CHAPTER XXVII THE PLAYGROUND The country affords the natural playground for childhood. Here there is plenty of room, and sunshine, and Country life air, and freedom. In the city it is and play not so. The buildings take up all the room; there is often no place worthy the name for playgrounds, the occasional vacant lot, the prim park, the streets full of traffic and presided over by policemen, and now and then a roof! Tens of thousands of city children have no place to play, except where play is forbidden. During a recent month there were some five hundred arrests of children for misdemeanors on the streets of New York, and almost half of these arrests were for playing ball! Thus play becomes a crime, because there is no room for it. It is only the country that is not crowded for space. One would expect from these conditions that we should find the country children the best players in the world, adept in all athletic sports, and realizing in them an important factor in physical, mental and moral development. But such is not the case. Rural children in general are not skilled in play, for they do not have the opportunity to learn to play. True, much of the best play does not need to be learned formally, but is spontaneously picked up through imitation, or invented on the spur of the moment. But, on the other hand, play activities can be much broadened and their interest inPlay, like work, needs to be creased by guidance. learned as an art. Especially is this true of games, which are but organized play. range of games. Rural children do not know how to play The rural child is ordinarily greatly limited in his He sees but few different games played, and is seldom taught new games. As a still further handicap, he often attends school where there are so few children that to organize games successfully is impossible. The result is that many rural children do not utilize even the little time they have for play. They may often be seen moping around the schoolroom at recesses, when they should be out on the playground. Or they gather in little groups, or separate off in pairs for conversation or gossip. Bickering, quarreling, talebearing and fighting are much more common than in the town schools, where the children are too busy in play to engage in these things. Under such conditions the social impulses are not cultivated; the ideals of sportsmanship are lacking; and the powers of initiative, decision and daring required in games are not developed. It is impossible for children to develop normally without play. Indeed, play is a constant factor in all ranges of animal life. Says Karl Groos: "Perhaps the very existence of youth is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal does not play because he is young, but he is young because he must play." Schiller says, "When hunger no longer torments the lion, and no beast of prey appears for him to fight, then his unemployed powers find another outlet. He fills the wilderness with his roars, and his exuberant strength expends itself in aimless activity"-he engages in play. So if we watch the swarming insects dancing in the sunshine, the playful kitten chasing its ball, the lambs frisking in the sunshine, we see the same impulse at work; they are but obeying the common impulse to play. A recent writer says: "Wherever freedom and happiness reside, there play is found; wherever play is lackWhy play is so ing, there the curse has fallen and sadness and oppression reign. Play is the natural rôle in the paradise of youth; it is childhood's chief occupation. To toil without play places man on a level with the beasts of burden. necessary "But why is play so necessary? Why is this impulse so deep-seated in our natures? Why not compel our young to expend their boundless energy on productive labor? Why all this waste? Why have our child-labor laws? Why not shut recesses from our schools and so save time for work? Is it true that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy? Too true. For proof we need but to gaze at the dull and lifeless faces of the prematurely old children as they pour out of the factories where child labor is employed. We need but follow the children who have had a playless childhood, into a narrow and barren manhood. We need but to trace back the history of the dull and brutish men of to-day and find that they were the playless children of yesterday. Play is as necessary to the child as food, as vital as sunshine, as indispensable as air." 1 The moral value of play can hardly be overestimated. City playgrounds have been found to transform gangs of hoodlums into well-behaved baseball teams, and prospective crimi Play a moral safeguard 'Betts, The Mind and Its Education, page one hundred and seventy-seven. Children nals into skilful and law-abiding athletes. who are engaged in active play not only find an outlet for surplus energy, but have their minds safely employed as well. There is a stage in the development of youth when the thoughts need to be occupied with objective interests, and not allowed to rest on self. Loafing and dawdling are always dangerous occupations for young people, and especially so when they are in the company of others of the same age. Many immoral and impure suggestions could be saved the minds of innocent childhood in our rural schools if provision were made to utilize all the recreation time in healthful play, instead of allowing it to be spent in mischievous idleness. The dearth of recreation and amusement in the country is one of the most fruitful causes of young people deserting the farm for the city. For Evils resulting from lack of play youth demands its playtime as natur、 ally as it demands its food and sleep. Let rural schools provide as fully for the natural play activities of its boys and girls as is coming to be done in urban schools, and these interests will prove a powerful anchor attaching the youth of the farm to rural life. Children should be taught to play, just as they should be taught to study or to work. Instruction should be. Children should be given in the activities of the playtaught to play ground, as well as in the activities of the schoolroom. Plays and games, not less than mathematics and science, should form a part of the curriculum. In Germany and England, the play period has long been a regular part of the curriculum. It is being rapidly introduced in many of the more progressive of the towns and cities of the United States at the present time, and is nowhere more needed than in the rural school. The school playground The question naturally arises as to the school playground and its equipment. For the introduction of play as a part of our system of education carries with it the necessity for adequate grounds and material, and these must be provided for as much as the equipment of the shop or the laboratory. It need hardly be said that the average rural-school yard is not calculated for a playground. It contains all the way from a few square rods to about one acre of ground. The schoolhouse is usually set near the middle of the area, with the coal or wood-shed adjoining, and two outbuildings at the rear. Trees are often located in such positions as to interfere with the use for play of what small space there is left. The grounds are seldom leveled, or the grass and weeds kept down. Of apparatus for the playgrounds, there is usually none. The sign posted on the side of an Arkansas school building, "Fifty dollars fine for any one found trespassing on these grounds after school hours," represents an attitude of mind altogether too common with reference to the use of school premises as playgrounds. The school yard has been one of the least utilized of our educational re sources. During the last ten years, however, a great play movement has arisen and is spreading rapidly throughout the country. Cities are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in obtaining room for their children to play, and in supplying equipment for grounds already provided. Even in towns and villages, and here and there in country schools, the movement has taken hold, and the school |