ABSTRACT

Aabsent; in some areas facilities for colouredmerican parents wishing to obtain the best conditions for physical education for their children might well be tempted to move to California. The temperate Californian climate makes physical activity possible, out-of-doors, all the year round. Some of the best teachers are attracted there by the relatively high salary scales; State law requires that five hours a week of physical education be provided. In other states conditions vary considerably. In Iowa, in the Middle West, for example, winter temperatures below zero seriously curtail physical activities in the smaller schools or, in the larger schools, necessitate expensive indoor facilities: in the summer, extreme heat makes much physical activity difficult. Teachers are not so well paid; State law requires only one weekly hour of physical education. Yet one might go further than Iowa and fare worse in some respects. For example, in 1946 the average salaries for teachers in some Californian cities were $2705, in comparable cities in Iowa they were $2153 and in South Carolina only $ 1650.[1] Local districts as well as states vary in facilities. Much financial support for education in America comes from taxes on local property. Yet it was possible some years back to find adjacent districts in which the same tax rate yielded for each child more than twenty times as much in the one district as in the other. [2] Physical facilities are affected not only by economic factors; in some areas German apparatus abounds, in some it is absent; in some areas facilities for coloured children are markedly less than for white. A boy playing basket ball for his high-school may find himself front page news in the local press, while his sister finds no competing high-school team which she can enter.