you. I was so nervous and mad that I didn’t know what to do—when I can’t
help you with the money. Friend I have something new to tell you, so now
look out. Tonight lady sent me to P. O. for letters and one letter was
there from Miss R., so you know what I does? I breathed on the letter so
long till I opened it her letter. I get so frightened I didn’t know
where I am or what I am doing. Miss R. writes that if I am not ...
satisfied on parole it would be better to take me back to the
institution.... Please send me the money $4. I took them from my lady so
I should pay your dress. Otherwise I couldn’t pay them right away and
you wouldn’t have your dress, and I had only $1. and when I think on you
so you know what heart I have, and I took the money out and now I’m
ready. When you send them I put them back where they was. You know what
Miss R. have another girl for my lady but she don’t know how to cook and
she is 28. She come from the institution. She was ther 14 months. She be
more satisfied than me. See friend, Miss R. I would give her a kick if I
can—don’t you think angel. So my angel maybe we wouldn’t see one another
any more. Back again to the institution.
... Dear we going to have another girl upstairs with us. If you could
come to us that would be nice and we would enjoy it much better. Last
night I was to school and when I returned home on the train I saw very
nice young fellows. They make lots of fun with me—such nice gentlemen.
They went from some kind of parade and when I went down from the train
they took their hats off and next Wednesday I am going to see them
again. Dear Friend.... I need the money I have only a nickel and that
got to be enough for one week.—so you can imagine how I got to save and
I need new hat—so I would like to buy me a hat for my money. You look
very nice in that hat, Ha, ha. Friend, if we could only help us to run
away to the West. I ask my lady at the school—she comes from California.
She tell me if I have carfare, I should go there. Dear, if we can be
only free then we know how to use the world. I’m not so any more like
what I was in the institution—I’m now such a devil that you wouldn’t
believe it. That man promised to lend me money but if he wouldn’t lend
it I don’t know what I am going to do. I have not got even for the
doctor and you know what it is with me? Friend, I would like to have
picture from my sweetheart, but send me [back] the money, I going to
send you money some other time for him because I only wanted to make my
lady jealous. She thinks we are only so-so. Sunday School. Friend, you
write to T.? I don’t, I don’t care. Wait, I going to fix myself up and I
going to wait for him and then I going to wipe my nose and then I going
away from him. Friend, I am so happy now that we are going to go West.
We are going to take other girls with us. We go like soldiers—hurrah,
hurrah, like soldiers to the war. Friend, if you answer me right away I
going to answer too. When you don’t answer on four letters so I don’t
think you care for me. Goodnight, Sunday School. Let the bed-bugs bite
you? Friend you have fellow in the bed. You go with him to sleep? In the
night when bite me some I kill him so blood runs. Write right away.
... I am crying so much—I have such a hard work. Everything hurts me; I
am all broke down. If I can only come free I wouldn’t mind to have not
even a shirt. I would give everything if we can be free. Friend, if you
only know how I feel bad but don’t say anything to your lady. You know
what Miss R. wrote, that I always ask you to come over. You must told
something to your lady or you wrote something to Miss R. Now I don’t
care any more if no one comes to see me. Forgive me if I write such a
letter. I don’t know what to say—I want to go to bed, its 10 o’clock. I
want you to get the letter right away Monday. Answer me right away what
you think if you want to be with me. If you like your sister better, so
stick to her and I go my way and worry about myself and save my money
for trip to go home and I never will return. I stay with my sweetheart.
When you go there friend, if you give me every month a dollar for your
dress, like a friend. Answer right away.
[March, 1915] ... My lady told me everything be much better next winter.
I going to have a nice warm room. This winter I had awfully cold room. I
went to bed with my cloths. She didn’t give me no blankets, so I sleep
in my clothes and I used to take hot iron with me to warm up the bed, so
bad I have here. Friend, I got to go to school every Wednesday but next
Wednesday I wouldn’t go, I go to the dance. I have white dress under the
black skirt and long coat and she going to think that I go to school. I
leave my skirt and my books in my friends house and I go to the dance,
ha, ha, ha. Come with me ha, ha, I have there lots of nice young boys
and the man who brings me the eggs and lots of other nice young man, so
I going to have nice time. Dear, I went Sunday out and I went to the
girl, her sister have a boarding house there where nice 3 young mans,
and all ask me to go with them to the dance, so I going to have big fun.
I be very glad if you can come with me, but don’t tell on me that I’m
going to the dance. My lady she don’t know anything about it. She think
I am innocent girl, No 1. I am, don’t you think friend? When I think I
have three years, I start to cry, I don’t know what to do. But when I
think of nice mens, I start to jump in the kitchen and singing. [Writes
the song she sings.] Only if you see me you would burst from
laughing.... I ask my garbage man if he can lend me money, he said he
help me with much as he can....
So friend have a good time and maybe on Tuesday I be back to the
institution. This year I get new trial, so don’t worry and don’t cry.
You know we have one God and he see everything. He must punish Miss R.
sometime. She is old enough but she couldn’t get married. Nobody wants
her who is rich and poor man she don’t want.... I like to have the money
by Tuesday. I should be sure that nothing is missing from her. So take
care of yourself. I going to eat beans for supper, ha, ha, but I going
to be all right. Now I be so bad that everyone is afraid of me. I don’t
care if they put me in the disciplinary in the cellar—I going to have
there friends—you know what kind—red ones, bed bugs, and roaches and
mouses. Ha, ha, I’m going to have good time, I won’t cry. You friend,
when you send the money don’t say nothing to your lady and send them so
that my lady wouldn’t know nothing about it, my lady. I suppose Miss R.
wrote that I receive dress from pawn shop. See, don’t tell on me—when I
be in the institution. Tell that your J. that he put them [dress] there,
that it shouldn’t get lost. Otherwise they would laugh at us that we did
not have any money and we had to put our dress in pawn shop—that be a
shame.
Miss R. wrote that they wouldn’t let me go to you—and if I ask again she
would give me a good scolding, so write to the old fortune-teller. So
good-bye friend, have a good time. Don’t forget to answer me right away.
Don’t say to no one what happen—write right away. You know in the
institution maybe they wouldn’t give me your letter. Good night and
good-bye forever. I think if I come to the institution I take my life
there.
[June, 1915. From Esther to parole officer, Miss R.]
