Bad Language

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 90, 5 February 1887, Page 2

Bad Language

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR.

Sib,— ln reference to your article on bad language, I am as pleased as you are to see that the Magistrates of the colony are doing their best to prevenj; gucii language -being used in public places, and, as" you justly obserre, the sentence passed on the man Price should act as a warning to some of. our '.y^oung men. Just so ; but. $he warning flight be taken also by those parents wh.o .not only make use of 1 horrible language in front of their children, but also by the boys, . or hobbledehoys themselves. The expressions one hears used by these would-be men sometimes, is both fearful and wonderful. Not long ago a gentleman and his son were riding on a road not far from Feildiiig when they met a respectably dressed young lad on horseback, riding on the wrong side of the road. This lad, in answer to a very gentle and civil remonstrance, said he didn't care a hang. I dare not put the word in he said, but it was of sanguinary hue. Now, sir, there must bo .something radically wrong in society. when such language is possible in the mouths of mere schoolboys, and I think really the the parents are to blame, for these reasons : care is not taken a<* to those persons their children associate with, over indulgence and an unaccountable predisposition against the authority of those who might effect a change for the better if only loyally supported by the parents. I mean our school teachers. Instead of that support, I know for a fact that children are taught to look. upon their teachers as their natural enemies, and nothing is too disrespectful to be said of them, and very often to them, one little child having the cooluess to call her teacher a " blooming old f ooL." If children will not obey the teachers, they are likely to be disobedient to their parents, and having no respect for law or '' order grow up with no respect for the laws of their country, and turn out larrikins, swearers, and sometimes even worse. "Just as the twig is bent the tree is inclined." — I am &c., - p ABENT .