BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE NATIONAL RECREATION ASSOCIATION PHILOSOPHY

By Weaver Pangburn (Circ. 1936-1940)

Ed. Note: The National Recreation Association was originally founded in 1906 as the Playground Association of America.  Over the years, reflecting the organization’s changing mission, it changed its name to the Playground and Recreation Association of America (1911-1930) and the National Recreation Association (1930-1965).  On August 14, 1965, the National Recreation and Parks Association was created when five organizations merged to form a single entity. The five merging organizations were all involved in the support of park and recreation service providers in the public sector and included the National Recreation Association (NRA), American Institute of Park Executives (AIPE), American Recreation Society (ARS) the National Conference on State Parks (NCSP), and the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (an affiliate of AIPE).

The Association believes play for the child and recreation for the adult (it uses these terms interchangeably) to be a fundamental urge in human existence, scarcely less powerful and important that the urges of physical hunger and sex.  It subscribes to Dr.  Richard Cabot’s well known statement that “work, play, love, and worship are what men live by;” and to Joseph Lee’s characterization of play for the child as “growth – the gaining of life” and for adults as “re-creation – the renewal of life.”

The Association aims at integrated personality for the individual, strongly emphasizing positive factors rather than negative; personal expression, the discovery of potential talents and skills; freedom and opportunity for the exercise of abilities and the joy of achievement; the early formation of the attitudes and tastes making for a satisfying childhood experience with the expectation of carry-over value in adult-hood; participation versus vicarious experience in every form of up-building leisure time activity; and play and recreation for their own sake and not for any professional purpose (for example learning to play in an orchestra for the fun and sense of achievement and not in the expectation of becoming ultimately a paid professional.)

Strong emphasis is put on the group as a medium of socialization.  This method is applied to all activities –physical, rhythmic, dramatic, and manual.  The team, the chorus, the orchestra, the drama group are typical public recreation units.  Folk dancing involving group action and group feeling, is favored over the exhibition dancing; and in social dancing the attempt is made through the Paul Jones and other such features to promote general acquaintances and unity in the entire dancing group.  “Starring” is discouraged.  The socializing benefit of the play day between schools and playgrounds, with its intermingling of players, is advocated rather than unmodified competitions between school and playgrounds intensifying narrow group loyalties and differences.  It is considered that working in groups, for instance the orchestra practice, is an insufficient social experience of itself.  To the strictly “work” activities involved in the rehearsal are added social activities which develop a feeling of one-ness, harmony, and goodwill in the group.

Special emphasis is put on leadership as being all-important.  The leader must be a person of sterling character as well as one skilled in the crafts of the playground and recreation center.  It is expected that the leader will be a person of understanding and one having a large conception of his functions.  The high type leader wants to develop activities out of which people will obtain genuine nourishment and deep-going satisfaction.  His goal is that out of a mountain climb, of sharing in the work of a good orchestra, or a baseball game, or handling the “props” for the community players, people may realize some aspiration, gather new courage and confidence or develop fresh idealism.  To this end he is willing to begin in a small way and with small groups, and to build soundly rather than flashily.  In other words, he has a sense of quality.  In this he is sustained by the constant discovery that both children and adults want something that challenges their power.  It is believed that the leader has inescapable obligations as to the ethical development of participants, but it is recognized that his influence must be exerted in subtle and indirect ways if the social experiences of play are effectively to make for the formation of habits and action looking toward transfer into adult-hood.

Play and recreation are not considered intrinsically moral in the current sense of morality.  Rather they are recognized as mediums, as rich soil for the exercise of leader influence in the direction of ethical attitudes and habits.  Indeed, the Association believes (and it finds many educators agreeing) that as conduct situations, the game, the singing group, the drama group, and the like have no equals among life situations.  This is held to be true since in the play situation, the individual exhibits a supreme concentration, amounting nearly to complete absorption and self-forgetfulness.  He is most himself at this time, and is most receptive and susceptible to external influences for good or evil.  This situation, of course, enhances the responsibility of the leader.  In athletics conduct situations are very numerous.

