Читать книгу The Educational Writings of Richard Mulcaster - Richard Mulcaster - Страница 18

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[Mulcaster gives a list of the forms of exercise which he thinks most suitable, both for indoors, and for out of doors. In the former class are—speaking and reading aloud, singing, laughing, weeping, holding the breath, dancing, wrestling, fencing, and whipping the top; in the latter are—walking, running, leaping, swimming, riding, hunting, shooting, and playing at ball. These of course are not all considered suitable for children, but a selection could be made from them to be practised in school under the regulation of the master. He then enters upon a detailed and curious examination of the value of each of these forms of exercise, considered mainly in regard to their physiological effects. In all this it has been pointed out by Schmidt (Geschichte der Erziehung, Vol. III., Pt. I, pp. 374-6) that Mulcaster followed closely, though without special acknowledgment, the De Arte Gymnastica of Girolamo Mercuriale, a contemporary Italian physician. As the science is mostly of the traditional and somewhat fantastic character then prevalent, the discussion is not particularly profitable from a modern standpoint. It will be interesting, however, as an illustration of his treatment, to see how he deals with a game that seems to have had much the same features in his day as in ours.]