[57] "An Adventure in Rural Health Service." Proceedings Second National Country Life Conference, p. 47.
CHAPTER XIII
THE COMMUNITY'S PLAY AND RECREATION
The people of most rural communities have an unsatisfied desire for more play, recreation, and sociable life. Opportunities for enjoyment seem more available in the towns and cities and are therefore a leading cause of the great exodus. Economic prosperity and good wages are not alone sufficient to keep people on farms and in villages if their income will not purchase the satisfactions they desire. To a certain extent many of these advantages of the town and city can be brought to the rural community, but only when country people come to appreciate and develop those forms of play and recreation which are possible and adapted to their conditions, and when they are willing to afford ample facilities and opportunity for the play of their children, will the lure of the city be checked. With such a changed attitude the rural community need have no fear of the competition of the city. It may not be able to have as fine commercial amusements, but it can have the best sort of play and recreation at small cost, for which the cities incur large expense.
There is a peculiar need for a better understanding of the place of play and recreation in the open country at the present time. Formerly large families gave better opportunity for the children of one family to play together, and there were more children of similar ages at the district school of the neighborhood. To-day with farms farther apart and fewer children, farm children do not have sufficient opportunity to play together in groups. The better opportunity for group play and team games is one of the advantages of the consolidated school which has been too little appreciated.
We have seen that one of the obvious necessities for the economic progress of agriculture is that its business be conducted on a coöperative basis. The chief obstacle to coöperation is the individualism of the farmer. The training of boys and girls in team games, in which they learn loyalty to the group and to subordinate themselves to the winning of the team, will do much to change this attitude. Boys who play baseball and basketball together, who are associated in boy scouts and agricultural clubs, will be much quicker to coöperate, for they grow up with an attitude of loyalty to the team group as well as to their own family.
Again, the awkwardness and self-consciousness of the country youth in comparison with his city cousin is due to no inherent inferiority, for in a few years he often out-strips him, but it is the direct result of his lack of social contacts. Personality develops through social life, through the give and take of one personality with another, through imitation, and the acquirement of a natural ease of association with others. The country boy and girl who has had the advantage of association with larger groups in the consolidated school or high school tends to become quite the social equal of the city child.
Heretofore many people, and particularly farm people, have regarded play and recreation for adults as more or less frivolous or unnecessary, while for children play has been used as an award for good conduct or hard work, but it has by no means been deemed a necessary phase of the child's life. If Johnnie does all his chores or if Mary washes the dishes and dusts the furniture faithfully, the opportunity for play is held up as a reward for services rendered; but that time for play and proper kinds of play are essential for a child's education has only recently been established by the students of child psychology and is not, as yet, generally appreciated either by parents or teachers.