PHYSICAL TRAINING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22319, 17 January 1936, Page 8

PHYSICAL TRAINING

The British Board of Education hopes with the aid of local authorities and other organisations to frame a comprehensive plan for the physical education of young people who have left school. Authorities have been emphasising the need for the extension of physical training. Dr. L. I'. Jacks recently spoke of the problem of the "physical illiterates." Dr. Norwood, former headmaster of Harrow, in an address before the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, mentioned that it had been found that the boys entering one public school, all from well-to-do homes, suffered on the average from three or four remediable defects apiece and that 50 per cent of recruits for the Army to-day were rejected on physical grounds. Possibly standards are higher and the public sense of responsibility is keener than ever before, but it is more than probable that modern conditions of life involving less walking, more indoor entertainment, and a higher nervous stress are undermining stamina especially where nothing is done to counteract their influences. Those who observe the extent of the new vogue of hiking and the like might jump to the conclusion that youth is developing its physique as never before, but in England and many other countries there is a mass of youth who are content to be the spectators of the physical exertions of others. This has been particularly pronounced during the economic depression. Through unemployment many young people have been deprived of opportunity to join with their fellows in sports and pastimes. It i 3 all the more important therefore that a comprehensive plan should be devised to stop the drift. Remarkable achievements in physical education have been made in Russia and Germany, but on a mass system, against which British sentiment would revolt. British youth would not be dragooned to the gymnasiums and playing fields, but would respond to a wise system of guidance, a system which would have the semblance of almost voluntary! action. j