fact that various types of physical exercise are intimately associated with social, ethical, and moral consequences. No other human activity gives the same opportunity for the development of a social spirit and personal ethical standards as do play, games, and sports of children and adolescents. Unsupervised, these activities degenerate and bring unmoral practices and an anti-social spirit in their wake.
Because of these opportunities and obligations, College Departments of Physical Training are including within their programs and jurisdictions more and more supervision of college athletics, and assume an ever increasing rôle in the direction of recreational activities of college students. It remains true, however, that these influences of supervised play and athletics should operate long before the individual reaches college age.
The intense interest of college students in athletic competitions, united with the opportunity which athletics offer for social and character training, has decided a number of colleges to turn athletic training over to the Department of Physical Training. This preparation for the supreme physical and physiological test must be built upon a foundation of safe and sound health. There is no more fitting place in the collegiate organization for these athletic and recreational activities.
Organization of Department of Physical Education
The college departments that cover this field in whole or in part are known by various names. We have departments of Physical Training; of Physical Education; of Physical Culture; of Hygiene; of Physiology and Physical Education; of Hygiene and Physical Education; of Physical Training and Athletics, and so on.
An analysis of these college departments shows that they all concern themselves with much the same important objects, although they differ in their lines of greater emphasis. We find, too, that in some colleges the department includes activities that form separate, though related departments in other institutions.
The activities of such departments fall into three large divisions, each one of which has its logical subdivisions. One of these large divisions may be called the division of health examination. It has to do with the health examination of the individual student and with the health advice that is based on and consequent to such examination. The second division has to do with health instruction covering the subject matter of physical training. The third division covers directed experiences in right living and the formation of health habits, and includes the special activities noted above.
We often refer to the first division noted above as the division of medical inspection, physical examination, or health examination; to the second as hygiene, physiology, biology, or bacteriology; and to the third as gymnastics, physical exercise, organized play, recreation, athletics, or narrowly as physical training.
The prime purpose of collegiate physical training, then, is to furnish the student such information and such habit-forming experiences as will lead him to formulate and practice an intelligent policy of personal health control and an intelligent policy of community health control. The collateral and special objects of physical training vary with the individual student under the influence of his previous training and his present and future life plans.
The Collegiate Department of Physical Training is primarily concerned, therefore, with the acquisition and conservation of human health—mental, moral, and physical health. Because of his physical training, the college man should live longer; he should meet his environments obligations more successfully; he should be better able to protect himself from, and better able to avoid, injury; he should lose less time on account of injury, poor health, and sickness; he should get well more rapidly when he is sick; he should be better able to recover his health and strength after injury or illness; and he should therefore give to society a fuller, happier, and more useful life.
Such a department is concerned secondarily with (a) those special defects of earlier physical training that bring to college, students in need of neuro-muscular training and organic development, (b) with social, ethical, and character training, and (c) with the conditioning and special training of students for athletic competition or for other extraordinary physical and physiological demands.
In the light of the above statements, the objects of physical training may be summarized as follows:
I. The fundamental and ever present object of physical training is the acquisition and conservation of vigorous, enduring health, the summated effect of perfect functions in each and every organ of the human body.
II. The special objects of physical training vary in their needs for emphasis at different age periods and under the changing stresses of life. Among the more important of these special objects are:
(1) General, normal growth. An object in the early age periods.
(2) Neuro-muscular development, coördination, and control. Accomplished best in early age periods.
(3) Special organic (anatomical and functional) development. Optimum period in childhood and youth.
(4) Social, ethical, and moral training. Character building. Objects more easily secured in childhood and youth.
(5) Preparation for some supreme physical and physiological test; e.g., athletic competition, police or fire service, military service. Most desirable training period in late youth and early maturity. Must depend, however, on the effects of earlier physical training.
(6) The formation of health habits. Best accomplished in early life but commonly an important function of the College Department of Physical Training.
(7) The conservation of health. Always an object, but more particularly so in the middle and later life.
The Medical Examination
In the American college of today, the student’s first contact with the Department of Physical Training is very likely to be in the examining room. In the College of the City of New York12 it has become the established custom to require a satisfactory health examination before admitting the applicant to registration as a student in the college. Entering classes are enrolled in this institution at the beginning of each term, and in each list of applicants there are always a few to whom admission is denied because of unsatisfactory health conditions.
