THE PHYSICAL TRAINING OF YOUTH.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4716, 18 February 1884, Page 2

THE PHYSICAL TRAINING OF YOUTH.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.)^ Sib,—When some five years since the Auckland Board of Education realised the necessity for the expansion—not of the minds only, but of the physical frames of the risijftitgeneralion, its action was generally coflPrnended. The cultivation of a-, graceful, clastic carriage in our boys and girls is most desirable. The Spartan Eepuhlic held the theoryof thir " survival of the fittest," and carried that theory .. into practice. Newborn babesl were submitted to; strict scrutiny, and if found - puling or mal-formed—destroyed; youths of both sexes were educated to active exertions, the result being a;model nation so far as physique was concerned. : Snob, an extreme course, happily, would receive no toleration nowadays, although the community might be benentted -by the removal of some unhappy persons whose dispositions , are sometimes as crooked as theirvgersons. The aristocracy of Great BritaiflTaTe remarkable tor tneir perfect physical development, attributable to the training carefully bestowed on their children at colleges and fcigh class schools. By maturing (he physique of the rwm« * generation a lasting benefit is bestowed on - ',tf»e. future of New Zealand. With few parents, teachers, and school ."committees are agreed on the wisdom of living the body, in conjunction with the . 'mind, an education. The body and the mind should be trained together, each' proving a relaxation' to the other. . Plato and Aristotle' couwfjii ed a comnionwealth defective in whi*F gymnastics, were neglected. Plato calls him a cripple cultivating his mind alone, suffering his body to languish^ through inactivity and sloth., Cicer^tra*BßM-:to Athens for the Jtecof§tj of^i^MPlf 'where his body -was so strenj*flP»ed by gymnastics as to become robustfche having been previously punyjand week! Julius C»3ar was when . young subject to epileptic fits, bnt ia> fluenced by his companions he took park in their gymnastic feats, and became strong and vigorous. Without gymnastics „ Cicero might never have triutriphed at the, : bar, nor : Caesar in the field. Many per- ; ,. sons believe that gymnastic training nr o necessary for their boys, but urge that school teachers should be -competent to'

teach it. The same rule might be urged in respect to music and drawing. Some school teachers have a forte for drill, others for singing, of "drawing; bat I would urge the danger of entrusting to amateurs work requiring experienced hands. If an accident at gymnastic drill occurs great is the outpry, and accidents must occur with the greatest observance of precautions. The plastio frames of growing boys should not "be entrusted to amateurs to play "with. Nothing but ill effects can arise from the untaught efforts of boys strong and weak indiscriminately gathered around the cluster of perilous machines often erected in a playground.' :Some make objections that our working boys have not time for systematic bodily Culture, but boys have surely time for anything desirable or necessary, and unless the physical powers are cultivated together with the mental ones, precocious book* worms will bo the product.—l am, &c, ; ■ ■■>.: 1 Muscle. / -

\To the Editor of the Evening Star.) Sis,—Permit me through your paper to call the attention of the proper authorities to the most awful and obaoxious smell that existed last night at 8 30 p.m. in the water table north side of Mary street from the Hospital to Mackay street, just at a time that church goers were out heir v way home. If such a nuisance is in the habit of existing there, it will be the means of bringing something into pur. midst that will bring sorrow to many a family.—l am, &c.,' Ratepattbb. -