... I am letting you know I am back in the same place—institution. I’m
letting you know why and I wrote you letter about my head and I like to
get rid of that. Doctor told me that he [saw] no other help, that I got
to have an operate on my nose. If not then I get a inflamation thro my
nose. So I wrote that to my friend, that one what we was together locked
up, but I didn’t tell her that I got this sickness, but I wrote to her
in English that I got disease, but I didn’t know that she gave the
letter to her lady and they sent them to the institution. So they read
that I getting disease that I stole $4 and one young man gave me $2, so
they make me very dirty, but I’m not afraid of them—you know that, when
they start with such a story, so I know that I’m in heaven. They only
want have me back. I should stay here the three years, so they come and
get me on Sunday, afternoon. So how I was, I went. They didn’t give me
only chance to put on my dress, shoes and hat and put me in a auto and
so that was we took the train to the institution and there they start to
ask me questions, why they took me back and when I come down here. I got
to let them examine myself and when she examine me, she said everything
is all right. You know what a disease is—so explain to her about my head
and my nose. So she said if girl say she have a disease, they take it
that its girl bad from a man, but I didn’t know that a girl get sickness
from a man. The lady doctor told me about how the girl get sick.... But
where is the right? And on account of the $4, that this way: That girl
is a Croation and I’m a Czech, and we used to write, and sometimes we
didn’t understand the letters from each other. And so about the $2. Once
in N. Y. I went down from car, I lost heel from shoe, I dropped the hand
bag, and so real man come out and pick up my bag [and gave me $2.00].
[Letter to Superintendent of institution from parole officer; June 4,
1915, after Esther had been returned to the institution]:
... It is very difficult to tell from the letters [of Esther] whether or
not she has actually broken her parole. The worst she has done,
according to her own statement, is (1) to borrow $4 from employer’s
purse to pay for a dress with fullest intention of returning it (and
employer is sure she would have missed it had it not been returned); (2)
opened a letter addressed to employer from writer; (3) went to picture
shows sometimes when she was supposed to be in class; (4) flirted with
men on train; (5) wrote T. T. whom she knew before coming to the
Institution; (6) kissed the egg man; (7) probably had sexual relations
with a man in Philadelphia for $2 (Esther denies this).
Her letters refer also to plans to go to a dance secretly and to go to
New York secretly. There is nothing in the letters to indicate that she
ever put her plan about coming to New York into effect. Esther denies
emphatically that she has been to New York and her employer thinks it
very unlikely that she could go without her knowledge. They show also
she thought she was diseased and had been to a doctor about it before
she came to the institution. She still worries about it whether or not
there is any cause. (First blood test was S—— G——.)
Subject’s attitude expressed in these letters is far more serious to my
mind than anything she has done, but it is a question whether it is
anything for which she should be blamed or punished. She is
unquestionably abnormally sensitive, suspicious and secretive and these
traits have been unfortunately emphasized by her arrest and commitment
here. She evidently suffers bitterly and constantly because she is on
parole to the institution and that resentment poisons everything she
does and thinks. She must have been under a frightful strain during
these months while she was working with the lawyer to win her freedom,
with the constant pressure he put on her for money and to come to New
York to see him. Then too the conflict of what may be merely normal and
natural sex interests and her fear of breaking her parole by expressing
these in any way has probably been bad for her and has emphasized these
sex interests. I think all of the references in the letters to “nice
young mens” who smiled at her and tipped their hats to her on the train,
to the nice young mens she sees at picture shows, to the men who invited
her to a dance, may be explained as a boastful desire to appear bad and
to be having attention and a good time, arising from a regretful
realization of how much she is missing in these lines. Possibly she was
just beginning to have a taste of “gay life” before she came to us and
the institution may have done much to whet her curiosity. She seems to
ridicule the idea of being considered “innocent and good”—“Sunday School
girls”—and asks co-defendant to send her the picture of her (Esther’s)
Bohemian sweetheart (she has always claimed to be engaged to a man now
fighting in the Austrian army) so she can show her employer she has a
sweetheart, “make her employer jealous” as she puts it.
Certainly if she had not been determined to keep her parole, with such a
demand on her for money from the lawyer and such an interest in men, she
would have solicited long before this. I think it is to her credit that
she has worked so steadily and satisfactorily and has tried to keep, as
she understood it, the letter at least of her parole.
I feel, however, that if the interest we have taken in her in giving her
an early parole under such good conditions and her employer’s never
failing efforts to understand and help her have not won her confidence,
we can scarcely hope to break down her attitude of misunderstanding and
suspicion of us, which breeds deceit in her so readily. After what has
happened she will probably be more antagonistic than before; the strain
on her of keeping parole might easily become too great at any time. It
would seem to be a very great risk both for us and for Esther to have
her out on parole again, particularly in another state.
I hope you will be able to make her see, even if you decide she has not
actually broken her parole, that she has not even understood its spirit
when she tried to buy her freedom through a lawyer and deceived us and
her employers as to her real intentions.
I think much of subject’s suspiciousness and deceitfulness is racial and
there is small chance of her adjusting to American customs. I remember
that you considered deporting her in the first place and while I still
think it would be very bad for subject to have the stigma of deportation
added to that of arrest, I do feel that her own country is the best
place for her and that she will be far more apt to live a straight,
normal life there with the restraints of her family and their standards
to help her than she will here. Do you think it may be possible to send
her back on her own money when conditions of war permit?
From certain standpoints this girl seems to be almost ideal human
material. The institution called her “intelligent, conscientious, and,
far beyond our girls, sensitive to fine distinctions of right and
wrong.” All her wishes are strong and social. She craves pleasure,
association with “nice young mens”, dancing, pretty clothes, but is an
industrious worker. Her letters to Lilian are overflowing with the
desire for response—both to give it and to receive it. In a letter after
her return to the institution, not printed here, she refers to the child
of her former employer: “Oh, I was glad to hear about Max. How often I
think about the times he used to pull my hair, and that was a great
joke. Yes, I often think and talk about him. Give him my love and see if
any of my flowers are up. If so, put one on him for me.” And she is
always thinking of improving her position in the world. “We are,” she
says, “going to look for some nice man, but something better, not only
working men.” She is ashamed of her relation to the egg man, “because he
is only egg man.” She does not want it known that she pawned a dress. In
her reference to Austrian army officers and a sweetheart in Bohemia, she
wishes to claim before her mistress that she has some social standing.
During the whole of her parole she is working on the problem of her
life. She is working alone, and she leaves no stone unturned. She is in
a village, not allowed to visit New York. She plans her campaign for a
new trial by letter, working through a stupid friend who unintentionally
betrays her. Her lawyer is exploiting her, her doctor also; her Italian
friend is not loyal, her uncle promises help but is poor. She even
appeals to the garbage man. Like many who have sought to reconstruct a
broken life, she plans to go west.
