FILM CENSORSHIP

Hokitika Guardian, 11 February 1921, Page 3

FILM CENSORSHIP

PROTECTION FOB THE CHILDREN VIEW’S OF MINISTER OF EDUCATION.

“1 am wholly in sympathy with any proposal to tighten up the censorship of kinomatograph pictures, especially as regards children,’ said the Minister of Education (Hon C. J. Parr). “I honestly believe that pictures have done more harm than good to the school children. This is because of the demoralising class of picture too often exhibited to young people. The kinoma ought to be a great educator. Under proper conditions it would be a most important factor in opening the minds of the children; but 1 regret to

say in New Zealand, in my opinion, the class of picture exhibited has done great harm. Teachers have told me time and again that when a highlyexciting picture comes to town, exhibition often a false, if not a vicious, view of life, the results are seen in the school children. Instead of going to bed after a little homework, the children go to these pictures. Next morning the teachers complain of the listlessness and apathy of the pupils, whose little minds have been excited by a film play in which a burglar appears as a hero, or in which some unreal phase of rough American cowboy life is shown. Muieover, these equivocal loose sexual subjects can only produce most neurotic and harmful results in young minds. “In one town the four headmasters, having control of 1860 children, all interviewed me with tlie same story of children' upset and unfit to do their lessons next day after a picture exhibition. Parents are much to blame for allowing their children to attend these shows, but because there are some silly

is no reason for inaction in a matter which concerns so vitally the ohole moral outlook of the coming generation. Legislation was drafted last session by the Special Schools’ Branch of the Education Department bearing on the school children and moving pictures. I intend to confer with the Minister of Internal Affairs as to the form this legislation should take. “An answer has been made that murders should not he prohibited, because they occ-ui in the great dramas and in literature, but fancy ‘Macbeth,’ with its glorious language and wonderful analysis of human nature, being compared to a murder done by a crook in the Bowcry quarter of New Vork.’