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farming, gardening, poultry-keeping, dairy-work, carpentry, bootmaking, or tailoring, and have every chance of being reformed in character. No boys are sent to Burnham who are merely destitute, or who need only some degree of careful control to make them like ordinary boys living in good homes. The institution is reserved for those who, from hereditary taint, or more frequently through the neglect or vice of their parents, or from both causes combined, have fallen into vicious ways. The process of reclamation in such cases is necessarily a slow one, and requires intelligence, patience, and sleepless vigilance on the part of those who are to carry it out. Classification of the inmates is an important feature of the work, and an essential element in its success. The boys are accordingly divided into three main classes, although it has been found desirable to make a separate subdivision for certain individuals who show signs of serious moral degeneracy. Promotion from a lower to a higher class is made to depend principally upon two factors— good conduct and diligence in school and in learning a trade. Those in the first and second classes receive small payments as pocket-money, besides other privileges, and any boy in the first class who earns more than the cost of his maintenance may have the surplus paid into the account of his earnings in the same way as if he were licensed out to service. So far as there is room, also, those belonging to the first class live in cottages on the farm under the supervision of married attendants, and enjoy thus a taste of home-life and considerably more liberty than boys belonging to the other two classes. The period of probation under conditions of partial liberty is a valuable means of fitting them for fuller freedom and responsibility when they leave the school. Those in the workshops and on the farm receive sufficient training to enable them to earn their own living afterwards, and in many cases they can step at once into as good situations as any other boys of the same age. It should be remembered that a training that shall do this is even more necessary in their case than in that of a boy whose parents are able and disposed to direct him in the first years of manhood, for the latter has both heredity and environment to assist his own voluntary efforts, whereas the reformatory boy can have a fair chance of an honest and respectable career only by being well equipped for the struggle of life. It has been stated from the Bench that in the absence of means of detaining boys committed to this reformatory, there is no option but to send them to gaol. This can no longer be said, as the large labour-yard that has just been erected at Burnham will enable close supervision to be exercised over boys of the worst class whilst they are engaged on useful work, and will almost certainly lessen the chances of absconding, without the necessity for having recourse to a larger amount of corporal punishment or of detention in cells. The cases of moral and mental degeneracy that form a certain proportion of the inmates of the school present some most difficult problems that have been the subject of careful and anxious thought to the manager, the medical officer, and the Department. Further allusion is made to them in the report of the Inspector-General of Schools. (E.—3.) Te Oranga Home is a reformatory for girls, and to some extent, as regards classification and training, the general principles guiding its management resemble those underlying the conduct of Burnham. Differences of an important nature are found, however, in the problems that present themselves for solution at the two institutions, inasmuch as the errors that form the grounds of admission, the occupations that are open to girls, and the dangers that await them when they leave the school are widely different from the same elements in the case of boys. The addition of a new wing at Te Oranga will aid greatly in the ease with which classification can be carried out. The principal occupations that are being taught are, first, those that will train the inmates in all kinds of domestic duties—cooking, sewing, laundry-work, the care of the house, &g. —and secondly, such occupations as could be taken up afterwards by women —light gardening, dairy-work, and poultry-keeping. It is hoped in time to add others to these. The second class of institutions named " industrial schools " are industrial schools properly so called. At present two of these are Government schools,
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