‘Having sex’ earns reform school place

Press, 10 August 1981, Page 4

‘Having sex’ earns reform school place

NZPA Shanghai Ask Chao Fengyin, a pert 17-year-old, why she has been sent to reform school and she will say in a tiny voice, after much squirming with embarrassment: “For having sex."

She is not alone. About 40 per cent of the girls at Shanghai's biggest reform school are there for “having sex,” according to school officials, who don't seem to find the punishment for such an "offence” unduly Draconian.

Fewer of the boys, who are housed in a separate section of the school, are there for the same reason.

Miss Chao’s boyfriend appeared to get off quite lightly. . An apprentice worker, he was allowed to stay at his job, although he had to submit to “observation".

The youthful liaison was discovered when Miss Chao became pregnant. She confessed to her parents, had an abortion, and was packed off to the reform school.

What she did is not punishable under the law, but it is regarded as sufficiently serious to earn her a year-long spell at the school, which has steel bars over the windows and is surrounded by a high wall.

At the school she mixes with youngsters who in other countries might be regarded as more fit to be punished, such as petty thieves.

But there are others whose misdemeanours seem trivial, such as boys and girls who persistently missed school or

who were simply too unruly for their parents to control. Tough action against crime of all kinds is in vogue in China at present. Many cities have faced a growing law and order problem, particularly among unemployed young people. The reform school headmaster, Mr Lu Chaochin. brushed aside suggestions that young people were treated harshly, or that the Chinese attitude towards teenage sex was oldfashioned.

“Chinese customs are different from those in the West," he said. “We have to keep teenagers from sex in school to ensure that they grow up healthily.” For their indiscretions, people like Miss Chao are sent to the reform school where for the first two months they have to write self-critical confessions and are not allowed to leave the school grounds.

Mr Lu said that many of the students were very hostile at this stage, partly because they believed the school was run by the police, whereas in fact it was under the local educational bureau. After two months a more relaxed programme of part work, part study was introduced, with the incentive of week-end trips home for good behaviour, he said. But former students carry the stigma of having been sent to reform school, and this can be a problem when seeking work on the overcrowded Shanghai job market.

Mr Lu and other officials insist that the Shanghai labour bureau, which assigns people jobs, does not discriminate against students from reform schools. Exam performance was the bureau's sole criterion, he said.

But this puts reform school students at a disadvantage because while there is some classroom instruction, there is not as much as in an ordinary school. In any case, officials said, the youngsters sent to reform school were often of less-than-average intelligence. so all ■in all the outlook for them was bleak. The officials said that the problem of getting jobs was greater for girls than for boys - but did not say whether this was because of discrimination or because there were fewer jobs for girls.

Mr Lu said that of 280 teenagers who had left the school since 1979, 70 had got jobs, about 120 were “waiting for jobs" - a standard Chinese euphemism for unemployment — and others had gone back to their old schools.

He claimed a qualified success for the school in its .-fforls to reform wayward teenagers.

About 70 per cent of school leavers had behaved “quite well,” 15 per cent were still giving cause for complaint with “minor mistakes." while the remaining 15 .per cent had continued down the slippery