The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

—
December, 1927
The Health Bulletin
YOUR CHILDREN AND THE MOVIES
We are publishing in this issue a
cartoon drawn especially for the Bulletin
by Mr. Norman Woodlief, a
patient in the State Sanatorium. The
cartoonist asks the question over the
picture : "Is this beneficial to our children"
And in the caption under the
cartoon the question is asked : "What
kind of movies are your children seeing"
We would advise parents and teachers
to study this cartoon and then ask
themselves the question repeated in the
caption. But do not stop there. Find
out for a certainty and then act with
definite precision. And the only intelligent
action in such cases is to keep
the children home and put them to bed
instead of letting them see such pictures
as portrayed.
The moving picture producers of the
country are said to be endeavoring to
eliminate such pictures, or at least to
reduce them to a minimum. Nobody
can argue but there has been entirely
too much of it in the past. The moving
picture business is one of the biggest
industries in the country. It is one
of the mightiest vehicles for education
as well as for entertainment, but it
may also become a great menace to the
health and morals of a whole generation
of people. The picture drawn by
the cartoonist is an illustration of
some of the types of pictures displayed
before children as well as adults too
many times.
When a parent in North Carolina
who went out last winter to see if he
could find the cause for a small sevenyear-old
son of his getting extremely
nervous and excitable, losing sleep and
having nightmares when no reason
known to him could account for it (this
man was a doctor of average intelligence
who seldom took his children to
the movies except it was an especially
adaptable picture for children, such as
Alice in Wonderland, and so on), his
discovery was enlightening. It may interest
other parents in like situations.
A moving picture theater in that town
had arranged with the school authorities
to put on an exhibition each Friday
afternoon, charging an admission
fee of something like a dime, and part
of the proceeds to go to the committee
on building and grounds for the improvement
of the school premises. This
father slipped into one of the Friday
afternoon entertainments. The sight
that greeted him was something like
the following: About one hundred
youngsters, most of them from 1st to
4th or 5th graders, were sitting breathlessly
on the front seats of the school
auditorium waiting for the show to
start. When it started it opened with
a bang and a slam. One man galloped
in on a horse, brandishing a pistol, with
a woman, who turned out to be another
man's wife, sitting across the
front of the saddle and held in one
arm. Before the thing was over there
were two outright murders and about
a half dozen marital tangles. Now the
foregoing arrangement would have been
fine; it would have afforded entertainment
to children on a Friday afternoon
and worked out well in every respect,
provided the school principal or
superintendent or a capable committee
of women with at least one doctor on
it could have censored these pictures
in advance.
We might mention another instance
that happened right here in Raleigh not
very long ago. A mother hearing a commotion
on the premises rushed in to
where a small boy was sitting astride
a still smaller boy whose face was already
pummeled black and blue to a
fare-you-well. Horrified, the mother
pulled off the young assailant, and after
first aid applied to the victim set about
to find how come. The answer was exceedingly
significant : "Oh, I was playing
like they do in the movies."
One of the chief causes of malnutrition
among present-day school children
is
recognized by competent authorities
as being due to emotional strain, to excitement
either at home, at school or,
at the moving pictures. The deleterious
effect in after years will be even more
serious.
It is reported that the hookworm disease
has been practically eradicated
by the Rockefeller Foundation. It is
the oily bird that gets the hookworm,
you see.- San Diego Union.