EDUCATION FOR LEISURE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 212, 4 June 1929, Page 12

EDUCATION FOR LEISURE

THEME OF VANCOUVER CONFERENCE “MOVIES” AND “TALKIES” Among the passengers who reached Wellington by the R.M.b. Makura yesterday en route for Sydney were a group of Australian delegates on their way back from the Vancouver Educational Conference. The party consisted of bir Archibald Strong (Professor of Bnglis'- at the Adelaide University), Mr. K. P. Franklin (headmaster of Melbourne Grammar School), and Mr. S. H. Smith (Director of Education, New South Wales). . The delegates stated that the meetings of the conference attracted crowded audiences, and evoked the enthusiastic interest of the people. There were thirty delegates from overseas, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia. India, France, Italy, Czecho-Slovakia, Japan, and Germany being strongly represented, while 200 delegates attended from various provinces of Canada. “The major theme of the conference,” said Mr. Smith, “was- ‘Education for Leisure.’ Speakers pointed out that leisure, unless spent wisely, would lead rather to death through dissipation than to enlarge life. By dissipation is not meant merely indulgence in debauchery in any of its forms, but also that wasting of time and effort on futilities that are not edifying.” Kinema Censorship.

Mr. Smith mentioned that one of the most interesting discussions held at the conference was upon the kinema. “A delegate from Montreal," he said, “Dr. Leslie Pidgeon, held the view that the moving pictures of to-day, generally speaking, exercise a corrupting influence upon the minds of the young. He pleaded for State control of the kinema and urged that society should assert itself to guide the censorship of pictures into constructive channels. ‘Censorship,’ he said, ‘is a purely negative force at present. It lacks opportunity to direct a positive influence upon the motion picture industry.’ The law of Quebec, which prohibits children under 16 from attending picture theatres, recognises the evil; and he urged that this principle be generally adopted. Other speakers opposed the suggestion that the State should control the film. ‘We might as well try to prohibit the Press,’ said Sir Aubrey Symonds; ‘it is here and it is doing much good and also much evil. We must devise plans to increase the amount of good and to eliminate the evil.’ The conference, as a whole, opposed Dr. Pidgeon’s views, but urged that a closer and more exacting censorship should prevail.”

“The Talkies.’’ When in Canada and the United States, Mr. Smith took the opportunity to investigate the “talkies.” “I am strongly of opinion,” he said, “that if we are to preserve the purity of the English tongue, drastic steps must be taken to keep out of these lands of the Southern Cross those of the American talking films which do violence to our Saxon speech. The sincere and successful efforts we are now making in the Australian schools to maintain a high standard of spoken English will fail if our young people hear much of the execrable pronunciation of English which distinguishes most of the American ‘talkies’ of to-day. We want legislation to enable our censor to exclude all talking pictures which disregard the canons of pure speech as practised amongst the educated classes in British communities. In, the interests of the boys and girls of our land some drastic steps must be taken,”