TACTFUL TREATMENT

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2328, 23 December 1925, Page 5

TACTFUL TREATMENT

A SCHOOL BOY'S LOVE AFAIRS. Scholboy and schoolgirl love affairs syre not unknown in boarding schools; almost certainly they, will occur in a boys’ or girls’ day school; in a mixed school they are inevitable. The attitude of schoolmasters towards such affairs varies. Some ignore them as if they did not exist. Others argue that they have a definitely bad effect on school work and do their utmost to repress them. On the other hand, a few schoolmasters with a broad outloote, while they do not encourage love affairs among their pupils, go so far as to offer friendly 'advice when they find that a boy or girl has become conscious of those strange, powerful and disturbing emotions which adults call love. I myself bad the benefit of such advice (writes “A Schoolmaster” in the "Daily Chronicle”) and of sympathy when the young lady proved unresponsive. Few schoolmasters, however, ar< prepared to give official recognition tt immature love affairs in this way. Those who try repression always fail. Not only are they fighting against instinctive feeling that overcomes mere school discipline, but they cannot control children concerned out of school hours, when meetings and so on take place. It is easy to understand theit attitude. After all, the pupils wearing the school badge are the living examples of the master’s work and the standard by which the public judges the school. The fact is that the control of tnese affairs is work for parents. Appropriate action on their part would go far towards eliminating the problem in schools. - " It is, therefore, unfortunate that so many parents treat the love affairs of their children with amusement or ridicule, or both. But to the boys and girls they are intensely serious affairs. They occur at a peculiarly susceptible ago, when it is easy to wound and to inflict mental scars that time will scarcely heal. Not silence but sympathy and understanding are golden at such a time. There is no harm in boyish love affairs provided they do not become an obsession —a rare occurrence. Fortunately, too, there are extremely few viciously-minded youngsters. Where viciousness does occur, more often than not it is the result of the too great seclusion of boys from girls, or vice versa. One of the great arguments in favxour of mixed classes is the restraint and gentleness induced among the boys, the absence of morbid sex-consciousness found among the girls. In any case, parents always have a certain remedy at hand. An undesirable affair can always be ended if the parents instead on forbidding, say, their son to see some girl, will invite her to the house and allow the two to see much of each other. It is astonishing how then, if the protagonists are young, ardour diminishes. It is equally astonishing, when they have grown up, how the same plan produces exactly opposite results!