MODERN BOYS AND GIRLS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5204, 16 November 1927, Page 3

MODERN BOYS AND GIRLS

DUTY TO TILEIB PARENTS. r GRATITUDE out of date. “The idea that children' should be grateful to their parents is out of date,” said Miss L. Faithfull, forjner principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, at a Mothers’ Union conference at the Mary Sumner House, Westminster, London. It had been replaced by the following attitude among the rising generation :— ■ “We were not asked if we wanted to ~come into the world. We don’t find it a very pleasant world. In pur opinion, it is the duty of our parents to make this uncomfortable world as pleasing as they can for us. It was not good of them to educate us. It was the least they could do.” The duty of the schoolboy could be summed, up thus, said Miss Faithfull: “My duty Is to honour and obey the senior prefect and all in authority under him ; to submit myself lowly apd reverently to the heads of my house and room and the captains on the playing fields; to be a thorough sportsman and take no mean advantage ; to play the game, and pjay the game well; to be just and h°nest and not to give away another fellow ; to keep my tongue from sneaking and lying, and to refrain from cribbing dnd cheating.” Both boys and girls are sent to school at much too early an age—unless parents undertake to keep in close touch with them. Parents simply sweep their children off to school, and then dismiss them from their minds. And when they come home for "their holidays thei parents’ one aim is to give them a good time and make them as happy as they were at school. Miss Faithfull said that though the boys and girls of to-day had any amount of heroic and corporate virtues, they did not seem to understand in the least those virtues concerning the graces of life.