Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1911 — REVIVE LOST ART [ARTICLE]

REVIVE LOST ART

Chicagoans Are to Be Taught How to Play. . » ‘ Professor Chubb of University of New York Says Children Are Losing Truo Spirit of Youth and Getting Into Adult Ways. Chicago.—Prof. Perclval Chubb of New York university and head of the department of English and pageants in the Ethical Culture school of New York, lectured here the other night under the auspices of the Chicago Ethical society. He sought to give Impetus to the Playground association of Chicago and to other agencies which are attempting to teach children and grown people how to play, for he declares that it Is a lost art.

“The old-time play spirit has been almost entirely forgotten,” he said. “Children do not know how to amuse themselves. They no longer play games at parties; they don’t indulge in puppet shows and minstrels. “The Sunday comic papers are among the chief offenders against children. In the schools, for example, we work to develop a certain standard of literary and aesthetic, tastes in children. Constantly, and out of school, the Sunday supplement works against any educative efforts. In place of better qualities, in the trough of the comic sheets children learn smartness, vulgarity, ‘money tricks’ and irreverence. “Besides establishing bad habits of taste the Sunday supplements make for a ‘scatter-brain’ state of mind among children. The habit of sustained attention is lost. I for one would prohibit these papers to children until they are sixteen years old. “The whole environment of the child is that of the adult. On the streets, for example, the advertisements greet him. Some of them suggest that, child as he is, one brand of whisky would be good for him. Another sign suggests that if he has a headache by drinking certain preparations the ache will be cured.

“Advertisements take the place of the old criers. We have forbidden the noise of one as a nuisance, but the appeal of the more recent method is Just as loud, Just as ugly as the older street cries. The whole glaring, blinking system tends to lower the standards of things. Children become precocious—adults before their time. “The same state of affairs is true when you come to the amusements of children. They are all adult amusements. The theaters, the songs, the gutter ditties and the ragtime, even the moving pictures which have improved in tone, present thingß unfit for children. I don’t mean necessarily Immoral things, but ideas which are not Intended for children.

“I would urge a system of festivals and pageants in which schools and settlements should unite. At Hull House children’s plays are given weekly. Already dancing is becoming a fad in New York, and in Chicago, also, I suppose. Dances to some extent fall short because in themselves alone they do not carry any great idea. This is what the pageant accomplishes. The pageant recalls old-folk arts, old songs, dances, and gives them place in an artistic and aesthetic culture.

"I am opposed to the idea that education is for work alone. I am in favor of an education for leisure. Under the modern system of Industrial organisation, If a man’s sonl is to be

saved, he must fall back on his leisure hours. We must educate him for this. We must create or draw out new capacities for enjoyment so that he can fall back on himself.”