DEFENCE OF CHILDREN.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 162, 11 July 1925, Page 14

DEFENCE OF CHILDREN.

... EVIDENCE AT OUR SCHOOLS. UNCLEAN LANGUAGE RARE. x-t :; GOOD INFLUENCES AT WORK. _;' The conditions at the Auckland schools , v, and 'among the poorer classes, where our I ( social workers are busy, do not bear out j :, the opinion expressed on Wednesday by j ,i Canon Percival James, that the standarrls of morality of our young have seriously declined. : Asked if he had ever come across any . sickening filth talked among the boys i and girls, . the Rev. Jasper Calder answered: "Rubbish, how could I? If I _.' it is done—but I am not in a position -,;• to give an opinion—it is surely done in j - secret, and not before a minister." j n' Pressed for his opinion, he was most ! .. emphatic. Nobody could possibly know ' •■}■ this unless, perhaps, .from hearsay, which was very unreliable. Personally he had ' frequently encountered some of the less ; harmful cuss-words, but he was modern *> Chough not to worry Unduly about these. Blasphemy and unclean talk, however, ;•> he most strongly deprecated. From time ■"'"■' immemorial he believed that boys and \. girls had indulged in the pernicious habit ..-■ of telling risky stories. This was a '•'■' pity. Nothing undermined the sacred- ' ness of intimate and serious things so .much as making,jokes about them. The — smutty or suggestive joke did far more harm than twenty broad-minded novels. When these things were treated seri-ously-no harm-was done, but-to speak of £exual and other sacred matters flippantly was a pernicious practice. & number ■ of headmasters ' of city schools'-dfihied"'that the boys and" girls' used filthy talk in the playgrounds; and at -a school in City West, which was in a densely populated area, where the._type {.'■oi 'home was: probably that referred to by-.the Canon, it was months since the headmaster had come across a case of parefttakmeglect;- "-.'-': •; -\-.v-" • ?-m«_i .-• Few Cases of Neglect. "To find a child neglected at home Is ___»'__ -very'rare -thing," -he said, "and we see - very little absolute indifference on the part of parents to the bodily and mental welfare of their children." His school had a roll-call of over five hundred. In the classrooms he showed the children well dressed and decidedly,, well cared for in their appearance, •wish. neatly-cut hair, trimmed ...finger .nails., and warmly, though not; expensively, clothed. Many of the" boys, had- their sleeves rolled up, and were; without boots and stockings, but their, clothes gave no grounds for suspecting, neglect in the home, and they had a most,healthy and bright appearance. The windows were open, and vases of flowers -stood on the window sills. The flowers were seen in all the rooms visited, and were brought regularly from home by-the children. Some of the boys and girls, had flower gardens at home, others grew vegetables. •* .'■'.'; Everywhere at the school. was the appearance of tidiness; aft.the waste in the shelter shed was carefully put into a receptacle, and the attention that the children paid to the orderly arrangement of their hats and coats in the school corridors would have been a good object to many of theip. .elders. No ] paper was seen lying about, as so often at Albert Park after fqlkf-bad lunched •there during the mid-day-.x-ce._s; and the headmaster remarked thai/the children . had become so accustomed to careful habite that reminders frbrb the teachers were seldom needed. -'•-' ' ' School Habits a£ ; H-tne. "I feel sure that they Vcarry these habits into their homes,"; he continued. Then he showed a busy troop of senior boys working with spades and go-carts at the back of tbe school.'".They were cleaning away the grass and rubbish and digging up the area to 'plant in lawn. "They do this quite voluntarily," he explained. "We have not' asked them to work during their play hours; but they are anxious to improve their playground, and, of course; ]\v_- encourage them. They have planted the front of the school in lawn and flower-beds, and when they have finished,-this piece they intend to dig up the ground on the south side." Theirs was a difficult "piece of work, as the area was a steeply-sloping clay bank that had to be arranged in terraces and covered with a layer of black soil in which to plant the grass, but they worked with a will,-and'the array of go-carts quickly removed the unsightly rubbish. As far as... one could tell, the boys were, enjoying jt as much as play, and, when the bell went, their spades were cleaned and locked up ln the tool-shed. ■' .'. ' "Some of them have the civic spirit very well developed," commented the headmaster, with a laugh. "They have built the go-carts at home, and,bring them to school to help them in ,th. ir. work. They have a hatred of dirt'at, .school, and I know it must be the same, in their homes. A few of the boys, bring spades as well, because we have not .enough at the school. They are manly and selfreliant, too; and I have.ijever had an instance of insubordination;. Some time ago two boys brought a little, fellow to mc for using bad language., but when they explained to mc the language was (it was nothing seridus, .though), of course I admonished the "iboyi" Boys Tell Humorou* Stories. Almost every dinner hour' -'.the headmaster would walk -around j the playground, and the teachers were,also careful to keep an eye on the'children, but cases of bad language 'were/ extremely rare- •'•"■ V ■ There was a chorus of "good' morning, sir," when the headmaster entered a class room, and. the members of a boys' class answered up promptly when questioned what they did at home. Sonje of the lads and a fund of humorous jstories and anecdotes with which tlky entertained the class. It was indeed a contrast with the "smutty story" which 'people so much suspected in the minds olr some children. "The moral outlook in New Zealand is quite equal to that in ; England," commented the headmaster, after explaining that he had personally investigated conditions there several years ago. CANON JAMES REPLIES. NOT ATTACKING THE SCHOOLS. Canon James replied that what he said was intended, firstly;:as a warning to the mothers. He had no idea it was going to be reported in:public, but he was not sorry that had happened. "I was not particularly attacking the schools," he explained, "and least of all the headmasters and teachers, for 'they are a magnificent lot of people of whom New Zealand ought to beiprbud. I, was speaking about what I know. '-- 1 '■ .wasnot saying that the schools were the hotbeds of this sort of' thing, but the instances that had come to my mind

were of this talk amongst boys and girls of the same schools, and, of course, boys and girls make friends chiefly from the members of their own schools." Questioned whether he considered the influences working to-day were making the situation worse and worse, the Canon answered emphatically, "Yes," He was not speaking only of children from what might be called the poorer homes. "They are all exposed much more than they were to fearful temptation," he said. "We have heard much lately about _ex precocity. I believe that is much more common than is generally supposed. People can see for themselves the immodesty among young people, in fact, modesty seems to have become rather an unpopular word, and where there it immodesty above the surface, there is only too much reason to fear immorality below. "My second reason for saying that things are worse than they were is the decline of discipline in the homes. The home discipline of our grandfathers may have been too strict, but there is a point where liberty becomes license, and we have reached it in many homes. I think when quite young girls are allowed out to roam at will at night until late hours, without guardianship, and without being warned, of the perils about them, if disaster follows, the parents alone are responsible."