Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1923

COMMUNITY CENTERS IN SCHOOL BUILDINGS-WHITE 443

imposes opinion and program on a community, but one who stimulates the community
to formulate its own desires and to meet its own needs, who has that something that
rests in the large, unbiased outlook and is rooted firmly in a belief in folks. Not only
the head of a community center system but every leader should have a philosophy that
sees the ultimate unity that comes from the frequent but often minor contact of diverse
personal interests and group line-ups. This is essential because the program of a community center is not valuable because it offers activities of such and such a kind, but
because of the tapestry of individual relationships and community grouping that result.
Fortunately, in this most statesmanlike field of social work, one finds today remarkable
persons in charge of community centers, who have deep, human qualities and carry in
their personalities those elements which build them into the right relationship with life.
As to the program: the vision that the community center presents in the way of
drawing to it individual enlargement of purpose and individual genius, as well as of
building up group power, is so far-reaching that a great challenge is presented in the
way of developing the activities that are offered. Just a program of activities will not
do. The program of a community center must offer a wide range of choice and of
experimentation in choice.
It is not uncommon for forums to spring into existence and to die. Discussion
clubs begin and go to pieces too frequently because the members have talked themselves
out, so to speak, and no extra train of thought from a different point of view has been
brought before them. Surely, since the forum and the discussion club offer perhaps
the richest of all educational fields, we must not be content with anything but the best,
most liberal, and progressive work. If anyone has ever had the privilege of following,
over a period of time, results in terms of individual outlook that come from a discussion
club where the members meet to think out together some of the baffling economic
situations of our time, it will be granted that through this free discussion there develops
the true educational aim of related thought more surely than through any other method.
No form of educational procedure is more valuable. Therefore real thinkers, men with
a message, must be brought before discussion groups. This is not a hard thing to
bring about, great as demands are that are made on our well-known exponents of
thought, because those who are in the first rank have caught the values of the center
and are willing to give their time.
The community banquets and the community socials which a center carries on
refresh a neighborhood. Receptions to public officials bring them face to face with their
constituencies where something like a close range of appreciation can develop. The
community festival brings every race and every citizen to present their best.
Not only should a center offer a program with some of the values here pointed out
but all ingenuity should be used to see that every provincialism that exists within communities is broken down. If a community is made up of several races, skill in programmaking should bring the races together. So dynamic and yet subtle should the program of a community center be that the community becomes permeated with its influence and this influence in turn should tend to draw all community interests to itself.
With the opportunity which the community center offers for the development
of the creative, we should in time get definite contributions to our material for plays,
for our music, and for our art expression. Surely the community center movement is
fundamental, and in accepting the responsibility for assisting in its development, school
boards are adding much to the effectiveness of their day-school education, and also