College Teaching Part 17

II. That legislation, similar in purpose and scope to the provisions and requirements in the laws recently enacted in California, New York State, and New Jersey, is desirable in every state, to provide authorization and support for state-wide programs in the health and physical education field.

III. That the United States Bureau of Education should be empowered by law, and provided with sufficient appropriations, to exert adequate influence and supervision in relation to a nationwide program of instruction in health and physical education.

IV. That it seems most desirable that Congress should give recognition to this vital and neglected phase of education, with a bill and appropriation similar in purpose and scope to the Smith-Hughes Law, to give sanction, leadership, and support to a national program of health and physical education; and to encourage, standardize, and, in part, finance the practical program of constructive work that should be undertaken in every state.

V. That federal recognition, supervision, and support are urgently needed, as the effective means, under the Const.i.tution, to secure that universal training of boys and girls in health and physical fitness which are equally essential to efficiency of all citizens both in peace and in war.

=By five national organizations=

In December, 1918, five national organizations, a.s.sembled in regular annual meeting, adopted resolutions which read in part as follows:

First: That this Society shall make every reasonable effort to influence the Congress of the United States and the legislatures of our various states to enact laws providing for the effective physical education of all children of all ages in our elementary and secondary schools, public, inst.i.tutional and private, a physical education that will bring these children instruction in hygiene, regular periodic health examinations and a training in the practice of health habits with a full educational emphasis upon play, games, recreation, athletics and physical exercise, and shall further make every possible reasonable effort to influence communities and munic.i.p.alities to enact laws and pa.s.s ordinances providing for community and industrial physical training and recreative activities for all cla.s.ses and ages of society.

Second: That this a.s.sociation shall make persistent effort to influence state boards of education, or their equivalent bodies, in all the states of the United States, to make it their effective rule that on or after June, 1922, or some other reasonable date, no applicant may receive a license to teach any subject in any school who does not first present convincing evidence of having covered in creditable manner a satisfactory course in physical education in a reputable training school for teachers.

Third: And that this a.s.sociation hereby directs and authorizes its president to appoint a committee of three to take such steps as may be necessary to put the above resolutions into active and effective operation, and to cooperate in every practical and substantial way with the National Committee on Physical Education, the division of physical education of the Playground and Recreation a.s.sociation of America, and any other useful agency that may be in the field for the purpose of securing the proper and sufficient physical education of the boys and girls of to-day, so that they may to-morrow const.i.tute a nation of men and women of normal physical growth, normal physical development and normal functional resource, practicing wise habits of health conservation and possessed of greater consequent vitality, larger endurance, longer lives and more complete happiness--the most precious a.s.sets of a nation.

=By the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board=

In January, 1919, the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board suggested the following organization of a department of hygiene for the purpose of establishing such a department in at least one normal school, college, or university training school for teachers in each state of the Union.

SUGGESTED ORGANIZATION OF A DEPARTMENT OF HYGIENE

I. _Division of Informational Hygiene._ (Stressing in each of its several divisions with due proportion and with appropriate emphasis, the venereal diseases, their causes, carriers, injuries, and prevention):

(_a_) The principles of hygiene. Required of all students at least twice a week for at least four terms.

(1) General hygiene. (The agents that injure health, the carriers of disease, the contributory causes of poor health, the defenses of health, and the sources of health.)

(2) Individual hygiene. (Informational hygiene, the care of the body and its organs, correction, and repair, preventive hygiene, constructive hygiene.)

(3) Group hygiene. (Hygiene of the home and the family, school hygiene, occupational hygiene, community hygiene.)

(4) Intergroup hygiene. (Interfamily, intercommunity, interstate, and international hygiene.)

(_b_) Principles of physical training. (Gymnastics, exercise, athletics, recreation, and play.) Required of all students. To be given at least twice a week for two terms in the Junior or Senior Years.

(_c_) Health examinations--

(1) Medical examination required each half year of every student.

(Making reasonable provisions for a private, personal, confidential relationship between the examiner and the student.)

(2) Sanitary surveys and hygienic inspections applied regularly to all divisions of the inst.i.tution, their curriculums, buildings, dormitories, equipment, personal service, and surroundings.

II. _Division of Applied Hygiene._

(_a_) Health conference and consultations.

(1) Every student advised under "c" above (health examinations) must report to his health examiner within a reasonable time, as directed, with evidence that he has followed the advice given, or with a satisfactory explanation for not having done so.

(2) Must provide student with opportunities for safe, confidential consultations with competent medical advisors concerning the intimate problems of s.e.x life as well as those of hygiene in general.