And she is very able. She has a mind adapted to the law, and she could
write scenarios. Note how she plans in one letter to have something “up
her sleeve” for the trial—to have her friend buy duplicates of the
articles stolen on the anniversary of the theft, to change the date of
the receipt from “1914” to “1915” on her employer’s typewriter, to put
the receipt in the cuff of her wrap and leave it in the toilet room of
the court to be found. This would be indeed a dramatic vindication. She
is thoroughly cunning and she lies a great deal. But she is in a fight
with organized society. She feels that there is a disproportion between
her offense and her punishment, and that she is being wronged and
defrauded of life. Cunning is one of the forms which intelligence takes
in a fight. And in general people become cunning when they are oppressed
or do not participate on an equal footing in their society. Esther is a
Jew, and the “racial” cunning of the Jew has the same origin as the
particular cunning in this case—exclusion from recognition and
participation. Any successful scheme of education, reëducation or
reformation must recognize the wishes expressed by Esther and will
involve an active participation of the subject in the plan. Esther was
not bad enough to be committed to the institution to which she was
assigned, but once there we note her complete psychic isolation from the
officials and from the family in which she was placed. She was directed
toward no interesting and creative work, and was not included in any
form of society in which she completely participated and in which she
could have recognition and the gratification of the other wishes. And
this is characteristic both of the penitentiary and of the older type of
reformatory for adults and for children.
But some years ago the juvenile courts were established. It had become
apparent that numbers of disorderly children, mainly from broken homes,
were being brought into the criminal courts for escapades and sexual
offenses, placed in jails with hardened criminals and thereby having the
possibility of the formation of a normal scheme of life destroyed once
and forever. Certain women were the first to protest and to act, and the
result was the formation of a court for children which dispensed with
lawyers and legal technicalities, and treated the child as far as
possible as an unruly member of a family, not as a criminal. The first
of these courts was established in Chicago, and in 1908 provision was
made for the study of the child by endowing a psychological and medical
clinic,—a practice which has been followed by other juvenile courts.
During the past decade some of these courts have reached a high degree
of elaboration and perfection. Their service has been very great in
checking the beginnings of demoralization. The court is wiser than the
parents of the children and incidentally does much to influence home
life. These courts have also focused attention on the general questions
and methods of reform and have begun to influence both penal
institutions and general education. There are many successful
formulations of influence developed by women of insight and personality
connected with the juvenile courts in numerous localities. An important
review of these conditions has recently been made by Miriam van
Waters.[96] But perhaps the highest perfection of procedure has been
reached in the juvenile court of Los Angeles where Dr. van Waters is
herself the referee.
87. In the treatment of juvenile delinquency that comes before the court
and involves change in status there should be an integration of the
forces that seek to establish new social relationships.... Some
mechanism of passing the threshold from ward of the state to the
threshold of normal citizenship should be devised with sufficient
strength to endure over the period of crisis.
An attempt to meet the problem of socialization has recently been begun
in behalf of the juvenile court of Los Angeles County. For the girl
whose normal relation to the family group has been severed by reason of
the permanently broken home, parents dead, imprisoned, incurably ill, or
defective and the like—a girl whose behavior-difficulties make it
impossible for her to be absorbed in the neighborhood group—there is
usually no provision but the reformatory institution. A place of
adjustment, a link between the court, the detention home and the
community is an important phase of diagnosis and treatment. El Retiro, a
school for girls of Los Angeles County, is an experiment toward such
solution.
The method of adjustment is as follows: Preliminary tests and
examinations are made in the detention home and a more or less
homogeneous group of girls in their teens are selected for El Retiro. An
intensive program of work, study, play and expression has been provided.
Student government, that is to say, student participation in the conduct
of affairs of group life, not a formal organization based on the least
satisfactory elements of our government, the municipality and the police
court, but rather a flexible, club-like organization of team work and
community responsibility is maintained. After another period of
observation at El Retiro a conference is held concerning the girl. At
this conference all available sources of information are brought
together.
The referee of the court, the probation officer, physician,
psychologist, superintendent of El Retiro, the principal of the El
Retiro school, the recreation director (who later directs the program of
the girl and directs the accomplishment of her project), and one of the
girls chosen from the student-body to represent the student-body
knowledge and opinion—all these persons with specialized information
meet to form a many-angled diagnosis. Traits of personality and the
reaction to group life are stressed especially. In this field of
research no opinion is more competent than that of the girl who
represents the student-body point of view—a mine of information hardly
touched as yet by social research. The objective of the conference is
the formation of a project or activity-goal for the new student, a task
suited to her strength and personality and for which she will be
responsible and receive the reward of recognition. On the completion of
this project, usually from eight to ten months, the girl is ready to
leave El Retiro; that is to say, she has succeeded in some phase of
group life and important clues for the adjustment of her personality in
the larger community outside have been formed.
Since these results have been attained largely as the result of social
relationships formed within the group at El Retiro, and by the use of
the project method and student government, the girl is likely to have
developed both self-confidence and group loyalty. The next essential was
to form some social relationship for the complete passage of the girl
into the community.
A Girls’ Club was organized and a club house secured in the city for
about eighteen girls and their field secretary. The girls pay their
board and work in stores, industries, etc. The housework is done by one
girl, who is paid by the others to act as home-maker. It is called the
Los Angeles Business Girls’ Club and is sponsored by the Los Angeles
Business Women’s Club not as a charity, but as an act of coöperation on
the part of the business women with the younger and handicapped working
girls of the city. Not all the residents are wards of the court, the
chief requirement being that girls be under twenty-one years of age and
receiving the minimum wage. The club serves as meeting place for
organization of young people, business girls, college girls, etc. Thus
any element of isolation, or unlikeness, is at an end for the girl who
may be a ward of the court and she is brought into relationship with the
normal forces of the community.
The following four cases, selected because they serve to illustrate the
integrating processes at work in a socialized court procedure, may be
presented.
Evelyn is one. She is an orphan of Canadian extraction. Placed by a
children’s aid society in some six temporary homes, she readily drifted
into delinquency. For two years for her it was a succession of
institutions, tempered by probation, after she came under the court.
Then El Retiro was established. Her health was so delicate that she was
sent there for observation for anæmia. There her central ability was
discovered—leadership, and her chief interest the design and manufacture
of clothing. On graduation she became president of the alumnæ group of
girls and went to live at the club house. She began earning $22.00 per
week as designer and shortly plans to open a shop of her own. As
president of the alumnæ organization she has succeeded in doing what no
probation officer has done—the voluntary reporting of each girl’s change
of work, address, and new friends. If they are out of work through
indifference or indolence, her fluent scorn and her own stylish costume
act on them as a spur. Her activity has two major outlets, leadership
and craftsmanship.
