DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 15309, 9 August 1923, Page 4

DAY BY DAY.

Such ancient proverbs as "Spare the rod and snnil the

. Behaviour of Young Folk.

child," “Children are to bo seen, not •heard,” and others of

like purport are doubtless accorded the disrespect which is their due in these enlightened days. It is rather refreshing, therefore, to read of doctors solemnly discussing “naughty children” at the British Medical Congress at Portsmouth, and gravely considering the behaviour of young folk who revel in naughtiness for the sheer pleasure of reducing their parents to a state of nervous prostration. “Bless their ■little hearts,” the indulgent parent would doubtless exclaim admiringly, “they love it.” But not the mother of the kind mentioned by Dr Cameron, an authority on children and their ailments, whose little daughter, aged ton, adopted drastio measures to make her shiver with horror. It can be readily agreed that the sympathy need not all be rewarded the modern child; —a proportion of it is still the due of the parents. Modern primary educational methods no doubt represent a great advance upon those of the past, but the disposition of children to do what they know that they should not do will probably have a very healthy survival despite the advanced psychology -of the school-room, and many little hoys, even if they comport themselves as little angels in school hours, will doubtless continue to reveal what may seem to be an innate tendency to be cruel and destructive. Fortunately, many of them may grow out of it, though improved methods of education do not appear to have any effect in counteracting a tendency towards an increase in juvenile crime. Children, however, who go to school nowadays are fortunate. They are studied and considered in a hundred ways. To their Idiosyncrasies the teachers adapt the methods of the school-room. Even the boy who yawns during a lesson is, it seems, no longer regarded as shaping for a bad end. According to the report of a well-known school in the Old Country, he is recognised by the teacher as a useful assistant —“two or three boys in whom spontaneous self-defence is well developed help a wise teacher to detect the first signs of fatigue.” Boys, it w'ould appear, are to be applauded for the possession of “a healthier and quicker resistance of over-pressure” than girls. What some of the great dominies of the old school would have said concerning this “spontaneous self-defence” may easily be conjectured.