Recommendation
1717 (2005)1
Education
for leisure activities
1.
The amount of time people spend working has been steadily diminishing,
alongside an equally steady increase in life expectancy with the result
that people find themselves with more free time and are not always
able to use it in the best way. The Parliamentary Assembly believes
that governments are responsible for providing their citizens with
conditions for the best possible quality of life. This is related to
quality of leisure in its different forms (intellectual, social, physical
and mental). Active involvement, for instance in music or sport, is
better than passive attendance.
2.
An average person, in his/her entire life, spends more time on leisure
than on anything else. Research indicates that a higher level of teenager
involvement in delinquency is significantly associated with increased
participation in unsupervised socialisation with friends and less frequent
participation in organised leisure, sports activities and activities
at home. Education for leisure activities can therefore promote social
cohesion and help prevent anti-social behaviour and crime.
3.
The implementation of leisure policies calls for a combined effort
of all sectors: the public sector on a central, regional and local
level, as well as the private and the non-governmental sectors. Leisure
policy, as an indispensable element of state social policy, should
define the objectives, tasks, means and methods of meeting the leisure
needs of the population, taking into consideration demographic and
cultural differences and the varying socioeconomic status of their
inhabitants.
4.
The effective implementation of leisure policy requires appropriate
action programmes, appropriate and generally available infrastructure
and properly prepared professional and voluntary staff. The success
of leisure policies requires that they be monitored and systematically
adjusted, that new priorities be identified and that action programmes
be adapted and evaluated. All this should be done with the active participation
of representatives of different sciences such as sociology, psychology,
pedagogy, economics and philosophy.
5.
Education for leisure should aim at enriching the knowledge and skills
of those to whom it is addressed and at enabling them to use their
leisure time in order to improve their quality of life. Culture, sport
and social and recreational activities are concerned. One of the priorities
of state social policy should be to enable individuals to utilise the
full potential of leisure, improve their quality of life during free
time and learn values important for their own intellectual, psychological,
physical and social development.
6.
Therefore, the Assembly recommends that the Committee of Ministers
draw up guidelines for education for leisure time, including such principles
as:
6.1.
education for leisure and the animation of leisure activities and
attitudes should include all the stages of life, from early childhood
to old age, and should be an element in programmes of formal and
informal systems of social influence;
6.2.
the role and objectives of leisure education, as well as the related
need for staff training should be pursued in school and in the local
community along the lines of the International Charter for Leisure
Education, adopted in 1993 by the World Leisure and Recreation Association
(WLRA);
6.3.
the role of non-governmental organisations should be recognised and
encouraged. Potential animateurs should be qualified but this should
not act as a deterrent to initiatives by NGOs;
6.4.
leisure education programmes should support the implementation of
this process in families through properly organised counselling,
in special management and in the distribution of appropriate leisure
institutions in residential areas;
6.5.
leisure education programmes should take into consideration the adult
community, which should be offered a wide range of leisure activities,
both after work and on non-working days as well as during holidays;
6.6.
special attention should be given to programmes and possibilities
for leisure activities for particular groups such as the disabled,
people who work in difficult conditions or who do monotonous work,
housewives, temporary workers and minority groups, the unemployed
and the retired;
6.7.
care for the quality of life of elderly people should, in addition
to other benefits for this age group, be expressed in terms of possibilities
for making use of a diversified offer of services that stimulate
this age group to pursue activities corresponding to their needs;
in pre-retirement, counselling should be encouraged in order to demonstrate
the importance of varying activities in old age;
6.8.
provision should be made for effective programmes for the training
and in-service training of specialists, professionals and voluntary
workers to guarantee high quality leisure education.
1. Text
adopted by the Standing Committee acting on behalf of the Assembly
on 1 September 2005 (see Doc.
10647, report of the
Committee on Culture, Science and Education, rapporteur: Mr Smorawinski).
