Our Reform Heritage: Recovering the Vision of Community Leisure Service

Abstract

Given the rare opportunity to write unencumbered by the usual scholarly constraints, I take this as an occasion for reflection, asking questions that are probably good for all of us to ask from time to time; How did I get here in the first place? and What keeps me going? Thinking back to my days as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina in the mid 1970s, I recall a seminar with the historian George Mowry and my selecting, more or less at random, in the 1920s from a list of research topics he gave our class. Exploring the topic, looking around the university, I noticed H. Douglas Sessoms and his bunch across campus were running a Recreation Curriculum. I went to see Doug and my life has, quite literally, not been the same since. Under Doug's tutelage I first saw what recreation and leisure were once, and might be again. I saw then visions of social reform and transformation, of human progress and betterment that were so striking, so inspiring, that I committed myself to study and teach these topics. This reform model and vision sustain me still, confirming my commitment when I despair for my fields. Writing my master's thesis, Playground Reform: The Recreation Movement in America 1880-1920, I discovered a group of activists in the mainstream of America's Progressive Movement presenting powerful critiques of industrialization, urban society, and the excesses of capitalism. At the inception of our fields, founders of the playground around the turn of the century such as Joseph Lee and Jane Addams, established a blueprint for reform that speaks powerfully today. Looking around them at the crowded and crime ridden streets of Boston, New York, etc., they saw children denied a basic human freedom-play. They spoke out against this condition, drawing the public's attention to the problem. Marshaling public support, they took action, providing free, open spaces (sandgardens) where children could be themselves and simply play, and beginning a social movement that flourished for over thirty years. Here is the reform model in elegant simplicity. Modern life (technology, urbanization, mass culture, capitalism) crowds out humans. We are alienated; separated from our true selves, our very essence; exiled to stunted and restless artificiality. It is the reformer's role to expose this alienation, gather public support for change, and do something practical, acting in the real world to make some room for our humanity. The men and women who came afterwards, leading the recreation and parks movement, followed this reform pattern. People such as Jay Nash criticized the onslaught of commercial recreation, pointing out that Americans were becoming passive in their free time, consuming rather than creating their amusements. Spectatoritis was sweeping the land, alienating more and more people as fat, lazy, and quarrelsome bench-warmers. What to do? Provide programs for the schools, playgrounds, and recreation centers that stressed active involvement and produced healthy, engaged sportsmen and women. Others criticized the increasing speed and deadly stress of modern life, offering recreation centers and parks as places for recuperation and of relative peace and quiet. Nature? The city was crowding out all things green. Humans were separated from natural surrounding (our evolutionary home) and suffered because of it. Solution? Bring a little nature to the city (parks) or take nature-starved humans out of town for some fresh air. These pioneers took notice of what others were saying and writing (scholars and journalists) and addressed larger public concerns-the devitalizing and de-skilling of work, for example. Technology was making work less and less satisfying. The best hope for men and women alienated at work was increasing leisure. Arguably, their major complaint was the loss of community. Not only were people becoming spectators at sports events, they were becoming passive in the building and maintenance of their own local culture. …