Springfield College - Massasoit Yearbook (Springfield, MA)

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THE MASSASOIT 13 condition. A careful study of the men who are leaders in the business, political, and educational life of to-day shows that they are for the most part men who have inherited or acquired a high degree of nervous vitality. It is the steam in the human engine which gives it power to drive. It is of the greatest importance then that this dy- namic quality be conserved, increased, and handed down to coming generations. As so large a part of our population must live under the necessarily- artificial conditions of city life, it becomes increasingly necessary to make the conservation and development of this vital energy a matter of careful thought and an in- tegral part of our system of education. This the Training School is aiming to do with ever increasing success, not merely through the work of its graduates in the Young Men’s Christian Associations, but also in schools and colleges. This need is being so strongly felt that there is a great and growing demand from these schools, colleges, and universities for carefully trained teachers of physical training. This demand we can only meet in part as yet, but it is the ideal of the Training School to do so more and more, and to give Gymnasium physical training a new place in the program of gen- eral education. It will not be long before physical

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12 THE MASSASOIT the individual to fit harmoniously and helpfully into the social whole. Our ideal, then, is not merely a school of Association technique, but one which shall develop the social spirit and the capacity for social service in a high degree. To that end we concentrate attention upon those subjects which have directly to do with mail ' s consti- tution and conditions , — the forces which make for his physical, mental, moral, and social de- velopment, and the principles which should control and direct men ' s relations with men. All the studies wdiich have to do with a man’s body and its upbuilding are shaped by the thought which is not new but given a new emphasis, “Sana mens in sano corpora.” While it is not always true that a good body means a good mind and character, it is true that mental and moral power have a close relation to physical condition. Physical vitality and control give to mind and character adequate means of expression. Genius has been defined as “power to work,” and power to work depends to a far greater degree than most men imagine on physical merely individual capacity, but a sense of social re- sponsibility. With leading educators in school and college and university we believe that education fails, unless it develops the truly social spirit, which enables Dormitory

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14 THE MASSASOIT more effective method of religious education the Train- ing School is taking an honorable place. Her students are taught “in season and out of season” that character building as well as body building is a science to be studied. We share in the growing conviction that reli- gious education has been sadly neglected. Parents have thrown the responsibility on the teacher. The fear of sectarian pros- elytism has muzzled the teacher. The Sunday Schools reach not more than twenty per cent of the children. Add to this the fact that the instruction in our Sunday Schools is confessedly on a lower plane than that of our public schools, and it ceases to be a matter of wonder that a large part of our population is religiously uneducated. Such a situation is an an- omaly for a professedly Christian people who even stamp on their coins “In God we trust.” It is our ideal not merely to help to place religious education in the Association on a more scientific and effective basis, but to hasten the time when religious education, in the large education will be as common and as scientifically di- rected as education in the sciences, and the school is Senior Table, {floods full Dining Room playing her part in this important movement. In the new movement towards a more rational and