The following article appeared in the Woking News and Mail on 6th April 1939

 

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PLACE OF PLAY IN SCHOOL

 

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Important Part of Educational Work

 

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MAKING BOYS FIT TO PLAY

 

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            The place of play in the curriculum formed the subject of an address given by Mr. E. B. Sibley, assistant county organiser for physical training, at a display of physical training activities given by West Byfleet Central School on the evening of Monday 1st April 1939.   The address was given during a display by the boys of the school, under the direction of Mr. Ronald Powell.   The programme included class gymnastic table, training for athletics, indoor practice leading to association football and practice for swimming, agility work, indoor games and counter walking.

 

            Mr. A. W. Stollery (chairman of the school managers), who presided, said no one could get any response from a school without enthusiasm and at West Byfleet they had enthusiasm amongst both the staff and the scholars.    He was disappointed at not seeing more parents present at the display.  The homes should give the encouragement and support which they at the school needed to produce the people of the future.  He thought that every parent should join the Parents’ Association.  It had only just been started, but there was evidence of its existence as it was providing the refreshments that evening.

 

            They were pleased to have with them Mr. Roland Heath (chief inspector for the Board of education in Surrey), Miss Dorothy Le Couteur (the county organiser for physical training) and Mr. E. B. Sibley.  The human touch was growing in Surrey as far as the schools were concerned.  At one time the schoolmaster and his staff spent a certain time at the school and then went home.  Now they seemed to give all their time to it, and the officers of the county also spent much of their time for the benefit of that greater education which they had so much at heart.

 

WHAT THE WAR 1914-1918 TAUGHT US

 

            Mr. Sibley said he realised how much parents want to guard their children, but thought that parents could go a little too far with their advice to the head teacher as to how their children should be treated at school.   He wanted to ask himself, “Why do we do physical training in school?   Why do we include it in the curriculum?  What is it?”  In answer to the last question he thought it could be described as “play”.  They knew there was truth in the saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” but it formed only a small part of the answer to his questions.   He wondered if they all realised what the word “work” really meant for he felt it had for many years been confused with the word “drudgery”.   Some people called any form of physical or mental activity work.  He decided not and he sincerely hoped that those present did not.

 

            In 1914 it was found that 7 per cent of the men of this country were fit for active service and the remaining 93 per cent, had to go, although they were not fit.  The war taught us something terrible – “what a rotten lot we really were although we won”.   In 1918 people said they would have to give boys more drill.  The parents said the same thing, and the boys had drill till they were fed-up with it.   They did not want something strict, but something which gave them freedom.    They wanted freedom of movement, and they wanted to be happier.  The boys in the school in their demonstration that evening had enjoyed their “work” and the authorities wanted that to happen.  They wanted things done with a smile and the boys to have harmonious bodies.

 

DEFINING PLAY

 

            Five years ago statistics were taken and showed that of the schoolchildren of that time 75 percent were still suffering some physical defect such as a flat foot, round shoulders or one foot slightly turned in.  They needed much more play.  If he was asked to define play he would say it was “a joyous and harmonious expression of human activity”.   A poet had said, “Man plays only when he is a human being in the fullest sense of the word and he realises full humanity only when he plays”.   They played because they had certain amount of surplus energy and when they had something inside them which found an outlet in play.  

 

            They were told that instincts governed their behaviour such as the pugnacious instant being accompanied by an emotion called “anger”, and the paternal instinct by an emotion called “self-preservation and preservation of the young”.  The boys in the school had been given outlets for such emotions by means of play.   It was only by means of play that those emotions could be controlled.  Play also taught the boys to obey their leaders and provided them with an excellent training for the future.

 

            The boys were being given body pride.  They had physical training without gymnastic vests so that their bodies could be blown by the wind.  They got air baths which were often much more valuable than water baths.   Sun bathing was good, but it could also be ridiculous.  Air bathing could never be ridiculous.  The only reason people sun bathed was that they could “swank”.   It was simply because they had a body of which they were proud.   The boys were being given bodies so shaped that their organs could work properly.  They were being given clean bodies, and with a clean body there was bound to a clean mind.  That was why the authorities asked that children should change for physical training and was why they were proud.   The boys were being given not a question of relief from the class because the physical training class was as important as the other classes.

 

FIT ENOUGH FOR PLAY

 

            The exercises which had been carried out by the boys, continued Mr. Sibley, bad been chosen by the finest doctors the country had ever known.  The exercises had been grouped and arranged so that the small boys had the easy ones and the big boys had the hard ones, while others were chocolate coated.  In the schools they hoped to make the boys, by means of physical training, fit when they left school not only to play, but to want to play.   The authorities wanted the parents to give the boys sufficient food so that they could go all out.  The boys needed food so much that they were nearly sick.   They wanted the boys to be so fit that their leisure hours became pleasure hours instead of hours when they knew nothing to do except go around to public houses and do things they ought not to do.  They wanted the boys to be fit enough in their play that they realised they were making their country fit enough to live in.

 

            The survival of Britain and of any country depended upon the moral rectitude of the people.  Mr. Sibley appealed to the parents to encourage their boys to do their work with as little clothing as possible so that their movements would be unhampered.  He asked that the parents should encourage the people like Cclr. Jenkins, J.P. (headmaster) and Mr. Powell, who with untiring energy carried out the job of teaching the boys in the school and who were  doing what he would called the “practical application of the theories taught in Sunday School”.