CURFEW WANTED

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 272, 13 August 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

CURFEW WANTED

Children Need More Sleep

LACK OF PARENTAL CONTROL

Concern at the harm suffered by children from lack of sufficient sleep was expressed at the annual conference of the National Association of Head Teachers at Nottingham, England, recently. A proposal that the Ministry of Health be pressed to cause a curfew to be rung at 8.30 was noted. Mrs. B. M. Biggs, of London, moved a resolution staling that the Ministry of Health should be asked to start a “more sleep for children” campaign, as the efforts of the school medical services in many cases were nullified through insufficient hours of sleep. “The trouble is that we are suffering to-day in our schools from a lack of parental control.” she declared. In her school of three hundred children more than two hundred of them lived in flats, and every family in the flats had a radio. “A mother told me that when her child goes to bed she can hear five radios going at the same time,” Mrs. Biggs said. “In the middle of those flats there are squares where the elder children play on skates and scooters until ten o’clock at night.” Mrs. M. Neale, London, seconding, said that when children were out on the streets at night they were not only losing rest, but were acquiring bad habits of speech and culture. Much juvenilfe crime was caused by that. “It is appalling to see little mites of four and five suffering from that feeling of ‘the morning after the night before,’ ” she added. A Curfew. Miss J. R. Crosbie, Liverpool, suggested that a curfew should be rung for children at a certain hour each night, after which they should not be allowed on the streets. “We are told that it would be interfering with the liberty of the individual,” she said. “But you ring curfews every morning to bring children from the streets into the school, so why should we not ring curfew to take them from the bad environments of the street at night to bed? “To-day we have children who are 'walking in their sleep until eleven o’clock in the morning. “As to the problem of juvenile delinquency, let us lessen the .time Jqjj . it. Children cannot' be delinquent 'in school. We must see to that'.’ If, you send them to bed earlier at night-you will halve the time for delinquency.” Miss Crosbie advocated approaching the Ministry of Health and urging that an addendum be made to the Children and Young Persons Act that a curfew should be rung at 8.30 every night. The delegates passed the resolution.