Lesson one

1.1  LEISURE IN A CHANGING SOCIETY

Leisure is the time one is free from his or her daily routine. It is the time one has at his or her disposal to use as he or she chooses without being bound by any necessity.

Leisure is regarded as the time free from work where an individual is set to use with freedom. In normal situations, leisure follows a given work.

However, because different individuals have different occupation, leisure might vary from one person to another. This means that what may be one’s leisure may be regarded by another as a piece of work.

1.2  TYPES OF LEISURE

There are basically two types of leisure:

  • Active leisure
  • Passive leisure

1.3  ACTIVE LEISURE

This kind of leisure involves a situation where someone is doing something. It involves a direct and physical participation of the individual enjoying the leisure activity.

In this type of leisure, a lot of money is used. This is because the individual is actively involved using either physical or mental energy to fulfill the activity.

Examples of active leisure include dancing, acting drama and playing games like football.

1.4  PASSIVE LEISURE

This is a kind of leisure where an individual is simply entertained. The person enjoys some activities without the direct participation.

This means that an individual uses only the mental energy. The examples of passive leisure include sleeping, watching films and listening to music among others.

However, passive leisure may have some problems since the individual simply absorb whatever is being presented. Such problems include:

  • Encourage
  • Leaves one’s talents undiscovered and
  • Encourages
  • Promotes
  • Promotes
  • Makes one unfit.
  • Promotes individualism and
  • Kills one’s creativity.
  • Limits
  • Promotes boredom

1.5  IMPORTANCE (SIGNIFICANCY) OF LEISURE

The various leisure activities carried out offer different benefits. This may be cultural, economical, social and spiritual in nature including the following:

  • Leisure helps in refreshing the mind of the workers. This makes it possible for an individual to recover from the fatigue of the work and regain the energy
  • Leisure provides an opportunity to discover and develop one’s talents. This is especially true with active leisure where the individual directly participates in such activities like playing football and netball and
  • Leisure promotes co-operation and socialization among people. As people come together to enjoy such activities including games, conversation and praying, peace and harmony may be
  • Leisure provides income to different people at different levels. This is true with entertainers including actors and play writers among others .
  • Leisure helps strengthen an individual faith. This can through activities such as watching religious films, bible studies and prayers among
  • Leisure promotes self-discoveries by the individual It gives an opportunity to evaluate the work already done. This may assist in finding loopholes an better solutions in one’s work.
  • Leisure provides employment For example, radio and TV presenters.
  • Leisure helps in strengthening one’s cultures through participating in activities like traditional dances. This gives the people their true identities and creates the sense of
  • Leisure promotes education among This can through activities like reading magazines, and novels among others. These activities may facilitate learning.
  • Leisure activities help to relieve the burden of being idle and redundant. In such a case, the worker is at least occupied with
  • Leisure activities can improve on the health status of an individual. Activities such as dancing and jogging among others make muscles flexible. It also reduces the level of fats in the body because of the sweating. This limits the chances of contracting diseases such as high blood pressure and heart
  • Leisure gives the chance for the workers to attend to their families. This is true considering that most workers spend much of their time away from
  • Leisure helps to diversify the economic standard of an individual and the country. For instance, the government may increase on its earning through taxing the people engaging in the leisure activities and even the equipment being exported or imported.
  • Leisure gives workers adequate time to prepare for the next stage of work. In such free time, an individual is given the opportunity to lay strategies and plan for the work For example, teachers can use their free time to prepare notes lesson plans and schemes of work among others.

1.6   PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH LEISURE TODAY

  • Most leisure activities today are commercialized. An individual is expected to pay some money before having access to the leisure activities like watching football and film shows among This means that it is only those with money who can enjoy them. The poor ones are isolated. This promotes social differences, which threatens unity in the society.
  • Some leisure activities promote boredom, especially when one decides to spend it passively. It may also be caused by thee activities being unnecessarily long and continuous. This makes such activities to become monotonous hence denying people total enjoyment.
  • Leisure is responsible for family neglect. In such cases, the leisure makers prefer engaging in leisure activities to attending to family
  • It can lead to neglect of faith. Such people prefer the pleasurable activities to religious activities like bible
  • Leisure can also bring about school dropouts. This is because of the growing tendency of some students to go for different leisure activities like films, disco, and watching football at the expense of reading
  • The plenty of free time may give way for an individual to plan This can explain the emergency of gang stars and evil doers in urban centres.
  • Some leisure activities are destructive to human life. Among others, motor rallies, drinking and wrestling have ended up causing serious injuries leading to
  • Some leisure activities consume and waste a lot of energy. This is true with active leisure where an individual is made more tired than Therefore, an individual may not be refreshed and engaged as it is always thought.
  • Leisure may promote wrong education in the community. For example, exposure to pornographic materials may lead to sexual immorality like
  • Leisure can lead to and cause poverty. Some people tend to spend money extravagantly on leisure activities such as drinking and going for trips among others. This discourages saving which affects investments
  • Some leisure activities degrade and undermine the indigenous African cultures. This is because of the ever -increasing love for the western leisure activities including films and night clubs among others. This leaves the traditional way of life
  • Some leisure activities limit socialization among people. People are divided up because of some activities like sleeping and site viewing which can only be enjoyed by a person at
  • Most of the good leisure activities are concentrated in urban areas. Activities such as film shows, theaters and discotheques are urban based. This may be one of the reasons why some youth are forced to migrate to
  • Some leisure activities kill a person’s Talents may not also be developed. This is especially true if the leisure is spent passively.
  • Leisure also wastes a lot valuable time that could be used in more productive activities. This may leave the community