MODERN PARENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22344, 15 February 1936, Page 10

MODERN PARENTS

ATTITUDE TO SCHOOLS STRICT DISCIPLINE SOUGHT , [from our own correspondent] LONDON, Jan. 18 The traditional notion that modern parents are inclined to be too indulgent to their boys was warmly contested by Dr. Terry Thomas, headmaster of Leeds Grammar School, in his presidential .address to the Incorporated Association of Headmasters at the City Guildhall recently. He said that the secondary school was the pivot of our educational system. It was daily brought into touch with all sides of national life. "May I," he said, "lay one ghost which pervades the fictional representation of the relationship between headmasters &t\d parents ? My experience is that parents are keen and excellent folk, who are only too willing to cooperate loyally with the school. "I believe that they are misrepresented sometimes as weak and vacillating people who desire a soft time for thei? boys, and who think that their geese are swans. This is a libel on the good parent. There is a strong demand among parents for .. strict discipline. They want their lads to be hardenedoff and prepared for the stern battle or life." There were three great modern •social forces which would be permanent' in a changing world, he added. They were the cinema, the wireless and the press. Under the present control there seemed a real guarantee that broadcasting in Britain would never degenerate into programmes of amusement only. r