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-FOREWORD

This is the story of recreation
for youth in wartime America.
Here are examples from the big
city, the small town, the rural
area, the quiet village which over-
night became a blue pin-on some-
one’s production map. Here are the
case histories. What they add up.
to is not so much a formula or a set
of instructions as the realization
that every town in America needs
recreation for its young people—
and can see that they get it.

Some towns are thinking in terms of community recrea-
tion for the first time; others had programs that needed only
easing at the seams to fit a war setting; many found that the
half-measures they had limped along with for years just
weren’t good enough to meet the demands of war.

All these towns, however, have this in common: they are
worried about their kids, troubled by the restlessness of
youth, its craving for excitement. They are appalled—and
with reason—by those few youngsters who get completely
off the reservation, who fall down hard. They recognize
some of the immediate causes: a big brother gone, a war effort
that doesn’t seem to need the young, a disrupted home, or
simply an overdose of battle news.

But they see, too, that within the community are some of
the immediate antidotes, and of these none is more effective
than recreation. They are coming to realize that education
doesn’t stop at 3 p. m.; that a sixteen-year-old’s free time is
as much a part of his education and as much the community’s
responsibility as his lesson in math.

 

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