The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1889-01-21
H00DlUMlSM.

"PolleX," in the "Auckland
Weekly News" of Dec. 3, 1888, de-
votes an article to what we would
call ''hoodlumism." He is rather
rough on the Colonial State method
of treating children who are left
without proper parental restraint,
We hereunder give the two conclud-
ing paragraphs, parts of which
might find an application on these
islands,
And what is the corrective to this?
| see nothing for it but for the
State to assume more of the paren-
tai responsibility and look better
after the morals of its foster chill
dren. Of course the proper course
would be to make the parents more
realise their responsibility by throw
ing back on them the onus of look
ing after their children. But prob
ably we are too advanced for that,
and must 90 on as we are. But if
we do we must have no more nom
sense Oh the part either of the par
ents or of maudlin sentimentalsts
in interfering between the State and
its proteges. AT present if State
teacher tans n boy for incipicnt larri-
kinism, lie is either waited upon by
the father in Il belligerent attitude,
and may be thankful if he has not
his head broken, or he is hauled up
before soft-headed magistrate, and
humiliated, to begin with, from the
rutlianly young hoodlum being shown
that he has protector from the con-
sequences of his misdeeds; and the
teacher, who only fulfilled n neg
lected duty, is held up in the pub
lie press as a brute, and if he is not
fined or sent to gaol, he is likely to
get such a wigging from someone or
another i'll authority that he will
think twice before he interferes with
larrikin propensilics again. And
when the natural result arises, and
these products of divided authority,
or rather neutralised or suspended
authority, develop their natural
characteristics and come within the
reach of the arm of the law, a thou
sand gentle voices scream in har-
mony and crave that the whip of
justice shall be arrested, and that
the young ruflian's skin be left un-
| smirched.
Can we wonder that from such q
system of dealing, we have absolute
lawlessness growing up in our
midst? We take o! er the respcnsi-
bilities of parents, from parents that
are all too willing, and we are not
permitted to exercise them, by the
parents themselves, or by our own
sickly sentimentalism; and so we
are training up Il garden-robbing,
window breaking, insolent, defiant,
and ferocious generation Of young
cubs with the mental and physical
developments Of the ourarg outang.
The idiosyncracies of colonial So
ciety apparently necessitate II meas
ue of parental responsibility being
accepted by the State. The admit
ted looseness of parental discipline
has the tendency to develop loose
ness of social obligations in the un-
licked cubs of colonial life, and for
the public good the authority of the
State may be invoked in relation to
these literally neglected children.
But the damning part in our treat
mcnt of precocious criminals is thai
we fail to do what the parents, whose
place we take, have already neg
lccted to do; and in dealing will
youthful hoodlums we are prevent
cd by maudlin sensiliveness, as
criminal as it is foolish, from doing
what nature as well as revelation
tells us is the right thing to do, i'm
printing the moral law with n switch
on their bare backs. "Spare the
rod and spoil the child" is as old as
history; and what with the selfish
Incidence of parents and the cul-
pablc leniency of the law, we are
developing race of Iawless hood
lums that will yet be the scourge oi
society.