View report page

31
In this connection, organised games fulfil a very useful function,
and no scheme of physical exercises is complete in which such
organised games do not find a very prominent place.
There is one matter of very considerable interest of which I
am constantly speaking, and which cannot be emphasised too
often. There are a large number of children who do not learn to
breathe properly. There is, as you know, a great deal of difference
between the breathing of an infant and the breathing of an adult,
and these children carry into their adult lives the infantile type of
breathing.
It is to be remarked that these children who breathe defectively
are usually of lesser intelligence than those who breathe properly.
It would be unwise at the present juncture to state that by teaching
these children to breathe properly they will of necessity become
more intelligent ; but this may be so, and in so far as correct
breathing will increase their physical vigour, it certainly will in
some measure be so.
The fault lies in the fact that our physical exercises have
developed as a modification of the bad old army methods of
training, in which an expanded chest was looked upon as the
quintessence of everything to be desired, even when it was attained
not by actually increasing the volume of the chest, but by pressing
abnormally on the contents of the abdomen and thrusting the liver
abnormally high into the chest itself.
There is, too, an idea that putting the shoulders back increases
the capacity of the chest. This is not so. When the chest is
expanded the shoulders will naturally be carried somewhat
backwards, but merely by muscular activity to null the shoulders
backwards and so to expose the greater part of the upper chest
has nothing whatsoever to do with chest expansion, and, however
spectacular, does not add one iota to the efficiency of the ventilation
of the chest.
The erect posture, too, is a matter which has received very
considerable attention of late, and I am convinced that too much
attention cannot be given to it at the present time.