Margaret is another: She was the oldest in a large family headed by a
dissolute factory operative and a quarrelsome, complaining mother. Her
home life was marked by coarseness and obscenity of language, and her
personality by alternate melancholy and violence. At El Retiro it became
apparently probable that her behavior was the reaction made by her
organism in seeking that which it really craved most, peace and
security. She became an El Retiro homemaker. A troublesome asthma
yielded to treatment based on quiet and contentment. She is now an
officer of the alumnæ club and she has returned to her own home, which
has largely become rehabilitated through her efforts. The club life
apparently affords her all she needs of contact with the outside world.
Geraldine is a girl of eighteen, wrecked on the moving picture industry.
She was seduced by an under-director in attempting to sell a scenario,
and was passed from hand to hand until her health broke. Her experiences
were unbelievably tragic and unbelievably common. Her health,
self-confidence, and charm were restored at El Retiro. She took to
nursing but the key to her interest in everything was affection. A
professional man understood her real and genuine capacity and married
her. She is an exceptional wife and mother. She too is a club member,
proud of her school and eager to assist.
Maggie was a rollicking, buxom girl of seventeen. Her parents were dead
and her living relatives of doubtful reputation. Indeed all the female
members of her family had “gone to the bad.” Maggie’s own escapades were
many. At El Retiro she was rough, noisy, daring, fearless, impetuous, in
short filled with the spirit of adventure. She did not graduate but was
returned to the custody of the probation officer. While on probation she
became pregnant. She refused to tell who was responsible but concocted a
story of nameless attack. The court commented on her strength, her
bravery, her resourcefulness, and gave her two weeks in which to find
the man and bring him herself, unaided to court. Surprised but not
daunted the girl succeeded. The man proved to be a soldier with a
temperament much like her own; on careful examination, physical, mental,
and social he was proved to be a fit husband and was permitted to marry
Maggie. This social rehabilitation has restored her to club life, much
to her delight. For several months she has been happy and
successful.[97]
In the meantime another important step has been taken,—the attempt to
forestall delinquency by working on the maladjusted, neurotic,
predelinquent child, or to adjust the delinquent child without resort to
the court and the consequent court record. In the larger cities
departments of child study, children’s welfare committees, bureaus of
children’s guidance, institutes for vocational guidance have been formed
in the public schools or working in connection with the schools. In this
work the object has been to work by cases, bringing the girl under the
influence of the social worker, improving the home conditions and the
attitudes of the parents, placing the girl in a better environment,
moving her from one situation to another until one is found to which she
responds, and developing in her some activity interests. The ideal is to
coördinate the girl immediately with the large society in which she
lives instead of building up a complete institutional community about
her as in the case of El Retiro.
The possibilities of this type of approach to the problem are
illustrated by the following cases reported by Doctor Jessie Taft of
Philadelphia.
88. Ruth, fourteen, Irish, pink-cheeked and blue-eyed, in her first year
of High School, the picture of attractive, innocent girlhood, had been
taken to the house of detention for stealing a diamond pin and taking
money from a teacher’s desk. When her denials were finally broken down
by proof, she confessed to a long history of petty thieving, hitherto
unpunished and for the most part undiscovered....
Ruth was an intensely egotistic person, desirous of social recognition,
approval, personal success; but due to lack of training, unfavorable
conditions and an impulsive, impatient make-up had never learned to work
for her satisfactions or make her impression on society in constructive
ways. She was quickly discouraged and resentful in the face of failure
or hardship and at once turned to some pleasure experience as a
compensation—something which could be obtained immediately and easily.
She used boastful stories and even her own misdeeds to heighten the
impression of her importance and superiority. This is a natural reaction
in childhood, where immediate gratification is obtained through crying,
tantrums, day dreams, purely subjective methods; but they are not
appropriate to a developing organism and must be abandoned for an
objective dealing with the facts of life. All of Ruth’s normal cravings
had been thwarted by her environment. She had lost her love object in
the death of her mother. Her family ideals had been shattered. Her
father had been exposed as unfaithful to her mother, and a weakling in
the battle between the stepmother and Ruth. He was a failure as a
provider and did not pay his debts. Ruth was forced to live in a home
situation which had for her none of the elements of a home, nothing to
be proud of, no loving approval and overlooking of faults, no faith, no
support and assurance of safety. She was forced not only to give up her
love object but to see it supplanted by an enemy, who also usurped her
place and influence with the father. Undoubtedly her sex ideals also met
with shock. She became convinced that her father was interested in
another woman before the death of the mother. Father and stepmother
quarreled and made up—separated and came together repeatedly. She saw
marriage as a series of endless petty conflicts. Both of them were
churchgoers, given to religious interests. Ruth’s disillusionment with
life was complete. There was nothing genuine, no real satisfaction. The
father and mother who constitute the bridges over which the emotional
life of the child may cross to a more and more social development had
blocked normal growth and thrown the child back upon subjective or
anti-social satisfactions. One of the defense reactions to such a
thwarting of fundamental needs is that taken by Ruth—a cynical,
suspicious, critical attitude toward everything and everybody. To want
and never get satisfaction is too painful a state to keep up, so the
individual criticizes every possible love object that he may make
himself and others believe he wouldn’t have it if he could. The reason
he has no love object is that none are worth having; thus he defends his
inferiority. Also he undermines any criticism from others by showing up
the inferiority of the source. He is protected by having already
discredited the other person. Moreover, there is a sense of power and
superiority in being able to criticize everything, so it offers a
natural compensation for the inferiority from which the critical or
cynical person suffers. Not having admirable loving parents one must
remember is a source of tremendous inferiority. A child of eight has no
intelligent weapons with which to combat a hostile family situation. It
has no chance against the egoism of the adults around it. All it can do
is to react blindly in ways that offer some temporary solace. Stealing
from the stepmother is a way of satisfying the needs to fight with or
injure or destroy the pain-giving stimulus. It gives the child a
tremendous sense of power and victory. Here is something which he can do
secretly and effectively. It really hurts the hateful object and it
supplies pleasure-giving stimuli, such as candy, which are otherwise
denied....
Ruth ... was so absorbed in the injuries done her by life that she
thought of nothing but pleasure compensations. She would face nothing
that demanded effort or any unpleasantness. She had a right to take
things because life owed her reparation. She saw nothing in school or
work, or the ordinary habits of daily hygiene but hardship to be
avoided. She wanted nice clothes and felt she had a right to take them,
but she saw no reason why she should take any care of them. If a garment
was torn or dirty, get a new one. She thought she ought to be placed
where there were servants so she would have no housework and no laundry
to attend to. She had no loyalty to any one. She played one person
against another and used everything to her own advantage as she saw it.
