Warrior Generation 1865-1885 by Richard Fulton

Author:Richard Fulton [Fulton, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, Victorian Era (1837-1901), Military, General, Modern, Social History
ISBN: 9781350138766
Google: ACfoDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2020-07-09T01:13:17+00:00

Two:

swing left leg over bench

Three:

swing right leg over bench

Four:

face the aisle

Five:

begin marching in place

Six:

march forward

Thus, a class of forty or fifty boys could be moved out of the classroom with a minimum of crowding, elbowing, shouting, and poking around.163

Then there was physical education (physical drill). Many schools included some form of drill as physical education before the reform movements began in the early 1860s. In the 1840s, Dr. James Kay (later Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth), the first secretary of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education felt strongly that drill was necessary in the pauper schools to help workhouse children learn a sense of order, and as a means of preparing them physically for when they grew into working men. Like many of his time, Kay felt that pauperism was hereditary and only by teaching patience, obedience, and industry through drill could the “taint” of hereditary pauperism be eradicated.164 Proponents of drill in the elementary schools falling under the 1870 Act argued that organized drill activities that emphasized forming lines, marching, doing classroom tasks in unison, and performing unison-stylized activities on the playground taught good habits of obedience and discipline. As Stephen Heathorn has it, “Drill was thought to diminish the desire of the poorer child to commit crime, to create an aversion to personal sloth and idleness, and to reduce impatience and individual disobedience. In its early formulations drill had very little to do with physical fitness or well-being.”165 Early on after the implementation of the Act of 1870 many elementary schools, particularly in the great cities, established drill as a way of teaching “habits of order, regularity, silence, obedience, neatness, attention, steadiness and method.”166 From about 1880 on Swedish Drill became the new catchphrase for school officials concerned about children’s health.

Swedish Drill had been developed by Petter Henrik Ling in Sweden in the early nineteenth century. The Ling method disallowed drilling to music, as music tended to distract the drillees and make them mechanical in their movements; the method also warned against showy public demonstrations of drill, as that, too distracted the focus on strengthening the individual’s individual muscles. Swedish Drill did include military-style marching, but the military posture, movement by the numbers, precise steps in turning, and order were focused not on a military appearance but on individual attainments of appropriate muscle development. Exercises were focused on stretching and strengthening muscles. George L Melio’s popular Manual of Swedish Drill (based on Ling’s system) was “used in the London Board Schools, and the Schools of Leeds, Bolton, Manchester, Bristol, Plymouth etc., and at the Young Women’s Christian Association, London, Newnham College, etc.,” or so Melio claimed. Melio’s pamphlet contained careful instructions for foot and hand placement during drills, and diagrams showing how the drill was to be carried out (see Figure 6).167

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