Gymnasium

“ This was the sacred precinct of the chosen athletes, and it was not open to any others. He saw a small gymnasium, and adjoining it a large, bright room with painted windows that let in the light, but could not be seen through. ”

“ The gymnasium, whither all the girls were scuttling, was a moderate-sized wooden building that had been erected, in pre-war days, at the side of the house. It served for many purposes, and was alternately drill-hall, concert-room, play-room, lecture-hall, art gallery or ball-room as the case might be. This afternoon, with a fresh coat of pink distemper, a big bowl of flowers upon the table, and [23] the sunshine coming through the skylight roof and shining on the nicely-polished floor and rows of varnished forms, it looked both business-like and attractive. ”

“ For good in-door exercise there is nothing like a gymnasium. This is fortunate, for every house has a gymnasium in it, if its owners only knew it. It may sound like a strange statement, but it is true. Every bedroom is a gymnasium.
It is convenient to call this piece of furniture a chair; but if you call the room a gymnasium, you may call this chair a pair of parallel bars and a trapeze. If it is a light chair, and the ceiling is high, you may call it an Indian club and a pair of dumb-bells also if you like. That bed is a horizontal bar; so is the ledge over the door. ”

“ Till he appears, our culture must remain for most a little hollow, falsetto, and handicapped by school-bred diseases. The modern gymnasium performs its chief service during adolescence and is one of the most beneficent agencies of which not a few, but every youth, should make large use. Its spirit should be instinct with euphoria, where the joy of being alive reaches a point of high, although not quite its highest, intensity. ”

“ Gymnasiums lead to the universities, and therefore afford professional training, while real-schools, leading only to business, present a practical course of studies intended to fit the pupil for the ordinary affairs of life. Sometimes the gymnasium has a department corresponding to the realschool, for the advantage of pupils displaying a peculiar fitness for that class of studies. The gymnasium is the stepping-stone to the university. ”

“ The master of the gymnasium is generally a vigorous and enthusiastic instructor, who is able to conduct skillfully daily gymnastic class work, and relieve monotony and evoke interest by introducing a variety of exercises for the different college classes. He is also the hygienic adviser in all matters relating to study and recreation. The students are taught that regular exercise, sufficient sleep, personal cleanliness, and proper diet will correct most of the so-called pernicious effects of over-study. ”

“ History of Secondary Instruction in Germany (U. S. Bureau of Education, Circulars of Information, 1874, no. 3) , page 41. "The name gymnasium came into use as early as the sixteenth century. The ministerial decree of the 12th of November, 1812, ordered that all learned school institutions, such as lyceums, pedagogiums, collegiums, Latin schools, etc., should bear the name gymnasium. A gymnasium is and has long been a classical school." ”

“ But lawn-tennis, baseball, football, and the gymnasium fill the bill. The students are proud of their gymnasium, and I know from personal experience that, during the last eight years, those who have excelled in athletic exercises have also excelled in rank.
Now I believe that this college has taken a new departure, and I believe there is a future for it from the fact that the alumni take more interest in the college than they used to take, and because there are so many poor students connected with it. Poor students are the salvation of a college. ”

“ The runs developed into the gymnasium, the wrestling-ring into the palaestra.
The word “gymnasium” means, properly, an athletic exercise. By a natural transference it comes to be used first in the plural, afterwards collectively in the singular for a place set apart for such exercises. It is a general term. The gymnasium is merely an athletic ground, or playing-field, where all sorts of sport take place. It contains “runs and wrestling-rings.” It may serve as a riding-school. Euripides speaks of “gymnasia resounding with the tramp of horses.” ”

“ The gymnasium was draped inside with flags and bunting and decorated outside with Japanese lanterns. School Hall became suddenly a bower of palms and other things in pots or tubs which looked like palms but were really something quite different with far more unpronounceable names. ”

“ The feats once learned, a private gymnasium can easily be constructed, of the simplest apparatus, and so daily used; though nothing can wholly supply the stimulus afforded by a class in a public institution, with a competent teacher. In summer, the whole thing can partially be dispensed with; but we are really unable to imagine how any person gets through the winter happily without a gymnasium. ”

“ The gymnasium was a public institution as distinguished from the palaestra, which was a private school where boys were trained in physical exercises, though the term palaestra is also often used for the part of a gymnasium specially devoted to wrestling and boxing. The athletic contests for which the gymnasium supplied the means of training and practice formed part of the social life of the Greeks from the earliest times. ”

“ The transformed gymnasium, again harmonized with the requirements of the period, will for the first time be fully equipped for the struggle with realism. Instead of burdening its pupils with classical studies till they turn from them in disgust, rendering them insensible to the charms of the Hellenic spirit, and giving them an aversion to humanism by the torturing drill in pedantic forms; instead of violently giving to their ideas a direction which sets them at variance with the world around, the gymnasium will insure to them an harmonious education in accordance with modern ideas. ”

“ Each contains sleeping-rooms to accommodate forty students, two masters’ studies, a recreation-hall, dining-room, kitchen, and service-rooms. Behind East Hall is the gymnasium, a picturesque structure of random-set stone, gray stucco, and much glass. Here, besides the gymnasium proper, is an auditorium of good size, a 14 modest swimming-tank, locker-room and baths, and a commodious office presided over by Mr. Wells, the physical director. From the gymnasium steps one looks across an attractive, well-kept quadrangle of shaded turf, vegetable and flower gardens, and tennis-courts. ”

“ From eight o’clock until half-past eight, the three sections joined in gymnastic exercises on one morning and on the other the same period was devoted to concert singing. On the same floor with the schoolrooms a small gymnasium had been fitted with wands, dumb-bells, Indian clubs, and all the paraphernalia of a high-school gymnasium. Their instructor was a young salesman in the sporting goods department, who left the selling floor for a half hour every other [100] morning to give the boys the benefit of his services. ”

