M Congress Afterthoughts EMBERS of the recreation profession were justly proud of their own number at the recent Recreation Congress at Atlantic City. V. K. Brown's emphasis on service as a form of recreation, of abundant living, thrilled his audience. Ernst Hermann, out of the wealth of his own personal experience and thought on recreation problems, pointed to the important part which creative use of one's hands has in building and keeping a life. Dr. James S. Plant, though not a professional recreation worker, has been closely associated with the recreation family, speaks our language, understands what recreation workers are trying to do. At the Congress Dr. Plant ably advanced the philosophy of Joseph Lee, of Jacob Riis, of Jane Addams, of Robert Woods in pleading against regimentation in all its forms, against making technique all supreme, against the assumption of all-wisdom on the part of recreation workers. The philosophy of the play-recreation movement has been Jesus' philosophy of rich abundant living. It has been the philosophy of Aristotle in recognizing time as the great wealth, and training for the use of time, of leisure, as the end of education. It has been the philosophy of Froebel and of Emerson and of Lincoln. There has ever been recognition of the individual, of helping the individual to build his own life, to be himself. It has not been so much the philosophy of doing things for people, of making people over according to one's own ideals, one's own pattern, for ends foreign to the individual, but rather of helping each person to use all his powers in so far as he does not interfere with allowing others to be themselves, to realize themselves. I remember in 1917 or 1918 Myron T. Herrick's reporting a conversation with the late George F. Baker, Jr., in which Mr. Baker told Mr. Herrick he had thought the recreation movement aimed to make people goody-goody and this had greatly antagonized him. Mr. Baker was enthusiastic for a program for giving people an opportunity for happy activity, but he did not like the idea of trying to make people over according to some one else's idea. I rather sensed from what Ambassador Herrick said that George F. Baker, Jr., did not want others making him over and he did not want to support any movement for making other people over. In other words he had respect for human personality his own and others. One felt this understanding in Dr. Plant's address. Rabbi Silver, like Dr. Plant, has for years belonged in a peculiar sense to the recreation movement. Again this year he dealt with fundamentals. Man's enduring satisfactions through the centuries are to be found in democracy and under self-government and it is important that the recreation movement be true to its own nature and neither condone nor give aid to the world forces that are making for centralization of power and using human beings for ends that are not their own. The recreation movement does have a philosophy of freedom, of cooperation, of individualism, of democracy, of helping men to help themselves in long-time ways rather than trying by tricks or techniques of group pressure to assume the wisdom to make men over without their knowledge or desire. The philosophy of the recreation movement is the philosophy of long-time growth sudden off-the-top changing of men's lives. not of There is a deep unity in the movement which comes from its common traditions and philosophy. This unity one felt at the recent Congress. One also felt a deep faith in what the people themselves will ultimately do for themselves through their own local government. JULY 1937 HOWARD BRAUCHER. T Tapping the Reserves of Power HE PEOPLE of America are living a horse and buggy spiritual life on a 1937 emotional speedway. By IVAH DEERING True, in times of major catastrophe we grow mental, physical and spiritual wings for a day or a week, achieve deeds of heroism, rise to heights of accomplishment for which we did not dream we had the power. Even the weak heart responds to the temporary demands of the rescue work of a great flood. The invalid mother carries a family through an epidemic of influenza before she herself collapses. The young man who was at the point of suicide gives his entire emotional strength to the little children left fatherless by a forest fire. There are known cases of complete physical recovery after a demand which in normal times would have been impossible to meet; then when the crisis passes, a retrogression to a dead level of existence. a new world which they take in their stride, naturally, easily, up to a certain point. But it is like the cable which is made up of strands covered by an outer coat of protective material. Its full strength or weakness can be known only when a test is made. And this new world constantly demands of the man or woman new strengths to meet the tests of an age of power, There was a time when school and leisure time leaders could "pass the buck" to the home and the church to build up the character of the boy and girl to meet those tests. Then they could forget about it. But this age of power touches every individual too closely to admit of shifting responsi Mrs. Deering, who lives in Cin- Yesterday, after ten days of night and day service for homeless victims of a disaster, Guiseppi entered my home with a light in his eye and a vitality in his step, not to mention the nobility of his whole aspect, that I would not have thought possible in one whom I had known last week as a "rough-neck" who took his recreation and his refreshment of spirit from a bottle. What will Guiseppi do tomorrow when the emergency demand is past? Will any of the new current remain to enrich his life and make it yield a measure of satisfaction? Or will the same spiritual poverty manifest itself which is evidenced by the kind of leisure time activity chosen even by recreation leaders and experts for their own personal use? We are a lethargic people, loath to tap the great sources of power which lie deep within the individual, dormant but ready for utilization in his everyday life when discovered and conserved and rerouted over adequate wiring. New Strengths Demanded This is a new age-an age of power unguessed by our fathers. The ninth grade boy knows more about the great forces of nature today than you and I know, for all our years of experience. It is bility. The church is in the midst of metamorphosis and cannot be counted upon to interpret its purpose in terms of practical development of individual power until the new conception of the motives of their Leader is more generally accepted. The integration of the whole man can be approached only by a recognition of the close association of the mental and the emotional, or, we may say, the spiritual. It may be that the church is on the way to that recognition, but the time is not yet. The home, too, is in a process of changing form. Its very outline grows dim before our eyes. Frequently the home is an automobile, a trailer, one tenement room, perhaps even a city park. It is ridiculous and juvenile to attempt to hold the ancient institutions to the same form and outline as were common a century ago. To do so means rebellion and revolution too violent to accomplish progress. If, however, this home of today can be visualized as not a place, but an atmosphere, an influence, yet still the source of the greatest power or weakness inherent in an adult being, we have accepted a rational point of view which ultimately may bring about some progress in human development. The