The Dominion. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1937. BROADCASTS AND JUVENILE MORALS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 71, 17 December 1937, Page 10

The Dominion. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1937. BROADCASTS AND JUVENILE MORALS

The public should feel indebted to the principal of Wellesley College for his frank utterances, reported yesterday, on the subject of j'uvenile morals. Environment and external circumstances have a powerful influence on character. If these are unfavourable their effect on young people during the formative period of their lives can be extremely harmful. There is a saying, as is the school so is the child,” but, as Mr. Stevens very properly emphasises, there are other influences that demand attention. Children to-day enjoy a measure of freedom that would have amazed parents of an earlier day. The sterner discipline of a former period by no means remote has largely disappeared from family life, and in the schools themselves it has been considerably relaxed in order to allow the children greater scope for the development of what the psychologists in. education call “self-expression.” The restraints imposed by old-fashioned methods of discipline, and which contributed valuably to the moulding of character are now designated “repressions,’’ which, we are told, are psychologically bad. . ■ In modern education, as in modern Government, there, is an overready disposition to slip old and safe moorings before being sure of the new anchorage. We have dispensed with the. old discipline, but have we substituted for it anything as effective and salutary? “Moralists on every hand,” declares Mr. Stevens in the comment under mention, “tell us that education has failed, that the Church is a spent force, and they indicate the general deterioration so obvious in public and private life.” Mr. Stevens quite reasonably declares that the Church and the school cannot be blamed for all this; that other forces must also be held responsible. He instances the radio. He asks,, in effect, what is the use of discussing during school hours the inspirational philosophy to be found in poetic and other literature when the children in their leisure hours can listen ,to “that salacious classic from 2ZB entitled ‘Sandy at the Nudists’ Club,’ or possibly another instalment of that blood-curdling epic, ‘Crashed in the Jungle,’ featuring Ching Li, desperate killer and ‘tough egg’ ?” He may well ask. It is deplorable to think that the delicate and difficult task of moulding juvenile chaiacter in school may be largely undone, and the effort wasted, by radio vulgarities and “shockers” of the kind that have evoked protests both in Parliament and throughout the country. If efforts to raise the standard and refine the tone of public morals are to be successful influences likely to be harmful to the younger generation must be carefully watched. Mr. Stevens pleads for a higher sense of parental responsibility, but even the good that may be effected by the light kind of home life may be undone if the kind of State broadcasts to which he refers are allowed to vitiate the air. True, they can be switched off, and the radio tuned oyer to a broadcast calculated to have a more stimulating and refining influence on character. But why should it be necessary -to have this discrimination in the case of a State-owned Government-controlled station? The Government in this connection has shown a regrettable lack of responsibility for which it has already been sharply criticised. Why has it hesitated to pay due heed to the protests that have been made? It cannot be indifferent, surely, to the warnings uttered concerning the influences which touch so closely the ethical standards and moral well-being of our young people.