Are
approved schools the answer?
truant from school to visit cafes. Then she away with a married man. Carol refused to go to school after failing an examination. She started taking 'purple hearts and slipped out at night to visit London with parties of boys. Daily Mail columnist Monica Furlong went to see the girls parents. Now she asks
Jenny played ran
whether the decision to send the
school
was
girls
to an
the best that could be done to
approved
help
them.
her
happy' which made them feel guilty, though 'Really that's what we had always tried to do'. The girl's headmistress was not very sympathetic and was obviously worried about the effects of scandal on her
Mr. Adams showed me the photograph of Jenny, an extremely pretty sixteen-year-old. She had always been pretty?an enchanting baby with curls and lovely eyes, a graceful schoolgirl who would have caught one's eye in any crowd. 'Perhaps that was part
school. She concealed for
a
time the fact that Jenny
of the trouble,' said her mother. had always been stubborn, and very lively, unlike an older sister who was placid and law-abiding. She had also had a fierce sympathy for the underdog, and when she became friends with a girl whom both parents and teachers disliked, no amount of persuasion could make her give up the friendship. With her new friend she went to a lorry-drivers' cafe on a big, main road and started to pick up men. She ran away to Southend with a married man, but gave herself up at the police station after a few days, asking them to telephone her family. She was to repeat the running-away three times, each time giving as her explanation that her feelings welled up inside her and she couldn't stand it. On other occasions she would go out and walk for hours on end, staying out alone or with her dog for most of the night, too agitated to return or to try to explain. Afterwards she could only say that she had been unhappy, whether because of her parents or not she couldn't or wouldn't say. 'You wouldn't
Jenny
understand.' Her boy friends tended to have bad records. 'She always seems to take to anyone who has been in trouble.'
Comforting and supporting problem the Adamses say that they felt different people pulled different ways. The police were comforting and supporting, partly because they had had so much experience of this sort
Of this stage of their
of situation and made the Adamses feel less alone with it. They urged the parents to bring their daughter to court after the third episode of running away. The
child
guidance people
wanted to go
on
helping Jenny
themselves. A psychiatrist in Harley Street whom the parents consulted told them to 'Go home and make 12
Drawing by by Kinsey Anthony Kinscy had been playing truant in the afternoons, and it was therefore longer before Jenny's parents discovered that their daughter was visiting cafes. Looking back on this period, Jenny's parents remember that Jenny seemed indifferent to the boys and men she was seeing; they did not seem real to her as persons. As a child she had been shy and awkward with strangers and as a little girl she would have nothing to do with boys. Her escapades had nothing to do with love?the men concerned were simply accessories to her desperation.
1
Separation
and
adoption
After she went to the approved school, she broke out twice, but gradually felt that she was offered no alternative but to put up with its discipline. She resented the sense of being locked up and, to begin with, was bitterly angry with her parents for forcing this situation upon her, though she has since said that she does not see how they could have put up with the uncertainty, the worry, the rows, of her disappearances. She remembers that she needed help, and knows that no other kind was actually available. But she, and her parents, worry about the future. Her parents told friends that she had gone to a boarding school, but the news of what had happened to her leaked out in her old school and she was profoundly distressed when she discovered this. In the respectable suburb where the family lives she feels that she will
be whispered about, noticed, perhaps rejected.
No warning of trouble Carol, another pupil of the same approved school, was brought up in a small country town, and did very well academically at the local grammar school Until she was sixteen. She had always shone in everything she had undertaken. She is an only child, adopted, and much treasured by her adoptive parents. She was a pliant, obedient little girl, and there seemed no warning of trouble until suddenly problems seemed to crop up in all directions at once. First she failed a music examination by a few points, and as a result seemed to suffer a total collapse of confidence ?ut of all apparent proportion to the event itself. She began to refuse to go to school, even to get out of bed. Puzzled by a strangely glassy-eyed look they began to notice in her, Carol's parents discovered that she Was taking 'purple hearts', though they could not
niake
out where she obtained them.
The family doctor,
who took
a
sympathetic
interest
in Carol's case, discovered that she had been trying to discover the whereabouts of her natural mother,
^hen, however, her adoptive parents spoke to her about this, and offered to help in the search, Carol backed
out and said that she could not bear to know.