In each case in which admission is denied because of unsatisfactory health, the individual is given careful advice relative to his present and probable future condition, and every effort is made to help the applicant plan his life so that he may be able at a later time to enter the college. Of course, it occasionally happens that applicants are found with serious and incurable health defects which make it very improbable that they will ever be in condition to attempt a college education.
Scope of health examination
The health examination of the student should cover those facts in his family and personal health history that are likely to have a bearing upon his present or future health, and the examination should include a very careful investigation of the important organs of his body. This examination calls for expert medical and dental service.
How to conduct health examination
The most useful examiner is he who is at the same time a teacher. Nowhere else is a better or even an equally good opportunity given to drive home impressively, and sometimes dramatically, important lessons in individual hygiene. Through a pair of experimental lenses placed by his examiner before his hitherto undiscovered visual brain cells, the young student who has had poor vision and has never known it, may obtain, for the first time, a glimpse of the beauty in his surroundings.
The dental examiner who finds bad teeth and explains bad teeth to the student whose health is being, or may be, destroyed by such teeth, has before him all the elements necessary for very effective health instruction.
The health examination should be a personal and private affair. It is often best not to have even a recorder present. The student should understand that whatever passes between him and his examiner is entirely confidential.
All advice given a student at these examinations should be followed up if it is the kind of advice that can be followed up. If the advice involves the attention of a dentist or treatment by a physician, time should be allowed for making arrangements and for securing the treatment necessary. After that time has elapsed the student should be called upon to report with information from his parent or guardian, or from his family health adviser, indicating what has been done or will be done for the betterment of the conditions for which the advice was originally given. In the hands of a tactful examiner—one who is a teacher as well as an examiner—the student and parent, particularly the parent, will coöperate effectively in this plan for the development of health habits of the student. Less than three tenths of one per cent of the parents of City College students refuse to secure special health attention for their boys when we do so advise.
These examinations should be repeated at reasonable intervals throughout the entire college course. We have found in the College of the City of New York that a repetition every term is none too frequent. Visual defects, dental defects, evidences of heart trouble and signs of pulmonary tuberculosis, and other defects, not infrequently arise in cases of individuals who have been seen several times before without showing any evidence of poor health. It is hoped that these repeated examinations may lead to the continuation of such habits of bodily care in postgraduate years.
A careful and concise record must be made covering the main facts of each examination and of each conference with the student subsequent to his examination. These memoranda enable the examiner at each later examination to talk to the student with a knowledge of what has been found and what has been said and what has been done on preceding examinations, and on preceding follow-up conferences. As a result, the examiner-teacher is in position to be very much more useful not only because of significant facts before him concerning the student with whom he is talking, but also because of the greater confidence which the student will necessarily have in an examiner who is obviously interested in him and who possesses such an accurate record of his health history.
These examinations should apply to every student in a college or a university, regardless of the division to which he belongs. The need for health instruction or for the establishment of health habits, in order that one may be physically trained for the exigencies of life, is not peculiar to any student age period or to any academic or technicological group, or to a college for men or a college for women.
One of the dangers present in these college examinations is the tendency of the examiner to become more interested in the number of students examined and the number of diagnoses made than in the good influence he may have upon the health future of the student.
Every “case” should be treated by the health examiner as if it were the first and only case on hand for the day. The student certainly classifies the examiner as the first and only one he has had that day. The examiner should plan to make every contact he has with a student a help to the student.
Health Instruction
A second large division of physical training deals with health instruction. As has been pointed out above, the division of health examination produces a very important and very useful opportunity for individual health instruction.
Content of hygiene instruction
Hygiene, however, is presented commonly to groups of students in class organization rather than individually. Anatomy, physiology, psychology, bacteriology, pathology, general hygiene, individual hygiene, group hygiene, and intergroup hygiene are sciences, or combinations of sciences, from which physical training draws its facts. These sciences and those phases of economics and sociology that have to do with the economic and social influences of health and disease, of physical efficiency and physical degeneracy, supply physical training with its general subject matter.