(_b_) Physical training.

(1) Gymnastic exercises, recreation, games, athletics, and compet.i.tive sports. Required of all students six hours a week every term.

(2) Reconstructional and special training and exercise for students not qualified organically for the regular activities covered in "1" above. It is a.s.sumed that every teacher-in-training physically able to go to school is ent.i.tled to and should take some form of physical exercise.

III. _Division of Research._

(_a_) Investigations, tests, evaluating measurements, records, and reports required each term covering progress made under each division and subdivision of the department, for the purpose of discovering and developing more effective educational methods in hygiene.

(_b_) Provide facilities for the sifting, selection, and investigation of problems in hygiene that may be submitted to or proposed by the department of hygiene.

(_c_) Arrange for frequent lectures on public hygiene and public health from competent members of munic.i.p.al, state, and national departments of health, and from other appropriate sources.

IV. _Personnel requisite for such a department._--Men and women should be chosen for service in the several divisions of the Department, who have a sane, well-balanced, and experienced appreciation of the importance of the whole field of hygiene as well as of the place and relations of the venereal diseases.

(1) One director or head of department. Must have satisfactory scientific training and special experience, fitting him for supervision, leadership, teaching, research, and administrative responsibility.

(2) One medical examiner for men and one medical examiner for women. There should be one examiner for each 500 students. Must be selected with special care because of the presence of extraordinary opportunities to exercise a powerful intimate influence upon the mental, moral, and physical health of the students with whom such examiners come in contact.

(3) One special teacher of physical training (a "Physical Director") for each group of 500 students. There must be a man for the men and a woman for the women students. The physical training instructors employed in this department should be in charge of and should cover satisfactorily all the directing, training, and coaching carried on in the department and in the inst.i.tution in its relation to athletics and compet.i.tive sports. The men and women who are placed in charge of individual students and groups of students engaged in the various activities of physical training (gymnastics, athletics, recreation and play) should be selected with special reference to their wholesome influence on young men and young women.

(4) One coordinator (this function may be covered by one of the personnel covered by "1," "2" or "3" above). Will serve to influence every teacher in every department on the entire staff of the inst.i.tution to meet his obligations, in relation to the individual hygiene of the students in his cla.s.ses and to the sanitation of the cla.s.s rooms in which he meets his students. The coordinator should bring information to all teachers and a.s.sist them to meet more satisfactorily their opportunities to help students in their individual problems in social hygiene.

(5) Special lectures on the principles and progress of public hygiene and public health. A close coordination should be secured between this department and community agencies like the Department of Health that are concerned with public hygiene.

(6) Sufficient clerical, stenographic and filing service to meet the needs of the department.

In February, 1919, the field service of the National Committee on Physical Education issued a tentative outline for a state law for physical education, suggested for use in planning future legislation.

The purposes of physical education as stated in the preamble of this law read as follows:

1. In order that the children of the State of .... shall receive a quality and an amount of physical education that will bring to them the health, growth and a normal organic development that is essential to their fullest present and future education, happiness and usefulness; and in order that the future citizenship of the State of .... may receive regularly from the growing and developing youth of the Commonwealth a rapidly increasing number of more vigorous, better educated, healthier, happier, more prosperous and longer lived men and women, we, the people of the State of .... represented in the Senate and a.s.sembly do enact as follows:

=By Legislative Committee of National Committee on Physical Education=

In February, 1919, the legislative committee of the National Committee on Physical Education prepared a bill for federal legislation for the purpose of a.s.sisting the states in establishing physical education in their schools. This proposed federal law stated the purpose and aim of physical education as follows:

The purpose and aim of physical education in the meaning of this act shall be: more fully and thoroughly to prepare the boys and girls of the nation for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship through the development of bodily vigor and endurance, muscular strength and skill, bodily and mental poise, and such desirable moral and social qualities as courage, self-control, self-subordination and obedience to authority, cooperation under leadership, and disciplined initiative. The processes and agencies for securing these ends shall be understood to include: comprehensive courses of physical training activities, periodical physical examination; correction of postural and other remediable defects; health supervision of schools and school children; practical instruction in the care of the body and in the principles of health; hygienic school life, sanitary school buildings, playgrounds, and athletic fields and the equipment thereof; and such other means as may be conducive to these purposes.

An a.n.a.lysis of these several authoritative and more or less official doc.u.ments indicates very clearly a unanimity as to scope and aims of physical education, for they all seek to promote and conserve, in the broadest sense of the term, the health of the nation.

=Poor type of physical education in secondary schools intensifies problem in the college=