THE FAILURE OF HOLIDAYS.[[1]]
By Canon Barnett.
May, 1912.
[1] From “The Daily Telegraph,” May, 1912. By permission of the Editor.
Eight hundred thousand children are every August turned out of the airy and spacious Schools which London has built for their use, and for four weeks they can do what they like. To the people whose opinions form public opinion, “to do what one likes” seems the very essence of a holiday. The forgotten fact is that the majority of these children do not know what they like. All children, indeed, need to be taught to enjoy themselves, just as they are taught to earn for themselves; and children whose parents are without money to take them to the country or the seaside, where nature would give them playmates, and without leisure to be referees in their first attempts at games, miss the necessary teaching. They get tired of trying to find out what they like, tired of waiting for the sensation of a street fight or accident, tired of aimless play in the parks, tired even of doing what they had been told not to do. A few—40,000 of the 800,000—are sent by the Children’s Country Holiday Fund to spend a fortnight of the month in country cottages; a few others go to stay with friends or accompany their parents, but the greater number—it is said that 480,000 children never sleep one night out of London during the year—have no other break than a day treat, which, with its intoxicating excitements and its distracting noises, can hardly claim to be a lesson in the art of enjoyment or to be a fair introduction to country pleasures. The August holiday under present conditions, cannot be described as a time in which working-class children store up memories of childhood’s joys, nor does it prepare them as men and women to make good use of the leisure gained by shorter hours of labour.
The use of leisure has not, I think, been sufficiently considered from a National point of view. It concerns the happiness, the health, and also the wealth of the nation. If their leisure dissipates the strength of men’s minds, leaves them the prey to stimulants, and at the same time absorbs the wages of work, there is a continual loss, which must at last be fatal. The children’s August holiday, with its dullness and its dependence on chance excitements, prepares the way for Beanfeasts where parties of men find nothing better to do amid the beauty of the country than to throw stones at bottles, or for the vulgar futilities of Margate sands, Hampstead Heath and the music hall, or for the soul-numbing variety of sport.
The recent report issued by the London County Council tells the result of an experiment in a better use of the holiday by means of Vacation Schools. The word “School” may suggest restraint, and put off some of my readers, who are apt to think of “heaven as a place where there are no masters”. They will say, “Let the children alone”. But they do not realize what “letting alone” means for children whose homes have no resources in space or interests. They do not remember that the schoolhouse is the Mansion of the neighbourhood, and that the Vacation School curriculum includes visits to the parks and to London sights, such as the Zoological Gardens, Hampton Court, and the Natural History Museum; manual occupations in which really useful things are made, painting and cardboard modelling, by which the children’s own imaginations have play; lessons on nature, illustrated by plants and by pictures, readings from interesting books, about which the teachers are ready to talk, and organized games. When relieved from the trouble of having to choose at what to play, the children find untroubled enjoyment. Vacation Schools thus understood have no terror, but let the children themselves give evidence whether they prefer to be let alone.
In a Battersea Vacation School there was an average attendance of 91·6 per cent, and on one day 153 children out of 154 on the roll voluntarily attended. “The high rate of actual attendance at the Vacation Schools, which compares not unfavourably with that of the ordinary day schools, in spite of the fact that compulsion is completely absent from the former, may be taken as an indication that the London child does not know what to do during the long vacation, and is anxious and ready to take advantage of any opportunity that may be afforded for work and play under conditions more healthy and congenial than the street or his home can offer.” In another school the teachers report: “We had been asked to do our best to keep up the numbers. Our difficulty was to keep them down.” “The discipline of the boys specially surprised the staff; a hint of possible expulsion was quite sufficient in dealing with two or three boys reported during the month.”
The children, by their attendance, give the best evidence that the Vacation School is in their opinion a good way of spending a holiday and the report gives greater detail as to the reason. The teachers tell how “listless manners give place to animation and energy, and how the tendency prevalent among the boys to loaf or aimlessly to idle away their holidays was checked by the introduction of an objective, the absence of which is chiefly responsible for the loafing tendency.... The absence of restraint appears to lead to more honourable and more thoughtful conduct, and little acts of courtesy and politeness increased in frequency as the holidays drew to an end.... Educationally the children benefit in increased manual dexterity, by the creation of motive, the training of the powers of observation, and the development of memory and imagination.... In many cases ... new capabilities were discovered, and talents awakened by the more congenial surroundings. Some children, who at first appeared dull and inattentive, brightened up and became most interested in one or more of their varied occupations.... Little chats on the Excursions revealed a marked widening of outlook.”