Part 8

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.”

In such testimony as this it is quite easy to find the reason why the children so greatly enjoyed themselves. They had a variety of new interests and they had the sense of “life” which comes in the exercise of new capacities. They were never bored and they felt well. The parents, whose burden during holidays is often forgotten, seem to have expressed great appreciation at the provision for the children’s care, and as for the teachers, one goes so far as to say that “the kind of experience gained is a teacher’s liberal education and training”.

The Report as a result of such testimony, naturally recommends an extension of the plan of Vacation Schools, so that this summer a greater number may be provided. I would, however, submit that the testimony justifies something more thorough.

The proposals of the Report assume that holidays must fall in the month of August. Now there are many parents whose occupation keeps them in town during that month, and who cannot therefore take their children to the country. August too, is the period when all health resorts are most crowded and expensive. And lastly, if holidays are taken only in this autumn season the country of the spring and summer, with its haymaking, its flowers and its birds, remains unknown to the children. The obvious change--so obvious that one wonders why it has not long ago been adopted--is to let some schools take their holidays in the months of June and July. But I would myself suggest the best plan would be to keep all, or most, of the school in session during the whole summer, establishing for the three months a summer curriculum on the lines of those adopted in the Vacation Schools. The children would then be able to go with their friends, or through the Children’s Country Holiday Fund for their Country Holiday without any interference with the regular school regime; and all, while they were at home, would have those resources in the school hours which have proved to be powerful to attract them from the streets. The teachers, free at last to take some of their holidays in June or July, would be able to benefit by the lower charges, to get, perhaps, a recreative holiday in the Alps instead of one at the English seaside in the somewhat stale companionship of a party of fellow-teachers.

This more thorough plan would do for all London children everything which Vacation Schools attempt, and it has the further advantage that it would put refreshing country visits within the reach of more children and teachers.

Middle-class families recognize the necessity of an annual visit to the sea or country, as a consequence of which great towns exist almost wholly as holiday resorts. The necessity of the middle class is much more the necessity of the working class, whose children have less room in their houses and fewer interests for their leisure. A pressure which cannot be resisted will insist that for their health’s sake and for the child’s sake, who is the father of the man, the children shall have each year the opportunity of breathing for at least a fortnight country air, and of learning to be Nature’s playmates. The only practicable way in which such holidays may be provided is by the extension of the holiday period to include other than the month of August.

The plan I have suggested would make such extension practicable with the least possible interference with school work, while it would secure for all children some guidance in the use and enjoyment of the leisure, which the experiment of Vacation Schools has proved to be so acceptable. That guidance, by widening children’s minds and awakening their powers of taking notice, would make the country visits more full of interests, and develop a love of Nature, to be a valuable resource in later life. If the Council’s Report succeeds in moving London opinion it may mark a new departure in the use and enjoyment of holidays.

It almost seems as if the education given at such cost ran to waste during the holidays. There is a call for another Charles Booth, to make an inquiry into “the life and leisure of the people” which might be as epoch-making as that into “the life and labour of the people”. Such an inquiry would show, I believe, the need of energetic effort if leisure is to be a source of strength and not of weakness to national life, a way to recreation and not to demoralization.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

RECREATION IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.[1]

RECREATION AND CHARACTER.

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

October, 1906.

[1] A paper written for the Church Congress, and read at its meeting at Barrow-in-Furness by the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Truro, the late C. W. Stubbs.

A people’s play is a fair test of a people’s character. Men and women in their hours of leisure show their real admiration and their inner faith. Their “idle words,” in more than one sense, are those by which they are judged.

No one who has reached an age from which he can overlook fifteen or twenty years can doubt but that pleasure-seeking has greatly increased. The railway statistics show that during the last year more people have been taken to seaside and pleasure resorts than ever before. On Bank Holidays a larger number travel, and more and more facilities are annually offered for day trips and evening entertainments.

The newspapers give many pages to recording games, pages which are eagerly scanned even when, as in the case of the “Daily News,” the betting on their results is omitted.

Face to face with these facts we need some principles to enable us to advise this pleasure-seeking generation what to seek and what to avoid. To arrive at principles one has to probe below the surface, to seek the cause of the pleasure given by various amusements. Briefly, what persons of all ages seek in pleasure is (1) excitement, (2) interest, (3) memories. These are natural desires; no amount of preaching or scolding, or hiding them away will abolish them. It is the part of wisdom to recognize facts and use them for the uplifting of human nature.

May I offer two principles for your consideration?

1. Pleasure, while offering excitement, should not depend on excitement; it should not involve a fellow-creature’s loss or pain, nor lay its foundation on greed or gain.

2. Pleasure should not only give enjoyment, it should also increase capacities for enjoyment. It should strengthen a man’s whole being, enrich memory and call forth effort.

THE QUALITY OF ENGLISH PLAYING.

If these principles have a basis of truth, the questions arise, “Are the common recreations of the people such as to encourage our hope of English progress? Do they make us proud of the growth of national character, and give us a ground of security for the high place we all long that England shall hold in the future?” The country may be lost as well as won on her playing fields.

