Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1880 — Howto Help the Children Grow Erect and Stately. [ARTICLE]

Howto Help the Children Grow Erect and Stately.

William Blaikie, the author of “How to Get Strong and How to Stay So,” spoke before the Brooklyn Teachers’ Association recently on “Physical Edu cation.” “ I want,” said he, “to see if in an informal talk, we can’t hit upon some way in which we can bring the physical education- of school children down to a practical basis. Our children, who are healthy and buxom when they begin school-work, come out pale, sickly and with round shoulders. If you require the children under you to sit far back on a chair and to hold their chins up, you will cure them of being round-shouldered, and the lungs and other vital organs will have free and healthy play. Another simple plan is to have the children bend over backward until they can see the ceiling. This exercise for a few minutes each day will work a wonderful transformation. If a well-qualified teacher could be employed to superintend the physical development of the children, the best results would be seen. Dr. Sargent, now the Superintendent of the Harvard Gymnasium, who formerly had charge of a gymnasium in New York, has no equal as a teacher of simple, efficacious means by which the weak parts of one’s laxly may be developed. I think it would be well for you to send some competent physician to him to take lessons, and then the exercises could be taught to your teachers. The first step should be simple and economical. Exercises of the simplest kind can be begun without any apparatus.”— New York Tribune.