“ At this primitive school there were no spacious athletic fields, no huge, airy dormitories, no stately towers, no gymnasium of any description. We, in this country, can hardly conceive of a crack school, for that is what this one is considered, not having at least a gymnasium. ”

“ Consequently, the gymnasia were the favourite resort of sophists and philosophers in search of pupils. Some philosophers habitually frequented certain gymnasia, which thereby became connected with particular schools of philosophy. In course of time literary studies prevailed over athletics, and the gymnasium developed into a sort of university. ”

“ After those two years were over, they still required continuous exercise to keep themselves in training; consequently men of all ages, from 16 to 60, were to be found in the gymnasium. Though the gymnasium was free, the teachers and trainers in gymnastics were paid, and as the poorer citizens had to earn their own living, the Athenian gymnasium, like the modern university, was for educational purposes chiefly frequented by the well-to-do. ”

“ When Marie was sixteen, she graduated from the "gymnasium" for girls, receiving a gold medal for excellence in mathematics and sciences. In Russia, as in Germany, the gymnasium corresponds to our high school, but also covers some of the work of the first two years of college. The name gymnasium signifies a place where the mind is exercised and made strong in preparation for the work of the universities.
The position as governess to the daughters of a Russian nobleman was offered to the brilliant girl with the sweet, serious eyes and gentle voice. ”

“ The gymnasium itself covers a period of nine years, extending five years below the period of our high schools. Examining the course of the Prussian gymnasium, we find in the first five years, or before the age of fourteen, Latin, Greek, French, history, geometry, natural history; and it is conceded by many educators that more is attained by the age of eighteen in Germany than in this country; that at the age of fourteen in Germany the development of the pupil is more mature, and that in essential features of education he has made more desirable progress. ”

“ A roomy school-yard, a bit of lawn, a gymnasium-track, or a track around the school-house, either of these is all the place needed in which to learn this now almost obsolete accomplishment. The gymnasium is perhaps the best place; as there they can wear costumes which do not impede freedom of movement. ”

“ Much, indeed the greater part, of the good to be derived from the gymnasium would have come from steadily adhering to the exercises above pointed out, so that even with no gymnasium excellent progress can be had; but results come quicker in the gymnasium, and the place invites greater freedom of action. ”

“ I maintain that the system of athletics existing at our colleges and in our athletic clubs in all the cities of the land does this. It does more. Its work is not only to save but to form men. It helps our schools and colleges to send out into the world not merely scholarly ascetics, but men full of force and energy, men of strong fiber, physical and moral.
The modern gymnasium is a necessary auxiliary to every well-equipped college, but it owes much of its increasing usefulness and importance to the fact that it is a training-place for athletes. ”

“ Such a contest has many advantages over an in-door track-athletic meeting, and now that most of the schools in the city are provided with gymnasiums, it would seem an easy matter to arrange one. Trinity School, at present, seems to take the greatest interest in gymnasium work of any school in the city. By gymnasium work I do not mean exercise in the gymnasium preparatory for track athletics. ”

“ The gymnasium was open every evening for exercise and amusement. The first time I ventured in to get a little extra drill on my own account, I had an experience of a kind that one is not likely to forget. My drill sergeant happened to be there. I saw him engaged in a whispered conference with one of the gymnasium instructors. A few minutes later the instructor came to me and urged me to enter the boxing contest which was going on in the middle of the floor, and which was the favourite amusement of the evening. ”

“ As the day grew cooler, men again went out and visited a gymnasium, such as the Lyceum or the Academy, in the city suburbs. [13] Here were grounds for running, wrestling, discus-throwing, and other sports, as well as rooms for bathing and anointing. While the younger men busied themselves in such active exercises, those of maturer years might be content with less vigorous games or with conversation on political or philosophical themes. ”

“ And in the gymnasium at Olympia they practise for the pentathlum and the races. And in the open air there is a basement of stone, and originally on the basement there was a trophy for a victory over the Arcadians. On the left of the entrance to the gymnasium there is a smaller enclosure where the athletes practise wrestling. And at the Portico of the gymnasium facing East are some buildings for the Athletes facing South and West. ”

“ But the gymnasium is the normal type of all muscular exercise,—the only form of it which is impartial and comprehensive, which has something for everybody, which is available at all seasons, through all weathers, in all latitudes. ”

“ Consequently he has left the gymnasium with an education which is so extensive and complete, that the most a university can do for it is to perfect some of its profounder specialties. It is said that when a pupil leaves the gymnasium, he not only has a comprehensive education, but he knows what he knows,—it is not befogged with uncertainty, it is burnt into him so that it will stay. ”

“ In the gymnasium at Marlborough, how the few clumsy specimens are ragged and despised and jeered at by the rest of the squad; in the gymnasium here you should hear the sounding cheer given to a man who has tried for eight weeks to make a long jump of eight feet, and at last, by the advice and assistance of others, has succeeded. They seem instinctively to regard a man singly, at his own rate, by his own standards and possibilities, not in comparison with themselves or others ”

“ Gymnasiums for the body, conducted by men who have made themselves masters of anatomy and physiology, should be an essential feature in every school, so that ignorance and the desire to excel may not lead to putting a strain upon the system calculated materially to injure organs which need careful and judicious development. Plays, games, dancing, marching and the gymnasium all require the careful supervision of a teacher well versed in a practical knowledge of the human system, and thoroughly appreciative of the great truth, “We are fearfully and wonderfully made.” ”