Thinking about Leisure

Andrew Greely, in his book The Catholic Imagination, makes the point that Catholics (by which he means cultural Catholics rather than strictly practicing Catholics) have a different concept of time, in particular, of leisure time, than non-Catholics. Basically, Catholics, in unconscious defiance of the Protestant "work ethic," place more value on time away from work than on time working. Not that we don't see value in work, but work is a means to an end--often an end that has to do with the accumulation of time to engage in other activities, be they familial, spiritual, intellectual, whatever. This rings true for me, as it does (I'm sure) for anyone from New Orleans. We don't live to work, we work to live. And many of us try to find the type of work that most closely resembles leisure in which to engage.

Considering that Spring Break just ended for the university at which I teach, and considering that very little of what I did during that week was "leisure" in the strictest definition, it seemed a good time to reflect on these things--or at least, to have the students reflect on these things! So I had them do blogs for the week on Spring Break and leisure. I asked them to consider Spring Break from a non-student perspective, and ask themselves who benefits from Spring Break. On the topic of leisure, I asked them to interpret it creatively. Well, I had to clarify somewhat, and this is how I did so:

Spring Break

By having you reflect on Spring Break, I was trying to induce you to get outside of yourselves a bit. Yeah, Spring Break is a great time to have fun, but do you think for one minute that the university, in gracious recognition of how hard you work, decides that you deserve this time off? Don't bet on it!! The university administration works a lot harder than you do, and puts in regular 40 hour work weeks, yet staff and faculty in administrative positions don't get a full week off. So what? Are they trying to get rid of you for a week? Vacations are great and all, but businesses don't regularly just give their employees a whole week to do with as they choose--so Spring Break clearly isn't a reflection of how life is in the real world. Employees have to "earn" vacation time over a set period of time and then ask permission to be able to take off even a few days, much less a week. So why are you, as college students, so privileged? And what about schools that don't offer Spring Break? Schools that, instead, have quarter systems to squeeze as much classroom time into the shortest number of months? Do they value education more than those schools that do have a Spring Break? Basically, who is Spring Break benefiting--besides the students? Because I can't imagine that the universities believe that you work too hard or that you can't get enough time to do what you want in the semester and you need a whole week to party. After all, what are Thursdays through Saturdays or Sundays for??

leisure time

This question was intentionally vague, but I believe it may have been
too vague. To answer that leisure time is time to relax is like
saying that recreational activities are things that people do to have
fun. The only possible response is. . . Um. . . yeah. Of course. So
let's get beyond that a bit. Things I'm interested in hearing about are:

* who has leisure?
* are some people deprived of leisure?
* does everyone deserve leisure?
* does everyone need leisure?
* is leisure a right?
* do all people WANT leisure? (regardless of whether they need
it or not)
* are there right and wrong ways to use leisure?
* are we as a society supportive of leisure?
* is too much leisure a bad thing?
* do we take leisure for granted?
* I think Ben Franklin may have been the one to say "idle hands
are the devil's workshop"--what does that say about leisure? are
there people who still believe this, and if so, in what contexts?

I'm hoping that this will get them to probe a little more deeply into both of these questions. Of course, there are arguments implicit in my questions. And clearly I can be a bit of a hard ass sometimes. . . (Pardon the expression)