MORAL SUASION

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 42, 19 February 1942, Page 9

MORAL SUASION

GIRLS OUT OF HAND

REFORMATORY SCHOOL

(0.C.)

SYDNEY, February 11

When Mr. Cliye Evatt became Minister of Education in the New South Wales Government he tried to dispense with the rod in schools in favour of psychology. He abolished caning, but protests from teachers and some parents caused him to modify the order. In a reformatory for recalcitrant girls at Parramatta, however, he would brook no interference. Backed by a staff of education reformists, in the Child Welfare Department he banned all corporal punishment and sought the "good that is in all of us" among the girls whom parents and Magistrates had despaired of.

At a Christmas function, Mr. Evatt addressed the girls sympathetically, and encouragingly. He told them to look on him as a father and to give expression to their own natures. The girls took him at his word and called him "Daddy." Since then they have expressed their feelings in their own particular way. In one outburst they lbcked themselves in their dormitories, smashed windows, and damaged £100 worth of furniture.

Not long afterwards, nine of them climbed the ivy-covered walls and made for. Sydney, 16 miles distant. It was also alleged, but not confirmed, that they bit the ears of two male attendants.

For the second time in a week, some of them staged a "stay-up" strike oh the roof of the school. Last Wednesday 11 girls, aged from 15 to 18, climbed at the lunch hour on to a low roof by means of a shed and ivy. They remained there for 10 hours, in spite of the orders and pleas of the matron and members of the staff to climb down. The girls laughed and swore, and the commotion they caused disturbed inmates of the Parramatta Mental Hospital, next door.

Police were called to assist the staff, but the girls became more defiant. They pelted those on the ground with silt and rubbish accumulated in the guttering. Finally hoses were played on them, but this did not cool their defiance. Some of them divested portion of their wet clothes. Attempts were made to reach them by a ladder, but each time the rebels threw the ladders to the ground. Shortly after 10 p.m. the girls struck a bargain with their tutors. They agreed to surrender if they were taken to a police station and not kept at the home. This request was granted, and the girls climbed down the ladders.

Seven girls repeated the house-top technique of "self-expression" again yesterday, but hoses were not used to make them see their error. The Director of Child Welfare (Mr. Martin) made an impassioned appeal to them from the ground, and they humbly climbed down.