Perfect carriage – the knowledge that you posses a full share of that poetry of movement which we call deportment has a wonderful effect upon the mind, and as I hold that it is absolutely necessary in the striving after physical fitness, first to have a regard for your mentality, I would put deportment down as the beginning of the alphabet of physical culture. Having learned to walk correctly, you have mastered one of the hardest and most exacting lessons of your athletic curriculum. You then know all about poise, balance; and awkwardness will not seize hold of you. … Training as training – a species of mechanics I would call it – is as appalling as it is monotonous and soul-destroying. … It is not uncommon to find the average trainer insisting upon his man working full steam until the very eve of a fight. There is nothing in my opinion more harmful to drill into a pugilist that he is just a fighting machine to be wound up and set working at will.
We shall not dwell any more on physical education, but on mental education. However, whatever Carpentier has said about the body is wholly applicable to the mind also. The education prevalent in our country and all over the world aims at preparing a severely muscular mind and brain as has been observed by Carpentier. What do we do in the existing system of education? We exert ourselves following some faculties of the mind or relying only on certain parts of the brain. We want to make the mind, the brain of the student expert and ingenious in certain branches of knowledge, that is, in certain the trick.
Georges Carpentier, the famous sportsman of FranceRead more
http://nextfuture.aurosociety.org/the-foundations-of-education-two
