HOBBIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 96, 24 April 1931, Page 4 (Supplement)

HOBBIES.

VALUE OF LEISURE,

HOW TO USE IT.

Leisure, the hours we do not work, and how to use it is one of the great problems which confront our age. We have time, now, we women. What are we doing with it? This is the question asked in a recent number of the "Queen." The writer, Florence B. Low, says: Education during the last 30 years hag been so busy preparing our girls for a career that little attention has been paid to the leisure aspect of life. Yet it may be said that the way in which people spend their leisure is probably the surest test of a good education. Whether we are workers earning a living, or heads of households large or small, leisure occupies a big part of our life. There are few occupations to-day in which long hours are demanded, while all household work has been diminished by labour-saving devices and the variety and- excellence of the cooked food obtainable in the shops. Education, therefore, in all types of schools should prepare the pupils for these hours, quite considerable in number, which will be entirely at their own disposal. Leisure for the girls who remain at school till 17 or 18 might well be regarded from a two-fold aspect; the period devoted to one's own pleasures and the time given to the service of others. Abandoning Intellectual Pursuits. It is quite right that the young people I should enjoy themselves, and dancing, cinema-going, dining at restaurants, at-1 tention to personal appearance are all suitable in moderation. But it seems a pity that in so many instances girls who are not going on to college or to take up definite training for a career should at once abandon all their intellectual interests and plunge into a whirl of pleasure. Parents, too, must bear part of the blame for their pleasure-loving and expensive daughters. In many instances mothers are not willing to delegate any of their home duties to their grown-up girls, nor do they desire them to pursue their cultural interests or their hobbies with any seriousness. The sensible mother who wishes to keep her daughter at home and docs not desire her to join the big army of independent young women living by themselves in fiats, hostels or clubs should do all in her power to encourage her to do any work—in the house or outside— to which she is attracted. A Daughter's Lament. Here is the lament of one 18-year-old daughter: "I came home from school filled with a desire to do something. I knew there was no need to earn my living, but I did not want to spend all my time in the social round. So I arranged to study a couple of hours each morning—l am learning Italian—and to go to a girls' club twice weekly. The rest of the week I would devote to my family and to social claims. Now, I have the dearest of mothers, but she simply cannot see why I want two quiet hours daily, and I am consequently always being interrupted. Then on a wet evening mv mother will say: 'I shouldn't go to that club, my dear. I'm sure it doesn't matter for once!' What ought I to do?" Dr. Arnold's Theory. But there is another aspect of leisure —that of opportunity for the servicc of others, and here again it would seem as if the schools could do more to inculcate the virtues of disinterestedness and altruism. The voluntary worker, who in the past has supported so many good causes and helped so many individual cases which required the "personal touch," is tending to disappear. Clubs and settlements all over the country are calling for young people of goodwill who, placed themselves in happy circumstances, will devote part of their time and their talents to those less well situated. There is work here for young women of diverse qualities— as ■ club leaders, as teachers of drill, /I—and many other subjects, as -just fronds to invalids and lonely mewomen and children. Perhaps the good-class boarding schools do not sufficiently emphasise this aspect of a girl's life when her formal education is ended and she takes her place as a member of society and a future citizen. Suggestion plays a big part in a young girl's behaviour, and perhaps during the last year at school her teachers might suggest to the sixth form, as Dr. Arnold used to do at Rugby, that each pupil going forth into the world had by some form of service to others to justify his or her existence. This Arnold spirit might of course produce rather priggish young women, but they will at any rate have ideals and aspirations. They are not likely to develop into vain, frivolous, selfabsorbed or self-indulgent persons whose chief aim in life is pleasure.