William Skarstrom
Published: 2015-07-20
Total Pages: 350
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Excerpt from Gymnastic Teaching For a number of years some of my friends had been asking me to write on the subject of Gymnastic Teaching, and finally Dr. J. H. McCurdy persuaded me to undertake the task. Like "Gymnastic Kinesiology" it was done, with the exception of the Appendix, in the form of monthly contributions to the Physical Education Review during the past three years. In this presentation I cannot claim to have added anything new to the subject. Nor have I tried to make an exposition of any particular system. It is merely an attempt to pick out and elucidate some of the principles underlying all gymnastic work and to show some of the possibilities of their varied application under different conditions. While some phases of the subject, such as the values and effects of the work, are still largely in the theory stage, the practical aspects of the work - methods and technique of teaching it, and the management of gymnastic material - have been abundantly tried and their effectiveness reasonably well proven. Indeed, the part of the discussion which deals with this side of the subject is but the summary of results of more than twenty years of study, observation and experience in teaching the work under fairly varied conditions - in the Y. M. C. A., in secondary schools, colleges and normal schools. The book is offered to teachers and students of physical education with the hope that it may prove helpful in the adaptation of gymnastic work to all kinds of conditions, but especially with a view to meeting conditions in educational institutions. If it will contribute to a broader, more liberal point of view, to a greater interest in and more effective teaching of gymnastic work, and thus to a fuller realization of its potential values, the effort will not have been made in vain. My grateful acknowledgment of helpful suggestions would include all the friends with whom I have been associated during the past twenty-two years. Among those who aroused my interest and guided me during my first years of teaching are Drs. J. H. McCurdy, C. J. Enebuske and L. Collin. In forming my point of view and general ideas on the subject I owe much to profitable discussion with these friends as well as Drs. L. H. Gulick, G. L. Meylan, C. W. Crampton, T. D. Wood, F. Leonard and others. In the systematizing and grading of apparatus work for men I received much help from Dr. G. L. Meylan, Mr. J. A. Davis and Mr. A. I. Prettyman while engaged in teaching the work at Columbia University. And to the stimulating, encouraging and steadying influence of Miss Amy Morris Homans I shall always attribute a large part of whatever success I may have attained in teaching the practical as well as theoretical side of the subject. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.