over. The cultivation of habits of exercise implies, first of all, that athletics should be fun, and though it may seem strange to suggest that they could be anything else, they can be easily killed by too much organization. At least, they are so little fun that the majority of people drop them as soon as school and college days are In a large athletic club-say of three or four thousand members-only a handful actually take regular exercise; most of the members sit about admiring the heroes or "swapping stories" about the past-and grow fat or dyspeptic in the process. Conditions are improving, to be sure, but not very fast; we are still a long way from the Englishman's idea of exercise as an essential part of his life. The reason, of course, is by no means that people think of athletics as not fun, as drudgery, but comparatively few think of them positively as fun: sports are still chiefly a spectacle. Another reason is that the majority of our people have never passed through sufficient athletic experiences to have acquired the habit; or perhaps they have played on a team and cannot think of athletic sports as possible without a team. Our education must provide more variety in sports -such as tennis, rowing, running—that the individual can continue alone or with a single friend, and, with adequate supervision, it must see that practically every student is included. Just as the curriculum must suggest leads for extra-curricular work, so the physical training must develop in each pupil sport resources to which he will eagerly turn when the team and school days are past. More fundamental than any of these reasons for cultivating habits of exercise is the physical and moral help that they are to a man or woman all through life. If a person has learned to take care of himself, to spend his leisure hours actively in appropriate sports, there is not only a good chance that he will escape many of the physical ills to which middle age is heir, but that, with a sound mind growing in a sound body, he will escape the despondency and cupidity and sensuality which frequently find expression in immorality and crime. These are truisms, no doubt, but we have nevertheless not yet widely realized what enormous value well-adjusted athletic habits may have in the moral field. The self-control, the patience, the courage, the generosity, the clean living that may arise from them, if they are habitual and kept in proportion with the whole life of the individual, can hardly be overestimated. In excess they are bad, of course, just as study in excess or business in excess is bad; but similarly, just as no study at all or no business at all is bad, so no athletics-especially no athletic habits in the individual-are a serious defect. If every man were a farmer or a lumberman, the defect might not be serious, but in our complicated city life, especially as regards those who attend secondary schools and colleges and later pass into business and professional activities, a personal athletic inheritance is practically a necessity. Such a condition, naturally, depends chiefly on a state of mind. Athletics to be of service must be kept in proportion; and to keep them in proportion, appropriate to the needs of the individual, means an appreciation of their values in relation to physical, mental, and moral development. Then and not till then will the problems suggested at the beginning of this chapter receive more than temporary and isolated solution. The point is not to surround athletics with rules so much as to educate our youth to a right attitude toward them. That this in its highest conception is an unattainable ideal is of course true; but it is not unthinkable that with increased supervision and coöperation an attitude of mind may be induced which will mean a striking improvement in physique and morale throughout the country. The problems which now confront us may be practically, if not quite ideally, solved. Smith will cease to "crawl like a crab" off-side-not because he may be caught-but because, instead of "everybody's doing it," nobody will be doing it. CHAPTER XII MORALITY AND RELIGION MORALITY and religion, more than any problems of education, are outside school jurisdiction. It is no doubt right that they should be, yet the moment we recognize that education is concerned with the whole life of the individual, we must recognize as well that the particular phase represented by the school may not wisely disregard the most important side of the individual's development. For we do not find it hard to agree that the most important thing in the education of the child is character; and it follows that the school, with its powerful if brief influence, must play an important part in determining the characters of our citizens. When we beg the question by delegating moral influence to the home, we not only invite the home to delegate intellectual influence to the school, but we dismember the child: in most instances we encourage the condition in which the child is good but not intelligently so, or clever but |