Recreation means the refreshment of the sources of life. Routine wears life, and “It is life of which our nerves are scant”. The excitement which stirs the worn or sleeping centres of a man’s body, mind or spirit, is the first step in such refreshment, but followed by nothing else it defeats its own ends. It uses strength and creates nothing, and if unmixed with what endures it can but leave the partaker the poorer. The fire must be stirred, but unless fuel be supplied the flames will soon sink in ashes.

It behoves us then to accept excitement as a necessary part of recreation, and to seek to add to it those things which lead to increased resources and leave purer memories. Such an addition is skill. A wise manager of a boys’ refuge once said to me that it was the first step upwards to induce a lad to play a game of skill instead of a game of chance. Another such addition is co-operation, that is a call on the receiver to give something. It is better for instance to play a game than to watch a game. It may, perhaps, be helpful to recall the principle, and let it test some of the popular pleasures.

POPULAR PLEASURES.

Pleasure, while offering excitement, should not depend on excitement; it should not involve a fellow-creature’s loss or pain, nor lay its foundation on greed or gain.

This principle excludes the recreations which, like drink or gambling, stir without feeding, or the pleasures which are blended with the sorrows of the meanest thing that feels. It excludes also the dull Museum which feeds without stirring, and makes no provision for excitement. Tried by this standard, what is to be said of Margate, Blackpool, and such popular resorts, with their ribald gaiety and inane beach shows? Of music halls, where the entertainment was described by Mr. Stead as the “most insufferable banality and imbecility that ever fell upon human ears,” disgusting him not so much for its immorality as by the vulgar stupidity of it all. Of racing, the acknowledged interest of which is in the betting, a method of self-enrichment by another’s impoverishment, which tends to sap the very foundations of honesty and integrity; of football matches, which thousands watch, often ignorant of the science of the game, but captivated by the hope of winning a bet or by the spectacle of brutal conflict; of monster school-treats or excursions, when numbers engender such monopolizing excitement that all else which the energetic curate or the good ladies have provided is ruthlessly swallowed up; shooting battues, where skill and effort give place to organization and cruelty; of plays, where the interest centres round the breaking of the commandments and “fools make a mock of sin”.

Such pleasures may amuse for the time, but they fail to be recreative in so far as they do not make life fuller, do not increase the powers of admiration, hope and love; do not store the memory to be “the bliss of solitude”. Of most of them it can be easily foretold that the “crime of sense will be avenged by sense which wears with time”. Such pleasures cannot lay the foundation for a glad old age.

Does this sound as if all popular pleasures are to be condemned? No! brought to the test of our second principle, there are whole realms of pleasure-lands which the Christian can explore and introduce to others, to the gladdening, deepening, and strengthening of their lives. May I read the principle again?

Pleasure should not only give enjoyment, it should also increase the capacity for enjoyment. It should strengthen a man’s whole being, enrich memory and call forth effort and co-operation.

Music, games of skill, books, athletics, foreign travel, cycling, walking tours, sailing, photography, picture galleries, botanical rambles, antiquarian researches, and many other recreations too numerous to mention call out the growth of the powers, as well as feed what exists; they excite active as well as passive emotions; they enlist the receiver as a co-operator; they allow the pleasure-seekers to feel the joy of being the creating children of a creating God.

As we consider the subject, the chasm between right and wrong pleasures, worthy and unworthy recreations, seems to become deeper and broader, often though crossed by bridges of human effort, triumphs of dexterity, evidences of skill wrought by patient practice, which, though calling for no thought in the spectator, yet rouses his admiration and provides standards of executive excellence, albeit directed in regrettable channels.

Still, broadly, recreations may be divided between those which call for effort, and therefore make towards progress, and those which breed idleness and its litter of evils; but (and this is the inherent difficulty for reformers) the mass of the people, rich and poor alike, will not make efforts, and as the “Times” once so admirably put it--“They preach to each other the gospel of idleness and call it the gospel of recreation”.

The mass, however, is our concern. Those idle rich, who seek their stimulus in competitive expenditure; those ignorant poor, who turn to the examples of brute force for their pleasure; those destructive classes, whose delight is in slaying or eliminating space; they are all alike in being content to be “Vacant of our glorious gains, like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains”.

OUR CHURCH AND RECREATION.

What can the clergymen and the clergy women do? It is not easy to reply, but there are some things they need not do. They need not promote monster treats, they need not mistake excitement for pleasure, and call their day’s outing a “huge success,” because it was accompanied by much noise and the running hither and thither of excited children; they need not use their Institutes and Schoolrooms to compete with the professional entertainer, and feel a glow of satisfaction because a low programme and a low price resulted in a full room; they need not accept the people’s standard for songs and recitations, and think they have “had a capital evening,” when the third-rate song is clapped, or the comic reading or dramatic scene appreciated by vulgar minds. Oh! the waste of curates’ time and brain in such “parish work”. How often it has left me mourning.

