in the open air. It is more vigorous than croquet, and gives abundant opportunity for conversation during the game. Much the same objections that apply to tennis, however, may be urged against it, as it can never reach the masses of the people. I believe, however, that every normal school would be wise to put in a bowling green if it has the ground on which it can grow the perfect turf that is required. SWIMMING. Swimming is a is a human accomplishment, which is very useful in recreation and which may be the means of saving the life of the person or of someone else. As teachers may have to take care of children where the danger of drowning is a real one, and as it is always a valuable accomplishment which gives dignity in the eyes of the child, all normal students should be required to learn to swim wherever it is possible. Swimming is a form of exercise that is apt to be continued if it is once learned. There are a number of colleges and universities that now require all their academic students to learn to swim, and there is surely more reason for making swimming compulsory in the normal school than there is for making it compulsory anywhere else. Many of our high schools and not a few of our elementary schools, have recently put in swimming pools. The pupils in the council schools of London are taught to swim by their regular teachers. No student is allowed to graduate from the high school in Boston who has not learned, and a systematic effort is being made in Philadelphia and Denver to teach all the boys. Swimming is becoming a more common accomplishment and the lack of it more of a deficiency. The inability to swim will often greatly restrict the activities and enjoyments of a summer vacation. SKATING. Skating is also a common accomplishment well suited for adults as well as children. Most normal schools will not have the natural pond in the vicinity for skating, but it is not difficult to flood a ground for this purpose. Every teacher should have skating as a part of her course whenever conditions make it possible. If the teacher expects the children to care for her world of books, she should herself be accomplished in the arts of childhood. We have too few winter sports and skating is one that should not be neglected. It is also one of the most wholesome forms of social intercourse between the sexes. CURLING. Curling on the ice is a popular game in Scotland which has been systematically introduced into Germany during the last few years. In the northern part of this country it is a practical winter game for men. There are already teams in many of our larger cities. It is a good winter sport for the normal if the ice is available. VOLLEY BALL. Volley ball, I believe, meets all the requirements of exercise and recreation for adults perhaps better than any other game. It is a new game, yet it is almost the only one that is being played by the business men in the Y. M. C. A.'s. It requires only a small space and a very inexpensive equipment. It is equally well adapted to the play of the women and the men of the North and the South, of the summer and winter, of the city and the country. It is almost the only game that we have that may also serve the purpose of corrective gymnastics. Volley ball should be required of all students in the normal school. INDOOR BASEBALL. Much the same things can be said of indoor baseball and its variation, long ball, as had been said of volley ball. It is really adapted to the play of adults and all adults. There is no valid reason why seventy-five per cent of the entire population over ten years old should not play these games, and it is one of the serious needs of the time, that our people should have some such games that increasing leisure may not mean increasing dissipation. WALKING. In Germany they have a national organization of walkers and there is a local organization in nearly every city. The school children often go off on a two days' walk, and not infrequently for a week or more. On these trips they visit the places of historic or literary interest in the neighborhood, become acquainted with the products and the people. They learn to love nature and the Fatherland. Walking is one of the best forms of exercise for adults, but we Americans do not seem to regard it either as exercise or recreation. It is too slow for our tastes. If we have three or four blocks to go in the city we take a street car, and if we have to go into the country or the mountains, we take an auto or carriage. Nevertheless, walking is the ideal way of travel. It is the easiest way to come to know a country and its people and to form a love for nature. A walking trip of two or three hundred miles is one of the best vacations that one can take. Of course it depends a good deal upon the locality, but there are very few places where there is nothing of interest. It is a good thing to have an interurban trolley or a railroad, so that one can skip the uninteresting places. Students should be taken on trips of ten or fifteen miles occasionally, until they appreciate the possibilities of such outings and know what can be learned from them. CAMPING. Every normal school should have a camp, if it is at all possible, and every student should be supposed to spend a week or more there, making botanical and other nature study collections, practicing cooking and story telling and camping arts. There is no other place where people get quite so near together as where they sit around the camp fire at night. This would enable the men to get some practical experience in scouting activities, and the women to practice the arts of the camp fire girls. It is a form of vacation that should be encouraged, for the summer stay at an expensive hotel has little to recommend it, and, if one has once had the experience of camping out, it is very likely to be repeated. The teacher is not merely a teacher of a school, but a member of the community and she ought to be able to organize camping parties among her acquaintances. If she can take her girls off to spend Saturday and Sunday occasionally, this may well establish a much more intimate personal relation that will hold through the remainder of her teaching, and it will at the same time give these young people an experience that will quicken the imagination and help them to appreciate many experiences that otherwise would have been meaningless. DANCING. Dancing is the one form of physical exercise that is ordinarily engaged in by mature women. There is much sentiment against it, some of which is well founded. Unsupervised and promiscuous dancing in saloon or hotel dance halls is certainly dangerous morally. However, the best antidote that we have for this form of dancing is folk dancing. This can be done only to a limited degree, but folk dancing is worth while in and of itself. It is a form of exercise that gives grace, physical training, and recreation at the same time. It can be done indoors in winter and out of doors in summer. It will be continued after school days are over. Its advantages are so many that it should be a part of the course in all normal schools. OPTIMISM My eyes fade, old through grief, not years; But, though I unrewarded die, Life still itself must justify! -STOKELY S. FISHER. |