EDUCATIONAL PUBLICITY 991 



governing authorities for the guidance of the people in the use of facilities. 

 These may be excerpts from general rules and regulations or they may be 

 specific directions regarding the use of play equipment, tennis courts, swim- 

 ming places, golf courses and other facilities. Such rules and regulations 

 may be printed on cloth or heavy cardboard and tacked onto boards made 

 expressly for the purpose, or printed on a board or sheet metal. The latter 

 is the more desirable and satisfactory, for the former may become faded 

 and easily torn. In some instances a bulletin board or sign case may be 

 expressly constructed with a glass door, the better to protect the sign from 

 weather and possible destruction. 



(b) Rules and regulations. Educational publicity by signs is an indirect 

 method of educating people. It is not likely to prove very effective unless 

 it is supplemented by more direct word-of-mouth educational publicity. 



One of the most difficult problems that any chief executive faces is to 

 inculcate in the people a sense of proprietorship in public recreation areas 

 which will lead to their use without abuse. Most people have a very keen 

 sense of proprietorship in public recreation areas, and a very large number 

 seem to feel that they must show this proprietorship by destroying some- 

 thing or by leaving places they have used in as disorderly a condition as 

 possible. 



Police or guards have been the main reliance in parks for the restraint 

 of the people in their destructive or disorderly tendencies, and if properly 

 trained they will in all probability always be increasingly important agents, 

 not only in the restraint of the people, but particularly in their instruction. 

 Instruction of the people, however, should be conceived and handled upon 

 a much broader basis. It should begin in the schools with children and 

 from that point be carried before every organized group that can possibly be 

 reached in a community. A plan of this kind will require in the first place 

 the cooperative help of the superintendent of the schools and the teachers. 

 The school superintendent and the chief park executive might formulate a 

 simple lesson in conduct for the children in relation to the care which they 

 should exercise toward plants and all other natural living things in parks 

 and toward the care of the properties therein. For the upper grades and 

 the high schools this could be used as a part of the instruction in community 

 civics. From time to time the park department might provide some one 

 accustomed to talking before children to speak briefly at general assemblies 

 or before classes. In the courses in nature study as followed in classrooms 

 and in excursions to the park, the teachers can even more directly and 

 pointedly inculcate the desired principles of conduct. If some such instruc- 

 tion as this were followed year after year, there would without doubt come 



