Halifax will sooner or later decide to employ to the fullest degree all
the opportunities which child-training affords. The school system is an
institution of society to mediate between a child and his environment.
Children must learn to do and to be as well as to know. Their plastic
minds must receive practice in resistance to domination by feeling and
in the use of the intellect as the servant and guide of life. To the
children of Halifax is due eventually a thorough training in
citizenship. This is the last call of the new future in education. It
rests upon the twin pillars of educational psychology and educational
sociology.
Recreation is still another sphere of civic life wherein the City of
Halifax has taken a forward step. In making her plans for the future she
has not forgotten that the rebuilt city should contain every facility
for children to grow up with strong bodies and sane minds; as well as
public provision for the leisure time of the adult population. A
Recreation Commission has been formed made up of representatives of the
various civic bodies and from the civic and provincial governments.[174]
A playground expert was called in by the city government, who after
study of the situation and conference with local groups, recommended a
system of recreation as part of the general city plan. Already marked
progress has resulted; indeed it has been said that the "municipal
recreation system of Halifax has made a record for itself." A hill of
about fifteen acres in the heart of the devastated area has been
reserved for a park and playground. The city has built and turned over
to the Commission a temporary bath-house, and has set aside the sum of
ten thousand dollars for a permanent structure. The plans contain
recommendations for minimum play-space for every school child, a central
public recreation area, an open-air hillside stadium, as well as a
community center with auditorium, community theatre, natatorium,
gymnasium, and public baths. The real significance of this movement
Halifax has not, herself, as yet fully realized. Just as there is a
close relationship between health organization and mortality tables, so
there is a close association between open spaces, street play, _etc._,
and juvenile, as well as other forms of delinquency.[175] The moral
value of organized recreation was itself demonstrated in the war, while
the increasing menace of industrial fatigue, as well as the fact of the
shorter working-day, call for public recreational facilities as a social
policy. This policy is not however fully carried out with merely
constructive and promotive action. It must be followed by restrictive
and regulatory control of commercialized recreation, and wise and
adequate systems of inspection for amusement in all its forms. This is
the path of progress in socialized recreation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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