How schools can help overcome delinquency

ONE of the great social problems of our time is the increase in juvenile delinquency and crime in general, Fr. Bernard O'Connor. OSA, headmaster, Austin Friars School. Carlisle, told parents and students at the school prizegiving ceremony.
"Just over a week ago," Fr. O'Connor said, "a working paper was produced for the Schools Council on Religious Education in the Primary Schools, which says that schools are finding it increasingly difficult to teach moral and religious values to young pupils because their parents fail to set a good example. There is a lack of moral stability in the home, says the report, and children are often so self-centred that they are unable to feel compassion for others."
This alarming statement was true, he said, not only of children in primary schools, but throughout the whole agerange. The influence of the home was evident not only in religious and moral matters, but in the whole field of one's attitude to school, to work, to life in general.
Fr. O'Connor said it stood to reason that the reverse was also true — that the stable, confident, happy, hard-working young person could thank the home which provided him with a background of warmth, affection and security where he could develop those qualities.
"In the case of a school," Fr. O'Connor said, "if its objectives are in harmony with the essential religious beliefs and practices, with the emphasis that is given to moral values. with the attitudes towards work and discipline and in general encouragement of serious interests that exist at home, then the school can do a great deal,"