Extra-curricular Activities In Secondary Schools

COPYRIGHT, 1931 BY ELBBRT K. FRBTWBLL ALL RIGHTS RBSBRVBD INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. EDITORS INTRODUCTION WHAT we today term Extra-Curricular Activities repre sent, after all, only an orderly organization and redirection and extension of those pupil activities characteristic of adolescent youth which have always been more or less present among young people in their teens. The Friday afternoon literary exercises and plays and spelling matches represent such activities as the older schools knew them, while parties, dances, ball games, the swimming hole, gangs, and various back-lot and back-alley activities have always characterized the leisure-time occupations of youth. Until quite recently, however, these activities were less prominent than now, and were largely ignored by the school, and few teachers of the older generation manifested any interest in what took place outside the classroom, or possessed any ability to organize and redirect these activi ties into more orderly and more useful channels. Largely within the past decade, and wholly within the past two, an entirely new interest in the extra-curricular activities of youth has been taken by the school. In part this change in attitude has been caused by the new dis ciplinary problems brought to the school through the recent great popularization of secondary education, in part by the marked increase in leisure time accruing to youth as a result of our increase in wealth and the applica tion of recently enacted child-labor laws, in part by the many new temptations to which young people in the pres ent age are subjected, and in part by thegeneral speed ing-up that all evolutionary social changes have experi enced as a result of the World War. The War revealed vi EDITORS INTRODUCTION anew the great importance of education in a democratic society, and the attention of the world was directed anew to youth as the hope of civilization if the hard-earned ad vances in democratic government are to be preserved. The school, accordingly, has recently come to realize the important distinction between the mastering of school tasks and the learning that takes place outside the school, and the wise schoolmaster has come to see that both he and his teachers are not fulfilling their true function as the in structors, guides, and counselors of youth unless they also help to organize and direct the many leisure-time activities of their pupils. The result of this new vision has been that the function of the teacher is both changed in direction and greatly enlarged in scope, and that a new conception as to the possibilities of the school has come to characterize the teaching profession. The responsibilities of the teacher naturally have been broadened, the morale of the school has been greatly improved, and a far closer intimacy be tween teacher and pupil is the natural result. It has been a fortunate change in attitude for all. Fundamentally, the movement is the result of a better understanding of the psychology of adolescence and of the proper means for training youth for citizenship. As a re sult of many psychological studies, made during the past third of a century, a wider recognition of the vast and far reaching physical, psychological, and social changes which take place with the onset of adolescence has become the common property ofthe teaching profession. The period of adolescence, we now realize, is a period of the utmost significance for the school. New tendencies to action arise, new emotions begin to sway youth, new ideals as to life begin to be formulated and tend to become fixed, serious thought is given to conduct, aspirations and visions of pos sible usefulness begin to take firm hold, qualities of leader EDITORS INTRODUCTION, vii ship emerge, social attitudes and tendencies of importance in after life incline to become fixed, and from impulses to action character is evolved...