Our live stock records make a better showing than this. For years we have
been quoting "a sound mind in a sound body" in various languages but have
failed in a large degree to achieve sound bodies. Nor, indeed, may we hope
to win this goal until we become aroused to the importance of physical
training in its widest import for all young people and not merely for the
already physically fit, who constitute the ball teams. If the child is
physically sound at the age of six, he ought to be no less so at the age
of eighteen. If he is not so, there must have been some blundering in the
course of his school life, either on the part of the school itself or of
the home. When we set up physical soundness as the goal of our endeavors
and this ideal becomes enmeshed in the consciousness of all citizens, then
activities toward this end will inevitably ensue. Physical training will
be made an integral part of the course of study, medical and dental
inspection will obtain both in the school and in the home, insanitary
conditions will no longer be tolerated, intemperance in every form will
disappear, and every child will receive the same careful nurture that we
now bestow upon the prize winners at our live-stock exhibition. The
thinking of people will be intent toward the one hundred per cent standard
and, in consequence, they will strive in unison to achieve this goal.
The large amount of incompleteness that is to be found among the products
of our schools may be traced, in a large measure, to our irrational and
fictitious procedure in the matter of grading.
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