To their requests that she should try to tell them how she felt and what made her so unhappy she would ?nly reply, 'I can't talk to you. It would hurt you.' The parents finally became desperate when they discovered that Carol was climbing out of her window at night and cars. Asked,
going to London with parties of boys in nowadays, about these boys she says: They were horrible. I could never have brought them home. You'd have hated them.' The child guidance clinic tried to help with Carol, but in the end, as with Jenny's parents, it was the police who became the
helpers
and arbiters in
a
desperate situation.
(n the approved school Carol also bitterly resents feeling
'locked up'. Physically and mentally she is more like her old self, though she still has not the confidence to take GCE examinations which are well Within her mental capacity. She, too, is worried about lhe future, and the feeling that 'everybody knows'.
She and her mother feel that the school is the 'best available', but her mother feels that there was just not enough help available when Carol first showed symptoms of distress, and before the situation became disastrous.
Daemon of adolescence No
quick conclusions are to be drawn about these girls or their families, except that all the actors in the two dramas seemed to have suddenly found themselves driven by an unknown and unexpected
two
Separation
and
adoption
force?a kind of destructive daemon of adolescence.
Everyone concerned seemed bewildered, open to ideas and help, eager to understand. The usual psychological explanations of motive did not seem to me to be adequate. And the discipline of the approved school, while undoubtedly helping by giving temporary stability, seems logical only for that reason. Apart from keeping them under a roof, it is not easy to see how it will meet the total desperation of the girls, unless removing them from, in each case, sympathetic home environments, is enough to achieve this in itself, or unless schools are extraordinarily successful in building a powerful community sense, in which psychiatric treatment makes more sense that it does to individuals who feel isolated. There is also, of course, the separate question of social disgrace and of how far this, in itself, is likely to be destructive for girls at a most vulnerable stage of
development. Perhaps the approved school system was originally built on the assumption that the children come from bad homes and need to be removed from them to acquire new habits. But is this still necessarily the case? And when it isn't, are residential schools necessarily the answer?
approved schools the answer?
truant from school to visit cafes. Then she away with a married man. Carol refused to go to school after failing an examination. She started taking 'purple hearts and slipped out at night to visit London with parties of boys. Daily Mail columnist Monica Furlong went to see the girls parents. Now she asks
Jenny played ran
whether the decision to send the
school
was
girls
to an
the best that could be done to
approved
help
them.
her
happy' which made them feel guilty, though 'Really that's what we had always tried to do'. The girl's headmistress was not very sympathetic and was obviously worried about the effects of scandal on her
Mr. Adams showed me the photograph of Jenny, an extremely pretty sixteen-year-old. She had always been pretty?an enchanting baby with curls and lovely eyes, a graceful schoolgirl who would have caught one's eye in any crowd. 'Perhaps that was part
school. She concealed for
a
time the fact that Jenny
of the trouble,' said her mother. had always been stubborn, and very lively, unlike an older sister who was placid and law-abiding. She had also had a fierce sympathy for the underdog, and when she became friends with a girl whom both parents and teachers disliked, no amount of persuasion could make her give up the friendship. With her new friend she went to a lorry-drivers' cafe on a big, main road and started to pick up men. She ran away to Southend with a married man, but gave herself up at the police station after a few days, asking them to telephone her family. She was to repeat the running-away three times, each time giving as her explanation that her feelings welled up inside her and she couldn't stand it. On other occasions she would go out and walk for hours on end, staying out alone or with her dog for most of the night, too agitated to return or to try to explain. Afterwards she could only say that she had been unhappy, whether because of her parents or not she couldn't or wouldn't say. 'You wouldn't
Jenny
understand.' Her boy friends tended to have bad records. 'She always seems to take to anyone who has been in trouble.'
