CLASSIFICATION OF INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 68, 18 September 1906, Page 4

CLASSIFICATION OF INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.

An interesting passage in the annual report of tho Minister of Education calls attention at once to a valuable improvement which has recently been effected if our industrial school system, and to some fuither improvements which are still nseded. The removal of the Caversham boys to Wereroa marks another important step in classification, and enables the Minister to say that "there is cow no industrial school at which girls reside where boys over ten years of age are resident inmates." "The purpose of the Caversham Industrial School," he continues, "is now similar to that ol the Auckland Industrial School— it ia for girls of any age, so long as they do rot need reformatory treatment ; and for boys not too old or too wild to bft boarded out, or who can be placed at once at service." The advama«ts oi dc taching the elder boys from the institutions to which girls aro also committed are too obvious to require any emphasising ; but the Minister also calls attention to another basis of classification which demands attention almost as urgently. The inmates of these schools aio sent there for their own good, and for tho protection of society, and, as tho Minister says, "the return for tho oxpeiditure is seen when many colonists, who would otherwise have baen found in the ranks of the unfit, show themselves to be sturdy farmers and artisans who have learned their business under good conditions." This is of course the ideal of tho system — that those who have been submitted to it should be made good citizens and useful members of society by the training which they under go; and those who ale responsible for the management nre making very creditable efforts to realise that ideal ; but their success is seriously checked by what under existing conditions is justly called by the Minister of Education "the most important and certainly the most difficult" Of the problems to be faced — viz., "that of dealing with that section of the reformatory inmates — both young men and young women — whose dangerously sensual and crimina 1 tendencies hamped the general work of reforming the other inmates.". The capacity, even in ordinary school life, of ono or two boys of strong character or evil disposition to spread moral infection among a 'wide circle of their fellows is so great that it is easy to imagine the gravity of the problem to which tho Minister refers under the more unfavourable conditions of tho industrial school. With no home influences to hold them in check, the moral taint of a few, perhaps in their taee the almost ineradicable result of hereditary weakness, has_ exceptional opportunities of propagating itself; "the mildewed car, blasting its wholesomo brother," may communicate the poison to many of its brothers under such conditions " Happily, ' saya the report, " neither in Burnham nor in To Oranga Homo nro the numbers of such cases larj^-a, although there ore a few in each institution who should be entirely separated from the others — that is to »ay, thnt another grade in the classification scheme should be instituted. To do this, other buildings Hiust bo erected, either as"" separate institutions or as annexes to tho existing schools, but they must be thoroughly isolated." The expense is ono which the colony should not grudge for a moment. Tho Minister makes tho further point that both in the reformatories and the prisons "there ;ire some of theso young people who, cither from marked deficiency or moral obliquity, are impervious to all efforts made on their behalf; and, as tho industrial schools law is at* present, there- k no power to detain inmate* after they reaoh twenty-ono years of ago." Horo also ii a matter "of grave concern," which appears to demand some kind of continuing and indeterminate sentenoo for its remedy*