Figure 1.--An interesting photo of Czech boys doing calisthenic exercises in their school room using sticks or rods. The photograph was taken in the early 1920s according to the source. I don't know enough about clesthetics to understand why the rods were used.

We do not have a lot of information about activities in Czech schools beyound the purely academic. We think such activiites were very limited. We do note boys doing various form of calesthetics, although we do not note sports competitions. This was the general pattern in German and Austrian schools which heavily influenced the Czech system. A reader writes, "An interesting photo of Czech boys doing calisthenic exercises in their school room using sticks or rods. The photograph was taken in the early 1920s according to the source. Most of the boys wear short trousers with long stockings, but at least two of the boys wear long trousers and one wears shorts with knee socks. Most of the stockings are black or dark brown (the common school color in the early 1920s), but one boy wears beige or light tan long stockings and strap shoes. The boy doing a deep-knee bend in the foreground has removed his shoes (you can see holes at the toes of his stockings) and appears to have outgrown his stockings which barely cover his knees when he is flexing his knees. He is obviously wearing supporters since the stockijngs don't wrinkle or fall down while he is exerting himself. The class seems to include both younger and older boys--from about 8 to 11 or 12 years of age. Czech school clothes in the 1920s were very much like those worn in Germany. I'm not sure what the function of the sticks is unless it is help the boys keep their balance while they are exercising. They raise the sticks above their heads in the erect position but hold them at chest level in the deep-knee bends. The school room seems to have curtained off to make a space for the exercises. Perhaps the girls used the space on the other side of the curtain if the school was coeducational." We note a Swedish class of schoolboys in 1916 doing similar calisthenics but without the rods.

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Created: 7:40 PM 10/22/2007
Last updated: 7:40 PM 10/22/2007