The Evolution of the Country Community: A Study in Religious SociologyWilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Religion
The Evolution of the Country Community: A Study in Religious Sociology
Wilson, Warren H. (Warren Hugh)
Christian sociology; Country life
The ethical, sometimes called the social factor in the community's life,
is no less essential. Organized work requires organized recreation.
Every community which has a systematic economy by which its residents
get their living is found to have a systematic though usually informal
and unrecognized provision for recreation. Somewhere in the bounds of
every working town in America is a playground. It is not the result of
"the playground movement," but of the play necessity in human nature.
The open lots where the town is not built up, the railroad yard, the
yard of a factory or the town common are used by common consent by the
young people and the working-people of the town as a playground.
The departure of many persons from country communities is due to the
lack of social life: and the fascination of the city for bright and
energetic young men and women is due to the variety of recreation and
interest which it provides to those who expect to work and are willing
to work. Regular work means regular play. This fact cannot be too well
learned by those who study the religious and moral life of modern men.
The need of play is as real as the need of food or of sleep.
This recreational life is highly ethical. The craving of the young and
of working-people for common places of recreation is a normal craving
due to the development of conscience as well as to weariness of body.
The exactions of modern labor create a craving for free and voluntary
movement. Those who are hired to work, and those who if they are
employers are bound to the routine of the desk or of the bench, seek to
breathe deeply the air of happy and self-expressive action. The result
is that play, especially team work, is highly moral. It is not only
personal and self-expressive, but it involves co-operation,
self-surrender, obedience and the correlation of one's own life with
other lives in a glorious complex of experiences, unexampled elsewhere
in modern life for their ethical value in developing adolescent minds in
the common humanities and moralities. The playground is an essential
field in the preparation of good citizens and it is not to be wondered
at that in country communities, where all provision of recreation is
difficult, and no public provision of playgrounds is thought of by those
in authority, that young people and working people, indeed all classes
of the population, tend to move away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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