USE OF LEISURE TIME

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19693, 27 July 1938, Page 6

USE OF LEISURE TIME

YOUTH OF DOMINION

OROANISED PLAN URUED

CANTERBURY OPINIONS

(Pur I'roso Association.)

CHRISTCHURCH, this day

"That this meeting agrees that it. has become necessary to have some organised effort to secure more profitable use of the leisure time of our young citizens and that a sub-committee be appointed to survey the existing facilities for the profitable use of leisure and to report back on means of getting fuller use of the present facilities, or of providing further organisation."

This motion was carried unanimously last night by a conference arranged by the Christchurch Technical College Board of Governors to discuss the use of leisure in New Zealand. The conference was attended by about 40 persons representng social welfare organisations, educational institutions, local bodies, business interests and associations generally interested in providing methods of employing leisure.

Intellectually Lazy

The Technical College principal, Dr. D. E. Hansen, said that New Zealander's had been described as an intelligent people but intellectually lazy and that seemed to him to be a good description. It the gap between boyhood and manhood could be bridged and young people given stimulus to carrv on their education, a good deal would be done to solve the problem under discussion. There were too many young men who did not know what to do with themselves in the')' spare lime.

Dr. 11. E. Field, professor of education til Canterbury University College said a survey should be made of the existing facilities for the constructive use of leisure.

Statistics to indicate the use of leisure by young people were quoted by Mr. N.'S. Woods, of the Christchurch Youth Centre, which directs, vocational guidance activities. Mr. Woods said he had obtained a typical sample by taking the cases of (12 boys and 44 girls whom he had interviewed during .three months. The clear inference in many of these cases was that there was a passive, unenterprising and uninlellectual approach to living. A big problem, in his opinion, was to overcome mental inertia.