Health instruction, then, as a part of physical training, draws its content from these sources. A logical plan of class instruction would, therefore, include the elements of anatomy, physiology, psychology, bacteriology (and general parasitology), pathology, economics, and sociology, as a basis for a more complete presentation of the facts of general hygiene, individual hygiene, group hygiene, and intergroup hygiene.
Method of health instruction
The most satisfactory presentation of these subjects involves the grouping of students into small classes, the employment of laboratory methods, the use of reference libraries, and the assignment of problems for investigation and study, with a general group discussion of these problems.
Unfortunately, college classes are large and the number of teachers employed in the department of physical training, or in those departments from which physical training draws its science and its philosophy, is small, so that it is impractical to plan to give this instruction to small groups of students covering this range of subject matter.
As a result, the lecture method with its obvious defects and shortcomings is the common medium for the health instruction of college students organized into classes. The more intimate and detailed instruction in these subjects is secured in special courses and in professional schools.
In the College of the City of New York, we expect that students who come to us from high schools and preparatory schools have had the elements of anatomy and physiology either in courses on those subjects or in courses in biology.13 Our health instruction, therefore, has been developed along the lines of lectures on general hygiene, individual hygiene, group hygiene, and intergroup hygiene running through the four terms of the freshman and sophomore years.
These lectures are given in periods of from ten to fifteen minutes each, preceding class work in various forms of physical exercise. They are often called “floor talks.” The shortness of the presentation favors vigor of address; necessitates a concise organization of material and a clarity and brevity of statement; and is more likely to command student attention and concentration. It has, however, its obvious defects. In these lectures persistent effort is made to influence the daily habits of the student. The lecture content is selected with reference to the practical problems of the daily life of the individual and of the community of which he is a part. It is obvious that the amount of time devoted to the presentation of the subject matter is utterly inadequate.
Short written tests are given once each month, and a longer written test is given at the end of each term. These examinations stimulate the student to organize his information and make it more completely his own property. The classes are too large14 and the instructional force relatively too small to permit the assignment of references, presentation of reports, and the conduct of investigations.
Further instruction in physiology and bacteriology is secured in this institution through elective courses open to students in their junior and senior years. These elective courses, however, are not planned primarily for the health education of the student, but rather for his partial preparation as a teacher of physical training, a student of medicine, a scientific specialist, or for public health work.
Health-Forming Activities of the Department of Physical Education
The third division of activities contains the health-habit-forming influences covered by the Department of Physical Training. These influences are formed partly in connection with the follow-up activities associated with the health examinations and advice noted above; partly through impressions made by way of individual and class instruction concerning the laws of health (also noted above); and partly through systematic class work, group work, and individual work in gymnastics, organized recreation, games, play, and athletics.
The student who has been given a health examination each term throughout his college career will be very likely to continue the practice as a habit after graduation. This habit will follow more surely if the examiner has been a real health teacher and not a perfunctory recorder of observations made upon the student. A lack of sympathy and tact may easily prejudice the student against the examination.
The student who has been led regularly to care for defects of one sort or another; whose contact with his examiner-teacher in conferences following up the advice that has been given at the time of examination has been accompanied by the right sort of explanation and mutual understanding, will be more likely to continue to exercise that sort of care for the welfare of his body after he is no longer under the influence of the college.
The student who has seen the application of class health talks to his everyday problems is likely to be influenced to the practice of consequent health habits, particularly if those short lectures serve to correlate his various habit-forming experiences while in college.
And finally, the student who is brought into contact with regular systematic exercise may, if the exercise is attractive and interesting, achieve a health habit that will be carried out into his postgraduate life.
The existence of the Department of Physical Training would be amply justified if its influence upon the health and vigor of the student were limited to the period of his stay in college. The full success of this department, however, like that of all other college departments, must be measured by its influence upon the life of the student after he has left college. The formation of lasting health habits is, therefore, the most important object of this department.
Place of physical exercise in program for physical education
Regular appropriate physical exercise is one of our most important health habits. It is perhaps safe to say that for the average individual it is the most important health habit. This is true because of its intimate and impressive influence upon all the fundamental organic functions of the body. Physical exercise in the American college is provided either as organized class work in the gymnasium, or by means of voluntary recreational opportunities, or through athletics.
