YOUTH’S NEW OUTLOOK

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 485, 15 October 1928, Page 13

YOUTH’S NEW OUTLOOK

From Saturday’s Late Edition.

“FRANK, HONEST CRITICISM” BETTER INSTRUCTION WANTED The changing outlook of modern youth .and the necessity of newer methods of instruction to keep pace with this change were referred to by Canon H. K. Archdall. headmaster of King’s College, in the course of an address to the Diocesan Synod on Friday, on the question of work among the youth of the Church. “After two years’ residence in this country, 1 can see an enormous difference both good and bad between the boys of New Zealand and Australia,” said Canon Archdall, in referring to the influence of early Church teaching upon the youth of the country. “There are two separate and distinct nations growing up side by side,” he said This was the time the Church should step in and take advantage of the enormous and splendid material that offered in the shape of the country’s youth. The task would have to be tackled if they were to meet the growing secularism throughout the community. There were many forces working toward the disruption of any form of corporate life, whether it was in the home, the school or the church, and the Church would have to rally its forces in an effort to meet this challenge to corporate life. There was none finer than the New Zealand boy, and there was no doubt that the material was there for them to work upon. He, the speaker, had come across boys in the country districts who displayed an alarming ignorance of most commonplace things, especially in religion. At the present time we were In the centre of a maelstrom, both religious and educational, and people had no idea of the extraordinary amount of honest and frank criticism in the minds of young people who were in the position of not knowing what they were expected to believe in religion and other things. The New Zealand boy should be shown that all aspects of life were part of one indissoluble whole, and then he would be able to believe quite naturally the instruction received and to apply such a standard to the problems of the greater life in which he was to take his place. “At the present time the youth of the country were going out into the world and were faced with problems to which they did not apply this general viewpoint, and. as a result, they were at a loss what to know and what to believe ”