SCHOOLS’ PART

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 305, 26 December 1936, Page 5

SCHOOLS’ PART

Relaxation Hours. EDUCATION FOR LEISURE Pursuits and Hobbies. The important part that can be played by schools in educating for leisure, and the need to encourage interests outside daily work which will improve the standard of culture of the coming generation, were discussed by Mr. C. T. Aschman, chairman of the Canterbury University College Council, in an address given at the prizegiving of the Canterbury College School of Art (states the Press). “As the true aim of science when applied to the economics of daily life can be only to increase the leisure enjoyed by the human race, so the ultimate aim of education is to enable people to enjoy that leisure,” said Mr. Aschman. “If lives are emptier and interests narrower than they need be, it is partly the result of a narrow ana unsatisfying education which leaves powers undeveloped and interests untouched, and-too often succeeds only in giving a distaste for those which it touches. The question of how a man spends his leisure is as important as the question of how he does his work; indeed, his ways of employing his hours of relaxation go far to determine his efficiency as a worker.'' A man who had no resources for tilling in his hours of leisure was likely to meet serious temptations and face great mortal dangers, Mr. Aschman said, and he considered that education had a call and a responsibility there. If present conditions in the schools did not meet that responsibility they must be altered until (hey did. The man was more than a workman. To turn out an expert workman, were our schols able to do so, which they were not, Mr. Aschman continued, would be a small thing compared with laying the foundation of a stable character. A main function of schools was to cultivate in pupils the germs of interests which become pursuits and hobbies after school age, and reduced working hours would be dearly bought at the cost of moral defect, he said. Sturdiness and stability of character were ensured by struggle without leisure but it was misuse of the leisure that came as the reward of struggle that had caused nations to sink into decay.

The other important aspect of education for leisure—“that which takes

account of the quiet spaces of t the inner life, in which lie the springs of personality and fruitful thought,’’ was also considered by Mr. Aschman. “Hustle in work and pleasure is universal. As we watch.these evidences of restlessness, heightened and encouraged by the swift movement, the mechanical*noise, and attractions of city life, we must, I think, determine more and more to seek in those whom we charge with the task of educating our children and our young people, a spirit that will counteract these influences. We must make the effort to secure this tranquil element in education. Great literature and, in particular, great poetry, music and art can help to form that whole some atmosphere which separates the cultivated life from the heedless and vulgar, for it is in them that the human spirit finds expression for its thoughts and impulses and aspirations which attune the whole life to a finer key.”