account. The periodic physical examination of children stimulates and increases this natural interest, if copies of the measurements are given to them to take home; it also stimulates teachers to observe physical condition and defects. Only a few vital measurements should be taken, but the examination should occur at least twice a year. It tends to promote emulation in physical development and strength, which in my judgment is much more wholesome than rivalry for percentages in class grades. It tends to call the attention of teachers of physiology to the whole subject of growth and development, and hence to the periods when overpressure thru school work is especially dangerous—namely the period of the second dentition and that of pubescence.

The third and last statement, with reference to the combination of the study of personal hygiene with that of physiology is not new in itself, but a change of method or of emphasis is much needed, one which cannot be secured by the simple statement of it. There is involved in it the whole revision of the point of view of the teacher by his or her study of the practical and essential in physiology and hygiene rather than the theoretical. The point of view is perhaps best attained by the combined study of such a physiology and hygiene as Hough and Sedgwick's The Human Mechanism, and Tyler's new book on Growth and Education.

The correct purpose of the teaching of elementary physiology has not been better stated than in the introduction to Hough and Sedgwick's book:

Avoiding that form of physiology which looks chiefly at the organs and overlooks the organism, we have constantly kept in mind the body as a whole, in order that physiology may become the interpreter of the common phenomena of daily life, and find in hygiene and sanitation its natural application to conduct.

We believe with Matthew Arnold that "conduct is three-fourths of life," and that this is no less true of the physical than of the moral and the intellectual life. We therefore make no apology for fixing upon this as the keynote of this work, and the right conduct of the physical life as the principal aim and end of all elementary teaching of physiology, hygiene, and sanitation.

Because of the presence of a few who will be inclined to doubt the advisability of giving over the teaching of physiology and hygiene to the supervision of the physical director, as outlined in this paper, it is a source of regret that time does not suffice for the discussion of the great breadth of this field and function. Let me quote simply a few sentences from a recent paper entitled, "The Physical Director as a Hygienist."

The study of all studies for the physical director is vitality, racial and individual. The modern tendency to congestion of population in our cities means racial degeneracy. This is proven by all comparative statistics of crime and disease for the city and country. It is clearly evident of statistics of human development in this country, in England, and in Europe. The physical director stands almost alone in his attempt to check this racial degeneracy. The sooner we swing away from the conception of the director as a leader of gymnastics or a director of athletics and grasp the ideal of him or her as a hygienist and the right-hand man of the practitioner of preventive medicine, the sooner will our work take on real power and significance. Our business is not to make gymnasts and athletes,

Published by The American Gymnasium Co., Boston, Mass.

but to make men and women, to give them reserve force and staying-power for their life work.

Physical education as a science is a department of hygiene. It is not an end in itself but a means to health and vigor. There is no branch of hygiene with which we are not concerned, no preventive agency which is not our function to use.

THE ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF

ATHLETICS

CLARK W. HETHERINGTON, PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND ATHLETICS, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, COLUMBIA, MO.

There is no more serious problem before educators than that of athletics. Articles written on the subject, tho numerous, are fragmentary in character, and give little insight into the complexity of the problem. Complete consideration would go rather exhaustively into three topics, viz.: (1) The nature, functions, and values of athletics; (II) The evils of athletics and their evolution and cause; and (III) The solution thru organization and administration. Hence, we propose to sketch briefly the three topics above, in order to place the questions involved in perspective.

I. THE NATURE, FUNCTIONS, AND VALUE OF ATHLETICS

There are two and only two classes of athletics: amateur and professional. The first is the flower of one of the most fundamental of animal and human instincts-play; it is the product of the play impulse, with social rivalry added. The second class grows out of an entirely different instinct, the instinct in human nature that creates an interest in spectacular contests, the willingness on the part of some to give favors for the satisfaction of this interest, and the willingness on the part of others to serve as a spectacle-maker and receive the favors. A sharp distinction exists between the motives in the play of boys in their early teens and the motives of professional baseball players, vaudeville acrobats, and prize-fighters. In the later years of youth the lessening gap in power for performance between the youth and the adult professional gives many opportunities for confusion. The contests of the former become interesting to the spectacle-lover. The boy's motives in play are likely to shift. Thru the spectator's desire for amusement and the boy's susceptability to the influence of the spectator, all athletic activities tend to be carried on into exhibitions for the amusement of the public with many unsavory features which often hide the meaning of the boy instincts which create athletic plays.

