A Guide to the History of Physical Education

GREAT BRITAIN.

While the _Turnverein_, or popular gymnastic society, was spreading over Germany, and systems of school gymnastics were being developed in that country and in Sweden, a variety of sports and organized games had become an established feature of life in the English public schools and universities.[156] As might be expected, these different types or phases of physical training have later begun to react upon each other, and each has been copied in more or less modified form in other countries. Most European states now have societies modelled after the German _Turnverein_, and the gymnastics of Spiess won friends among educational authorities far beyond the bounds of Switzerland and Hesse. We have found the playground movement making headway in Germany and Denmark, but shall also see the Swedish system of school gymnastics gain a foothold in England, as it had already done in Denmark.