Class work in physical exercise
Class work may include: marching, mass drills with or without light apparatus, work on heavy apparatus, games, dancing, swimming, and track and field work. This class work may be indoors or outdoors, depending on the season or climate.
Additional facilities for physical exercise
Voluntary recreational opportunities are offered through free mass drills open to all students who may desire to take them regularly or irregularly; through open periods for apparatus work; and through facilities and space for games, swimming, mass athletics, and so on.
Recreational activities and athletics
Competitive athletics are typical of the American college. Theoretically, athletics are open to all students. Practically, in many of our colleges athletics are made available only to the student with leisure time and exceptional physique. Consistent effort is being made today by college authorities to provide opportunities for intramural (interclass, intergroup, and mass) athletics for the whole student body; at the same time preserving the desirable features of the more specialized intercollegiate competitions.
Inculcating habits of physical exercise
Physical exercise in these various forms has its immediate and valuable influence upon the health condition of the individual student, if taken in sufficient quantity. It has its lasting and very much more important influence in those cases in which physical exercise becomes a habit. It has, therefore, become the increasing concern of the college teacher of physical training to develop activities in physical exercise that the student may use after graduation. Teachers of physical training have become more and more impressed with the importance of interesting exercise, not only because interesting exercise is more likely to become habitual exercise, but also because exercise that is accompanied by the play spirit, by happiness and joy, is physiologically and therefore healthfully of very much more value to the individual. The relationship between cheerfulness and good health has become very firmly established through the scientific researches of the modern physiologist. We know that health habits which are associated with cheerfulness and happiness are bound to be more effective.
Opportunities for character building
The teacher of physical training finds opportunity for incidental and yet very important instruction leading to the formation of fine qualities of character and fine standards of personal conduct. These opportunities arise constantly in the various general types of physical exercise found in the curriculum of the department of physical training. They are especially present in those activities in which competition occurs, as in play, games, and athletics. These activities do not in themselves produce excellent qualities of character or high standards of conduct, but the teacher—whether he be called a coach or a trainer or a professor of hygiene—who sets a good example and who insists that every game played, and every contest, whether it be in a handball court between college chums or on the football field between college teams, shall be clean and fair, is using in the right way one of the opportunities present in the entire college life of the student, for the formation of fine character.
Special Exercises for Special Groups
In any given group of college students one will find a number of individuals in need of special or modified physical exercise. These students may be grouped commonly under the following heads: (1) undeveloped, (2) bad posture, (3) awkward, (4) originally weak, (5) deformed.
Some of these students suffer from defects that are remediable, Some of these defects are due to poor physical training in earlier years. Some are the results of disease. All of them call for modified exercise and recreation. The fact that a student may fall into one of these groups in no way justifies the assumption that he is therefore no longer subject to the laws of health or to the need for rational health habits. As a matter of fact, such cases generally call for greater care and attention in the formulation and operation of a rational policy of right living.
Every student physically able to go to college is physically able to exercise. No student in attendance on recitations anywhere can offer a rational plea for exemption from exercise, The individual whose physical condition contraindicates all forms of exercise needs careful medical advice and probably needs hospital or sanitarium treatment.
College Departments of Physical Training are planning for cases in need of special or modified exercise, through the organization of special classes and through individual attention. In the College of the City of New York we attempt to group the weak students in a given class, into squads of four such students with a squad leader, a student. The awkward students are grouped in the same manner. The exercise of the cripple and the student with serious organic weakness is individualized. These special individualized cases are under the direct supervision of a physician on the staff.
Organization of the Students for Prescribed Work in the College Courses
In this college, organized, directed physical exercise as outlined above is covered in the division of physical training, the division of recreation, and the division of athletics, all of which are subdivisions of the Department of Hygiene.
The enrollment in the required classes in the division of Physical Training varies from thirty in the smaller classes to over two hundred in the larger. The total enrollment has been approximately eleven hundred each term for several years. These courses are required of all students during the first four collegiate terms. Each of these four courses requires three hours a week, distributed over two or into three periods, and credits the student with one half point toward graduation. This time allowance is, however, inadequate.
The class organization in the division of the Department of Hygiene is based on a unit composed of five students. Each of these units or squads contains one student who is designated as the “leader” of that unit.