As soon as an effort was made to give her insight she reacted to protect
herself from the painful revelations by criticizing the worker and
taking the attitude that there was a game going on between her and the
worker in which each was trying to get ahead of the other. She could not
believe in disinterested effort on her behalf.
Ruth was turned over to a child-placing agency with the foregoing
interpretation of her behavior and suggestions for working on the
problem, but with great doubt as to the outcome. She was to be given as
much gratification of her pleasure wants as possible in order to reduce
the struggle to satisfy them and leave some of her energy and interest
free to be developed along other lines. She was to be placed with a
really superior person whom she might finally come to respect as genuine
and her best chance would be to find some one person, the worker or the
foster mother, who had real faith in her possibilities.
The social worker who took her over was young and enthusiastic,
undaunted by the impossible and full of faith in her own ability to get
results. She transferred this faith to Ruth. She never wavered in her
belief that Ruth could change her ways. She lived through stealing
episodes, truancy periods, every kind of discouragement and finally
found a home which did some of the things we had hoped for. Ruth’s first
experience in this home was a summer trip and a glorious good time. When
she came back there was little housework and a doctor’s important
business to help with after school. There was social prestige in this
home. The mother was a good disciplinarian and insisted on the formation
of certain daily habits of living, but she took Ruth in as a member of
the family and had, like the worker, supreme faith in her own ability to
make Ruth go to school every day, study her lessons and keep going in
the path of righteousness.
Ruth responded surprisingly and for six months all went well. Then she
began to be unhappy and ask to be removed, saying that she would make
removal necessary if something were not done. Finally she had her way.
It seemed evident that this home, while successful in many ways, lacked
the thoroughly admirable personality which we thought Ruth needed. The
woman was hard, set and self-centered. Another home was found in which
there proved to be serious marital conflicts in which Ruth was forced to
be a party. Here the stealing broke out again. Then a high school
teacher became interested in the girl and invited her to her summer home
for vacation. This was the great turning point in Ruth’s life. Here her
desires for social superiority and pleasure were satisfied, and she was
surrounded by real people for whom she felt at last the whole-souled
genuine devotion and admiration which was essential for her
socialization.
From that moment there has been no trouble with Ruth. No more stealing,
no more truancy, no shirking of lessons. She has gone to live with
another teacher for whom she keeps house. Six months have passed and
there has been no complaint. To complete this treatment and make it
permanent, Ruth ought to be given insight into her own behavior and
understand just what has happened to her. Then she would be armed
against the accident of circumstance.[98]
89. ... Mary was an alert, boyish, attractive girl of eighteen ... at
work in a department store after having reached first year in High
School and reported to have been living with her weak, immoral mother,
sharing the mother’s young paramour, a boy only a little older than
herself....
The following case history was obtained: Because of the mother’s
promiscuity, Mary’s paternity was uncertain. As a child in her mother’s
home she had known only loose living, good-natured, easy-going neglect
and poverty. Illegitimate births were common in the family. There seems
to have been complete lack of ordinary sex morality and social
standards. The family lived a roving, hand-to-mouth existence. When Mary
was ten, the Court removed her and gave her to a child-placing agency.
She was tried out unsuccessfully in several homes and finally made a
good adjustment in a country home where she had excellent school
opportunities, finishing grammar school at the head of her class. She
entered High School with a continuing interest in school, accompanied by
an increasing interest in boys. Her late hours, love for good times and
her rebellion against restraint worried the foster parents so that they
gave her up. She was accepted by a city institution where she was under
strict supervision and was sent for the first time to a city school. She
tried to enter the second year of High School with inadequate
preparation, failing quite completely in every subject. Accident entered
at this point in the shape of a new matron at the institution. The girls
were trying her out and in her effort to control the situation she
threatened to expel the next girl guilty of insubordination. Mary
happened to be the victim. She was returned to the Court and discharged
to a married and apparently respectable sister. The sister, unequal to
disciplining Mary, allowed her to go to her mother, then living in a
wretched little house in another town with a young man by whom she was
pregnant. There was only one bedroom containing a bed and a cot. Mary
shared the cot with the younger brother, a boy of fifteen. For about a
year this situation continued. Mary broke away once only to return
again. The mother finally went out to work with the new baby, leaving
Mary to keep house for her brother and the man. Finally Mary came to the
city a second time and got a job. She wandered from one position to
another and came in contact with a social agency just as she was about
to give up and go home again because she saw no work ahead and was
unable to support herself on what she was earning.
The social worker took the matter up as a vocational guidance problem
and ... with the psychologist worked out the following picture of Mary:
In earliest childhood she had known little or no restraint and had been
familiar with the freest sex life and complete absence of ordinary
social standards as regards sex. But there had been affection,
easy-going, good-natured attitudes and a great deal of personal freedom.
The loose living, the roving, unsettled existence had made it fairly
easy for Mary to accept and adjust to varying conditions so that
foster-home placement to her was not the agonizing experience that it is
to some children. Moreover, she seems to have been from the first an
objective, eager, alert, social youngster who most fortunately
compensated for her family inferiorities by a complete going over into
school life and active energetic expression in work and play....
The dismissal from her foster-home seems to have been caused by behavior
which was natural enough on the part of a developing adolescent girl.
She merely carried over too much of her superabundant energy into
parties and good times with boys.... The dark side of her life here was
her introduction to sex experience through the foster father. These
experiences, shocking at first, were finally accepted as a matter of
course and sank into the background of an existence in which objective
interests—school, companions, good times, farm work, held first place.
There seems never to have been any deep conflict nor any marked feeling
of shame or inferiority. It was taken as part of the day’s work,
something which went along with living in this foster-home which for the
most part was desirable. She wanted to keep on with her school. She was
afraid to tell the wife. She had none of the ordinary sex morality which
most of us have absorbed from infancy on. The easiest way was to keep
still and adjust. When Mary was asked how she felt about sex, she
replied characteristically and cheerfully: “Well, the world is made that
way, you just have to accept it. It isn’t any use to worry about it, you
might as well take people as they are.”
Although these years in Mary’s life apparently left no scar, they did
break down completely any sex inhibitions she might have had, aroused
sex needs and accustomed her to the habit of sex expression. It meant
that when she went to live with her mother, she experienced no
particular shock and was illy prepared to offer resistance to the
advances of her mother’s paramour who found her so much more attractive
than her mother and with whom she was thoroughly infatuated....
The really critical experience was the transfer to the city institution
and the city High School. In neither situation was she at home and for
the first time in her life she experienced failure and disgrace in her
studies. She now had a genuine inferiority, a discouragement which
undoubtedly reacted on her behavior at home. She grew indifferent and
reckless, would not respond to scolding or appeal. The objective work
and play expressions, as well as the customary sex life, were cut off.
