Youth v. Maturity

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 548, 23 December 1949, Page 10

Youth v. Maturity

NY port in a storm, any oasis in the desert, and any leaven of wit in a radio discussion is prized out of all proportion to its intrinsic merits. I rather liked the remark of one schoolboy in the second half of the ZB Citizens’ Forum session recently who commented apropos (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) of the importance of science, that it was possible to have an overdose of physics. The topic was "Do we keep our children too long. at school?" and it was well suited to the dual panel method of Youth versus Maturity. In this case Youth had a much better fling at it than did Maturity, contributing all the wit (see above) and a good proportion of the wisdom. Undeterred by fears of being misunderstood at home or misreptesented abroad the youths came out into the open with statements such as "Boys need more education than girls" (ambiguous) and "It isn’t. parents who

keep children’ at school — it’s the children who decide." I felt in this particular discussion that it would have made for livelier listening if Youth and Maturity had been permitted to come to grips with one another. Great _point is made of the fact that the second panel does not hear the arguments of the first, but a discus-

sion so organised is likely to appear broken-backed, unless the chairman sees to it that points raised by the adult panel are slipped in for juvenile consideration.