Persistent effort is made to assign students of like physical development and needs to the same squads. In this manner a single class of a hundred young men will have a graduation on the basis of proficiency which makes it possible for the teacher to come very near to the rational application of exercise for the individual student.
These units or squads are organized into divisions, each division being made up of four squads. Each division is under the supervision and instruction of a member of the departmental staff. In any given class, then, there is a regular instructor for each group of twenty students, and a student leader for each group of four students. The aim in this organization is to establish a relationship between the instructor and his twenty students that will secure for him an intimate knowledge of each young man, relating to his physical training needs, general and special.
A class period in physical exercise
A typical class period is made up of a short health talk, 10 minutes; a mass drill, 10 minutes; apparatus period, two changes, 20 minutes; and a play period, 15 minutes. If the health talk is not given the play period is lengthened.
The mass drills referred to above are made up of drill in marching and in gymnastics with and without hand apparatus. These drills are graded within the term and from term to term so that a desirable variety is secured. They are devised for disciplinary, postural, developmental, and health purposes. During the progress of the drill the instructors present inspect the posture and work of the students in their divisions.
The apparatus periods referred to include work on the conventional pieces of gymnastic apparatus, with the addition of chest weights, an indoor track, and a swimming pool. The squad organization for this work gives opportunity for the development of student leadership which is often of extraordinary educational value to the individual boy. These periods, because of this squad organization, may be utilized for such special exercise emphasis as may be decided upon for any given group of students. It is here that special conditioning may be given those young men who are planning for military training or who need selected exercise for neuro-muscular development.
The play period in the regular class program is devoted largely to looser games that contain a predominating element of big muscle activities. Competition is a fairly constant factor. Here, again, our squad unit permits us to assign selected groups of students to special types of games. It is feasible, in this organization, to satisfy a need for the training that is furnished by highly organized games, fighting games, and by games and out-of-door events that develop special groups of muscles and special coördinations.
A well-organized Collegiate Department of Physical Training could coöperate very effectively with a Collegiate Department of Military Training. The squad organization in apparatus periods and in play periods offers the best possible avenue for a successful emphasis of several of the very important phases of military physical training.
Recreational facilities in addition to prescribed work
The division of recreation in the Department of Hygiene in the College of the City of New York, takes charge of all recreational and athletic space and all recreational and intramural athletic activities in those periods of the day in which regular class work does not take precedence. Students of all classes are admitted freely throughout their four collegiate years to these activities, and a studied effort is made to increase their attractiveness as well as to secure from them their full social and character-training values. Such values depend to a very large degree upon the experienced supervision and direction given these activities. It does not follow that the creation of play opportunity is bound to produce good citizenship. The quality of the product depends upon the quality of the man or men in charge of the enterprise.
The most important mission of the Recreational Division is its purpose to furnish the student lasting habits of play and recreation based upon the physical development he has secured in his earlier experiences in physical training. After all, one’s physical training should begin at birth and continue throughout life.
The Division of Athletic Instruction is concerned with all plans for intercollegiate athletics, including organization, financing, training, coaching, and scheduling. All these activities are under the direction of members of the staff of the Department of Hygiene. There is no one employed in this relationship who is not a member of the staff. Constant attempts are made, in every reasonable way, to accomplish the athletic ideals that have been set up by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Clean play, honorable methods, and sportsmanly standards dominate the theory and practice of this athletic instruction and supervision.
The scope and content of physical training which I have attempted to present in these pages is brought out more clearly by the following announcement of the Department of Hygiene of the College of the City of New York:
HYGIENE (1916-17)
The Department of Hygiene is made up of the divisions of Physical Training, Physiology, Bacteriology, Health Examination, Recreational Instruction, and Athletics.
Through these divisions the Department attempts to train young men for the exigencies of life through the establishment of enduring habits of health examination and repair, health information and individual and community protection against the agents that injure health and cause disease, and through the establishment of wise habits of daily life.
This organization gives opportunity for the development of neglected organic and neuromuscular growth, coördination and control; for the social, ethical, and moral training (character building influences) inherent in wisely supervised athletic and recreational experiences; and for the special conditioning that accompanies training for severe physical and physiological competition and other tests.