Comforting and supporting problem the Adamses say that they felt different people pulled different ways. The police were comforting and supporting, partly because they had had so much experience of this sort
Of this stage of their
of situation and made the Adamses feel less alone with it. They urged the parents to bring their daughter to court after the third episode of running away. The
child
guidance people
wanted to go
on
helping Jenny
themselves. A psychiatrist in Harley Street whom the parents consulted told them to 'Go home and make 12
Drawing by by Kinsey Anthony Kinscy had been playing truant in the afternoons, and it was therefore longer before Jenny's parents discovered that their daughter was visiting cafes. Looking back on this period, Jenny's parents remember that Jenny seemed indifferent to the boys and men she was seeing; they did not seem real to her as persons. As a child she had been shy and awkward with strangers and as a little girl she would have nothing to do with boys. Her escapades had nothing to do with love?the men concerned were simply accessories to her desperation.
1
Separation
and
adoption
After she went to the approved school, she broke out twice, but gradually felt that she was offered no alternative but to put up with its discipline. She resented the sense of being locked up and, to begin with, was bitterly angry with her parents for forcing this situation upon her, though she has since said that she does not see how they could have put up with the uncertainty, the worry, the rows, of her disappearances. She remembers that she needed help, and knows that no other kind was actually available. But she, and her parents, worry about the future. Her parents told friends that she had gone to a boarding school, but the news of what had happened to her leaked out in her old school and she was profoundly distressed when she discovered this. In the respectable suburb where the family lives she feels that she will
be whispered about, noticed, perhaps rejected.
No warning of trouble Carol, another pupil of the same approved school, was brought up in a small country town, and did very well academically at the local grammar school Until she was sixteen. She had always shone in everything she had undertaken. She is an only child, adopted, and much treasured by her adoptive parents. She was a pliant, obedient little girl, and there seemed no warning of trouble until suddenly problems seemed to crop up in all directions at once. First she failed a music examination by a few points, and as a result seemed to suffer a total collapse of confidence ?ut of all apparent proportion to the event itself. She began to refuse to go to school, even to get out of bed. Puzzled by a strangely glassy-eyed look they began to notice in her, Carol's parents discovered that she Was taking 'purple hearts', though they could not
niake
out where she obtained them.
The family doctor,
who took
a
sympathetic
interest
in Carol's case, discovered that she had been trying to discover the whereabouts of her natural mother,
^hen, however, her adoptive parents spoke to her about this, and offered to help in the search, Carol backed
out and said that she could not bear to know.
To their requests that she should try to tell them how she felt and what made her so unhappy she would ?nly reply, 'I can't talk to you. It would hurt you.' The parents finally became desperate when they discovered that Carol was climbing out of her window at night and cars. Asked,
going to London with parties of boys in nowadays, about these boys she says: They were horrible. I could never have brought them home. You'd have hated them.' The child guidance clinic tried to help with Carol, but in the end, as with Jenny's parents, it was the police who became the
helpers
and arbiters in
a
desperate situation.
(n the approved school Carol also bitterly resents feeling
'locked up'. Physically and mentally she is more like her old self, though she still has not the confidence to take GCE examinations which are well Within her mental capacity. She, too, is worried about lhe future, and the feeling that 'everybody knows'.
She and her mother feel that the school is the 'best available', but her mother feels that there was just not enough help available when Carol first showed symptoms of distress, and before the situation became disastrous.
Daemon of adolescence No
quick conclusions are to be drawn about these girls or their families, except that all the actors in the two dramas seemed to have suddenly found themselves driven by an unknown and unexpected
two
Separation
and
adoption
force?a kind of destructive daemon of adolescence.
Everyone concerned seemed bewildered, open to ideas and help, eager to understand. The usual psychological explanations of motive did not seem to me to be adequate. And the discipline of the approved school, while undoubtedly helping by giving temporary stability, seems logical only for that reason. Apart from keeping them under a roof, it is not easy to see how it will meet the total desperation of the girls, unless removing them from, in each case, sympathetic home environments, is enough to achieve this in itself, or unless schools are extraordinarily successful in building a powerful community sense, in which psychiatric treatment makes more sense that it does to individuals who feel isolated. There is also, of course, the separate question of social disgrace and of how far this, in itself, is likely to be destructive for girls at a most vulnerable stage of
development. Perhaps the approved school system was originally built on the assumption that the children come from bad homes and need to be removed from them to acquire new habits. But is this still necessarily the case? And when it isn't, are residential schools necessarily the answer?
