Chapter 9 Summary: Muscular Education—Gymnastics

Critique of Traditional Gymnastics

• Traditional gymnastics is collective muscular coercion - Commands and forced movements repress natural development

"The generally accepted idea of gymnastics is, I consider, very inadequate... The guiding spirit in such gymnastics is coercion, and I feel that such exercises repress spontaneous movements and impose others in their place"

• Medical gymnastics inappropriate for healthy children - Exercises designed to cure problems don't benefit normal children

"Similar movements are used in medical gymnastics in order to restore a normal movement to a torpid muscle... truly I do not well understand what office such exercises can fulfil when they are followed by squadrons of normal children"

True Muscular Education Philosophy

• Support natural physiological development - Help normal movements like walking, breathing, speech

"We must understand by gymnastics and in general by muscular education a series of exercises tending to aid the normal development of physiological movements (such as walking, breathing, speech)"

• Focus on practical life skills - Movements needed for daily activities like dressing

"Encourage in the children those movements which are useful in the achievement of the most ordinary acts of life; such as dressing, undressing, buttoning their clothes and lacing their shoes"

Understanding Child Anatomy

• Children have disproportionately large torsos - At age 3-6, limbs are only 38% of total height

"At the age when a child enters the infant school his limbs are still very short as compared with his torso; that is, the length of his limbs barely corresponds to 38 per cent of the stature"

• Growing bones cannot support adult expectations - Weak bones easily deformed by premature walking demands

"The tender bones of the limbs must therefore sustain the weight of the torso which is then disproportionately large... the long bones of the lower limbs, yielding to the weight of the body, easily become deformed"

• Children are not "little men" - They have unique proportions and needs

"We are wrong then if we consider little children from this physical point of view as little men. They have, instead, characteristics and proportions that are entirely special to their age"

Natural Movement Tendencies

• Children's instincts serve their physical needs - Lying down and kicking exercises limbs without body weight

"The tendency of the child to stretch out on his back and kick his legs in the air is an expression of physical needs related to the proportions of his body"

• Walking on all fours is natural - Short limbs make this comfortable and appropriate

"The baby loves to walk on all fours just because, like the quadruped animals, his limbs are short in comparison with his body"

Innovative Gymnasium Equipment

• Wire fence apparatus - Children discovered this themselves, moving limbs without body weight

"Instead of sitting down on the ground or on the chairs, they would run to the little fence and catching hold of the upper line of wire they would walk along sideways... They moved their limbs without throwing upon them the weight of the body"

• Trampolino swing - Wide seat supports legs while child pushes against board

"This little chair is hung from strong cords and is left swinging... he strengthens his limbs through the species of gymnastics limited to the lower limbs... without resting the weight of his body upon his legs"

• Equipment designed for child proportions - Spiral stairs, jumping platforms, all sized appropriately

"The steps must be very low and very shallow... the very smallest children can learn movements which they cannot follow properly in climbing ordinary stairways in their homes"

Practical Life Skills Training

• Dressing frames as gymnastics - Ten different fastening methods to master

"We use ten of these frames, so constructed that each one of them illustrates a different process in dressing or undressing"

• Children learn without direct teaching - Natural progression from practice frames to real clothes

"We succeed in teaching the child to dress himself without his really being aware of it, that is, without any direct or arbitrary command we have led him to this mastery"

• Pride in independence - Self-sufficiency brings natural satisfaction

"Soon he will be proud of being sufficient unto himself, and will take delight in an ability which makes his body free from the hands of others"

Respiratory and Speech Gymnastics

• Teaching the art of breathing - Coordinated with muscular movements

"The purpose of these gymnastics is to regulate the respiratory movements: in other words, to teach the art of breathing"

• Preparing speech organs - Specific exercises for lips, tongue, teeth

"These exercises teach the movements of the lips and tongue in the pronunciation of certain fundamental consonant sounds, reinforcing the muscles, and making them ready for these movements"

• Individual assessment and correction - Teacher helps with specific muscle movements

"She may then touch the muscles which should be used, tapping, for example, the curve of the lips, or even taking hold of the child's tongue and placing it against the dental arch"

Free Games and Natural Movement

• March for poise, not rhythm - Accompanied by songs for breathing exercise

"In the first class, I recommend the march, the object of which should be not rhythm, but poise only"

• Simple games encourage natural activity - Balls, hoops, tag games in natural settings

"In the free games, we furnish the children with balls, hoops, bean bags and kites. The trees readily offer themselves to the game of 'Pussy wants a corner'"

Educational Integration

• Gymnasium work connects to academics - Movement prepares for intellectual development

"The gymnasium, therefore, offers a field for the most varied exercises, tending to establish the co-ordination of the movements common in life"

• Physical skills support practical independence - Proper muscular development enables self-care

"Such movements as I have described, reinforce the hand in its most primitive and essential action, prehension;—the movement which necessarily precedes all the finer movements of the hand itself"