Chapter I: Preface

Thirty years ago, when the writer of these lines was called to a professorship in physical education, there existed no comprehensive survey of the field he was entering. The reports of Dr. Hartwell contained excellent summaries which suggested our debt to the past and to foreign lands, and fuller treatment of certain earlier periods in the United States; but the English language offered little else of value. Suitable preparation of courses in the principles and methods of physical education required more ample knowledge of what others had done and were doing, and the task of finding out and gathering together the best of the European literature bearing on the subject was at once begun and has been continued ever since. A summer trip to Germany in 1896 whetted an appetite which later found satisfaction in an entire year (1900-1901) on the Continent, where the large special collections at the Stockholm Central Institute of Gymnastics and the Berlin _Turnlehrerbildungsanstalt_ supplied for the first time an opportunity to become familiar with the older books and periodicals. The year also contributed to the linguistic knowledge and experience needed for the handling of such material. The direct contact with historic spots and significant aspects of physical education in Europe which it brought was afterwards renewed and broadened by five months (February to June, 1913) spent at important centers in Switzerland, Germany, the three Scandinavian countries, and Great Britain.

Meanwhile the collection of material had progressed at a rapid rate, and from time to time as circumstances permitted chapters of a book-to-be were prepared and published, in irregular order, and biographical sketches which might later be incorporated in such a work as the present one. Thus it happens that only five of the twenty-eight chapters in this volume are altogether new, though all have been carefully revised and many of them largely rewritten within the last year and a half. The selection of topics, order of arrangement, and manner of presentation have been determined experimentally in courses given to students in Oberlin College since the spring of 1894, and for thirteen years (1899, 1902, and 1908-1919) at the Harvard University Summer School. The illustrations are chosen from nearly six hundred which have been employed in the form of lantern slides in these courses. With few exceptions the references in the text and footnotes are based on first-hand examination of the originals.

If we except Viktor Heikel’s _Gymnastikens Historia_ (issued at Helsingfors in four parts, 1905-1909), comprehensive in plan but quite erratic in its treatment of the United States, no work undertaking to trace the history of physical education in Europe and America and to describe the chief present-day movements has appeared hitherto in any language. Euler’s standard _Geschichte des Turnunterrichts_ and the lesser German manuals, while they are in general excellent guides so far as ancient and medieval Europe are concerned, and for the recent history in that particular country, have little or nothing to say of the rest of modern Europe, except as it has influenced Germany herself. This is less true of Euler’s monumental _Encyklopädisches Handbuch des gesamten Turnwesens_ and the more recent _Handbuch des gesamten Turnwesens_ of Dr. Rudolf Gasch, but in these, too, the space allotted to non-German subjects is altogether insufficient. Similarly Illeris and Trap’s brief _Grundtræk af Gymnastikkens Historie_ covers chiefly Danish experience. For each country one must consult its own literature, and particularly the periodical publications, and he needs also to supplement his reading by personal observation and investigation on the ground in order to avoid distorted views and arrive at sound conclusions.

If this attempt to set forth clearly the characteristics of the different stages and phases through which physical education has passed, to introduce the persons who have contributed to its advancement, and to guide the reader to the best that has been written on the subject, shall lead to deeper and more general appreciation of the place which physical education should win and hold in general education, and to the adoption of wiser measures where it is introduced, the labor expended upon the volume will be well rewarded. Much has been omitted which might have been included. If inaccuracies are discovered the author will be glad to have his attention called to them.

F. E. L.

OBERLIN, OHIO, 1923.

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

The shore of physical education is strewn with the wrecks of systems and movements, many of them good in themselves, but left to drift when the personal support and enthusiasm of the founder was removed from the helm. It has only been when some great national crisis had to be faced and the minds of patriots and scholars were engaged in the effort to meet it, that systems have been evolved great enough to survive the death of their founder, the test of time and change in their national conditions. This is notably true of the gymnastics of Denmark, Sweden and Germany. Incomplete as systems of physical education without the addition of games, but logical and accurate in their application to the conditions they have had to meet, whenever similar conditions have arisen it is to them we have turned for inspiration and instruction, and nowhere was this better shown than in the great war of 1914, where crude masses of untrained and underdeveloped men had to be made quick and accurate in response to command and given that control of their bodies that is the true function of physical education in its highest sense.

To the sincere student of physical education nothing has a more sobering effect than the study of those advances made by the great men who have given their lives to their cause. He finds that most of the theories that come to him as new and startling have been thought before and have been either rejected or put into practice as well or better than he is likely to do, and so if he is a philosopher, he can avoid the inevitable failure of schemes that have been discarded and adapt from material of proved worth the material that suits his special conditions.

