Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV / WORKING OUT A PROGRAM OF PHYSICAL RECREATION The facts in the first chapter showed the startling poverty of girls' lives in vigorous, upbuilding exercise and in outdoor play. Boys have not enough of the right sort of play, but they have two or three times as much as girls. Play without leadership is either impossible or valueless. Boys supply their own leadership in part, because they know games to play. Girls, after twelve, do not know how; and if they know exercises they might take alone, it is a rare girl who will do what she merely "ought" to do. There must be someone to teach what they do not know, to organize the crowd into the order necessary for pleasure, and to give all activities the atmosphere of joy which makes them vital. The Purpose of Physical Recreation for Girls.—Every girl ought to attain a minimum standard of physical efficiency that will make her useful to society; to have poise and control over her own body that will give her skill, courage, and confidence; to achieve muscular and organic health, vigor, and endurance that will be adequate for emergencies of physiological and nervous strain; to give her happiness and the habit of recreation; to develop ideals of cooperation and fair play, generosity, and honor; and to develop her capacity for leadership. In working out a program to achieve these ends it is neither sufficient nor wise merely to extend to girls a chance to do what boys like to do. Many of - the same activities will be used for girls and for boys because so many of their common human characteristics are involved; but some must be quite different. The suggestions here made are the result of years of careful experimentation by experts who have worked from the standpoint of the welfare of the girls, but who have "taken them a...