FILM CENSORSHIP.
PROTECTION FOR THE CHILDREN. VIEWS OF MINISTER OF EDUCATION. “I am wholly in sympathy with any proposal to tighten up the censorship of kinematograph pictures, especially as regards children,” said the Minister of Education (Hon. C. J. Parr) in an interview at Wellington. “I honestly believe that pictures have done much more harm than good to the school children. This is because of the demoralising class of picture too often exhibited to young people. The kinema ought to be a great educator. Under proper conditions it would be a most important factor in opening the minds of the children; but I regret to say in New Zealand, in my opinion, the class of picture exhibited has done great harm. Teachers have told me time and again that when a highly-exciting picture comes to town, exhibiting often a false, if not a vicious, view of life, the results are seen in the school children. Instead of going to bed after a little homework the children go to these pictures. Next morning the teachers complain of the listlessness and apathy of the 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 1800 children, all interviewed me with the same story of children upset.and unfit 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 last session by the Special Schools Branch of the Education Department bearing on the school children and moving pictures.' T intend to confer with the Minister of Internal Affairs as to the form this legislation should take. “An answer has been made that murders should not be prohibited because they occur in 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 in the Bowery quarter of New York.”
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Taranaki Daily News, 15 February 1921, Page 2
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393FILM CENSORSHIP. Taranaki Daily News, 15 February 1921, Page 2
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