THE POST-WAR CHILD

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 32, 7 February 1935, Page 17

THE POST-WAR CHILD

SFFECTS OF MECHANISATION

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

' LONDON, January 12.

At the Public School Masters-Conf-erence .at Harrow,, Dr. H. CrichtonMiller, founder and senior > physician of the Institute of Medical Psychology, spoke on post-war tendencies: , .

In the influence of the war, he said, many people found a popular and rather melodramatic explanation'of-an abnormal child, but the: abnormality was.more probably due to the temper of. the father since he • came .: back from.the war. Among post-war influences not directly associated'with-the war was the mechanisation of life. A great problem of modern life was the elimination of human effort. If a boy wanted to make an assignation with a friend 100 yards away, his first idea was not to walk the 100 yards, but to ring up his friend. "The, idea that ,the telephone is installed to save time is eclipsed by the idea that it is there; to save, effort, and if father put in the telephone.to ,save his time, Peter uses 'it to' avoid effort." Schoolmasters 'would ■ have i to"'deal more and more with a- generation of very 'suggestible youngsters 'Who wpuld take-ready-made 'opinions much more willingly than 'did their fathers or grandfathers. Schoolmasters should encourage boys to think for themselves. UNSTABLE BACKGROUND. Children interpreted things' in terms of calculability, and a stable background was all that mattered to them. The post-war attitude 'towards marriage did not give a child stable background. Unstable home life,had led to a generation of boys who were p.articularly apprehensive about vicissitudes of life. Another feature x>i post-war life was the small family. "One of the things which will probably wreck our civilisation ultimately," said Dr. Crichton-Miller, "will be when we have a House of Commons, a,Cabinet, editors of newspapers, and so on, who are all'only sons—or only daughters. Then people will wake up and see that the problem of the small family'is not merely a question of economics.

"You are dealing with a generation of schoolboys (who are afraid of' being ignored or devalued by the adult. There is the pernicious type which demands a tactful snubbing, and too often gets neither the tact nor the snub. They are the outcome of the small family."