Finally, preparation may be secured for life work along certain lines of research, certain medical sciences, various phases of public health, physical training and social work.
In addition, this Department is concerned with all those influences within the College which affect the health of the student. Every reasonable effort is made to keep the institution safe and attractive to the clean, healthy individual.
Division of Physical Training
1. Course One. (a) Lectures. “Some of the common causes of disease.” (b) Physical Exercise. i. Graded mass drills. (a) Elementary drills are used in order to develop obedience, alertness, and ready response to command, accurate execution, good posture and carriage and facility of control. (b) More advanced drills are given in which movements are made in response to commands. Strength, endurance, and coördination are brought into play. ii. Apparatus work. Continuation of graded exercises for squads of five students each. iii. Selected, graded, recreative indoor and outdoor games and play. iv. Swimming. Each student is required to learn to swim with more than one variety of stroke. Prescribed. Freshman, first term; three hours a week; counts ½. 2. Course Two. (a) Lectures. “The carriers of disease.” (b) Physical Exercise. i. Graded mass drills. Two-count movements. These drills are continuations of, but more advanced than those given in the preceding term. ii. Apparatus work. Continuation of graded exercises for squads of five. iii. Selected, graded, recreative indoor and outdoor games and play. iv. Swimming. Each student is required to develop endurance in swimming. Prerequisite: Hygiene 1. Prescribed. Freshman, second term; three hours a week; counts ½. 3. Course Three. (a) Lectures. “The contributory causes and carriers of disease.” (b) Physical Exercise. i. Graded mass drills. Four-count movements. More advanced work. ii. Apparatus work. Continuation of graded exercises for squads of five. iii. Selected, graded, recreative indoor and outdoor games and play. iv. Swimming. Diving, rescue and resuscitation of the drowning. Prerequisite: Hygiene 2. Prescribed. Sophomore, first term; three hours a week; counts ½. 4. Course Four. (a) Lectures. “Defenses against poor health and disease.” (b) Physical Exercise. i. Advanced graded mass drills. Eight-count movements. ii. Advanced graded apparatus work. For squads of five. iii. Selected, graded, recreative indoor and outdoor games and play. iv. Swimming. Advanced continuation of requirements outlined for Courses 2 and 3. Prerequisite: Hygiene 3. Prescribed. Sophomore, second term; three hours a week; counts ½. Modified Course. In each of the above required courses provision is made for those students whose organic condition may permanently disqualify them for the regular scheduled work. This special work is under the immediate direction of a medical member of the Staff. 5. Intermediate Physical Training. This course is planned to supply the student with such organic development and efficiency as will enable him to demonstrate successfully as a teacher various type exercises for classes in elementary and intermediate indoor and outdoor gymnastics, aquatics, games, play and athletics. Prerequisite: Hygiene 4. Three hours a week; counts ½. 6. Advanced Physical Training. This course is a continuation of Course 5, and is designed for the physical equipment of teachers of more advanced physical work. Prerequisite: Hygiene 5. Three hours a week; counts ½. 7. Class Management. This course supplies the practical instruction and experience needed for the training of special teachers in the management of elementary and intermediate classes in various forms of physical exercise. Prerequisite: Hygiene 6 and 32. Fall term, three hours a week; counts 1. 8. Class Management. This course is a continuation of Course 7. It is planned to give a training in the management of more advanced classes. Prerequisite: Hygiene 7. Spring term, three hours a week; counts 1. 9. Control of Emergencies and First Aid to the Injured. This course supplies instruction concerning the management and protective care of common emergencies. The instruction is practical and rational. It covers such emergencies as: sprains, fractures, dislocations, wounds, bruises, sudden pain, fainting, epileptic attacks, unconsciousness, drowning, electric shock, and so on. Prerequisite: Hygiene 32. Fall term, two hours a week; counts 1. 10. Theory and Practice of Individual Instruction in Hygiene and in Departmental Sanitation. Students taking this subject will be given practical first hand experience of special use to teachers; (a) in connection with health examination, inspection, conference, consultation, and follow up service carried on in the departmental examining room; and (b) in connection with the sanitary supervision carried on by the department. Prerequisites or Co-requisites: Hygiene 32, 41 and 48. Spring term, six hours a week in two periods of three hours each; counts 2.
