Recreational Desires Of The Child

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29268, 28 July 1960, Page 13

Recreational Desires Of The Child

Recently, Mr Keith Plunkett, liaison organiser for physical education with the Department of Education, Christchurch, carried out a survey into the recreational interests of Form I and Form II children at a city school. The object of the questionnaire was to discover the

sporting interests of the children, any sports that needed developing in the area, what the children most looked forward to doing at the weekend and the activities they would like to know more about. Where the questions referred to sport, the answers revealed a typical New Zealand pattern with Rugby and basketball most popular of the winter games and swimming and cricket the favoured summer ones. Twenty-eight wished to learn how to play tennis, 18 hockey, six judo and one indoor bowls! Some interesting and amusing answers were given to the question asking what pupils looked forward to doing most at the weekends. In the main the girls liked to go visiting their friends, helping around the home, going to the pictures, collecting photographs of rock n’ roll stars, and (in two cases) “lying in bed.” The boys looked forward to week-end sport, "tinkering with bikes,” building underground huts, fighting, “going tq the YMCA for a bit of exercise,” a “cutting up frogs and studying 1 them.” “drinking cola,” “Lancas- | ter Park,” and one boy “lying 3 in the sun and taking it easy!”

The questions which brought forth the most interesting results, asked the children to mark from a list of 40 activities the things they could do and the things they wanted to know how to do. The results of the latter part of this question are shown in the diagram below. Only 22 of the items are shown as the results of the others were insignificant. The vertical columns show the number of boys and girls interested in learning more about that particular activity. For example 13 girls and 32 boys for archery, 39 girls and 32 boys for skiiing. “Although some of the sports are expensive and perhaps could be described as ‘glamorous’, (e.g. skiing, ice-skating, horse-back riding and ballet dancing) others are well worth fostering to provide leisure time activity for interested children,” said Mr Plunkett Of particular interest is the score of 17 denoting interest in astronomy. These children should have their desires fulfilled with the opening of a planetarium at the Canterbury Museum. A desire to play a musical instrument was uppermost in the minds of 34. Although the combative sports show a preponderance of boys it is interesting to note that 11 girls wished to know about fencing and 19 judo. “The survey shows that even children of the age of 11 or 12 have definite ideas on what they would like to do in their leisure time. Parents should be aware of these needs and whenever possible help to foster them,” Mr Plunkett said. "The result makes a much happier picture than the ’Cathedral Square lounger’ type who, without sporting or recreational interests, eventually gets into bad habits and becomes a worry to his parents.” The findings of the questionnaire were considered to be of so much interest that similar surveys will be conducted in other city schools to find out whether a similar pattern exists and perhaps to provide figures showing the need for more-recrea-tional guidance in school and conununity.