road down to the last field levelled and pavilion
built or shed put up, by voluntary effort and in time
found by the workers without encroaching on regular
school work. And lastly, an outdoor occupation
for free time which, in the earlier days of school
life, we shall do well to encourage—both
for its own value and the manifold interests that
it encourages and lessons that it teaches, and also
for its bearing on questions of national service that
will remain to be answered after the war—is
the wide range of activities comprised in scouting,
undoubtedly one of the chief educational advances
of our time. Whatever differences of views there
may be on the wider questions of military service
for national defence, and of making military training
a specific part of education, few can deny that, with
a view to national service of
some kind, the
use made by Sir Robert Baden-Powell of instincts natural
to all at a particular stage of growth, by an organisation
which can be kept entirely free from the failings
of militarism, is a development of the utmost educational,
as well as national, value. If a school already
develops, by other means, all the activities trained
by scouting, and utilises in other ways the instincts
and motives to which it makes appeal, there may be
little or nothing to be gained by its adoption.
But of how many schools can this be said? For
the rest it undoubtedly offers a way of doing, at
the stage of growth for which it is best fitted, much
of what, if there is any truth in what has been urged
above, is, from the point of view of individual development,
of greater importance now than ever before. If,
in addition to this, it will go far to solve the problem
of national service, and to remove the need for conscription
in the continental form, there is every reason to
give it a prominent place in the activities encouraged,
if not insisted upon, at school.
Let us now turn to the group of indoor pursuits, which,
if they have not quite so direct a bearing upon health,
are in another way even more important; for a large
part of leisure, even at school and still more, in
all probability, afterwards, falls at times and under
conditions that make some indoor occupation necessary,
and the waste or misuse of these times is likely to
be greater. In this group certain things need
be no more than mentioned, as either applying, at
any given time, only to a few picked individuals, or
else likely, in the majority of schools, to be made
a regular part of the school routine; such as, of
the one kind, the editing of the school magazine,
or membership of the school fire-brigade with the frequent
practices that this involves; or, of the other kind,
special gymnastics (including such things as boxing
and fencing), or lectures and concerts and other entertainments
given to the school, as distinguished from those given
by members of it, the preparation for which gives
occupation beforehand to much of their leisure.
Of the free-time pursuits more properly so called,