ABSTRACT
In the common schools we are accustomed to describe as gymnastics a species of collective muscular discipline, which has as its aim that children shall learn to follow definite ordered movements given in the form of commands. The guiding spirit in such gymnastics is coercion, and the author feel that such exercises repress spontaneous movements and impose others in their place. We must understand by gymnastics and in general by muscular education a series of exercises tending to aid the normal development of physiological movements, to protect this development, when the child shows himself backward or abnormal in any way, and to encourage in the children those movements which are useful in the achievement of the most ordinary acts of life. The gymnasium, therefore, offers a field for the most varied exercises, tending to establish the co-ordination of the movements common in life, such as walking, throwing objects, going up and down stairs, kneeling, rising, jumping, etc.
