Evening Star Newspaper, February 28, 1932, Page 75

BY CAROL BIRD. EBISURE today is taking on the form of & white elephant to men and women untrained in its use, It has stampeded into their midst; and now that they've got it, they don’t know what to do with it. Instead of proving a jovial playmate, it has turned out to be a great big gloomy pest. With enforced unemployment in time of de- Pression, the mechanistic industrial scheme and the shorter working week, leisure is taking on immense proportions. It is getting out of bounds, turning into a millstone around the necks of people unaccustomed to its society. Although it should represent glorious freedom from ‘eccupation, & boon to culture and a golden siesta from arduous labor, it is actually becoming a lowering monster with whom the idle cannot cope. This sinister quality which surrounds spare time is attributable to the fact that America has made the mistake of “educating people only for times of prosperity, preparing them for material well-being and leaving them high and dry for adversity.” Dr. L. P. Jacks, British philosopher, who for the last 15 years was pres- ident of the Manchester College, Oxford, ex- plains in this fachion the phenomenon of the present growing unpopularity of leisure. He is one of the best known English scholars, be- ing holder of many academic distinctions. He has been lecturing in the United States, spon- gored by the National Recreation Association. “We do not prepare people for adversity, equip them for times suth as we are passing through,” said Dr. Jacks, discussing the matter of what to do with unoccupied time. “Both America and Europe made the mistake of edu- cating people only for times of prosperity. Our education has been at fault. The whole sys- tem of education must be made over—revolu- tionized. People must be trained for skill, and along creative lines instead of being edu- eated for book knowledge alone.” R. JACKS described the leisure of today as a veritable Frankenstein of the age which ereated it, a monster rearing its head among the unemployed, a spectral nightmare to men and women so untrained as to be unable to ap- preciate its blessings or its opportunities for oreative and cultural advancement. “Leisure is more terrifying for people to con- template in times of financial distress than during an era of prosperity,” he pointed out. *When people have plenty of money they can solve the problem, after a fashion, by going out and buying their 2musement on the open market. It is pretty thin stuff to go on with year after year, but what are they to do now when they haven't the wherewithal to buy even that?” Dr. Jacks, a slender, gray-haired, scholarly #ppearing man, with the tranquillity that comes from the possession of a well stocked mind, continued: “They know what to do at the zenith and are at loose ends and in despair at the nadir. Our education has been at fault. We have been educated with one great object in view— to make money. So it is that when leisure is thrust upon pecple it rears its head like a specter to the employed who acquire it and then do not know what to do with it when they have it: like a nightmare to the unem- Ployed who have it arbitrarily thrust upon them, and in sych large quantities. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, FEBRUARY 28, 1932. HAUNTED ‘WHITE by ELEPHANT? of LEISURE Educated Only for Prosperity, We Are Tt otally Unprepared for This Period of Depression, Contends the Oxford Philosopher, Dr. L. P. Jacks, as He Advocates Training to Meet Adversity. 11" THOSE who are employed and find them- selves facing more leisure than they ever had before are appalled by what should be a blessing. They do not know what to do with the idle hours even during their busiest sea- sons. What shall they do now with added long hours that must be whiled away some- how? All of the noisy, standardized, mechani- cal ‘fun’ is beginning to pall. It is like being offered cream puffs when one is hungry for a more solid fare of steak or a thick chop. But where can they go to find other and more desirable substitutes, particularly now when their funds are low or even nonexistent? “Unfortunately, people have not been trained to create their own amusements, to be resource- ful, original, self-reliant. So they go on buying the canned recreation, if they have the money, even though they are tired of it. They know of no other way in which to fill in the hours away from work. As for the unemployed who face the prospect of no work at all and plenty of time for diversion, what shall they do to capitalize that time and make it endurable until ‘better times’ return? “What, in the past, have we aoccomplished in our schools to prepare our people for times like the present? Nothing at all. So I con- sider this the opportune and psychological time to call attention to the fact that our existing system of education must be changed, must be made over, reshaped and corrected. While our present system prepares people for employment, it leaves them at a total stand- still for times of unemployment. Unemploy- ment and the resultant excess leisure put most people at loose ends, at random completely. They stagnate, go to pieces, drown in despair. For them there is no dignity in leisure. “Look about you. What are the unemployed doing? What has their education done to help tide them over this crisis? It has availed them nothing. They have been educated along the lines of book learning, nct for skill or creative endeavor. If they had acquired train- ing in the arts and crafts and in the cultiva- tion of fascinating and absorbing hobbies, their unemployment could be turned into profit. With such useful training