“PENNY DREADFULS."

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2662, 22 November 1923, Page 2

“PENNY DREADFULS."

SPEAKING at the teachers’ vacation Course in London, Mr Frank Jones made, a suggestion for curing the “Penny Dreadful” habit Among boys. He proposed that “Tim the Tireless,” and other “favourites,” should lie made a kind of elass subject, and that teachers should point out to the hoys the stupidity of the stories. A good deal of nonsense, he said, was talked about pernicious literature. When a boy found himself in the Children’s Court lie often explained that lie lmd been reading pernicious literature or had been to the pictures. Both these excuses lu> thought were very clever, because he did not himself believe at all in Ibis pernicious literature story. When they came to the “twopenny blood cut” there was only one real difference between it. and “Treasure Island,” for instance. This difference was that the writer of the “blood nut” had very little imagination and he had to make up by throwing away all sorts of restraint which the good writer exercised. It was no good telling a boy that you did not care for a “blood cut,and that he ought to read improving literature. There was no better way of turning a boy away from, literature than telling him it would do him good. “What you want to do.” said Mr Jones, “is to let the boys buy llieir “Tim the Tireless,” and so on, and study it in class, 'fry and wean them from it, not by pointing out any grammatical errors, but by pointing out the stupidity of the story.” The oldfashioned teacher was 100 much afraid of joy, said Mr Jones, but he was afraid that the modem teacher was too much afraid of work —on the part of the child. He hoped lie was no kill-joy, but the child who left: school without having done something that he did not find altogether acceptable, would have a very strange view of life. If a child were always allowed to do exactly what it wanted it would have a very rough awakening when it left school. He advised his hearers, so far as poetry was concerned, not to lie satisfied with Walter Scott. Scott was a verv poor pool indeed. lie was a great story-teller and novelist, but except for his lyrical work bis poetry was alnrosl negligible. The poetry a boy learned at school was a possession for ever. II was probably the only time the ordinary hoy was going to learn poetry. Therefore," they wanted him to learn the very best.