Physical Education - 1

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 http://isrilankan.com/review-coming-home-the-books-of-r-k-narayan-by-koom-kankesan/


 ...The headmaster said, "Every member of the staff is expected to handle drill classes once a week by turn."

"I don't know any drill---never attended any class even as a school boy."

"Keep them engaged for an hour. Don't let them off. We are trying to teach them also Surya Namaskar."

"I know nothing about it."

"We will help you to learn it by and by. Today keep them engaged. Take the roll-call and make note of the absentees."

And so I found myself in the drill field surveying an array of fifty boys standing in two rows under the evening sun. The sun hit us from the west. Many others, including teachers, stood around to watch my performance. I inspected the boys closely, like a commander reviewing an army, cried "Right, left, right, left," marched them, made them perform high jumps, long jumps, swing their arms, kick their legs in the air. I engaged them as long as I could; still no bell rang to indicate the end of the hour. I cried, "Stand at ease!" and then, "Dismissed!" and the whole crowd vanished in a second...

...I suddenly felt that it would be impossible to spend another day at school or in this house. I knew the bus would be coming in half an hour under the tree. Got a coolie to carry my box and roll of bedding, banged the street door until the lady came up behind it, mentioned to her I was leaving for Mysore, and caught the bus for Mysore again...

......From: My Days by RKN

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  http://johngushue.typepad.com/blog/2007/01/a_thought_on_hu.html

...Ohio State was a land grant university and therefore two years of military drill was compulsory. We drilled with old Springfield rifles and studied the tactics of the Civil War even though the World War was going on at the time. At 11 o'clock each morning thousands of freshmen and sophomores used to deploy over the campus, moodily creeping up on the old chemistry building. It was good training for the kind of warfare that was waged at Shiloh but it had no connection with what was going on in Europe. Some people used to think there was German money behind it, but they didn't dare say so or they would have been thrown in jail as German spies. It was a period of muddy thought and marked, I believe, the decline of higher education in the Middle West.

As a soldier I was never any good at all. Most of the cadets were glumly indifferent soldiers, but I was no good at all. Once General Littlefield, who was commandant of the cadet corps, popped up in front of me during regimental drill and snapped, "You are the main trouble with this university!" I think he meant that my type was the main trouble with the university but he may have meant me individually. I was mediocre at drill, certainly---that is, until my second year. By that time I had drilled longer than anybody else in the Western Conference, having failed at military at the end of each preceding year so that I had to do it all over again. I was the only senior still in uniform. The uniform which, when new, had made me look like an interurban railway conductor, now that it had become faded and too tight made me look like Bert Williams in his bellboy act. This had a definitely bad effect on my morale. Even so, I had become by sheer practice little short of wonderful at squad manoeuvres...

....From: University Days, James Thurber


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There was a disturbing news item the other day that in the city schools here Physical Education is going to be compulsory and evaluated and the scores students get in that 'subject' would be reflected in their final grades.

More tomorrow about my radical views on this proposal, in line with great writers like RKN and JT cited above (good company).



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