"ITS PROPER PLACE"

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 92, 16 October 1934, Page 8

"ITS PROPER PLACE"

"If recreation bears its proper place in the programme of education I foresee a people overcoming many limitations, physical and mental." In the admirably balanced address given by Dr. Lamb yesterday the sentence" quoted expressed the ideal—"the proper place." There may, of course, be arguments as to what is the proper place. Dr. Lamb is director of the department of physical education at McGill University, and he may not agree completely with a distinguished colleague, Professor Stephen Leacock. Probably he does not, for in an article contributed to the McGill "Record" (reprinted in "The Post" recently) Professor Leacock was more thjin a little critical' of the importance attached to sport in American university life. Dr. Lamb said yesterday that the "age of medieval scholasticism" had passed. Professor Leacock said the same and appeared to regret that it had been succeeded, first by an age of commercialism, and then by an age of sport, when the university tended to become a collection of buildings round the sports campus. But Dr. Lamb's ideal as outlined in his address yesterday was eminently sensible. Recreation, he pointed out, was a means towards the equal development of body and mind. The unity of body and mind was now recognised^ and the one part could not be affected without also affecting the other. If this is remembered, and if the competitive element in sport is not overstressed, recreation must have its proper place. A professor in plusfours could not be in the pictur-e^of medieval scholasticism, but his golf might yet be improved without detriment to his scholarship.