The second, though less obvious, is no less important. What is the most
palpable fact of the child's play? It is enjoyment. We have done for
ever with the elegant morality which grown-up people, very particular
about their own meals, used to impose upon children, and which was based
upon the idea that everything which a child enjoys is therefore bad for
it. We are learning the elements of the physiology of joy. We find that
pleasure and boredom have distinct effects upon the body and the mind,
notably in the matter of fatigue. Careful study of fatigue in school
children has shown that the hour devoted to physical exercise of the
dreary kind under a strict disciplinarian may, instead of being a
recreation, actually induce more fatigue than an hour of mathematics.
If, then, we cannot allow the girl to play, but must give her some kind
of formal exercise, we must at least make it as enjoyable as possible.
There are Continental systems of gymnastics which do not believe in the
use of music because, forsooth, they find that the music diminishes the
disciplinary effect! Such an argument dismisses those who adduce it from
the category of those entitled to have anything to do with young people.
They should devote themselves to training the rhinoceros, these
martinets; the human spirit is not for their mauling. In point of fact
one of the redeeming features of physical training is the use of music,
which goes far to supply the pleasure that accrues from the natural
exercise of games, and greatly reduces the fatigue of which the risk is
otherwise by no means inconsiderable.
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