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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 78

Footnote "Power of Play."

Footnote "Power of Play."

In the above address I specially em phasised the claims of 'Play and Games in School Life,' but, as I have indicated elsewhere, I am of opinion that useful and interesting manual instruction and' occupations might take the place of games: to a considerable extent. Further, I feel very strongly that the craze for playing page 72 football and cricket, pushed to virtual professionalism by an athletic few, and the mere "barracking" by the many, is a degradation and abuse of the true spirit of games, and defeats the end in view. Where this custom prevails, those who are most in need of active recreation are allowed to become loafers, or mere crammers. However, this fact affords the strongest argument, not against, but in favor of the provision of proper playgrounds and the systematic cultivation of games in connection with all schools. Every boy and every girl should play several games passably well, and this could easily be brought about if schools facilitated and encouraged the playing of a reasonable number of the wide range of games suited to all ages, stages, and conditions which have been handed down to us from the past.

The following quotation from Professor A. F. Chamberlain's exhaustive study of the child, from the point of view of Evolution and Education, is suggestive :—

"Childhood is the period in which, by the eminently supple and attractive instrument of play, the natural instincts and impulses, so exuberant and so far-reaching, make possible the normal, healthy, active, ingenious, self-knowing, and self-trusting adult. . . . The prolongation of infancy in the human race needed as a corollary the activity of youth to secure the wisdom and strength of mature life. . . . Man had to be young to be civilised; had he no youth and no play he were perpetually a savage

"Play in childhod, as Groos has abundantly shown, is concerned with everything; emotions, feelings, acts, thoughts, imaginings, speech, all begin their careers under its subtle, shaping influence, and the really genial among adults never lose in science, art, or literature the play which makes it a joy to be alive. . . Language, poetry, art, science, all begin in child-play; the orator, the poet, the artist, the searcher after knowledge 'play' as surely and as naively as the child."

J. L. Hughes says (in his 'Froebel's Educational Laws ') :—

The old idea, that the mere storing of the memory was the highest work of the teacher, made it difficult for teachers to believe that one could seriously suggest that play should be made an organic school process, to be systematically carried on as a regular means of educating children. At first the suggestion met with ridicule only then leading minds acknowledged that play might be of advantage, as a rest and a change from severe mental work; next it dawned on a few progressive teachers that play was really better than formal physical exercises for training the child physically in varied activity and in natural grace-fulness; until now the world is beginning to understand that Froebel made play an organic part of his educational system—not alone for recreation and relaxation, nor for physical culture only, but as the most natural and most effective agency for developing the child's physical, mental, and moral nature, and for revealing and defining its individuality.