ARE PIRATES' STORIES GOOD FOR CHILDREN?

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 168, 21 July 1908, Page 2

ARE PIRATES' STORIES GOOD FOR CHILDREN?

Schoolboy Teading was discussed by tbe Teachers' Conference at Hastings the other day. It was -urged by Mr J. E. Barton, M.A., of a Gloucester Grammar School, that " exceptional childreh may read through Dickens, Scott, and ThackeTay without tedium m their early teens. Of children who are not exceptional, however, great numbers have no opportunity to read ait all, many read anything so long as it mentions Red Indians, and some — usually the victims of misguided parents^-are brought up on that tearful and unctuous type of story which publishers describe as 'wholesome,' and which miay comprehensively be defined by the word ' slop.' Teachers must cater fbr the generality. At a certain' age the taste for pirates is a thoroughly sound taste, and it is our duty to take advantage of its existence." In concluding the debate the head master of. Manchester Grammar School said : " The child's natural .desire for a tale is the out-, oome of its interest m actual things nnd people. If we give it books which arc sentimental and third-Tate, we commit the sin of offering a stone for bread. Children thus nurtured will grow up to suppose (as most people already do suppose) that literature is the antithesdß rather than the ex-

pression of life. They will grow up to fancy that rhetoric is style ; that cant and claptrap are lofty passions; that cheap facetiousness is humor. The word * art,' m their mouths, will denote silly pictures of the kind which is supposed to ' tell a story.' "