THE FEAR OF LEISURE vv
P^Hsonally,
I shall begin to of i .^orry seriously about the problems when 1 see some signs of the For as long as I can remember, iClans and sociologists have been c0n Cerned about what is going to happen ^ Machines do more and more of less VV?r^ ar>d there is?theoretically? ^ess left for us to do. So far, ^ women 1 know work h^rd a'^ ^an their mothers did. Their do as much school work in thre S as we ^ 'n a wee^And t^e a working week for a manual country is actually an hoUr e,r 'n this t^lan 't was ten years ago. ?n^er So re seems to be no cause for alarm yet. But any alarm for the fiitUr J.Ustuseful if it obliges us to think abnuf '.s
'eisi?SUre p0lit*:
tiearian^
chjuer
r^n
W0r,Verage
present.
a
* saw a cohk?'ears a8?> in the
grey
of
eac^ s'^e anc* a sma^ tin can down the middle According to the caption, it was afternoon in a northern city. years ago, driving through Wilt-
?y k u-ses lcking of
Sun^
photograph
rain, with small
street, on
a
Th^
shire on stopD ?ar'y *n a
Sunday evening, we county town and found one c^fe n ^ vyas uncomfortable, served abom^611' "N[0 'nat>le coffee but had a juke-box.
No .ancing,"
to
a
said a notice on the wall, Last month, attempting
pa'nS'n?-" ^alf"ar>-hour
^ith
us?and particularly most youngsters?have the least to do and the The puritans who most time to do it. decided that Sunday was to be a day of rest and no play, saw to it that the day was safely filled with work, although not so labelled. Now, the majority of us who no longer go to the church services or to Sunday school, are left with an empty space. Grown-ups, and country children can fill it well enough. The city teenager cannot. Public schools, and Oxford and Cambridge, have always understood that adolescents have superabundant physical energy, and are expensively organised to provide outlets for it. State schools are not. In a way, this is understandable. If state schools had spent as much time on organised games of
most
organised people's
and
can
state
new
on
tax
are as
necessary a
part
for other children as well as their own, build them deliberately into the as
history,
system.
organised games at school are only beginning. As soon as one has left
But a
it becomes difficult to find other people who want to play the same game as oneself, at the same time. Clubs are the obvious solution, in a large city, they tend to be far
enough
agreeably a
games
education
of
school,
in
middle-class
that their payers would have protested money was being wasted. Now, perhaps, we can persuade them to see that
a
rnornin8
schools,
public
as
town, we ?Pen one narrow sandwich bar accornmodation for about eight ' and comfortable room for none.
SundaSs Pe?pi
by Eirlys Roberts Sunday shows up the problem of leisure most dramatically. This is when
but,
away on the outskirts. What one should learn, young, are the individual sports?riding, skating, sailing, climbing, water-skiing, skiing. All they need is skill, which is easiest to acquire as a child, and somewhere to exercise it. After they have left school, there is no
why teenagers, or anyone else, should be provided with facilities for their sports free. It is not money, primarily, of which we are short. And for the teenagers most people are worried about, youth clubs, community centres and state-aided institutions probably have a dislikeable flavour. What we need is sudden gestures like that, for instance, of the directors of the Belle Vue stadium in Manchester who are hoping to be able to throw open the stadium to teenagers at a nominal charge and under expert guidance one or two evenings each week. This is the bright idea of a few imaginative people. There must be hundreds more. But we need more than scattered ideas, however imaginative. There are about eight million people in this country between the ages of 10 and 19. But there are only, for example, about 28
reason
ice-skating rinks, 14 roller-skating r'nf ( and 82 bowling alleys. We need n10. There are over 60 registered water* ing clubs, but the charges are not che Many
more
of
us
now
get
a
^}
night's skiing holiday abroad. jS fortnight is very little. And therLe tri such a thing as artificial snow, and f? are plenty of slopes in this country fl(
to put it on. There are hundreds | miles of canals and rivers, in p'ea?L\i * country near industrial towns. few of them are used for pleasure' '
|
Punt'^
These?riding, skiing, sailing, water-skiing, climbing, ice-skating-^ exotic status-providing sports, which ^ middle and upper classes provide ^ keep their leisured teenagers
mischief.
It
seems
reasonable
c? ..
private enterprise or a bination of both (involving the 0f | ordinarily successful Central Counci | Physical Recreation) should do ^ se\{-
state or
for all leisured teenagers. It seems evident that if you give a lot of lelS to a lot of young, vigorous create .f you must provide outlets for physical energy. Or you'll have
l.|e