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This concern with providing children a wide range of acrivities is one of the major changes that have occurred at British prep schools over the past generation. One headmaster described the "pervassive purposeless" at his old school. The headmaster at Winterfold House described his old school, which is probably an accurate description of most English prep schools a generation ago:
How callow and narrow were we products of the 1950s and 60s by comparison, but then the schools we went to were fundamentally different. One does not remember being unhappy, and one probably received an excellent formal education. No, the impression one is left with as the years roll away, is the frinding tedium of much of it, and the feeling that precious time and opportunity were going to waste .... Spare time was clearly an embarassment to the establishment, and little attempt was made to fill it in any way constructively. The problem was solved by hearding us all into the church as long as possible, to make sure of satisfying our spiritual needs, while the physical ones were fulfilled by endless walks in the lanes around the school. One remembers too simply hanging about in the passages in the evening waiting for the bed bill to ring.
The many prep school offering a wide range of both academic and non-academic activities is a far cry from the situation as most modern schools where the children appear to energetially confronting both their academic and non-academic activities. We can not really remember visiting one school where the children were "hanging about in the passages" awaiting the bed bell. Instead the children we saw seem to partticularly enjoy the free time before bed, using it when an activity or club was not scheduled for a wide range of activities from visiting with friends, playing board games, practing instruments, or even a little extra studying.
