What is to be done in dealing with this situation? Three answers have been given. First, plays must be arranged in a sequence which will follow the natural order of children’s development, and when this play course is properly organized, children must be given training in play. The training should be of the same kind as that given in any line, namely, such as to stimulate self-activity and full utilization of the teacher’s suggestions. Specialists in the field have found it advantageous to revive folk games and to call attention to the interest which children exhibit in festivals and dramatic representations. In other words, the discovery of plays suitable for children is nothing but the extension into the field of recreation of the type of educational resourcefulness which has enlarged the curriculum in every division of the school. The enriched course of training in play should be used for the improvement of adults as well as children, thus making education for play a part of the movement of educational extension.
Survey of Recreational Facilities
Second, the available resources of the community for play must be canvassed and must be intelligently utilized. In the quotation from the Cleveland survey given above it was pointed out that there are vacant lots which are not used. A study of the play facilities of the community will also show the necessity of curbing those forms of recreation which are undesirable. A survey of this kind should deal not only with the community’s equipment for play among children but also with the play of adults. Such a survey has been made for the city of Madison, Wisconsin, and there is now going on in the city of Cleveland an extensive examination of all forms of recreation and amusement together with an investigation of their effects on the people.
A few extracts from the Madison survey will show the kind of findings which are turned up by such an inquiry:
A study of the various sections of this survey shows that play or recreation occupies a great place in the life of the city. The time, effort and money put into it is enormous. Practically every social organization, as well as the individual and home, is involved in it. A very large percentage of the business section of the city and many outlying business places are directly or indirectly, wholly or partially, devoted to it, as is a large area of the whole city territory. Its influence is far reaching....
The study of children’s activities in connection with the map survey shows that there is an enormous amount of play forced into the streets, even in well-to-do sections of the city, and in other cases into the worst of environmental conditions. There is no leadership or supervision of this play and there are no public playgrounds except Burr Jones Field and two park playgrounds and inadequate, unsupervised school playgrounds, where there is no attractive organization or play to draw the children from the streets to more wholesome activities and influences on the playgrounds. This is physically dangerous and a menace to morals.
The study of commercial recreation shows that the large number of children are involved in passive amusements indoors during the few hours free for outdoor, health-giving activities or when they should be in bed. This is bad from the standpoint of health, the educational efforts of the school, and general social habits or ideals.
The study of environmental influences and a neglect of play show that some of this street and unsupervised play results disastrously, even in delinquency, and supports the claim of many observers that most of the bad habits of children develop in play under bad influences.
If the play of children is to be wholesome and generally developmental rather than inactive or detrimental, they must have wholesome places to play in, equipment, companionship, and at least a part of the time organized play and leadership. In so far as the home cannot supply these demands most of the time—and the larger number of homes cannot—public interest in the welfare of the rising generation demands that the play be centered in a community playground under proper supervision. The supreme need of children of Madison is playgrounds under trained directors.
The recreational needs of the young men and women of the city requiring public attention are of three classes, all of which require places, organization and leadership. (1) They need athletic and aquatic activities, athletic organization and leadership. These activities are wholesome and increase efficiency rather than decrease it. (2) The young men and women need facilities and organization for more wholesome social activities, such as dances. They need to be under the auspices of the best influences rather than the questionable, and it is just as easy to have the best as the questionable. (3) Young men and women need opportunities for, and direction in, the more constructive use of their leisure time. They need places for their club meetings that have a distinct educational value as well as organization and general leadership. Individual use of museums and libraries also needs organization. The facilities for these activities are meager and an effective organization and leadership are totally lacking.
The needs of adults in the way of activities and facilities are so complicated that it is almost impossible to summarize them. From the standpoint of public effort, the main points are provisions for the essentials in the way of facilities, organization, promotion and direction that cannot be supplied by individuals or small-group initiative or enterprise. This requires a public body that can study and deal with these needs. There is still a great body of adult individuals, largely of the untrained, laboring classes, without recreational resources and unprovided for by any recreational agency except, perhaps, the saloon. These men are recreational outcasts; they seriously need a place where they can find clean opportunities for their toilet and bath and wisely organized recreation. The provision of organization is the way to a simple, constructive use of leisure time by at least some of the younger of these men; here is a demand for a new type of men’s club, or a new type of organization of men who have no recreational resources. It is a need practically untouched by social agencies, yet one that must be faced frankly if these men are to gain or maintain any semblance of self-respect and not be a menace to democratic institutions.[86]
Play as Part of the Regular School Program
Third, the work of the schools should be so adjusted that play will take its place with other subjects as a regular and essential part of the curriculum. This implies not only that play will be given time in the program but also that the same kind of expert guidance will be provided for play as is provided for the other activities of the day. The great value of a varied program is evident to all who have watched the process which has been going on very rapidly in recent years of opening up the school hours so as to include many different types of activity. Play needs not only to be organized as play and to be equipped with proper facilities, but it needs also to be incorporated into the regular systematic program of the school. This statement may be reënforced by extracts from the conclusions reached by the Cleveland survey.
Some reorganization of the educational corps should take place with a view to efficient administration of play and recreation from a broad educational and social standpoint. This would lead to a far greater influence of the school upon the out-of-school life of the community. Through lack of greater influence of the school during out-of-school hours, there is a great social leakage for which the city must pay.
The school is the natural and logical agency for the safeguarding of the great fundamental interests of children and youth. Each year discloses more and more clearly that the school is the one institution we have yet conceived that is best fitted adequately to conserve these interests and utilize them for educational and social progress. Opportunities that came as a matter of course to children a generation ago do not come to many children now unless they are specifically planned for by some agency other than the home. Met wisely by the community, this seeming handicap may, in the end, result in a great and new-found social strength.
Play is more than recreation. If its educational significance is real in the kindergarten period, it is real in every subsequent stage of growth and development. Rightly conceived, play is a most efficient method of education for life, for work, for social service. The fact that we do not yet know how to make full use of play in education need not and should not prevent the utilization of play, to the full extent to which we are prepared, for the tremendous social service it can render.[87]