Athletics, then, are created by the play impulse. They are a phase of play, the more strenuous end of play, created by youth's motor-social and self-testing instincts, and play is nature's education. Intellectual power, prolonged infancy, and play all evolved together and are interdependent. During the growth and development of the infant, motor activities are chiefly play activities. But for play there would be no growing up. Thru play nature educates mentally and socially. Education, then, comes largely thru discipline in action, experiment, and experience. In athletics, boys learn their own powers and

the power of others, their own rights and the rights of others. They gain their first lessons in social intercourse, in human nature, and in "the rules of the game." They are socially disciplined for unsocial acts; they give discipline. Among college men, the moral and social training thru athletics, when properly administered, is the most intensive of any influence in college life; it lasts thru life. There is no higher physical morality than that involved in "training;" it means temperance in all things, and an intelligent adaptation according to individual peculiarities of hygienic forces. Sportsmanship is the application of the Golden Rule to the ethics of sport. Determination, grit, self-control, and all the character elements demanded in social competition are tested. Athletics are the natural play activities of adolescents and of the years of early manhood. Formal plays or athletics give larger opportunities for an educational discipline than free play. Athletics carry, therefore, all the deep significance of play for functional development, and for a mental, moral, and social discipline. They are a phase of the technique of physical education. Physical education, as a social or educational effort, takes over nature's methods. Athletics and gymnastics are co-ordinate in educational aims; no rational physical education can be built on either alone. The fundamental functions of physical education are the physiological development and motor development of the child during growth. To this must be added the moral and social value of play, especially of strong motor plays. The mere fact that physical education, as a science, must take over nature's method of physical education, forces physical educators to become leaders in morals and social conduct.

Physical education is but a phase of a propaganda for the normal hygienic, social life of a people, of which preventive medicine and the playground movement are also a part. With the development of society, sanitation, playgrounds, physical education, and athletics become more and more important. In the normal expression of the boy's athletic impulse, it could be readily shown that not only boys, as undeveloped men, but parents and society as well have profound natural rights.

Taken in its essence, then, and stripped of evils which we shall show are unnecessarily associated, the athletic instinct is the most profound educational force in the life of boys. Considered biologically, physiologically, sociologically, ethically, or from any scientific view-point whatever, the meaning of athletics is educational. There is no conflict between this view-point and that of the boy. The boy seeks sport and gets educated. Educators should promote and guide his sport and see that he gets this education.

The only other view-point is that of the spectator, the amusement-hunter, the sport, and the athlete who becomes the product of this interest. Administered from this latter view-point, athletic activities, whether of school or club, are on the same level as horse-racing, professional base-ball, vaudeville acrobatics, and aerial wire performances, prize-fighting, etc. There are no objections to professional athletics or professional athletes in their place, but the interests in this field are absolutely blasting to any educational purpose in athletics.

II. THE EVILS OF ATHLETICS

In considering the evils of athletics a distinction should be made between the elemental tendencies to evil found in all social motor plays, and the secondary evils which come with particular lines of development.

The elemental tendencies to evils are three:

1. There are the tendencies incidental to any pleasurable activity; the tendency to overindulgence, pleasurable dissipation, and for older boys, the wasting of time. In this there can be no special legitimate criticism of athletics as an activity but rather a criticism of a weak tendency in human nature.

2. There are the dangers incidental to all active physical activities; the danger of injury. Naturally the more strenuous the activity the greater the chances of injury, unless training enters to increase resistance.

