“DON’T POKE FUN.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3853, 4 October 1928, Page 4

“DON’T POKE FUN.”

• ▼ THE CHILD MIND. A WARPED MENTALITY. Don’t poke fun at the red-haired boy. Don’t call little girls “Bobbie.” Don’t make boys and girls feel greedy when they are willing to eat wholesome food. These warnings were uttered by speakers at the summer school of the British Social Hygiene Council at Cambridge. Admonishing his hearers not to poke fun at the red-haired boy, Dr. 11. Crichton Miller said: “We all think red-hair a joke, because none of us here has it in any marked degree; but it is not a joke to the owners. They may grow to regard it as a joke when they reach mature years, but the experience in earlier years of having been, on their entry into a schoolroom or going down the street, the signal for a joke has twisted their whole attitude to the human herd. “We have all sorts of misapprehensions about the red-haired person, especially the red-haired boy. We think the red hair goes with choleric temperament, which is a complete misapprehension. It is thought that rebels and adventurers and wild people like that have red hair as a physical symptom of their temperament.” That might be true in a slight degree, but the real fact of the matter was that red hair led to an attitude of self-defence, and the owner might become aggressive trying to compensate himself for what he felt to be an injustice. GETTING BACK THEIR OWN. Dealing with the attitude of mental defectives towards life, Dr. Miller said: — “The mental defective is haunted with the feeling that he is different from others, and his life tends to become one long attempt to prove to himself and others that he really is as good as others or better. The mental defective is always wanting to cheat simply because the feeling that he has thwarted the normal person, that he has proved to himself how clever he is, is meat and drink to him.”'

Speaking of the effect of the absence of a sense of personal value, Dr. Miller mentioned a girl who had become beyond the control of her parents. She was the seventh girl in the family, and had always been even more de trop than the others. The complete absence of personal value led her to try to get her own back on life. Then there was nineteen-year-old “Bobbie,” a girl whose mother had wanted a boy and had not hidden that desire. “Mothers who call their little girls “Bobbie” are calling them something they had noi right to do.”