PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1603, 31 January 1873, Page 3

PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

A celebbated doctor, in the course of a conversation on the subject of Education, Baid to bis interlocutor, "We are taught Greek and Latin, but we never receive a single lesson on Hygiene." The declivity ou which a pedagogy, without hygiene, has placed us becomes every day more steep, and consequently, Education itself less effective than it Bhould be. If intelligence stands in need of character, character and intelligence stand equally in need of the body, and we think that the body ought to become, more than it is actually, an object of education. Its development cannot be neglected without prejudicing the mind, because nature has created, between body and mind, relations which cannot be disregarded with impunity. These reflections have imposed themselves on our mind after a careful perusal of the various reports on the operations of the late scholastic year, read by the conductors of our great public educational institutions, on the occasion of the distribution of prizes. We noticed with regret, that, except in the case of the High School of Dunedin, and of the Auckland College, reference is no where made to the physical training of the boys. We do not doubt that our lads make a profitable use of the time granted them for recreation, and we do not cast any disparaging remarks on their praiseworthy indulgence in the manly games of cricket, football, etc. We sincerely wish to see those noble sports encouraged; but we desire, also, to see a regular and methodical training of the body form a part of our educational system throughout the length and breadth of the Colony. To attain this object, the introduction of a regular course of gymnastic and of mi'itary drill is indispensable. Mr. Charles O'JSTeil, during the session of 1870, called the attention of the Government to the importance and necessity of giving military training to boys at school, and said he felt sure that the House would readily grant a reasonable sum for the employment of drill instructors. The Hon. the JJefence Minister highly approved of the suggestions of Mr. O'Neil, and the Government fully recognised the importance of having youths in school trained to the use of firearms, and considered that it would be well if drill instructors were employed for the purpose, as trained cadets would be most valuable to the Colony in the future. Up to the present time, the good intentions of the Government have not been fulfilled. The science of man i 8 naturally divided into two distinct branches, Physiology, which considers man from the outside, and as if he were a being foreign to us, and Psychology, which treats of the operations of those intellectual faculties known only to ourselves through our most intimate experience. Physiology and Phsycbology, though intimately connected together, are yet perfectly distinct from one another. The examination of the brain will never teach us what an idea is; and the study of ideas would never have revealed unto us the physical machinery of thought, if Anatomy had not been called to its assistance. This shows that those two branches of the science of man complete one another, and, therefore, cannot be isolated the one from the other. We know very well that Psychology has had, at all times, the pretention to attribute to the facts of conscience an absolute value, and to be, of itself, an independent science; but, this pretention is vain, because conscience cannot aArify its intentions, and control its We trust our readers will pardon us this purely'esthetic digression, into which we have been drawn by our desire to ventilate fully some ideas upon a subject of the highest importance, that of the necessity of giving more attention to the physical training of our school boys. The relation between the training of the mind and that of the body ib of the same kind as the relation between Psychology and Physiology, and, we think, that on the eve of resuming scholastic duties it is well that we should remind all those concerned in the subject of education of the importance of keeping in view the motto of Juvenal, metis ywa in cQr^Qre 4010] ,