School Program in Physical Education #266439

The report of Clark W. Hetherington, herewith submitted, on a proposed "School Program in Physical Education" is very broad in its scope. Beginning with a concise review of the rise of physical education in the public schools, it proceeds to a destructive critical analysis of the attempts that have been made to adapt European methods of physical education to American schools, and thence it passes to a constructive scientific presentation of the problems, objectives, and principles involved in the organization of a school program.<br><br>Perhaps the greatest contribution made by the author in this report is to be found in his treatment of the primary aims of physical education. He shows how the big-muscle activities must be organized as an essential and bulky phase of child life, and then how these big-muscle activities must be organized in such ways as to secure their inherent values for the development of the fundamental intellectual, emotional, nervous, and organic powers underlying efficiency in life.<br><br>Mr. Hetherington has had much experience and much success both as a teacher and as a supervisor of physical education. His theories, therefore, have been submitted to the test of experiment in school work and on the playground. They are the conclusions derived from long observation and much experimentation as well as from thought and study.