Such a study will save him from the outstanding characteristic of many exploiters of this subject, the unfounded claims for originality and novelty in their work. Small collections of free exercises are dignified as systems and published as such with apparent seriousness, slight variation of method is hailed as a great discovery, has its little day of notoriety and takes its place on the library shelves as a literary curiosity of interest only to the antiquarian, and the busy teacher has neither the time nor the inclination to separate the wheat from the chaff. Up to the present there have been but incomplete and fragmentary reports available for our guidance, often in translation, and frequently garbled by personal bias, so that the need has become more and more urgent for a complete and scholarly review of the growth and distribution of systems that are associated with certain names and certain periods.

Dr. Leonard is peculiarly fitted for such a great task. An enthusiastic scholar, with an intimate knowledge of the languages in which the originals were written, he has devoted the leisure and the vacations of thirty years to collecting, reading and making available rare and inaccessible works on the subject, for students of education in general and of physical education in particular. Repeated visits to Europe and pilgrimages to the shrines of the pioneers have given him the proper perspective, and this volume presents his conclusions as delivered in his yearly lecture courses at Oberlin and Harvard.

It comes appropriately early in a series of books designed to place physical education on an equality with other more strongly entrenched parts of a general educational system. The soul is indeed dead that does not react with a generous glow when reading the difficulties overcome and the work accomplished by the heroes of any field of endeavor, and what could be more inspiring at this time than to have set forth the conquests and defeats of those patriotic spirits whose lives have been given to upbuilding the health and fitness of the youth of the world, throughout the ages, as a guide and inspiration to us who have these same problems to meet at the present time.

R. TAIT MCKENZIE,
Editor.

CONTENTS.

PART I. EUROPE.

CHAPTER I.

THE GREEKS.

Two Types of Education, Spartan and Athenian 17

Physical Education at Sparta 18

Physical Education at Athens 20

The National Festivals 24

CHAPTER II.

THE ROMANS.

The Roman Conception of Education 28

Military Training and Discipline 29

The Introduction of Greek Gymnastics 31

The Exercises of the Public Baths 32

The Public Spectacles of the Amphitheater and the Circus 33

CHAPTER III.

THE TEUTONIC INVADERS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 34

CHAPTER IV.

ASCETICISM IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

Causes 37

Nature of the Period 38

Effects 39

CHAPTER V.

MONASTERY AND CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS. 41

CHAPTER VI.

CHIVALRY. 43

CHAPTER VII.

THE UNIVERSITIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 47

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION.

Changes in Education—The Humanists 49

Vittorino da Feltre 49

Physical Training Advocated by Writers on Education:

In Italy—Cardano, Mercurialis, etc. 50

Luther, Zwingli, Camerarius, Comenius 53

The Spanish Scholar Vives 54

In France—Rabelais and Montaigne 54

In England—Elyot, Mulcaster, Milton 57

CHAPTER IX.

LOCKE AND ROUSSEAU.

John Locke 59

Jean Jacques Rousseau 61

Medical Writers of the Period 64

CHAPTER X.

THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN GERMANY.

Basedow, and the Dessau “Philanthropinum” 67

Salzmann, and the Schnepfenthal Educational Institute 70

The Life and Work of GutsMuths 71

His Writings 77

Vieth’s “Encyclopedia of Bodily Exercises” (Footnote) 81

CHAPTER XI.

FRIEDRICH LUDWIG JAHN, AND POPULAR GYMNASTICS IN GERMANY.

Jahn’s Early Life 83

The Outdoor Gymnasium (Hasenheide _Turnplatz_) near Berlin 88

The Spread of the Jahn Gymnastics in Germany, up to 1819 95

The Reaction of 1819—Jahn’s Later Life 98

The Development of Popular Gymnastic Societies since 1840—The
_Deutsche Turnerschaft_ 101

CHAPTER XII.

ADOLF SPIESS, THE FATHER OF GERMAN SCHOOL GYMNASTICS.

Early Life, and School Days at Offenbach 109

University Student and Tutor 110

Teacher in Switzerland, at Burgdorf and Basel 112

In Charge of School Gymnastics in the Grand Duchy of Hesse 116

His Contribution to Physical Education 117

CHAPTER XIII.

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN THE PRUSSIAN SCHOOLS.

Ernst Eiselen in Berlin 120

Massmann Endeavors to Revive the Jahn Plan 121

Rothstein at the Berlin Central Institute 122

The Training of Teachers in More Recent Times 124

Gymnastics in the Schools 127

The German Universities and Technical Schools 130

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PLAYGROUND MOVEMENT IN GERMANY.

Koch and Hermann in Brunswick 132

Hartwich in Düsseldorf 135

Von Gossler’s “Playground Order” 137

Von Schenckendorff and Eitner at Görlitz 138

The Central Committee, 1891-1915 142

CHAPTER XV.