emotional trend of the individual is still molded by the atmospheres of his first few years. Conflict, insecurity, frustration, bear disastrous fruit in an unsuccessful life. Recreational activi 212 TAPPING THE RESERVES OF POWER ties may in themselves be good, but fail to develop strengths because of the attitude of the group in which the child takes part in the activity. The growth of emotional power can no longer be left to chance, for while the home of today may be negative, the influences and tensions of the world without are distinctly positive. Character is something more than conforming to the mores of the adults of a community. It is a matter of building up strengths and discovering the latent powers and possibilities of every girl and boy. We have scarcely glimpsed the possibility that lies in the human being. We prefer to accept the superman as a genius or a prophet rather than the product of definite laws and circumstances which can be reproduced in increasing numbers if truly desired. Perhaps we are fundamentally a lazy people. The responsibility for creating as a norm a person who is of the calibre which we now term superman is too much for the mind to grasp, too great a task for leaders to undertake with their present limited use of their own powers. We have accepted the fact that the age of machinery and the half-turned bolt is an age of tensions and strains; that the speed of the world today forces the human being to find his balance in his leisure time, but we have spoken in terms of games and activities only, with little analysis of and appreciation for the significance or value of the task of any leader of leisure time activities. Marking time is a bore, whether it is done on the parade ground or in the classroom or playground. The great pioneer leaders took the time to awaken in their people an understanding of what was the ultimate goal of any journey, and so they were inured to hardship, long hours and suffering. So much of the cheapness of attitude, the spiritual poverty of recreation leaders would be dissipated if they could be chosen with greater care, injected with the virus of understanding and challenged to the exercise of that courage which Miss Earhart tells us "is the price that life exacts for granting peace, and release from little things." Levels of Power It takes courage and understanding to vision recreation as the release of energy which will set men on the trail to high endeavor. James it was who told us of the many levels of power in terms of the man who climbs a mountain, gives out at the first spur, then gets his second wind, a strength he had forgotten or never knew, and goes on to the top. I have a vivid childhood recollection of a great fire when a frail elder sister and I carried innumerable buckets of water across the field and up a ladder to a smoldering barn-unaccustomed labor, too difficult for a child, but leaving no dire results. I have seen a hobo, ragged and unkempt, dive into a stream and rescue a little child, then lounge on down the tracks with downcast eyes. There are many recognized methods of discovering and using these levels of emotional force. Some are scientific, some chance only: The Holy Roller meeting where the sot became "sanctified" and in the grip of a spiritual ecstasy, was for a week a model of sobriety; the withdrawal of Gandhi into the wilderness or into the meditation from which he emerges with a new poise and command of his people; Christ entering his Gethsemane, the yogi, his silence. Hypnosis is increasingly used to tap hidden resources and adjust the disintegrated individual. Various religious sects base their astounding but none the less real results on the same principle-whether it is called "getting in tune with the infinite," or accepting Christ, or "casting out error." The modern psychiatrist uses the same principle and in a new science has gone far to explain and rationalize and make available for use this latent power over routes heretofore called spiritualistic or psychic. This delving into the darkness of the human mind by the psychiatrist with inadequate knowledge is somewhat dangerous. There is today a great fear of psycho-analysis, lest the power discovered be too great for the frail emotional wires builded for a weaker current to withstand. Eventually the scientific technique will be perfected, however, and made available to the common man. At present it can, at its best, reach only a small few. It remains then for the leaders of growth, through school or leisure time activities, to discover some less complete but scientific approaches to the problem which will go a little way on the road to the development of supermen and women as a norm of existence. Two great experiments are being tried here and there, with inadequate understanding of the implications and none too intelligent leadership. These two alone will we mention in this article: the use of the free discussion method of education for adults and creative expression for child and adult. TAPPING THE RESERVES OF POWER Education for Adults We are still impregnated with the virus of facts, and with those adults who in their free time come to evening classes eager for learning and some solution of their boredom there has been a continuation of the "pouring in" process. The reasons are obvious. The leaders available are the teachers already in our public schools and trained for a classroom procedure. Then, may I repeat, mentally we are a lazy people. It is far easier to teach history by a textbook and examination method than to face the sometimes confusing facts and questions that will inevitably come out of the living experience of grown men and women where freedom of discussion is given. Leaders are still afraid to say "I don't know" and to seek together for the truth. Are they afraid to lose the domination upon which they have heretofore relied? Still another deterrent to a more complete use of discussion is the time element. Growth is slow and none too regular. The awareness of the timid little man who sits in a group for a year before he evolves an idea and gains the courage to express it, is vital to his development and may add to the sum total of human knowledge, but in the wait for this one moment there is weariness and labor. 213 On the other hand, the results are well worth the weariness and the labor; for while in the academic method of adult education the learning process tends to stop at the door of the classroom -if, in truth, it ever entered-that man or woman who takes part wholeheartedly in group discussion is stimulated to continue his research, for his questions are never wholly answered for him. He is left by the true leader of discussion with a challenge to find out for himself the answer which he seeks. To point the road to learning, unafraid that the goal attained may be one foreign to the experience of the leader; to trust fully the integrity of mind, the possibility for growth in the human being, this it is which must be the chief ability of the leader of the future, particularly in the field of adult education. When the American or the European or the Oriental mind is truly free to seek far and find all the facts about a moot question, I am not fearful of the results. The only rcal danger lies in an attempt to predigest and predetermine the bits of knowledge that the adult is to be given. In minor degree this is also true of the education, through school or play, of the child. We are still seeing bogey-men, still afraid to trust the free |