Division of Physiology
32. Elements of Physiology.
This subject deals with the general concepts of the science of physiology, the chemical and physical conditions which underlie and determine the action of the individual organs, and the integrative relationship of the parts of the body.
One lecture, one recitation and two laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
33. Special Physiology.
A study of the fundamental facts of physiology and methods of investigation. The aim is to give a complete study of certain topics: the phenomena of contraction, conduction, sense perception and the various mechanisms of general metabolism. Laboratory work is arranged to show the methods of physiologic experimentation and to emphasize the necessity of using care and accuracy in their application.
Spring term, two lectures and three laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
34. Physiology of Nutrition.
The aim of this subject is to study broadly the metabolism of the human body. In the development of this plan the following topics will be considered: the food requirements of man, the nutritive history of the physiologic ingredients, the principles of dietetics and their application to daily living.
Fall term, two lectures and three laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
Division of Bacteriology
41. General Bacteriology.
Lectures, recitations and laboratory work introducing the student to the technique of bacteriology and to the more important facts about the structure and function of bacteria. Special applications of bacteriology to agriculture and the industries are discussed, and brief references are made to the activities of allied microbes, the yeasts and molds. The general relations of bacteria to disease and the principles of immunity and its control are included.
One lecture, one recitation and four laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
42. Bacteriology of Foods.
This includes the bacteriologic examination of water, sewage, air, milk, the various food products together with the methods used in the standardization of disinfectants, a detailed study of yeast and bacterial fermentation and their application to the industries. Numerous trips to industrial plants will be made.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 41.
Fall term, one lecture and six laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
43. Bacteriology of Pathogenic Micro-organisms.
This subject is devoted to the laboratory methods of biology as applied in the state and municipal boards of health. Practice will be given in the methods used for the diagnosis of diphtheria, tuberculosis, malaria, rabies, and other diseases caused by micro-organisms, together with a detailed study of the groups to which they belong.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 41.
Spring term, one lecture and six laboratory hours a week; counts 3.
44. Potable and Industrial Water.
Very few industries are independent of a water supply. No one is independent of the source of his drinking water. Water varies in its usefulness for definite purposes.
This subject differentiates between various waters, takes them up from industrial and hygienic standpoints, considers softening, filtering, purifying and water analysis.
Work is divided into three groups.
| A. Industrial Water | } | } | given in the Chemistry Department. |
| B. Potable Water | } | ||
| C. Water Bacteriology (microscopy of water) | } | given in the Department of Hygiene. |
Municipal students may elect any or all of the three groups.
Prerequisite: Chemistry 4 and Hygiene 41. Chemistry 9 is desirable.
Spring term, seven hours a week; counts 3.
48. Municipal Sanitation.
Lectures, discussions and visits to public works of special importance. The principles which underlie a pure water supply and the means by which the wastes of the city, its sewage and garbage may be successfully disposed of, and the problems of pure milk and pure food supplies, the housing question with its special phase of ventilation and plumbing, and the methods by which a municipal board of health is organized to fight tuberculosis and other specific diseases will be studied.
Fall term, two lectures and one field trip a week; counts 3.
49. Municipal Sanitary Inspection.
Professor B—— and Bureau of Foods and Drugs, New York City Department of Health.
The seminar work of this subject is done in the College and the field work in company with and under the direct supervision of an Inspector of the Department of Health of the City. The subject is limited to six students each semester, and is intended for those planning to go into this branch of the City’s service. The qualifications will be based upon individuality, personality playing an important part.
Prerequisite: Hygiene 41 and 48 and Chemistry 19.
Spring term, two seminar hours, one recitation and one inspection tour a week; counts 3.
50. Research.
Seniors who have completed satisfactorily a sufficient amount of work in the Department may be assigned some topic to serve as a basis for a thesis which will be submitted as credit for the work at its completion. The student will receive the advice of the instructor in the subject in which the research falls, but as much independent work as possible will be insisted upon. The purpose is to introduce the student into research methods, and also to foster independence.
