PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS

The questionnaire sent to the public schools, asking how many pupils in the classes belong to clubs or other groups for recreational purposes, in the settlements and elsewhere, brings out the fact that, with only one school report missing, 597 children out of the 6,031 attending school in Honolulu this year are in such ways provided with socializing influence once a week. Of course many have home surroundings which make outside influence unnecessary. The public playground, however, has an attendance of over two hundred a day, an indication of what might be expected in attendance if the school yards were equipped with playground apparatus and placed under supervision.

No social activities are reported by the public schools themselves excepting a picnic given annually or semi-annually.

On the other hand, a similar questionnaire sent to the private schools, including those philanthropically supported brought forth the following list of activities for boys and girls:

This very full and comprehensive program throws into strong relief the barrenness of the lives of the students after they graduate or leave these institutions, as well as the lack of any like opportunity for development offered by the community to its young people not in private schools. These programs will, it is hoped, be used by any committee taking up the question of public recreation.

I have talked with graduates of Kamehameha, who fortunately have an alumnae association, and with Normal and Punahou girls, who found no substitute for their basketball, tennis, and social life generally as they lived it while at school. It is true that Palama and Kalihi Settlements have basketball, dancing and gymnasium classes; but these institutions owe a duty to the economically handicapped portion of the community which they are taxed to their capacity in discharging. I question very strongly if it is advisable to call on philanthropy for the provision of cultural and social activities for wage-earners. Is it not rather philanthropy’s best service to stimulate those who are as yet unawakened to the possibilities of life, and then pass them on to the normal community for the development of those possibilities?

An inquiry made by the sub-committee on public and quasi-public amusements—settlements, churches, benevolent societies, lodges, etc.—brought out the usual social equipment of a city of this size. But there is an element which finds its social expression rather in independent groups made up of congenial persons; and where these groups can be brought into the public school recreation center with its library, gymnasium, piano and other activities, all under intelligent guidance, a broad social development is possible. The church clubs, settlement clubs and benevolent societies have their normal membership; but it is more difficult than can be realized by those who have never tried, to bring the other group into this environment. It is a group that needs to be provided for in the community social scheme, and other communities have found that the schoolhouse recreation center best cares for it.

Evening recreation centers for adults have been established in other cities at little expense. Once the work of organizing and equipping them is accomplished, their work goes on almost of itself.

Wherever evening schools, recreation centers, playgrounds, vacation schools and other activities connected with the public school system have been established it is becoming more and more apparent that measures making for social betterment are nowhere else so effectively applied as in the public schools. Here is the most democratic of all our institutions—the place where, with a compulsory education law carefully enforced, 100 per cent. of the coming generation of citizens may be reached.