PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Sts,—The article on Games by your Medical Correspondent in The Spectator of February 26th is welcome at a time when criticism of the over-importance attached to games in a minority of schools may lead to a general misapprehension of their educative value. Other countries emphasise different aspects of physical education. The British character responds best, perhaps, to the training implicit in games, a training in individual prowess and initiative devoted to the common good of the team. Moreover, in the education of youth—not necessarily in schools— the range of games and sports extends wider than the usual team games ; such activities as climbing, swimming, sailing, rowing, providing competi- tion with the elements, opportunity for achieving ascendancy over nature rather than over human opponents, come equally under the heading of physic d•remation and education.
A fetish may have been made of games in some schools ; far too little opportunity has been allowed for them in State schools. Your corre- spondent rightly points out their social value. " Games teach boys me girls not to cheat—the greatest of all citizenly lessons," said Dr. Gilbert Murray at an Inter-Allied Conference on the wide aspects of physics: education in London last year. Properly directed they can teach also a sense of world citizenship. They provide occasions' for people from different communities and different countries to visit each other, to give or receive hospitality and to learn the geography, language and customs of other nations. Indeed, movement is in itself an international language.
International gatherings have by no means been hamionious in the p.m and their object of developing mutual understanding has been abused. All the more reason that the British should revive the true spirit of friendly rivalry which should characterise them rather than the spirit of aggressive competition and national propaganda sthich spoiled them and demeaned their purpose before the war. It is in our schools and youth training centres that boys and girls can learn that first and foremost games are great fun. They can learn there to regard them in their true perspective. There is no need to give them disproportionate importance ; nor is there any need to belittle a part of education, the outstanding features of which are the development of individuality and the art of co-operation.—Yours truly, BRONWEN LLOYD-WILLIAMS. L.P.E.A. Hamilton House, Bidborough Street, London, W.C. t.
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