Division of Health Examination
I. Individual Instruction in Hygiene.
This instruction is of a personal confidential character, and is given in the form of advice based upon medical history supplied by the individual, and upon medical and hygienic examinations and inspections of the individual.
(a) Medical and hygienic history and examination.
In this relationship with the student the Department attempts to secure such information concerning environmental and habit influences in the life of the student as may be used as a basis for supplying him with helpful advice concerning the organization of his policy of personal health control. The medical examinations are utilized for the purpose of finding remediable physical defects whose proper treatment may be added to the physiological efficiency and therefore to the health possibilities of the student.
Prescribed: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior and special students. Once each term. No credits.
(b) Hygiene inspections.
These inspections are applied in the mutual interest of personal, departmental and institutional hygiene.
Prescribed: freshman and sophomore.
(c) Conferences.
All students who have been given personal hygienic or medical advice are required to report in conference by appointment in order that the advice may be followed up.
All individuals found with communicable diseases are debarred from all classes until it is shown in conference that they are receiving proper medical treatment, and that they may return to class attendance with safety to their comrades.
All individuals found with remediable physical or hygienic defects are required to report in conference with evidence that the abnormal condition has been brought to the serious attention of the parent, guardian or family medical or hygienic adviser. Students failing to report as directed may be denied admission to all classes.
II. Medical and Sanitary Supervision.
(a) Sanitary supervision.
An “Advisory Committee on Hygiene and Sanitation” with the Professor of Hygiene as Chairman, has been appointed by the President. This committee has been instructed to “inquire from time to time into all our institutional influences which are likely to affect the health of the student and instructor, and to make such reports with recommendations to the President as may seem wise and expedient.”
(b) A medical examination is required of all applicants for admission to the College. Approval of the Medical Examiner must be secured before registration is permitted.
(c) Medical consultation.
Open to all students. (Optional.)
(d) Medical examination of Athletes.
Required of all students before admission to athletic training and repeated at intervals during the training season.
(e) Treatment.
Emergency treatment is the only treatment attempted by the Department. Such treatment will be applied only for the purpose of protecting the individual until he can secure the services he selects for that purpose.
(f) Conferences.
(See “c” under I.)
(g) Laboratory: The Department Laboratories are equipped for bacteriological and other analyses. The water in the swimming pool is examined daily. The laboratory service is utilized to identify disease carriers, and in every other reasonable way to assist in the protection of student health.
Division of Recreational Instruction
Liberal provision is made by the College for voluntary recreational activities indoors and outdoors during six days of the week and throughout vacation periods. Emphasis is laid on recreation as a health habit and a means of social training.
Division of Athletics
(1) Athletic Supervision.
Three organizations are concerned:
(a) The Faculty Athletic Committee, which has to do with all athletic activities that involve academic relationships.
(b) The Athletic Council, a committee of the Department of Hygiene, charged with the supervision of all business activities connected with student athletic enterprises.
(c) The Athletic Association of the Student Body.
(2) Athletic Instruction.
The Department utilizes various intramural and extramural athletic activities for the purpose of securing a further influence on the promotion of health habits, the development of physical power, and the establishment and maintenance of high standards of sportsmanly conduct on part of the individual and the group.
At present the schedule includes the following sports: baseball, basket ball, track and field, swimming and water polo, tennis, soccer foot ball, and hand ball.
Thomas Andrew Storey, M.D.
College of the City of New York
[It was hoped that it would be possible to include with Professor Storey’s chapter a number of forms and photographs calculated to serve as aids in the organization and conduct of a College Department of Hygiene. As Professor Storey’s work is very distinctive, other institutions which are striving to organize effective departments of physical education would have found his experiences as graphically depicted in these photographs and summed up in these charts extremely helpful. Unfortunately it has proved impossible to print them here on account of limitations of space, but all who are interested in securing further information can obtain these valuable guides in the introductory stages of the inauguration of a Department of Hygiene by applying to the College of the City of New York. Editor.]
Footnotes
12 The construction of this chapter on the teaching of physical training is based very largely upon the experiences and organization of the Department of Hygiene in the College of the City of New York.
13 This precollegiate instruction is, unfortunately, uniformly poor in so far as it relates to health.
14 The present enrollment in these classes, February, 1919, is approximately 1500.