The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1918-06-07
Importance of Play

x N 5 the goes on, says The Outlook, the
business OF play is increasing instead OF
diminishing. This is it should be, for, quite
apart from the pleasure and profit of play at any
time. many observers are beginning to ask what
reduction in the of training soldiers to fight
there would have been had they been first trained
TO play in years past Had such been the case, a
large number of those who volunteered for mill
tary service and were refused might have pos
sessed physical qualifications closer to the stand
ard OF their patriotism That government
realizes the importance OF organized recreation IS
shown by the fact that the war and navy depart
ment commissions on training camp activities have
taken bodily the Playground and Recreation
Association Of America to carry on its benehcent
work for our new armies under the name War
Camp Community Service
Recent figures compiled by this association show
the extension of play into the winter months, and
tyhe increasing demand for lighted Fairgrounds for
evening use. Some six hundred Fairgrounds are
now opened and lighted throughout the evening.
1t is impossible to conceive Of the number Of un-
healthy and unWhoesOme places from which chill
dren thus saved
. The number Of schools established to train play
ground leaders is increasing, and the Standard Of
those workers has been raised by civil service ex-
aminatiOns. About nine thousand men and wo-
men are now employed to direct play at recreation
centers. About three-quarters of million boys
and girls daily swarm in the play centers, and
some seven hundred school buildings are used for
play after school hours. One Of the consequences
of this is the birth of a kndlier feeling for the
school buildings in the heart of the pupil who may
have regarded that building place OF torture
Is Throughout the country, we read, there are some
two hundred bathing beaches four hundred public
baths and three hundred swimming pools; and
-durng 1917 some tour thousand playprOundS and
neighborhood recreation centers were maintained.
A recreation center often means an open place
where brass band plays and it sometimes means
an indoor place where one may take book from
the library shelf; learn that in 1917 about fifty
cities Specialized in brass bands sixty in orches
tras, and two hundred in community sings; that
there were debating clubs in forty cities and free
libraries in many more
While it is good to read that there has been an
increase of eighteen percent in the number of play
grounds operated and of fifty percent in the dol
lars spent, we know that the present crowded play
and recreation Centers only in fifty of
those children who should be served We also
know that those who should be served-indeed,
those who are being scrved--are not only babies
and boys and girls and young people, but some
men and women who never going to grow old.
AS one sees the happy youths, therefore, from
the poorer tenement districts Of cities in the
municipal and other play grounds, breathing bet
ter air, playing games, singing songs crowding
the swings, seesaws, and Coasting slides sense
of gratitude Comes for their escape from unsaui-
tary living conditions from the danger Of disease,
and the danger of injury from street accidents.
But there is future good to reckon with, for
play makes for better and cleaner citizenship later