they would not have to vegetate until times were better; they could be capitalizing their training and having a jolly, profitable time doing it. “We should, long, ago, have planned it so that people could utilize their spare time, not just waste it. At present, as things are, spare time is just wasted time, unwanted and squan- dered. Unless we can make leisure more profit- able and enjoyable than it is now, some of our greatest present-day problems will go unsolved and the future for mankind will be a sorry one. “When I advocate the utilitarian way of spending leisure, it is not my intention to reduce it to a set program, a painful, busy process in which nobody has any fun. I don’t want to spoil leisure; I want to enhance it, improve it, make it the joyous sort of thing it should be. Today leisure is an unpleasant phantom, something almost terrifying. I don’t mean that we must reduce our leisure to a scientific formula, but what I do want to con- vey is that we should be prepared to use it to our best advantage and in a manner which we will enjoy the most. “People should be trained in wise methods of developing and creating more ways in which to enjoy themselves. This will add instead of subtract from the sum total of human happi- ness. We would all have a great deal more fun if we shaped it with our own minds and hands instead of having to go out and buy it from regular pleasure factories that make a business of turing out fun in big job lots— the same kind of fun for everybody, regard- less of differences in tastes and temperaments. We should be more selective, more dependent upon our own choice and originality for our spare-time divarsion. “Adversity, with its enforced lack of work, could be turned into something rather unique and diverting if our system of education had not failed us. We must go on playing the fool during our spare time, since we are only trained to add up figures, with no bookkeeping job in sight; to sell insurance when nobody wants to Saving forces of civilization today, says Dr. Jacks, are mainly three: 1. Courage of the Brave. 2. Competence of the Wise. 3. Faft’lfu’ne.n af the Trustee. Any kind of education which develops those three qualities is education for adversity, and it 1s afl& by possessing those three quelities that natrons and individuals can fight d r way through the difficulties ¢ 3d dangemo of Iife. buy it; to write shorthand when there are no employers willing to dictate letters; to sell stocks and bonds when the market crashes have frightened people; to read the classics when, just now, we would find this not al- together profitable.” R. JACKS was asked how people could be trained for adversity. He replied: “The only way to train people for adversity is to encourage their general intelligence, courage and skill. You cannot train them for particular kinds of adversity unless you know exactly the type they may face. But you can so train them that they will not be at loose ends when unemployed, so they won’t actually be unemployed at all. “To accomplish this, our system of education needs to be entirely refashioned. I have no doubt that the present depression in trade, if traced to its fundamental causes, would be found to have arisen from the imperfectly educated state of the nations of the world. If they had been educated so as to act together like a community instead of getting themselves tied up into knots and bundles like a panicky crowd when a crisis occurs, the frightful muddles in which we now are would not have taken place. " HAT is needed above all else is com- munity education. The art of turning a crowd into a community and acting together in the team spirit is the finest art in the world. Whoever succeeds in converting a crowd into a community, whether a crowd of children on a playground or a crowd of adults in a populous neighborhood, whether in work or at play, has taken the first step toward establishing the sort of education for the nations at large which is needed to save us from these terrible muddles in international affairs, “There are three great reforms which educa- tion needs at the present time. First, a larger place on the educational program for creative activity and the acquisition of skill as distinet from the acquisition of mere knowledge. The second is much greater emphasis on physical education, and I mean by that something quite distinct from ordinary gymnastics and with a much finer technique. I mean by physical edu- cation the art of bringing the whole body under the control of the intelligence and the will. The third reform would be in the direction of awakening a sense of beauty in the young, & side of education which has been greatly neg- lected, although I am glad to see that attention is now being given to it in many American schools and colleges. “Putting through these reforms is the only way I know of to educate the world to face adversity. No form of education can be devised which will protect people from having to face difficulties and to endure suffering in one form or another. The saving forces of civilization are mainly three: “Courage of the brave, competence of the wise and the faithfulness of the trustee. “Any kind of education which develops those three qualities is education for adversity, and, as far as I know, it is only by possessing those three qualities that nations and individuals can fight their way through the difficulties and dangers of life. “Education for leisure is not a separate kind of education, which you can add on as a kind of extra to education for work. The training which educates a man for leisure is the educa- tion of the whole man, body and mind together, Continued on Eleventh Page ’ -