examination. Generally speaking, it has not yet, either in schools or
in colleges, been related to physical needs of the individual pupil. In
fact, there is no guarantee that it is not in many schools working a
positive injury on defective children or imposing a defective
environment on healthy children. Formal exercises in cramped space, in
ill-ventilated rooms, with tight belts and heavy shoes, are conceded to
be pernicious. Formal exercises should never be given to any child
without examination and prescription by a physician. Children with
heart weakness, enlarged tonsils, adenoid growths, spinal curvature,
uneven shoulders, are frequently seen doing exercises for which they
are physically unfit, and which but serve to deplete further their
already low vitality. Attention might be called to many a class engaged
in breathing exercises when by actual count over half the boys were
holding their mouths open. Special exercises are needed by children who
show some marked defect like flat foot, flat chest, weak abdominal
muscles, habitual constipation, uneven shoulders, spinal trouble, etc.

That no physical training should be provided for normal children is the
belief of many leading trainers. This special training is useful to
develop athletes or to correct defects. Like massage, osteopathy, or
medicine, it should follow careful diagnosis. The time is coming when
formal indoor gymnasium exercises for normal pupils or normal students
will be considered an anomaly. There is all the difference in the world
between physical development and what is called physical training. The
test of physical development is not the hours spent upon a prescribed
course of training, but the physical condition determined by
examination. To be refused permission to substitute an hour's walk for
an hour's indoor apparatus work is often an outrage upon health laws.
Given a normal healthy body, plenty of space, and plenty of playtime,
the spontaneous exercise which a child naturally chooses is what is
really health sustaining and health giving.

Mere muscular development artificially obtained through the devices of
a gymnasium is inferior to the mental and moral development produced by
games and play in the open air. Eustace Miles, M.D., amateur tennis
player of England, says:

I do not consider a mere athlete to be a really healthy man. He
has no more right to be called a really healthy man than the
foundations or scaffolding of a house