HOME AND EDUCATION

...tf"Our constant insistence on the danger of pauperizing the poor is but one of many aspects of our real fear of facing and coping with the underlying causes of poverty...

...The excellent experience of Rochester, in using the public school buildings for this purpose, was also pointed out...

...Lee K. Frankel...

...The promise of goneral cooperation there given was at the Congress splendidly fulfilled...

...I cannot close without expressing admiration for the courageous way in which Rochester has gone forward in this...

...A normal csurse in play, prepared by the Association, is now being used in twenty-one educational institutions...

...On Friday afternoon, the delegates to the Congress visited Genesee Valley Park and there heard fifteen hundred boys and girls singing music of Wagner, Gounod and Schuman...

...Commercial Recreation RECOGNIZING the need of regulating, where it is not yet possible to supplant, recreation facilities which are administered for profit, the Congress devoted time to several phases of this subject...

...To Miss Marion B. Newton, the director of Physical Training in the Public Schools, is due great credit for the arrangement of this splendid affair...

...Educators, physicians, social workers, employers and church workers are uniting everywhere throughout the country in urging the necessity of providing wholesome play under good leader-skip...

...it included the consideration of the whole reach of public recreation...

...pictures as "one of the few inteiests that bring the entire family together," and furnishes a splendid link between the Playground, the School and the Family...

...C. H. Israels, the chairman of the Committee on Amusements and Vacation Resources of working girls, presented an interesting paper upon the experiments thus far made in New York City in providing wholesome dance halls...

...Entertainment Features ONE of the problems that was made the subject of an exhaustive report was "Story Telling" in connection with playground work, and not only were the possibilities of this discussed in the Congress but they were demonstrated in the inimitable telling of Irish Folk Tales by Seumas MacManus, of Donegal, Ireland...

...A large part of one afternoon was devoted to this discussion and the address of Dr...

...The feature, however, which gave to the whole Congress the hearty, enthusiastic play spirit was the fact that at every general session there were exhibition folk dances, songs and games by groups from the Public Schools...

...The Church and Recreation ANOTHER indication of the wide scope of the study of this Congress was shown in the discussion of the relation of religious organizations, not only the Y. M. C. A. but the church itself, to public recreation...

...This is the larger problem which underlies and embraces the playground problem and to which this, the Fourth Congress of the Playground Association of America, addresses itself...

...This was sprung as a surprise upon the delegates, many of whom attended in order to see something of the way in which Rochester has developed its Social Center movement...

...The Wider Use of Public Schools as Social Centers AT THE first evening meeting of the Congress, its broad scope was illustrated in the address given by United States Commissioner of Education, Elmer E. Brown, on "Some Uses of the Public Schoolhouse...

...It was also presented in the address of Miss Mary McDowell, of the University Settlement of Chicago...

...Said Ex-President of the Association, Dr...

...It seemed as though, after the first two or three sessions, the school children's fund of exhibition would be spent but this was far from true...

...Rose Pastor Stokes, of New York City, who spoke on "The Possibilities of Relieving the Monotony of Factory Work...

...Working Conditions and Recreation THE PROBLEM of ameliorating the conditions of labor in the interest of wholesome recreational opportunities was squarely met in such addresses as that of Mrs...

...He spoke of the educational value of well-directed recreation and then dwelt at length upon the possibilities of social development through the use of the Public School Buildings as Social Centers, pointing with commendation to the three years' development in Rochester...

...The address of Commissioner Brown sounded one of the key notes of the Congress—Develop the unused possibilities in the school plants...

...We know theoretically that there is nothing more vitally related to the education and morals of the peoples of the world than what they do with their leisure time...

...In these discussions the Congress showed the same tendency that was shown the previous week at the Convention of Charities and Corrections at St...

...But it was more than that, for its scope was not limited merely to childrens' playgrounds...

...The very forces that have been drawing us apart have been making us sick of artificial separations," he said...

...Luther H. Gulick said that the three words which should express the work of the leaders in this movement were "Study, Promote and Advertise...

...Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT public recreation in amerca fourth annual playground congress at rochester By EDWARD JOSHUA WARD THE Fourth Annual Con_ gress of the Playground Association of America, which met in Rochester, New York, June 7—11, was, by the statement of its newly elected president, Joseph Lee of Boston, the best Playground Congress ever held...

