THE NAUGHTY BOY.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17769, 22 May 1923, Page 12

THE NAUGHTY BOY.

OVERCOMING HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT.

AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM,

The problem of the naughty boy is international; and bo is the difficulty experienced in solving it. Eecently, in Hamburg, I happened upon one scheme for giving him a chance that was original to. the extent of being entirely voluntary, as far as the parents were concerned, and free from State control or compulsion, writes Evelyn Sharp in. the "Manchester Guardian." The name of the "Bauhe Haua" iB shrouded in mystery; it is v not so called, as might be supposed, because rough or rowdy boys are sent there, but according to the most credible theory, because the oldest of its buildings are originally a "Kauhe Haus," or rest-house, for tho' private owner who lived there. It is certainly not a rowdy_ house now, nor yet a rest-house, for it is a boarding school for boys with. a "past." I saw it on a day of winter sunshine, when the boys come shouting out of school to skate and slide on the frozen pond, and the little group of boarding-houses scattered round the main building gave the whole place the look rather of a colony or a settlement than a reformative institution.. There was nono of the comfort or perfection of domestic arrangement that distinguished the Jewish reformatory near London. Everything at Eauhe Haus is rather bare and Spartan, a reflection probably of the lowered standard of living that is universal in post-war Germany. But there are worse things for young people than hard physical conditions, and the boys I saw seemed jolly enough, though in some cases so poorly clad that it was difficult to believe they belonged almost exclusively to the middle class. r

For nearly all the 220 boys, between the ages of ten and eighteen, who aie the pupils of the Bauhe Haus are the sons of officials or merchants. They are there because they have in some way become unmanageable elsewhere; but their parents have acted as voluntary agents in the matter, and not under compulsion from any magistrate, and they pay to the boys as thoy would in sending them to any other boarding school, except that there i.-' a fund, privately subscribed, for /assisting parents of small means. The only public support comes from the municipality, which pays half ;ttusalaries of teachers, and has the right to nominate a small minority of its inmates from other institutions. Tho great majority are, however, ordinary middle-class boys who have misbehaved themselves; and the director deals only with the parents, as the head ot an English public school would do. There are two scales of payment, tha richer boys paying 36 gold marks n month, and the other 24 gold marks; this is an arrangement dating back to the early days of the school, and is one of which the present director, tho: Pfarrer Pfeiffer, entirely disapproves, as he hates all artificial distinctions of class.

"But I get over it," he added, in his humorous way, "by making the difference one of non-essentials. ior instance, the richer boys have a tablecloth at dinner, while the others, have none. But the food on both tables is the same, and that is what matters most to the children!'"

In all schools, and especially reformative' institutions, the personality of tho head principally determines its success or its failure; and in the appointment, two years ago, of Pfarrer Pfeiffer as director of the Bauhe Haus has secured a real reformer and educationist, who takes the sound human view ot iuvenilc delinquency, whatever its na ture "Whatever a boy did before lie came here," he told me, "all is forgotten as soon as he enters the school, and his past is never referred to again. Nothing is locked up, and nobody eVer wants to run away. Of course we occasionally have failures, boys who cannot be successfully treated by our methods, and who have to.be sent elsewhere for the sake of the- other boys. But these are very few in number, and I do hot case blame the poor children for what is clearly the fault of heredity and early environment. Aa the boys come from aIT kinds of schools, the education has to be rather varied and rather special-one advantage at all events, that the ordinary public school does not enjoy It includes the teaching of English to every boy, and a good deal of handwork, there being a first-rate carpentering shed on the premises. The curriculum rather resembles the •'modern" side of a public school, I should say, and most of the boys become officials m State institutions when they leave, though a few go on to the University. The staff at the Itauhe Haus is composed of old boys, trained there for the purpose.

It is impossible to judge any educational enterprise by a chance visit; but a tour of the homes in which the boys live as separate "families" gave one some idea of their daily life. Each house is known by the name of some symbol, carved over its front door,' sucn as, the Beehive, the Chestnut, the Fir Tree, and so on; and fourteeen boys with three big "brothers" constitute a family. These "brothers" are former pupils, who act as guardians and! helpers out of school hours to the children in their house, fon whose happiness and welfare they are responsible."'Every home has its living room, where the boys keep their owndesks and lockers and private treasures: and there seemed to be a genuine intention to make the place homelike and as far as possible removed! from the institutional idea. Educationally, it seemed good that the domestic and "garden work should be done principally by the boys themselves, though "all meals are taken in the main building, where the classrooms are and also the home of the director. The bare distempered wall of the main staircase was pleasantly decorated with the following legend, in brilliantly painted script:* "Was Hn.nschen niclit lernt, wirtl Hans dimmer lernen" (What little Hans does not learn Big Hans will never learn). The Eauhe Haus is interesting as one more attempt to deal in a'human way with that most human of natural products, the naughty boy. The outlook of its head, his tolerance of delinquency, and his belief in goodness, the emphasis he laid on the voluntary nature of the school as opposed to the State compulsion connected with the ordinary reformatory, well all to the good. The idea of putting the boys in little homes (borrowed,, I believe, from Dr. Barnardo's Homes) was good too; and one was pleased with other little homelike touches, such as the custom of keeping a book ou the chapel desk in which each boy entered the date of his birthday, so that there should be a special prayer for him, as well as a special birthday treat and cake for him, when the day came round. One's chief criticism would be, I think, of the lack of beauty, as compared, for instance, with Dr. Wilke's reformative experiment at Berlin-lich-terfelde, three years ago, in which

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flowers and painting played so large a part. And, secondly, the absence of women seemed a real human and educational blemish. There was the director's wife in her house, I suppose, and I saw a few maidservants in the main building; otherwise, the boys would never see a woman from the beginning to the end of each term. A home that contains only '/brothers"' is very far from the real thing. It is true fiat the boys of the Eauhe Haus go home for three weeks' holiday at Christmas Easter, and midsummer '(except new' boys, whofemain at school for the first six months without a break); so they are not much more removed from feminine society than the ordinary English schoolhoy is. But in an age when this isolation of the sexes during the school years is very much on its trial one cannot help regretting that any newer enterprise like that of the Bauhe HauB { enlightened in so many ways, has not made a departure in the direction of trying what the healthy companionship of girls of his own age can do for the naughty boy.