overcome the evil influences
of his environment as best he may. The ideals of the school are too
weak, too feebly established, to prevail against the ever present and
ever potent influences of the environment unless side by side with the
rise of the new ideals we at the same time endeavour to lessen, if we
cannot altogether remove, the obstacles which prevent their realisation
and prevalence. This problem of how to raise by education and by means
of the other social agencies at work the children of the slums to a
higher ideal of life and conduct and to secure their future social
efficiency is the most urgent problem of our day and generation. Mere
school reforms in physical and intellectual education will effect little
unless the other aspects of the problem are attacked at the same time.

Further, our school system, which requires that the child should
restrain his instinctive tendencies to action, and for certain hours
each day assume a more or less passive and cramped attitude, is also
prejudicial to the development and free play of the organs of the body
which have entrusted to them the discharge of certain functional
activities.

Hence the evil effects of the school itself must be removed or remedied
by some means having as their aim the increased functional activity of
the respiratory and circulatory systems of the body. And therefore the
aim of any system of physical exercises should be not merely increase of
bone and development of muscle but also the sustaining and improving of
the bodily health of the child by "expanding the lungs, quickening the
circulation, and shaking the viscera." This, as we shall see later, is
not the only aim of physical education. It may further aid in mental
growth and development, and be instrumental in the production of certain
mental and moral qualities of value both to the individual and to the
community.

Another cause operating in the school to prevent the full and free
development of the body is the method of much of the teaching which
prevails. A quite unnecessary strain is often put upon the nervous
system of the child, and as a consequence a lassitude of body results
which physical exercise not only does not tend to remove but actually
tends to increase. Methods of teaching which fail to arouse any inherent
interest in the attainment of an end of felt value to the child require
for the evoking and maintaining of his active attention the operation of
some powerful indirect