GAMES
Games are nearly always regarded as recreation, though a few people take them seriously and work at them with a view to becoming professionals and earning a livelihood in this manner. When I say they are used as a recreation, this is applicable to those people who play different games in a desultory fashion during the whole or part of the year; showing as time passes curiously little improvement in their play. Plodding continuously on, but from what point of view it is difficult to understand, unless it be from a purely animal liking of being in the open air and the pleasure they derive from following after, hitting, or kicking a ball. One cannot believe that they can get any pleasure from the competition arising in games, as they never strive to improve their play. Many I know have devoted several hours weekly for a long time to a game, but they play no better or very slightly better now than when they commenced.
If one remarks on the rather curious mental condition a person must be in to act like this, the reply generally is, ‘Every one cannot play games well. A good eye is necessary,’ &c. Certainly that is so, but a good eye is mostly training and practice like any other muscle control. Surely if a thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing well, and I think that any one who gives the matter a few moments’ thought will agree that it is extremely harmful physically and mentally to go on doing a thing in the wrong way year after year. It denotes lack of concentration, lack of self-control, and a general mental sloppiness. Curiously enough these people are always the ones who continually ask others to teach and help them to improve their play, but an endeavour to do so is nearly always greeted with a laugh, and, ‘Oh, yes, I see,’ and they go steadily on with the same faults as before, though quite often showing that with a little concentration and control they might have become admirable players. This class of game-player, I feel sure, has developed from the child who has been allowed to undertake its games and its work in a slipshod fashion, never being made to realise that if a game or a piece of work is taken up it should either be done well and completely or left alone. By this I naturally do not mean that all amateurs ought not to play a game unless they play it like a professional, but there is a very far cry between professionalism and the slipshod game-player. The next type of man who plays games is the one who does so purely from the health-giving point of view and not from any real love of games, doing so most likely only when he is a bit off colour, and in vulgar parlance, wishes to have a good sweat! A Turkish bath would have as good an effect, but he, like a good many others, cannot be bothered to seek after health unless his mind is stimulated and amused at the same time. He is not really of much interest from the game-playing point of view, as he enters into the world of games but little.
At the opposite extreme is to be found the man who takes games seriously, though this type is really divided into two classes; one who plays games to keep fit, and the other who keeps fit to play games. The latter, of course, are the men with a real devotion to games who spend little time doing anything else; at all events, during the season when their own particular game is to the fore. The questions I think one is inclined to ask oneself, when seriously thinking over games, are: in what spirit ought games to be taken? Are they a waste of time or not? and are they of real good mentally and physically to the player? I have always personally felt that games, regarded as they are at the present day, are extremely bad, but if taken in a sane and sensible fashion ought to be of the greatest value. This is what I mean. Children when they start to play games are nearly always allowed to do so in a most haphazard manner; for instance, a child who shows a strong fancy for games is often left to play them ad lib., only being reproved if his school-work suffers, and often a lenient eye is turned on all shirking of work if the shirker is found to have used the time for game-playing. It is rarely explained to him or her that games ought to be regarded as a recreation and an aid to health, also that if played they ought to be played properly at proper times. Shirking your other work to play them or playing them badly is misusing both your body and mind, and generally hurting yourself physically and mentally.
Games must be looked at in their proper proportion and once finished with not allowed to usurp the mind, as a man who makes games his sole thought throughout life is a sad person to meet. If the child who was backward and rather stupid at games was taken a little trouble with and equally taught with his more forward brother that games are to be regarded educationally like any other physical exercise, I think that as grown men they would both be improved. On the one hand, you would not find the man who does not play games at all, from having been told when a child that he was no use; and on the other, the man who eats, thinks, talks, and sleeps games: but two human beings with the good health, concentration, quickness, and self-control which games properly used certainly bring, all of which are most admirable qualities having a very great effect on a man’s life in all and every profession. A man of the above qualities, added to a clean outdoor sense of things, is far more apt to make a success of his life from the higher point of view than the one without them. Equally this reacts on his children. The man of control and understanding will most assuredly see that his children are trained to have the same qualities.
I do not think it can be repeated too often what great harm can be done to children, and, alas! is done both physically and mentally, by allowing them to play games at all times and in any manner they please. It is quite time it was realised that during the period the brain and body are developing, enormous care ought to be taken in the supervision of all bodily exercises, for that their effect is very great on the brain only the ignorant will deny. A child left to exercise itself at games will as a rule play till it is dead beat, thus undoing any good that might come to it from the exercise of its muscles and mind, as long before it has got to this stage of tiredness it will have been hitting wrong, running wrong, and forcing the heart to overwork. Mentally it will be over-excited, the eye will be strained, and the temper out of control. One of the great advantages of games is the teaching of tolerance and self-control, but when a thing is young and tender it does not do to bear too heavily on it. Whereas judicious exercise strengthens a weak thing, heavy work will merely spoil it, and in all probability ruin it for all time. How often one sees a child burst into tears for no obvious reason, become irritable and bad-tempered, and when bedtime comes lie awake for hours. The cause nearly always being the ignorance of teachers and parents who in their mistaken kindness allow children to play games until they can hardly walk with fatigue. I have often been asked if I advocate games for children; before the ages of ten or eleven years old I certainly do not, and between those ages and sixteen, I think games ought to be most carefully supervised and chosen, and for these reasons. From infancy up to eleven years is a most critical period, the most critical I personally believe in the whole life. When a young child is playing games it is most difficult, in fact almost impossible, to get it to remember several things at once. What I mean is this. A young child at this period is merely learning everything, how to walk, how to run, and how to balance itself correctly. The meaning of perfect poise ought at this age to be installing itself into a child’s mind; in the excitement of the game a child as a rule tries to do too much, with the result that in a short space of time it will be walking badly and heavily, and running in an ugly, uncertain fashion.
Then there are very few games which do not draw the body forward, contracting the chest, in consequence of which the breathing is restricted, which naturally renders the blood impure, this leading to a thousand troubles. Also I do not believe it is good or natural for any young undeveloped thing to be knocked about in the way that happens in a good many games, as the muscles and bones are soft and apt to be distorted easily. Children in a natural rough-and-tumble amongst themselves are no more likely to hurt themselves or each other than puppies or any other young animal at play, but bring in the competition and the unnatural excitement which creeps into games that after all are an artificial amusement, more harm than good is likely to result to children under sixteen years of age. After that age, regarded in their proper proportion, I think they are excellent. I am a firm believer for the young in individual athletic exercises such as running, jumping, throwing the hammer, the discus, swimming and dancing, &c., but under the eye always of an experienced person, as in these exercises it is possible to control and watch the work of each child, to see and teach that each muscle is developed in proper fashion, and by degrees the girl or boy will understand how to control the whole body in a perfect manner, each and every muscle hardening and enlarging to its full development. If this form of physical education is carried out from infancy, at sixteen years old a girl or boy ought to be fit to take up any game they may have a fancy for, reaping the great good that certainly may be got from games and equally avoiding the great harm.