THE MODERN CHILD

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 71, 25 March 1939, Page 19

THE MODERN CHILD

SEES MORE THAN MOTHER

"CIRCUS CIVILISATION"

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London

Representative.)

LONDON, February 20.

Viscountess Astor, M.P., told a Conservative Teachers' Conference in London that she was "totally different" from her mother. Her mother "had eleven children and gave up dancing at 30. I have six and I took up'1 skiing at 50." Lady Astor continued: "When I was speaking to a so-called modern child the other day I got the impression that he had made the world before he came into it and had just come back to see how it was going along.' "The child is really a problem nowadays. The average eight-year-old today knows more than its mother knew, and certainly is seeing more than its mother has ever seen. If its grandmother had seen what it has seen she would have died from shock." BIRTH-RATE DECLINE. Lady Astor said that teachers today I had not half the chance they had fifty years ago. They had so many rivals —cinemas, newspapers, wireless, the telephone, and motors. "Children are born into a sort of circus civilisation. They are apt to see nothing through having too much to look at," she added. Nothing could prevent the declining birth-rate in this country. "Even iri the totalitarian States, where they are doing all they can, there is a fall in the birth-rate," Lady Astor declared. "I think it is time we' had a longterm policy for children. So far we have got long-term policies for pigs, potatoes, wheat, and everything except children." A.R.P. TRAINING. Courses of training for teachers in connection with the work of evacuating children from vulnerable cities in the event of air attack were pressed for in a resolution, passed unanimously. The resolution urged that full consideration between the teaching profession and the Government departments concerned was essential before regulations were issued relating to air raid defence work in the schools.