KINDLY METHODS FAIL

Timaru Herald, Volume CLI, Issue 22203, 21 February 1942, Page 6

KINDLY METHODS FAIL

Girls At Institution “Stay-up” Strike On Roof When Mr Clive 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 parents caused him to modify the order. But in a reformatory for recalcitrant girls at Parramatta, 16 miles from Sydney, he would brook no Interference. Backed by a staff of education reformers in the Child Welfare Department, he banned all corporal punishment and sought the “good that is in all of us” among the girls of whoin parents and magistrates had despaired. 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 cne outburst they locked themselves in their dormitories, smashed window’s and damaged £lOO worth of furniture. Not long afterward, nine of them climbed the ivy-covered walls and made for the city. 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-in strike on 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 Bargain Struck 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 before 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 trom the ground, and they humbly climbed down.