BOYS' WAGES
Sta,—May I refer briefly to the paragraph headed " High Wages and Juvenile Crime " under " News of the Week " in The Spectator of November 28th?
It is there stated that evacuation, the disturbance of family life, the closing of schools and clubs have combined to produce one of the most distressing results of the war—the increase of juvenile crime. Before the war, however, an increase was very marked, as is shown by the appended figures quoted by Sir Samuel Hoare in the House of Commons in November, 1938: Children school age guilty of juvenile crime:
1934 1935 1936 I 13,873 14,457
Young people under 17 found guilty of indictable offences were:
1935 1936
1937
25,543 27,126 5,543 27 29,201
Sir Samuel added that 38 per cent, of all indictable crime was com- mitted by boys under 17. It would appear, therefore, that the increase in juvenile crime cannot altogether be attributed to the " distressing results of the war."
I submit that the appalling increase to which you draw attention is mainly due to the neglect in recent years of ethical education, the inculcation of a system of morality, in elementary schools. In this connexion I quote from Matthew Arnold, Marcus Aurelius:
" The object of systems of morality is to take possession of human life, to save it from being abandoned to passion or allowed to drift at hazard, to give it happiness by establishing it in the practice of virtue ; and this object they seek to attain by prescribing to human life fixed principles of action, fixed rules of conduct."
Let us hope that the present opportunity will be taken by the Board radically to reform so-called " Education " in elementary schools. There is a hard saying for teachers, but worthy of belief and practice, that it does not matter very much whether a child can read and write as long as he, or she, is educated. " By their fruits ye
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