A NEW PROBLEM

Evening Star, Issue 20984, 24 December 1931, Page 2

A NEW PROBLEM

WHAT TO 00 WITH LEISURE Woman’s increasing freedom, the result of dwindling tasks m the homo, has caused a stupendous modern problem ‘which emphasises the need for education for vocations and in the arts, iMiss Anna L. Burdick, representative of tho Federal Board for Vocational Education, told the Western Arts Association at its recent convention in Louisville, says tho ‘ Christian Science Monitor.’ There was a time when women rather gloried in quoting the proverb ending, “woman’s work is never done,” said Miss Burdick, but with the growth of the industrial st-stem d decided change sot in.

In tho years of lessened housework and inroads of mechanical devices, leisure has come too gradually to bo perceived, she said, but its decisive effects may bo proved by the food industry alone. This has grown tremendously because of tho “eating out” habit, rapid transportation, and the condensation of living. A large percentage of the 700 teachers of lino and industrial arts at the convention, coming from tho territory between Pittsburgh ami Denver, Canada, and the Gulf of Mexico, visited the Louisville schools during their stay. How tho teaching of art appreciation in tho public schools of America, by providing a wider market for the products of arts and crafts workers may bo able to relievo future periods of technological unemployment was brought out b3’ Harry L. Gage, of New York, director of typography for the Alcrgonthalor Linotype Company and secretary of tho Bartlett Orr Press, in an address:—

“Technological unemployment now seems bound to occur, depression or prosperity. The only possible solution is the growth of artistic appreciation to the point where every homo in America will insist upon affording some concrete object of artistic expression, This will result in a much wider spread of the arts and crafts, now limited by American taste and demand,” Mr Gage said. Fred. J. Hartman, director of the Department of Education of the United Typotheta? of America, explained that the planting industry is launching a programme of appreciation of printing, not alone as an industry, but as an art.

Teachers of printing and of art in the schools are learning to train the young in the appreciation of the proper expression of the printed word, so that they may differentiate between a wellmade book and a poorly-made one, a well-printed newspaper and a poorlyprinted one. Quoting William F. Russell, Dean of Teachers’ College, Columbia University, to the effect that this country lias reached a period when there will bo increasing idleness for all workers some of the time, Miss Lilian Weyl, director of art, Kansas City, Missouri, president of the association, declared that the situation brought an insistent cull to teachers of the arts. Attention was demanded, she declared, to problems of the use of leisure, and she emphasised the needs of

greater general and prevocational edn cation, of developing individual versatility with broader vocational education, and the importance of vocatiomr education for girls, since homes now have more than one wage-earner.