Disturbed Children

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31089, 18 June 1966, Page 14

Disturbed Children

Sir, —Our prisons, borstals, and mental homes are full, yet teachers are compelled to watch the “progress” through our schools of a bumper crop of unfortunate future inmates for the vast majority of whom nothing effective is being done. It is scandalous that the numerous reports on these children by visiting teachers, psychologists, headmasters and, I hope, inspectors, have apparently been ignored by all senior officers who are in a position to initiate action. Presumably these persons are showing the usual form by playing for time until the curtain of retirement shut them off from the dread prospect of having to perform effective deeds instead of speak ineffective words. I assure Varian J. Wilson that there are exasperated and frustrated teachers who have the intelligence to organise a “crash programme” and the will to force it through, but that primary promotion policies prevent these very people from attaining positions of power.—Yours, etc., J. F. WILLIAMS. June 17, 1966.

Sir, —Regarding “A. B. Cedarian’s” letter on the history of a little first-born girl, I wonder why the Freudian probe was “fortunately” no help. I believe all children are born pure in mind and have no evil intent. They are taught evil through the laws of society, and the church. Sin is foreign to them. As for the poor child in question being told that babies arrived from cabbage patches, this was pure mental cruelty to her and said to protect the puritan views On sex at the time. This story is hardly conducive to her maturing into normal womanhood. How in the eyes of a child can a cabbage be symbolic of the love and affection of a mother? No doubt she was told to eat up her cabbage (her mother) and was punished for being reluctant to do so.—Yours, etc., PAT T. SHUHAN. June 16, 1966.