YOUTHFUL CANVASSERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24142, 8 December 1941, Page 4

YOUTHFUL CANVASSERS

Sir, —Christmas time is again wjth us, and I feel it is time a protest was made against the pernicious and seemingly usual custom of sending our country school boys and girls out to canvass every home in their district to ask the householders to give money for their own Christmas treats and gifts for themselves. Those of us who have normal child minds to deal with know that they need almost constant checking to overcome the natural tendency to selfishness and greed, instead of encouraging it, if we wish them to grow into self-respecting, independent and desirable citizens. The poor old world is already overpopulated with "spongers," and I am sure that we, as builders of a nation, are making a sad mistake in encouraging, or even allowing, the rising generation to go on in this way during the tender formative period of their lives.

Not for a moment would I begrudge them their annual treats and gifts, but it needs no master mind to arrange for a far more suitable means of raising the funds required, so that their Christmas presents come as gifts and not as something they have gone around begging for.

The One whose birth we are preparing to celebrate, Himself, said:_ "It is more blessed to give than to receive." What a condemnation parents and teachers are bringing on their own heads, by teaching and encouraging our children to disregard so flagrantly one of God's fundamental truths in this way. Cannot something he done to change this deplorable custom? Anti-beggar.