PER HENRIK LING, FATHER OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN SWEDEN.

Early years in Sweden 146

Student in Copenhagen 148

The Lund Period 149

The Stockholm Period—The “Central Institute” 151

CHAPTER XVI.

LING’S SUCCESSORS AT THE CENTRAL INSTITUTE IN STOCKHOLM.

Branting, Georgii 156

Nyblæus, Hartelius, Hjalmar Ling 158

Törngren, Silow, Balck, Sellén 161

The Central Institute in 1900 163

Proposed Reorganization (1912) 170

CHAPTER XVII.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS OF SWEDEN.

Elementary Schools 171

Higher Schools for Boys 173

Higher Schools for Girls—Private Schools 176

CHAPTER XVIII.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN DENMARK.

Under Nachtegall 178

Under la Cour, Wegener, and Amsinck 183

The Rifle Clubs 184

The People’s High Schools 186

The Swedish System of School Gymnastics Introduced 187

Under Ramsing and Knudsen 189

The Playground Movement 194

CHAPTER XIX.

GREAT BRITAIN.

Sports and Organized Games 198

Archibald Maclaren 203

The Swedish System of School Gymnastics Introduced 208

The Dunfermline College of Hygiene and Physical Training 213

CHAPTER XX.

INTERNATIONAL GATHERINGS.

European Gymnastic Federations 215

The Modern Olympic Games 216

Congresses for the Promotion of Physical Education 224

PART II. UNITED STATES.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE FIRST INTRODUCTION OF THE JAHN GYMNASTICS INTO AMERICA.

Early Life of Follen and Beck, in Germany and Switzerland 227

They Settle in Northampton and Cambridge, Massachusetts 232

The First School Gymnasium in the United States, at Round Hill 233

The First College Gymnasium in the United States, at Harvard
University 235

The Boston Gymnasium, the First Public Gymnasium in the United
States 237

Lieber Succeeds Follen at the Boston Gymnasium 238

Later History of Beck, Follen, and Lieber 242

Introduction of Gymnastics in Other Schools and Colleges 244

CHAPTER XXII.

THE “NEW GYMNASTICS” OF DIO LEWIS.

Early Life of Lewis—Becomes Popular Lecturer 251

Introduces His “New Gymnastics” in and about Boston 255

The Normal Institute for Physical Education 256

Lewis’s Writings 259

School for Girls, at Lexington and Spy Pond 261

Later Life 262

CHAPTER XXIII.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN AMERICAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.

In the Period of 1830 264

In the Eighteen-fifties 264

Harvard, Yale, and Amherst Build Gymnasia 268

Amherst Establishes a Professorship of Hygiene and Physical
Education 272

Other Colleges in the Eighteen-sixties and -seventies 274

The Land-grant Act of 1862, and Military Training 276

Beginning of Rowing, Baseball, Football, and Track Athletics 277

Dr. Sargent at Hemenway Gymnasium, Harvard University 279

Progress since 1880 284

CHAPTER XXIV.

GERMAN-AMERICAN GYMNASTIC SOCIETIES AND THE NORTH AMERICAN
TURNERBUND.

Early History, up to the Close of the Civil War 290

The Period 1865-1886 295

George Brosius, and the Milwaukee Normal School of Gymnastics 296

The Year 1886 a Turning Point 301

Carl Betz, and German Gymnastics in American Schools 302

Recent History of the Turnerbund and Its Normal School 306

CHAPTER XXV.

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN THE YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS.

Robert J. Roberts and His Work 309

Luther H. Gulick at the Springfield (Mass.) Training School 312

The Chicago and Lake Geneva Training School 318

Recent History of Physical Training in the Associations 319

CHAPTER XXVI.

SWEDISH SCHOOL GYMNASTICS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Posse, and the Introduction of Swedish Gymnastics in the Boston
Schools 322

Dr. Hartwell’s Contribution to Physical Education in America 326

The Work of Nissen, Enebuske, Bolin, and Others 331

Swedish Gymnastics at the Woman’s College and the Bryn Mawr School
in Baltimore 335

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE PLAYGROUND MOVEMENT IN AMERICA. STATEWIDE PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

Sand Piles and Outdoor Gymnasia in Boston 337

Chicago Small Parks and Playgrounds 342

Status of the Playground Movement in 1916 347

Legislation Favoring Statewide Physical Education 348

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS.

Dio Lewis 352

The North American Turnerbund 352

Dr. Sargent, at the Private Gymnasium and the Harvard Summer School 352

The Anderson Normal School of Gymnastics, and the Chautauqua Summer
School 353

The Young Men’s Christian Association Colleges 355

The Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, and the Posse Gymnasium 356

Teacher’s Courses in Colleges and Universities 357

HISTORY OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION.