Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1911 — URGES MORE KISSING GAMES [ARTICLE]

URGES MORE KISSING GAMES

New York Instructor Says Children Play “Poetofllce,” But Elders Should Refrain. Chicago.—Chicago children need more kissing games, according to Professor Percival Chubb of New York university and head of the department of English and pageants in the ethical school of New York, who lectured the other night at the Henry Booth settlement house under the auspices of the Chicago Ethical society. “Kissing games, as played by children, are harmless,” he continued. “Drop the handkerchief, postoffice, clap in and clap out, and a dozen more games of the same sort hurt no one. “Mind you, I don’t advise them for the elders, but before the young people have reached the age of sixteen they are all right.” Professor Chubb declares that older people, too, have forgotten how to play. “The old time play spirit is gone,” he continued. “The children no longer play games at parties and their elders play bridge most of the time. ’The Sunday comic papers are among the chief offenders against children. In the schools, for example, we work to develop a certain standard of literary and esthetic tastes in children. Constantly, In school and out of school, the Sunday supplement works against any educative efforts. In place of better qualities, In the trough of the comic sheets children learn smartness, vulgarity, ‘money tricks’ and irreverence. “Besides establishing bad habits of taste, the Sunday supplements make for a ‘scatter-brain’ state of mind among children. The habit of sustained attention Is lost. I for one would prohibit these papers to children until they are sixteen years old. ‘The whole environment of the child is that of the adult. On the streets, for example, the advertisements greet him. Some of them suggest that, child as be is, one brand of whisky would be good for him. Another sign suggests that if he has headache by drinking certain preparations the ache will be cured,

“Advertisements take the place of the old criers. We have forbidden the noise of one as a nuisance, but the appeal of the more recent method is just as loud, just as ugly as the older street criers. The whole glaring, blinking system tends to lower the standards of thingß. Children become precocious—adults before their time. “I would urge a system of festivals and pageants in which school and settlement should unite.”