Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium

Most important of all, however, in the training that comes through games is the development of will. The voluntary aspect of the will and its power of endurance are seen to grow in the power of initiative, courage to give “dares” and to take risks, and determination to capture an opponent, to make a goal, or to win the game. But probably the most valuable training of all is that of inhibition—that power for restraint and self-control which is the highest aspect of the will and the latest to develop. The little child entering primary school has very little of this power of inhibition. To see a thing he would like is to try to get it; to want to do a thing is to do it; he acts impulsively; he does not possess the power to restrain movement and to deliberate. A large part of the difficulty of the training of children at home and school lies in the fact that this power of the will for restraint and self-control is undeveloped. So-called “willfulness” is a will in which the volitional power has not yet been balanced with this inhibitive power. One realizes in this way the force of Matthew Arnold’s definition of character as “a completely fashioned will.”

No agency can so effectively and naturally develop the power of inhibition as games. In those of very little children, there are very few, if any, restrictions; but as players grow older, more and more rules and regulations appear, requiring greater and greater self-control—such as not playing out of one’s turn; not starting over the line in a race until the proper signal; aiming deliberately with the ball instead of throwing wildly or at haphazard; until again, at the adolescent age, the highly organized team games and contests are reached, with their prescribed modes of play and elaborate restrictions and fouls.