Archibald Maclaren
Archibald Maclaren, (1820-1884), a Scot by birth, was on the Continent at a time when it was giving considerable study to the whole question of physical education. On returning to England in 1858 he established a private gymnasium in Oxford. A few years later the government decided to reorganize and regenerate the system of military gymnastics and Maclaren was placed in charge of the work. His ideas were incorporated in a manual "A Military System of Gymnastic Exercises" which was to be used as a text. there was sent to his gymnasium a group of officers who were to be instructed in the theory and practice of gymnastics, and then were to return to the military center at Aldershot, where a normal school for other officers was to be established. The entire plan was carried out and Maclaren's system came to be used in the military and naval schools to supplement the games and sports as a means of increasing the physical fitness of the soldiers and sailors.
Maclaren was not satisfied with that; he believed that educational gymnastics was the direct and more important means of improving the physical standard of the British. His book " A System of Physical Education" printed in 1867 and again in 1885 and again, by his son, in 1895, reveals the following theories: That physical training and mental training should go hand in hand and each should be of benefit to the other; that the much-practiced games in England will not produce a well-balanced organism, but, on the other had, they will tend to develop a one sidedness; that only trained instructors should be employed; that health rather than strength and skill should be the aim; that "mind and body should be viewed as two well-fitting halves of a prefect whole, designed in true accord mutually to sustain and support each other and each worthy of our unwearied care and unstinted attention'; that school games, sports, and pastimes are recreational, while systematized exercise is educational; that exercises should be regulated by individual fitness; that systematic exercise is not only good for children and soldiers, but for the men of the shops and factories; that exercises must be progressive and organized in a rational manner; that gymnastics must not interfere with the playtime in the school rather it should become a part of the regular educational program; that gymnastics "mean a gradual progressive system of physical exercise, so conceived, so arranged, and so administered, that it will naturally and uniformly call forth and cultivate the latent powers and capacities of the body, even as the mental faculties are developed and strengthened by metal culture and exercise.