DIFFICULT GIRLS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 24 November 1927, Page 8

DIFFICULT GIRLS

IDEAL TREATMENT COMMON-SENSE AND SUCCESS. DR. GRAY’S INVESTIGATIONS. During his tour of America, Great Britain, and the Continent to study modern methods of dealing with mental and allied cases, Dr. T. G. Gray, In-spector-General of Mental Hospitals, visited Sleighton Farm, near Philadelphia. a school for young girls who get into trouble and come before the courts. Dr. Gray describes bis visit to the institution as one of the most interesting experiences of his trip. He says the institution is a “ideal” one. Dr. Gray says that the girls are committed until they reach the age of 21 years, but the school authorities like, if possible, to parole them to suitable families at the age of 16. The usual length of residence is about two years. No very young children are admitted because it is recognised that foster parents are better than institutions. On the other hand no girls over 18 are admitted. “The general aims and objects and the history of Sleighton Farm,” states Dr. Gray, “are well set forth in the pamphlet which I am appending to my report, but I may supplement it by stating that I stayed at the farm for two days and nights and made a detailed inspection sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by one of the staff or pupils. The whole school conveyed to me an impression of efficiency, breadth of vision, common-sense, and success. There was a refreshing absence of any reformatory or institution atmosphere, and an entire dissociation from the hide-bound traditions with which such places tend to surround themselves. Theoretical considerations have never entered largely into the managemnet of this succssful school with its roll of 500 pupils, consisting largely of those whom we would term ‘difficult girls.'

KNOWLEDGE ANn UNDERSTANDING. “ Phychological knowledge is evidenced in almost every detail of management, not the much-vaunted Freudian ‘New Psychology’ with its Oedipus complex, but a real knowledge and understanding of child mentality and of the methods most likely to secure cooperation, readjustment, and a moral expression of the hitherto misdirected energy. There is no evidence of repression whatever; the girls were not only happy and contented but, incredible though it may appear, they were obviously fond of the place and each was anxious to impress the visitor with the superiority of the house to which she belonged. “There is no fear of the development of any inferiority complex here; the girls are carefully guarded against any implication of disgrace, and after discharge they often re-visit their Alma Mater, sometimes accompanied by their husbands and families. Tho school staff do not attempt ‘to reform by hard work and firm discipline’—thev form part of the environment which allows or encourages or activates the real reformative influences, which are primarily within the child herself, to develop. There is nothing to suggest an institution—it is a school, but a special school in the sense that it does not make a fetish of academic education—it makes allowance for personal traits, and for early handicaps, and its methods are successful. NO FANTASTIC THEORIES. “The illusion that Sleighton Farm is merely a first-class girls’ board school is dispelled only after examination of the history cards of these children—there one may read the most sordid stories of vicious homes and criminal associations, and then one realises the meaning of the word one so often hears at Sleighton—adjustment—the key word of this system which can take a child from a criminal haunt in the slums of New York and complete its education at a high school. This is not accomplished through any Heaven-sent system of classification, nor by psychoanalysis nor by any one of the fantastic theories claimed by enthusiasts as the panacea for crime or degeneracy. Its success is directly due to the sound common-sense of the women who manage it. There is systematic teaching of sex hygiene on biological lines and nothing is kept hidden fro..t the girls, who are encouraged to bring their personal difficulties to the teacher, or if so preferred, to write them. The head teacher told me that there is practically no difficulty over sex matters, certainly not more than in most other schools. “The success of Sleighton Farm is due to the environment into which new admissions are received, and it is a necessary corrollary that reception into a bad atmosphere would produce the opposite effect. This is a very cogent reason for avoiding classification based on ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ and the establishment of corrseponding institutions. A well-conducted institution can work wonders with a bad child, but a reformatory with its constant suggestion of wickedness, its prohibitions, and its repressions can afford little help to any of its inmates. ' “It is true that some children will be found too refractory for a school such as Sleighton, but the more enlightened and understanding the management, the fewer will be the failures, end these will probably be found to be defective or psychopathic—requiring treatment in an institution devoted to these classes. The aims of the Borstal institutions and of the Education Department’s training farms and industrial schools are essentially the same, and I suggest that these should all come under the co-ordinating direction of the Eugenics Board.”