...The grand finale to the Convention was to have been a Play Festival at South Park, participated in by ten thousand of Rochester's school children and by groups of recent immigrants in national folk dances and by gymnasium teams from the Social Centers...

...Moving Pictures ONE of the features of the week and one of the things which showed the progressive spirit of Rochester was the opening of the first moving picture show in a public schoolhouse in connection with a playground during the week of the Convention...

...Social action, coherent, intelligent cooperation have made modern business, modern manufacture ai&d are making modern democracy...

...Booker T. Washington...

...Frederick Thompson, designer and builder of Luna Park, Coney Island and the Hippodrome, New York City, in an address on "Why Wholesome Shows Pay," demonstrated that the decent is also the profitable in public recreation...

...Everybody Cooperating AYEAR ago at the Congress in Pittsburg, when the invitation was given to come to Rochester this year, it was evident that efforts to make the Congress a success would not be limited to the School Board, the Park Board or the Children's Playground League, which administer playgrounds in Rochester, for at the Pittsburg Congress there were also delegates representing the city administration and the Rochester Chamber cf Commerce...

...There is really arising a hunger for neighborliness and it is most clearly felt in the very environment where the old fashioned neighborliness is most clearly impossible...

...We have assumed that the old community conditions still obtain, in which the individual tastes and desires of the person or of the family, are adequate...

...Tf"It is not possible for one man to hold another man down in a ditch without staying down there with him...

...He presented the larger view of a public educational system which shall include the whole of life, the working time and the leisure, through which the unlimited human resources may be developed...

...In nearly every city, where taxpayers have been given an opportunity, they have voted by substantial majorities to establish play centers...

...Our shortest way to our neighbor is around by some common meeting place where we join with him in a common cause...

...This opening was timed so that it would fit in with the address of John Collier, of the National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures in New York City...

...The departments of the City Government, the Public Schools, the Park Commission, the Chamber of Commerce, and practically every organization in the city contributed, even the street railway company giving a fine excursion to the delegates, A Great Year in Public Recreation AT THE opening meeting of the C?ngress, the Secretary reported that within the past two years 246 cities had established playgrounds for the first time and 195 cities have movements for playgrounds on foot...

...The lines of association do not now run straight from door to door...

...The Congress in Rochester did much to promote and to advertise the public recreation movement in America...

...George William Knox, of Union Theological Seminary, dealt directly with it...

...The splendid educational and recreational possibilities of motion pictures was pointed cut in his address and demonstrated in the show...

...It was felt by all of the leaders, however, that the great problems, which were opened up or suggested by the program of the week, demanded most earnest study and there was general agreement to the proposition that, while in various sections of the country there might be play festivals and Playground Association Institutes next year, the Annual Meeting of the Association for 1911 should be held in the more thoughtful atmosphere of a university...

...This was to take place on Saturday afternoon, but on Saturday morning the rain made the meeting in the park impossible, and nothing in the whole Convention was finer, as a demonstration of the play organization of the city, than the way in which the great State Armory was hastily decorated and fitted for this festival...

...This school house note was also sounded in the address of Jacob Rubenstein, given on Monday evening at the Convention of the Federation of Boys Clubs, which was held in connection with the Playground Congress...

...Luther H. Gulick, in his statement of the program, "Public recreation is the largest unorganized, ignorantly administered section of American public affairs...

...It is equally true that there is nothing in America to which we have given less attention than we have to affording the people an opportunity to use their leisure time in a way that shall make for wholesomeness...

...We have not noticed that the same factors which have made the individual helpless in industry, helpless in trade and helpless in government, have made him equally helpless in matters of recreation...

...Technical Problems of Public Recreation AT THE first session of the Congress, Dr...

...Louis, to go below the surface and seek the causes of the unwholesome conditions of society and not simply to be satisfied with surface-dressing the disease...

...Twenty-five hundred people attended the initial show...

...This same force, however, needs to be tried with reference to the opportunities for public recreation...

...Gulick spoke of moving Gymnasium Scene in One of Rochester's Social Centers...

...Elizabeth Casterton, who had charge of the musical training for the festival, and the many others who cooperated with her, earned credit for furnishing not only entertainment but inspiration to the Congress...

...Jake Rubenstein is one of the working boys who testified from his own experience of the value of using the public school buildings as meeting places for the boys clubs in the city...