PROBLEM OF THE BOV.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 4 January 1928, Page 5

PROBLEM OF THE BOV.

INFLUENCE OF MODERN LIFE

MENTAL IDLENESS ENCOURAGED

BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. LONDON, Jan. 2. “The boy of to-day drives his father to the golf links, beats him at golf, and hence is apt to get values wrong,” said Mr. Maurie Jacks, headmaster of Mill Hill School. This is the outstanding dictum in a series of educational conferences in London customary every year, which was largely concerned with problems of home and family life. Mr. Jacks expressed the opinion that economic pressure and the housing shortage had engendered the motor habit, which filled Britons with restlessness. Wireless and cinemas encouraged mental idleness, which preferred to have things done for ns. He added: “Boys know the latest gramophone records, names- and history- of cinema stars, and the titles of the best plays, but are in complete ignorance of birds, beasts and flowers. The education of the lx>v should he a. partnership between the parents and the school, hut instead parents are. often rivals. It is the pathetic part of the schoolmaster’s work at the beginning of each term to have to undo what the parents have done in the holidays, in the belief that they are giving the children a good time. Children aTe growing np with the most shadowy notion's of what respect means.”