There was nothing left but breaking rules to get a good time. Expulsion
from the institution meant the final break with school and she thinks it
was then that her ambition died. She had no technical training, she
could get only underpaid, uninteresting jobs. Where was she to find an
outlet for her young energy? The sister, less intelligent than Mary, had
no influence and was only a source of irritation. Then in her restless
seeking for something more satisfactory, she went to her mother who was
living in another city. There she was disturbed chiefly by the mother’s
jealousy and feeling she was doing her wrong; also the presence of the
younger brother. Finally the glamour wore off and she began to see the
man in his true character. He was lazy, unreliable, disloyal, weak. He
had none of the straightforward, eager, active attitude which Mary had
toward life. Gradually she turned against the kind of person he was and
after many struggles, finally broke away.
It was at this point, when her courage was giving way once more, that
she was found by the case worker.
It seemed to the psychological examiner that the problem here was not
the so obviously indicated sex situation, but the blocking of Mary’s
work and play interests and the complete quenching of her egoistic
ambitions. The psychometric tests showed her to be well up to average in
intelligence. She was as interested in taking the test as the examiner
was in giving it. Her intellectual curiosity was a delight. In the
course of the interview she brought out a slip of paper with two long
words on it which she had been treasuring, waiting for an opportunity to
look them up in a dictionary. She thought the examiner was a good
substitute. Throughout she exhibited a frank, straightforward attitude,
an honest, unsentimental facing of facts, a complete freedom from
cynicism or critical reactions. She put no blame on other people, used
no evasive mechanisms. She had a certain pride and independence. When
consoling herself for her lack of good clothes she remarked: “My clothes
aren’t much but no man is paying for them, and at least I have a
contented mind.” There seemed to be every basis for a satisfactory
adjustment to life if the environmental opportunities could be provided
so that her work and social interests would have a chance to develop and
help to organize a more socialized sex expression.
The social worker was reassured and determined by this analysis of the
problem. Mary herself was allowed to go over every detail of the
intelligence tests and was told that ability like hers had a right to a
better training. She faced what lack of education would mean in
underpaid, uninteresting work. Her faith in her own power and ability
was restored and her ambition revived. Her former failure in High School
was explained and she became convinced that it was not too late even now
to achieve success in school work.
Meantime the case worker built up the social background, finally raised
scholarship money and Mary went into the second year of the commercial
course in a good High School.
There was never any attempt to deal with the sex side by repressive
methods, never any interference with her social life, nor any form of
restraint. When she wanted to go to visit her mother, the whole
situation was talked out with her and she was given the worker’s
attitude frankly and honestly but decision was left to her. She did not
go. She has continued to associate with boys on an unusually free basis.
She will go to see a boy friend at his home exactly as she would visit a
girl. She could not be made to see why she should not accept a boy’s
invitation to go to New York City for a sightseeing excursion. She was
willing to stay home to please the worker but she was told she must
decide on another basis. Only accident in the shape of the boy’s illness
prevented the escapade. Everything she does is talked over with the
worker with the utmost freedom. Her standards are changing rapidly with
her developing tastes and interests. She has made good in her school
work consistently. She has been rash and unconventional in the extreme
but has never, apparently, overstepped the boundaries of morality on the
sex side. For a year and a half she has made steady progress and there
is no indication that she will ever again become a delinquent.[99]
The most disheartening condition which we have to face in connection
with the delinquent child is the demoralized home. It appears in one
study (document No. 58, p. 100) that nine tenths of the girls and three
fourths of the boys who reach the juvenile court come from bad homes.
Case No. 83 (p. 152) is an extended description of such a home and the
following summary of some cases may be taken as representative.
90. A family of 13 children; father a drunkard who deserted them; mother
scrubs and cleans; “a very poor, dirty, and crowded home.”
Family “very degraded”; father, a drunkard, criminally abused two little
daughters (who later became delinquent wards of the court) and then
deserted the family to avoid prosecution. Mother married again, but
stepfather also drank and was so abusive that wife and children left
him.
Father, a man of bad habits, deserted; mother drank; she said girl had
inherited unfortunate tendencies from father.
A family of fourteen children, six of whom died; father was immoral and
cruel to his wife, and very unkind to his children; he deserted, leaving
family to charity; the girl left home because of ill treatment and
became immoral.
Father, professional gambler, utterly irresponsible, deserted his
family; one boy was always “wild” and one girl went to a house of
prostitution.
Father and mother, both shiftless, begging people who will not work;
father periodically deserts family, who were all in Home for the
Friendless at one time and who are often destitute and a public charge.
Father is now in old soldiers’ home and three of the children are in a
soldiers’ orphans’ home.
A family of six children, one girl delinquent; home dirty and untidy
with two beds in parlor; mother has a bad reputation, drinks habitually
and always has the house full of men. Father deserted at one time, and
family has been helped by a charitable society constantly for two years.
A family of seven children; father, an habitual drunkard, supposed to be
a fruit peddler but really a common tramp; deserts periodically but
always comes back; very brutal to wife and children when he is at home,
and responsible for demoralization of two older girls; family a county
charge and on records of three relief societies.
A very degraded home; father drunken and immoral, abused girl’s mother
shamefully before her death; criminally abused girl when she was only
seven and then abandoned her. Girl brought to court at the age of twelve
on charge that she was “growing up in crime.”...
Lillie, a German girl, seven years of age, whose father, now dead, is
said to have been as near a brute as a human being could be, whose
mother is insane, and whose sister is abnormal, was brought in as
incorrigible and immoral.
Vera, a seventeen-year-old girl, whose father’s address is unknown, and
whose mother is insane, found employment as a barmaid in a concert hall,
and afterwards became a prostitute.
Rosie, a sixteen-year-old Russian Jewess, whose mother is in the
hospital for the insane, and whose father abandoned her, was brought
into court on the charge of immorality.
Annie, a fifteen-year-old girl, whose father was frozen to death and
whose mother is of unsound mind, has two brothers who are imbeciles. She
is herself feebleminded, and has been the mother of three illegitimate
children—probably the children of her imbecile brothers.[100]
The gradual realization of this condition through the experience of the
juvenile courts and the schools and also the desire to avoid any court
procedure in connection with a child whose morals are endangered has led
many teachers and social workers to the view that the child should be
taken in charge by society as soon as it shows any tendency to
disorganization and that the school should have this function and should
gradually displace or incorporate the juvenile court, or such functions
of the juvenile court as remained would be transferred to the court of
domestic relations. Eliot took this position as early as 1914,[101] and
the conviction has been expressed frequently in various forms. The
following is an extract from one of the most systematic proposals.