What the clergymen and women can do is to show the people that they have other powers within them for enjoyment, that effort promotes pleasure, and that the use of limbs, with (not instead of) brains, and of imagination, can be made sources of joy for themselves and refreshment for others. Too often, toys, playthings, or appliances of one sort or another are considered necessary for pleasure both of the young and the mature. Might we not concentrate efforts to provide recreation on those methods which show how people can enjoy _themselves_, their own powers and capacities? Such powers need cultivation as much as the powers of bread-winning, and they include observation and criticism. “What did you think of it?” should be asked more frequently than “How did you like it?” The curiosity of children (so often wearying to their elders) is a natural quality which might be directed to observation of the wonders of Nature, and to the conclusion of a story other than its author conceived.

“From change to change unceasingly, the soul’s wings never furled,” wrote Browning; and change brings food and growth to the soul; but the limits of interest must be extended to allow of the flight of the soul, and interests are often, in all classes, woefully restricted. It is no change for a blind man to be taken to a new view. Christ had to open the eyes of the blind before they could see God’s fair world, and in a lesser degree we may open the eyes of the born blind to see the hidden glories lying unimagined in man and Nature. In friendship also there are sources of recreation which the clergy could do much to foster and strengthen, and the introduction and opportunities which allow of the cultivation of friendship between persons of all classes with a common interest, is peculiarly one which parsons have opportunities to develop.

And last but not least, there are the joys which come from the cultivation of a garden--joys which continue all the year round, and which can be shared by every member of the family of every age. These might be more widely spread in town as well as country. Municipalities, Boards of Guardians, School Managers, and private owners often have both the control of people and land. If the Church would influence them, more children and more grown-ups might get health and pleasure on the land. I must not entrench on the subject of Garden Cities and Garden Suburbs--but the two subjects can be linked together, inasmuch as the purest, deepest, and most recreative of pleasures can be found in the gardens which are the distinctive feature of the new cities and suburbs.

THE CLERGY AND THE PRESS.

If the clergy knew more of the people’s pleasures they would yearn more over their erring flocks and talk more on present-day subjects. Take horse-racing for instance, who can defend it? Who can find one good result of it, and its incalculable evils of betting, lying, cheating, drinking? Yet the clergy are strangely loth to condemn it! Is it because King Edward VII (God bless him for his love of peace) encourages the Turf? The King has again and again shown his care for his people’s good, and maybe he would modify his actions--and the world would follow his lead--if the Church would speak out and condemn this baneful national pleasure.

It is not for me to preach to the clergy, but they have so often preached to me to my edification, that I would in gratitude give them in return an exhortation; and so I beg you good men to give more thought to the people’s pleasures; and then give guidance from the Pulpit and the Press concerning them.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

SECTION III.

SETTLEMENTS.

Settlements of University Men in Great Towns--Twenty-one Years of University Settlements--The Beginning of Toynbee Hall.

SETTLEMENTS OF UNIVERSITY MEN IN GREAT TOWNS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

[1] A paper read at a meeting in the rooms of Mr. Sidney Ball at St. John’s College, Oxford, November, 1883.

“Something must be done” is the comment which follows the tale of how the poor live. Those who make the comment have, however, their business--their pieces of ground to see, their oxen to prove, their wives to consider, and so there is among them a general agreement that the “Something” must be done by Law or by Societies. “What can I do?” is a more healthy comment, and it is a sign of the times that this question is being widely asked, and by none more eagerly than by members of the Universities. Undergraduates and graduates, long before the late outcry, had become conscious that social conditions were not right, and that they themselves were called to do something. It is nine years since four or five Oxford undergraduates chose to spend part of their vacation in East London, working as Charity Organization Agents, becoming members of clubs, and teaching in classes or schools. It is long since a well-known Oxford man said, “The great work of our time is to connect centres of learning with centres of industry”. Freshmen have become fellows, since the Master of Balliol recommended his hearers, at a small meeting in the College Hall, to “find their friends among the poor”.

Thus slowly has men’s attention been drawn to consider the social condition of our great towns. The revelations of recent pamphlets have fallen on ears prepared to hear. The fact that the wealth _of_ England means only wealth _in_ England, and that the mass of the people live without knowledge, without hope, and often without health has come home to open minds and consciences. If inquiry has shown that statements have been exaggerated, and the blame badly directed, it is nevertheless evident that the best is the privilege of the few, and that the Gospel--God’s message to this age--does not reach the poor. A workman’s wages cannot procure for him the knowledge which means fullness of life, or the leisure in which he might “possess his soul”. Hardly by saving can he lay up for old age, and only by charity can he get the care of a skilled physician. If it be thus with the first-class workman, the case of the casual labourer, whose strength of mind and body is consumed by anxiety, must be almost intolerable. Statistics, which show the number in receipt of poor relief, the families which occupy single rooms, the death rate in poor quarters, make a “cry” which it needs no words to express.

The thought of the condition of the people has made a strange stirring in the calm life of the Universities, and many men feel themselves driven by a new spirit, possessed by a master idea. They are eager in their talk and in their inquiries, and they ask “What can we do to help the poor?”

A College Mission naturally suggests itself as a form in which the idea should take shape. It seems as if all the members of a college might unite in helping the poor, by adopting a district in a great town, finding for it a clergyman and associating themselves in his work.

A Mission, however, has necessarily its limitations.