A Guide to the History of Physical Education

PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN AMERICAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.

Each of the four systems or sorts of physical training brought forward for trial during the decade whose middle point was 1830 had been adopted by one or more institutions of college rank. Under Follen's guidance Harvard students were introduced to the Jahn gymnastics in the spring of 1826 (pp. 235-237), and other outdoor gymnasia of the Hasenheide type were prepared soon afterwards at Yale, Amherst, Williams, Brown (pp. 245-247), and Bowdoin (p. 249). In "A Memorial of the Class of 1827, Dartmouth College," written by Jonathan Fox Worcester (Second edition, Hanover, N. H., 1867), there is also mention of "the interest awakened, during the latter part of our career, in the subject of physical education; the gymnastic apparatus set up behind the ‘College' in 1826, by the students themselves.; the cricket clubs which covered the green the next spring, adding this excellent game to our previous list of modes of exercise. " Manual labor, combined with study, played a large part in many sections of the country, and particularly in new colleges founded while that movement was at its height. Norwich University made military exercises and long marches on foot a regular part of the course, under Captain Partridge, its first president (1835-1843); and Mount Holyoke College, chartered as Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, opened in 1837 with both domestic work and "calisthenics" included in its plan. The latter was more properly dancing steps, accompanied by singing.[239]