... Each city, probably each county would require an extension or
reorganization of its personnel to include a department of adjustment to
which teachers, policemen and others could refer all children who seemed
to present problems of health, of mental development, of behavior or of
social adjustment. For good work this would require the services of
doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, field investigators, recreational
specialists....
The ideal would be to have the school act as a reserve parent, an
unusually intelligent, responsible and resourceful parent, using
whatever the community had to offer, making up whatever the community
lacked....
All neglected, dependent and delinquent children, whether of school age
or not, would fall within the province of [the department of
adjustment]. For these children we would have the authority of the
school extend from infancy to adult life.... We should [thus] get
entirely away from the conception of penalizing children for their
offenses and from the stigma of courts and reform schools.... We should
establish our thinking firmly on an educational basis. The fatal
gradation of reform school, work-house, county jail and state prison
would be broken.... Wherever possible we would have dependent children
sent to public schools. Homes for “friendless” or “destitute” children
belong with scarlet letters, stocks and debtors’ prisons....
With the clearing away of old names and associations should come better
opportunity to meet the needs of girls before they reach an advanced
stage of incorrigibility.
[Arrangements should be made for] pooling the juvenile court’s probation
officers, the truancy department’s numerous officers, the school nurses,
the medical instructors, the special schools and reformatories, and all
the rest of the specialists on the physical, mental and social troubles
of school children into one department of adjustment.... Only the most
determined blindness could prevent [the school board member] from seeing
how the school truant officer and the probation officer overlap.... He
could surely see the waste of having the schools, on the one hand, build
up a staff of doctors and nurses and the juvenile court on the other
trying to duplicate this machinery—both sets to serve the same group of
children.[102]
These writers argue also that the juvenile court does not afford so good
an opportunity as the school for the study of the child and for
record-making, that the stigma placed on the child by an appearance in
court deprives him of the chance of future favorable recognition, that
the court cannot prevent delinquency, that the child is frequently
incorrigible before he reaches the court, that the courts have a very
limited range as propaganda and general educational agencies, since they
have no power over the child’s life before he comes actually before the
bar of justice, that the power of the probation officer is relatively
slight and casual, and that vocational placement should be connected
with the school.
Further than this, the depraved family conditions which I have
emphasized are due not only to bad economic conditions but to the
failure of community influence. You may have very good family life with
bad economic conditions but you cannot have good family life without
community influence. I have shown in Chapter II how strong was the
influence of the community on the family. It is not too much to say that
the community made the family good. Human nature often appears at its
worst in connection with pair marriages and small families. The records
of the societies for the prevention of cruelty to children are filled
with sickening details of the brutality of parents. An organic
connection with a larger community is necessary to the maintenance of
moral standards and fine sentiments. If we look, therefore, as we are
forced to look, for a social agency whose influence may penetrate the
family we find it in the school. The school is not a natural
organization like the family, but an artificial organization capable of
rapid changes and adjustments. In this respect it has almost the freedom
of a scientific laboratory. It receives all children early and keeps
them a relatively long time. Its function is the setting and solving of
problems and the communication of information. Its representatives are
far superior to the average parent in intelligence and understanding. If
we invented any device to replace social influence lacking at other
points it would be the school. It is probable that the school could be a
sort of community forming the background of the family and the child and
could supply the elements lacking in the home, at least to the degree of
preventing in a large measure delinquency and crime, if it exercised all
the influence it could conceivably exercise, and that it could, more
than any other agency, socialize the family. From this standpoint the
appearance of the visiting teacher in the school has the greatest
importance.
The first visiting teachers began work in the year 1906–1907 in New
York, Boston and Hartford, Connecticut. In these cities, and later in
other places, as has frequently happened in other educational
experiments, the impulse came from outside the school system. Private
organizations—in Boston, settlements and civic organizations; in New
York, settlements and the Public Education Association; in Hartford, the
director of the Psychological Laboratory—saw the need of providing a
specially equipped worker to help the schools, and developed and
privately maintained the work until the school board became convinced of
its value and incorporated it as part of the school system. In other
cities, like Rochester and Mt. Vernon, New York, and Cleveland, Ohio,
the work was introduced directly by the board of education. At present
in all but four cities the work is part of the city public school
system. The movement has grown until at present the work has been
extended to twenty-nine cities in fifteen states. In some of these
“school visitor” or a similar term is used instead of visiting
teacher....
“Through individuals to the group” is the approach of the visiting
teacher, and as the result of her knowledge, derived from case work, new
types of classes have been organized, school clubs, or other means to
make the school fit the newly discovered need. Study rooms have been
opened, school recreation centers organized; parents’ clubs, courses in
domestic training, special trade courses, school lunches and other
extensions have been started as a result of the visiting teacher’s view
of the neighborhood. In this way her work becomes of value to the school
as a whole. She acts as a scout bringing back a more definite knowledge
of the lacks in the neighborhood, educational, social and moral, and of
newer demands on the school that have arisen because of changing social
and industrial conditions. This relation accords with the ideas of
modern educators who believe that the connection between the school and
the community life cannot be too closely integrated.
On the other hand, the visiting teacher’s acquaintance with the families
and the neighborhood brings about social results. Through her work,
various communities have been stimulated to provide scholarship funds,
nurseries, community houses, homes for neglected children and other
social activities. Hidden danger spots are not infrequently brought to
her attention by parents who have not known what to do about the
situation or have been afraid to report to the proper agency or
official. In this way the work assumes an additional preventive aspect,
and results in such improvements as better policing and lighting of
parks, better provision for playgrounds, closing of improper movies,
etc., checking of traffic in drugs to minors and the removal of similar
insidious conditions.
The visiting teacher’s position as a member of the school staff makes
for certain advantages. She gets in touch with cases at an earlier stage
than would an outsider. Teachers and parents consult her about
suspicious cases which they would not feel justified in referring to a
social agency. As representative of the school, the visiting teacher is
free from the suggestion of philanthropy, and of all visitors she has,
perhaps, the most natural approach to the home, going as she does in the
interests of the child. It is a very rare thing for a visiting teacher
to experience an unpleasant reception. Further, she is in a position to
follow the child in school from year to year. Where the home carries a
serious handicap, she may anticipate the difficulties of the younger
children, help them avoid the false starts made by the older brother or
sister, and also assist the school to reinforce the children against the
inroads of the family handicap....
