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§ 23. Apart from the doubts here raised as to the perfection of Greek training, let us revert, in conclusion, to the absence among elder boys of those out-of-door games, like cricket, which are so valuable for developing mental, together with physical, qualities. There is one feature in these games which the Greeks seem to have missed altogether, and which appears to be ignored in most German books on the reform of physical education in schools. It is that forming of clubs and teams of boys, in which they choose their own leaders, and get accustomed to self-government and a submission to the superior will of equals, or the decision of public opinion among themselves. Plato saw long ago that the proper and peculiar intention of boys’ sports was more mental than bodily improvement. But he confined himself to that part of the question which advocates the cultivation of spirit in boys as better than that which cultivates strength only. This is perfectly true, and no game is worthy the name in which spirit and intelligence cannot defeat brute strength. But there is little trace, save at Sparta, of any free constitution in boys’ education, in which they manage their own affairs, fight out their own quarrels, and praise or censure according to a public opinion of their own. No Greek educator seems to have had an inkling of this, and the foreign theorists who have discussed educational reforms on the Greek models seem equally unaware of its importance. Yet here, if anywhere, is the secret of that independence of character and self-reliance which is the backbone of the English constitution and the national liberty. The Greeks were like the French and the Germans, who always imagine that the games and sports will not prosper or be properly conducted without the supervision of a Turnlehrer, or overseer; and they give great exhortations to this man to sympathize with the boys and stimulate them. In England the main duty of such people is to keep out of the way and let the boys manage their own affairs. The results of the opposed systems will strike any one who compares, on the one hand, the neat and well-regulated French boys of a boarding-school, walking two-and-two, with gloves on and toes turned out, along a road, followed by a master; on the other, the playgrounds of any good English school during recreation time. If the zealous and learned reformers who write books on the subject in modern Europe would take the trouble to come and see this for themselves, it might modify both their encomia on Greek training and their suggestions for their own countries.