SPORT IN FRANCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 997, 13 June 1930, Page 7

SPORT IN FRANCE

HOW FUTURE ATHLETES | ARE DEVELOPED TRAINING IN THE SCHOOLS The remarkable strides that France has made in recent years in the world of sport, especially in amateur athletics and Rugby football, is in large measure due to tine intensive development of physical training from the schools upward. Just what is being done among the schools is well illustrated by the following article, which is reprinted through the courtesy of the French Consul at Auckland, M. Paul Serre: At the present time, physical training in the schools begins for children of either sex at the age of 6. From 6 to 13, two hours of physical training a week, divided into daily lessons of 25 to 30 minutes, are allowed for in the time-tables of the primary schools. These lessons are given, in the course of the afternoon, by the school teachers of either sex, whose duty it is to afford their pupils a complete education, both in the physical and in the moral and intellectual spheres. The first step, of course, was to make the instructors —the schoolteachers of either sex—acquainted with the new task devolved upon them. Accordingly, in the primary normal schools, two hours a week were devoted to the physical training of the future school-teachers, who were supplied at the same time with the necessary appliances for gymnastics and athletic sports. With the latter, 27 normal schools had been provided by 3 926, 43 by 1027, 45 by 1928, 53 by 1029. For primary teachers having already left the normal schools to take up their duties, departmental and district courses were organised. The latter were attended, successively, by 7,000 future instructors in 3926; by 7,500 in 3 927; 8.000 in 1925; 10,000 in 3 929. In 1930, four-day ski-ing courses were instituted in the Alps and in the Jura Mountains; these courses were attended by 4SO school-teachers of both sexes.

As against the pupils who continue their studies up to the age of 1 6 or 18, there are those children who leave school when 3 3 years old, and whose needs are provided for by various useful institutions, such as: Continuation courses, working boys’ and girls’ clubs, post-school athletic clubs, sports clubs.

Lastly, it should be noted that, apart from the school games clubs, 1,222 men’s clubs and social institutions for women have been placed under the control of the Ministry of Education.

Physical training, as provided in France is; 1, educational and healthy; 2, athletic; 3 social and economic: 4 medical and therapeutic; 5 esthetic. For there is no real physical training where there is no moral training, no building up of character. It is solely by such methods that the French Government and educational authorities have been able to obtain the results sought after: the improvement of the race generally, arid the intellectual and moral development of the individual.