CONDENSED
Condensed Volume 3. Chapter 9

IX.—PHYSICAL EXERCISES

… to give the child pleasure in light and easy motion—the sort of delight in the management of his own body…dancing, drill, calisthenics, some sort of judicious physical exercise, should make part of every day’s routine.

Drill of Good Manners.—Just let them go through the drill of good manners: let them rehearse little scenes in play,—Mary, the lady asking the way to the market; Harry, the boy who directs her, and so on. Let them go through a position drill—eyes right, hands still, heads up. … this sort of drill should be attempted while children are young, before the tyranny of mauvaise honte  [shyness] sets in. Encourage them to admire and take pride in light springing movements, and to eschew a heavy gait and clownish action of the limbs.

Training of the Ear and Voice.—The training of the ear and voice is an exceedingly important part of physical culture. Drill the children in pure vowel sounds, in the enunciation of final consonants; do not let them speak of ‘walkin’ ’ and ‘talkin’,’ of a ‘fi-ine da-ay,’ ‘ni-ice boy-oys.’ Drill them in pronouncing difficult words—‘imperturbability,’ ‘ipecacuanha,’ ‘Antananarivo,’—with sharp precision after a single hearing;

The Habit of Music.—As for a musical training, it would be hard to say how much that passes for inherited musical taste and ability is the result of the constant hearing and producing of musical sounds, the habit of music, that the child of musical people grows up with. …every child may be, and should be, trained to sing. … by carefully graduated ear and voice exercises, to produce and distinguish musical tones and intervals.

…the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions—a running fire of Do and Don’t; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way, and grow to fruitful purpose. The gardener, it is true, ‘digs about and dungs,’ prunes and trains, his peach tree; but that occupies a small fraction of the tree’s life: all the rest of the time the sweet airs and sunshine, the rains and dews, play about it and breathe upon it, get into its substance, and the result is—peaches. But let the gardener neglect his part, and the peaches will be no better than sloes.