Manawatu Herald THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1921. SCHOOL CHILDREN AND MOVIES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2237, 10 February 1921, Page 2

Manawatu Herald THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1921. SCHOOL CHILDREN AND MOVIES.

STRONG support for I lie altitude taken by (lie .Minister of Internal Affair.- on the pielure censorship is aiven by the Hon. ('. J. Farr, Minister of Education. “I am wholly in sympathy with any proposal to tighten up the censorship, especially as regards school children,” said the Minister, when interviewed this week. “1 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 cinema ought to be a greater educator. Under proper conditions it would be a most important . factor in opening the minds of the children; but .1 regret to sa’y in New Zealand, in my opinion, the class of picture exhibited has done great harm. Teachers have (old me time and again that when a highly-exciting picture comes to town, exhibiting often a false, it not a.vicious, view of life, the results are seen in the school children. Instead of going to bed after a little homework, (lie children go to these pictures. Next morning the teachers complain of the listlessness and apathy of (he 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. Moreover, 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 1,800 children, all interviewed me with the same story of' children upset and unlit 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 parents is no reason for inaction in a matter which concerns so vitally the whole moral outlook of the coming generation. Legislation was drafted lasi session by the Special Schools Branch of the Education Department beating 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 lias been made that murders should not be prohibited, because they occur iii 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 itf the Bowery quarter of New York.”