The Association’s conception of the developing values of play includes the discipline of painstaking, persistent and meticulous effort to perfect work; for example, encouragement of the boy to produce a model airplane which will be a thing of beauty and efficiency so that it will fly well, or the perfecting of form in diving or swimming, or the truest possible interpretation of a play.  It believes that ultimate satisfaction comes only with progressive achievement.  It is interested in play that has meaning and substance involving growth and nourishment for the soul.

Community recreation is conceived as a medium for the release of bottled up aspirations, emotions, and energies.  The neurologist and psychiatrist will agree that what a restless high-strung people need is not to repress but to give themselves, to participate and pour out their energies.

Skilled leadership for the play of children and guidance (or service) for the recreation of adults are considered to be perfectly consistent with freedom for the individual or the group.  Regimentation and over-supervision are to be avoided.  What is wanted is leadership unmistakable in its influence, but which at the same time does not cramp initiative or resourcefulness.  The highest freedom is considered to be that associated with growing powers.  The playground stands for freedom with growth.  The achieving child is the unfolding child.  The more a child unfolds, the freer it becomes.  Leadership involves discipline, but it is concerned with the expansion of the individual and the group.  Play can be taught without destroying its spontaneity.  The richer the program, the more exposures to lines of individual development, the more numerous the avenues  of freedom.  The philosophy of freedom is also carried out through the encouragement of self-government and group initiative on the playground, on the athletic field, and the neighborhood evening centers.  It is found that in all life situations, people are constantly subjecting themselves to one kind of leadership on another.  When leadership is intelligent, sympathetic, and efficient, personality flourishes, because of it and the sense of freedom is not cramped.

The Association’s field is not that of entertainment and amusement.  It focuses on participant recreation. It recognizes, however, that the appreciation of skill and beauty go hand in hand with participation.  It believes that appreciation can best be promoted be securing participation.  Hence it is interested in capable leadership and adequate facilities for more and more players, singers, and actors, not more stadium seats for spectators.

It is appreciated that activity is not all.  Every child and adult should have an opportunity to invite the soul, to mediate; and no program should be so designed as to crowd out such experience.  Every playground and park should have retreats, beautiful, restful, and stimulating to the imaginative senses, where the individual may ponder on men and things.

It is believe that even the most citified individual has remnants of biological hunger for the soil and in most people this urge is quite strong.  The program fostered by the Association aims to satisfy the desire for contact with mountains, woods, streams, lakes and the country.  This accomplished through setting aside of permanent parks, public water fronts, beaches, camp sites, reservations, and through programs which invite the public to come in close contact with nature.

The constant influence of the Association is toward the simpler, unsophisticated satisfactions of leisure time experience.  Hence, it is seen advocating and fostering the games, sports, music, dances, varied forms of dramatic expression, and crafts, based on race-old pursuits – the activities which have given color, satisfaction, and inspiration to mankind form the earliest times.

It is believed that the community has responsibility for fostering a broad program of leisure time recreation for the people just as it is responsible for schools sanitation, health, and policing.  Furthermore, in the interest of democracy, permanence, adequacy, and general effectiveness the Association believes in municipal maintenance and administration of recreation, the taxpayers paying the costs.  Supplementing the municipal agency there should be the private group in an advisory capacity, and in some cases for experimental laboratory work.  The use of tax funds for this purpose is justified on the assumption that the city exists not only to promote trade and commerce, but also for social services and the promotion of “the good life.” It further justifies it on the basis of the observed social values of organized recreation.

From the foregoing it may be seen that the Association’s immediate objective is creative life experience for the individual and the group.  Its secondary, but closely linked objectives are growth in health, morality, and good citizenship.

Weaver Pangburn

Source: National Recreation Association Records. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Social Welfare History Archives. Minneapolis, MN: https://www.lib.umn.edu/swha