PREFACE.

Thirty years ago, when the writer of these lines was called to a professorship in physical education, there existed no comprehensive survey of the field he was entering. The reports of Dr. Hartwell contained excellent summaries which suggested our debt to the past and to foreign lands, and fuller treatment of certain earlier periods in the United States; but the English language offered little else of value. Suitable preparation of courses in the principles and methods of physical education required more ample knowledge of what others had done and were doing, and the task of finding out and gathering together the best of the European literature bearing on the subject was at once begun and has been continued ever since. A summer trip to Germany in 1896 whetted an appetite which later found satisfaction in an entire year (1900-1901) on the Continent, where the large special collections at the Stockholm Central Institute of Gymnastics and the Berlin Turnlehrerbildungsanstalt supplied for the first time an opportunity to become familiar with the older books and periodicals. The year also contributed to the linguistic knowledge and experience needed for the handling of such material. The direct contact with historic spots and significant aspects of physical education in Europe which it brought was afterwards renewed and broadened by five months (February to June, 1913) spent at important centers in Switzerland, Germany, the three Scandinavian countries, and Great Britain.

Meanwhile the collection of material had progressed at a rapid rate, and from time to time as circumstances permitted chapters of a book-to-be were prepared and published, in irregular order, and biographical sketches which might later be incorporated in such a work as the present one. Thus it happens that only five of the twenty-eight chapters in this volume are altogether new, though all have been carefully revised and many of them largely rewritten within the last year and a half. The selection of topics, order of arrangement, and manner of presentation have been determined experimentally in courses given to students in Oberlin College since the spring of 1894, and for thirteen years (1899, 1902, and 1908-1919) at the Harvard University Summer School. The illustrations are chosen from nearly six hundred which have been employed in the form of lantern slides in these courses. With few exceptions the references in the text and footnotes are based on first-hand examination of the originals.

If we except Viktor Heikel’s Gymnastikens Historia (issued at Helsingfors in four parts, 1905-1909), comprehensive in plan but quite erratic in its treatment of the United States, no work undertaking to trace the history of physical education in Europe and America and to describe the chief present-day movements has appeared hitherto in any language. Euler’s standard Geschichte des Turnunterrichts and the lesser German manuals, while they are in general excellent guides so far as ancient and medieval Europe are concerned, and for the recent history in that particular country, have little or nothing to say of the rest of modern Europe, except as it has influenced Germany herself. This is less true of Euler’s monumental Encyklopädisches Handbuch des gesamten Turnwesens and the more recent Handbuch des gesamten Turnwesens of Dr. Rudolf Gasch, but in these, too, the space allotted to non-German subjects is altogether insufficient. Similarly Illeris and Trap’s brief Grundtræk af Gymnastikkens Historie covers chiefly Danish experience. For each country one must consult its own literature, and particularly the periodical publications, and he needs also to supplement his reading by personal observation and investigation on the ground in order to avoid distorted views and arrive at sound conclusions.

If this attempt to set forth clearly the characteristics of the different stages and phases through which physical education has passed, to introduce the persons who have contributed to its advancement, and to guide the reader to the best that has been written on the subject, shall lead to deeper and more general appreciation of the place which physical education should win and hold in general education, and to the adoption of wiser measures where it is introduced, the labor expended upon the volume will be well rewarded. Much has been omitted which might have been included. If inaccuracies are discovered the author will be glad to have his attention called to them.

F. E. L.

Oberlin, Ohio, 1923.