MANNERS OF YOUTH

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXV, Issue 14430, 31 July 1947, Page 2

MANNERS OF YOUTH

Sir—With reference to your leader and recent correspondence on the manners of modern youth may I add my bit? When staying in town not long ago I answered a knock at the dooi. A College' boy, standing there, without any preliminaries, asked: “Do you know where Mrs B - lives? I said: “I am not sure but I think in that concrete house opposite. The boy said “Oh,” and walked away, leaving me too dumbfounded even to hint that a thank you was indicated.

Personally I think the homes are more to blame than the schools. Coupled with allowing the children to grow up. pagans, I consider it nothing short of criminal and the height of unfairness to the children themselves, for parents so to spoil them as to make them disliked by and unfit to associate with, theii fellow beings. A spoilt child usually turns into a hopelessly selfish adult.

A law which makes parents punishable for their children’s offences is badly needed, and I think our magistrates and police would be the first to welcome it. To have to deal with young delinquents who are only in trouble as the result of wrongful upbringing, must be the most heart breaking part of their work. —I am, etc., A LOVER OF CHILDREN Sir,—Recent letters in your columns have drawn attention to the apparent lack of training, particularly in their obligations to others, among many children and young people at the present time. At Mount Maunganui the other day two boys of about nine or ton were seen by passers-by to be lying on the tar sealing in the middle of the main road, apparently with the idea of daring cars to run over them. Several people remonstrated with them without effect.

There are many young children living at the Mount, and such an example set by boys who are old enough to know better might well have fatal results if followed by some younger child who wo"uld be unable to get out of the way if a car or lorry did come along. Such matters should be taken up both by parents and by school

: ( pi teachers, and the offenders, - caught, punished severely,-I ’ s p' etc.. tt “BACR’|pl