THE MODEM GIRL

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 53, 6 March 1929, Page 13

THE MODEM GIRL

CLAIM OP GYMNASTICS

(From "Th* Post's" R«prsi«ntatlvs.) LONDON, 9th January. Dame Janet Campbell, Senior,' Medical Officer of the Maternity and Child Welfare Department of the Ministry of Health, addressing the Ling Association of Teachers on Swedish gymnastics, said that this country had made a good deal of progress in physical training in the last twenty years, but as a nation we had never taken kindly to gymnastico. Although there had been for a great many years gymnastic clubs and athletic associations, our traditional interest in games and sports had perhaps led us to under-value somewhat the importance'of systematic gymnastic exercises. Physical training was hardly known at all in the schools twenty years ago, and although considerable progress had been made since the war, they sometimes felt discouraged to' find tho drill of the oldfashioned, lifeless kind being carried out iv schools.

"Physical trainilig," she proceeded, "has a positive value to education as a whole; indeed, it is an integral part of complete education. Thanks partly to physical, training, though .partly, of course, to the influence of modern environment and fashion, the average school girl of to-day is, I am sure, a much more athletic, vigorous, physically fit individual than she was a generation ago. Every now and then wo are told that devotion to sport and games, the use of apparatus in the gymnastic lessons, or-participation in athletics are causing her physical or moral damage. Of course, excessive exercise of any kind may injure any growing girl—or boy, for that matter — * but so far as I am. aware, there is no evidence of. physical injury following properly controlled teaching of the playing of games under suitable conditions. All the evidence, indeed, seems to be in the opposite direction, namely, that the results of careful training soon become manifest in upright bearing and good carriage, with an increasing physical vigour and health, as well as a wholesome ability, to do-operate' unselfishly with her fellows."