3. There are the tendencies incidental to all social play; the tendency to act unsocially. Unsocial acts are the serious evils in athletics. Bad manners and cheating are common in spontaneous play as well as in a complex athletic development. Dishonesty in organizing teams appears with permanent organization and the development of rivalry.

A new tier of evils, in addition to increasing the volume of bad manners and dishonesty, appears with the spectator. The mere presence of the spectator affects the player and the coach. The player, according to his temperament and stage of development, becomes self-conscious and shrinks from observation or "goes in" for approbation. The spectator tends to eliminate the undeveloped, the awkward, the modest and to give a new stimulus to the developed. The coach under the same influence feels it to his advantage to aid in this movement. These tendencies work out to a logical conclusion in the specialization of athletics and the elimination of the many.

Again, the managerial function is influenced by the spectator. The attitude in arranging for sports directed by players themselves and supported by themselves is quite different from the attitude in arranging for the accommodation and pleasure of spectators. With the rise of the paying spectator and the manager, another tendency to evil appears: that incidental to the financial management of any public enterprise, the tendency to bad, or dishonest, use of money.

Finally the spectator evolves as a spectator. He influences not only the attitude of the player, the manager, and the coach; he influences himself. He becomes a partisan with partisan sympathies, which demand social satisfaction. To become a partisan in any contest is human nature. When a social group or institution is represented by a team, the group becomes partisan. Here is the motive force behind the great development of intercollegiate athletics, and the motive force behind the appearance of yet another evil, the abnormal intensification of the desire to win and an exaggeratiton of the importance of winning. An exaggerated partisan sentiment is the psycho-social soil upon which all the crimes of athletics have grown. The elemental tendencies to evil and the specialization are here repeated in ever-widening circles. This exaggerated partisan sentiment has hovered over all college athletics like black

menacing genii ready to rend the members of any administration that did not produce a winning team. Under the conditions that have existed, the bleacher crowd is a menace to the existence of sport as sport or as a means of education. In our colleges, the creators of what national sentiments and practices we have, is naturally found its extreme expression. Here have arisen those tendencies to exaggeration, commercialism, and professionalism, of which we have heard so much in recent years. That the conditions criticized do not exist in equal degree in all colleges is true; yet the atmosphere, the sentiments, the feelings, and the ideas that produce the conditions do exist potentially, no matter how conscientious or moral the administration. The philosophy upon which present-day athletics are conducted, has been passed on from the older colleges to the newer and weaker. In the forces producing the sentiments and the methods lies the secret of present-day athletic conditions.

The

The cause.-Now the trend of social evolution depends on a cause. cause here is negative. It is due to the neglect, indifference, and ignorance of college authorities. Boys had to develop athletics without precedents, standards, or the guidance of deep-thinking, earnest men. Boys supplied the initiative, but they lacked educational or social perspective, and this educators did not supply. This neglect gave the opportunity for irresponsible characters to assume leadership. The evils of athletics are never initiated by the majority of students. In every college there are at least a few students who have no moral sentiment except fear, and who will resort to any practice to satisfy partisan vanity. That there are occasionally faculty men of the same stripe cannot be denied. On the other hand there are a few students whose instinctive moral sense is so keen that they need no guidance. Between these extremes stand the great mass of students to be swayed one way or the other according to conditions. There is a constant tendency for those who lack moral sentiments and all appreciation of athletics except as a spectacle to usurp control and promote athletics according to their own concepts: and the faculty has allowed them. As in politics, the better element withdraws until results bring moral revulsion and a partial house-cleaning. Neglect is the central factor in all our twisted American athletic development. Bad leadership has followed, and therefore a bad philosophy of athletics. All this could have been avoided and can still be changed by proper organization and administration.

From what has preceded it is evident that (1) the values of athletics grow out of a fundamental instinct in human nature guarding a need for a physiological education; and (2) that the evils of athletics are largely the product of neglect and bad administration.

It is evident further that the more serious social evils develop in connection with inter-institutional contests, not in contests within the social group. The burden of the problem therefore falls upon inter-institutional contests and especially the more strenuous contests of the older boys or men. This is the