The following case shows how, out of a bad family situation, real
educational capital was made for a headstrong, irresponsible girl of
fourteen who hated school and thought she wished to go to work to help
her family. Knowing the reaction of the home situation on the girl’s
school life, the visiting teacher worked out a special plan with the
family agency to which she had referred the family. She advised that the
money required for the family budget be paid in the form of a weekly
scholarship to the girl. The conditions stipulated were that she attend
school regularly and keep a budget. She was transferred to a special
class and given a special course providing an unusual amount of
household training—the one school subject which seemed to her to serve
any useful purpose. The personal interest of the domestic science
teacher was enlisted in the girl’s home situation, and she not only
advised about the budget but encouraged the girl to make the most of her
scanty home furnishings. A tutor was provided to help with the academic
subjects. Through this weekly-payment plan the girl was made a partner
in the family situation, and her sense of responsibility developed. Her
budget book served as the most effective arithmetic text book she had
ever used. Incidentally, she learned much about food values and
purchasing.[103]
But while in the present condition of society there is no point at which
the prevention of delinquency and the socialization of the family can be
undertaken so successfully as in the school, the school itself has very
grave defects of character, and the question of its adaptation to the
welfare of the child involves at the same time the question of change
and reform in the school itself. Many educators will agree that if we
attempt to measure the influence of the school with reference to its
efficiency as a factor in personality development we are confronted at
once with the following conditions:
1. The average school, like the old community, works on the assumption
of uniformity of personality and presents the same materials and plans
in the same order to all. The assumption is that children react in the
same way to the same influences regardless of their personal traits or
their social past, and that it is therefore possible to provoke
identical behavior by identical means. “Nature,” says Doctor Jennings,
“has expended all her energy in making our little flock of children as
diverse as she possibly can; in concealing within it unlimited
possibilities which no one can define or predict. It sometimes seems as
if we parents in our process of educating them were attempting to root
out all of these diversities, to reduce our flock to a uniform mass....
The only way in which appreciable progress can be made in the attempt is
by cutting off, stunting, preventing the development of the special and
distinctive qualities of the individuals. Unfortunately this can be done
to a certain extent, but only by a process which may be rightly compared
with the taking of human life.”[104]
2. The creative or plan-forming interest of the child is an expression
of the phase of new experience which is based on curiosity and appears
very early in the child. The child expresses his energy and secures his
recognition, favorable or unfavorable, mainly along this line. Response
and security do not mean so much to him as yet. The fact that the school
work is detached from activity and not related to the plan-forming and
creative faculty explains its failure to interest the child. An
investigator took five hundred children out of twenty factories in
Chicago and asked them this question: “If your father had a good job and
you did not have to work, which would you rather do, go to school or
work in a factory?” Of the five hundred children, between the ages of
fourteen and sixteen, 412 said they would rather work in a factory.[105]
In 1920 the White-Williams counselors in the Junior Employment Service
of the Board of Public Education interviewed 908 of the 10,674 children
who came that year to the Board of Public Education for general working
certificates. Forty-seven per cent of these did not want to go on with
their school work. They gave as reasons: “I was ‘left down’”; “I didn’t
like arithmetic”; “I was too tall for the other girls in the room”, etc.
Many of these difficulties might have been adjusted if some one could
have made plans with the children while they were still in school.[106]
3. There is therefore a question whether as a device for plan-forming by
presenting the right material and definitions at the right moment, the
school is not inferior to the world at large, at least when its
influences are protracted. The school presents indispensable
information, a technic for handling problems, such as reading, writing,
and ciphering, and presents the solution of the innumerable problems
which are already solved and which it is unnecessary to solve again. But
the school works injuriously on personality development and creative
tendencies. By presenting the whole body of cultural values in a
planless way, planless so far as schemes of personal development are
concerned, it tends to thwart and delay the expression of the
plan-making tendency of children until physiological maturity approaches
and the energetic, plan-forming, creative period is passed. The lives of
creative men show that they began their work early and did it by hook or
by crook sometimes by evading the schools, often by being the worst
pupils. The chemist Ostwald in his interesting book “Grosse Männer” has
pointed out that the precocity of such men as Leibnitz and Sir William
Thomson would have done them no good if the schools had been “better” in
their time.
In measuring the influence of the school we must recognize two types of
success in the adaptation of the individual to life, the one based on
his assertion and realization of wide and original claims, the other on
contentment with limited claims. If he is contented with claims which
are more limited than his powers justify, his adaptation is success
through relative failure. To the degree that the school treats children
as identical it produces a maximum number of relative failures. To some
extent the genius is regarded as a prodigy because so much spontaneity
is repressed by the school.
4. Clinicists and case workers who handle successfully difficult
children taken from the schools report that the schools tend to
accentuate rather than obviate the difficult features. Some of them feel
that where unsocial and neurotic tendencies have begun to appear through
bad family conditions the school is an additional influence for evil to
be overcome.
The school reaches practically every child and does its part in
deepening or lessening the neurotic tendencies. At present we are safe
in assuming that for the most part it deepens these tendencies. It
drives the neurotic child into truancy, vagrancy, anarchy, invalidism
and every form of delinquency or hardens its emotional reactions into
permanent moods, and it does all of this without in the least being
aware of it....
If our public schools really educated, if they understood that education
involves a training of the instinctive and emotional life as well as of
the intellect, if they saw that they cannot even develop intellect as
long as they ignore desire, we should have an agency for adjusting the
neurotic girl and boy second only to the home in its power. There is
proof for this statement. Enlightenment is coming into education in
spots. There are visiting teachers who work on the problem children in a
school and get wonderful results. There are experimental schools whose
methods are based on an understanding of the new psychology as it
applies to educational theory. These schools are able to deal with the
able but neurotic child who cannot get along in the public school. Those
of us who work with difficult children are defeated constantly, not so
much by the impossibility of the cases, as by the impossibility of
finding any public school that understands or has time to act on its
understanding. I am constantly trying to straighten out the children the
public school can’t handle. Our school is not primarily educational but
is a place to observe and get acquainted with difficult, dependent, or
destitute children whom the various children’s agencies of Philadelphia
are trying to place satisfactorily in homes. They are children who do
not get along anywhere. Nobody wants them because they are so hard to
manage. The thing that constantly surprises us is how easy it is to
manage their behavior. They are not set like adults and a little
understanding, a little insight, and patience, a mere approach to real
educational methods gives immediate results that are almost like
magic.[107]
It is desirable that the school should eventually supersede the juvenile
court and replace other welfare agencies concerned with the child, but
in adapting itself to this task and to the task of general education it
will be compelled to make provision for the development of the emotional
and social life of the child as well as the informational, and in doing
this it will inevitably approach the model of El Retiro as described by
Doctor van Waters.