Boys in Trouble
- Type:
Book Reviews & Abstracts
- Author:
Wormwood Scrubs
A study of Adolescent Crime and Its Treatment. L. Le Mesurier. With an Introduction by Alexander Pater- son, H.M. Commissioner of Prisons. John Murray. 284 p. 6/-. 1931.
This book has been written by the Leader of the Women Workers at the Boys’ Prison, Wormwood Scrubs, who for eight years have helped to secure better classificataion of b?ys awaiting trial, by interviewing the lads, visiting their homes and parents and provid- lng the Medical Officer with full reports on the social environment which has played its part Producing the anti-social acts. Thus Mrs. e Mesurier’s opinions have the weight of ex- perience and first-hand personal knowledge of some thousands of ” boys in trouble,” and in the words of Mr. Alexander Paterson, she has earned the right to write.” She has also Cai’ned the right to be read, and those who are concerned to improve our methods of dealing ^lth juvenile and adolescent crime, would do ^’ell not on]y tQ rea(| ]ier book themselves, ?>ut to do their utmost to persuade others, mag- istrates, M.P.’s, and the ordinary undis- lnguished public which in the long run is ^sponsible for our prisons and penal system, J^ead it too.
Pii exPei”t maY find nothing new in these cSes. ^ As the author points out, they were written for him. They were written to rn^SUa^e man *n ^ie s^reet that the treat- th f b?y ?ffenc^er is his responsibility, out Sannot fulfil that responsibility with- of Pr?viding for investigation into the cause inr:fa^ boy’s crime and the best way of help- cuts toto make good. There are no short re *? good citizenship and no one specific H y for delinquency. The unhurrying tion t scientist, patient study, devo- aPt)V ^ and respect for facts, must be consr? thousands of cases which distr 1 Prob^em- The man in the street the 1 h tl?e. man of science, especially when in c]-a ter joiiis forces with the humanitarian the nScrec^ting the old superstitious belief in The ?^er punishment to make folk good. sU?arSClej?^c P^l must be coated with the? Mesnrj ” common sense,” and Mrs. Le first b Cri c^one the great service of shewing y her works, and then by her words, that the new way with crime, that of individ- ual study and individual training”, is also the way of common-sense..
Her gospel is contained in this book, where she gives briefly but incisively a review of some of the causes of delinquency, with illus- trations from cases she has known. She surveys the various methods of dealing with the boy offender, and suggests alternatives and re- forms. Prison is wholly bad and must go;, whipping stands condemned, not on senti- mental grounds, but because experience shews it does more harm than good; fines are rarely suitable, either ther are too light to be effec- tive or too heavy to be paid; probation, one of the best methods, needs a better staff chosen without regard to the religious creed of the candidate; Borstal needs more accommodation and more variety of training.
Despite her semi-official position, Mrs. Le Mesurier speaks with a candour for which reformers owe a debt of gratitude, not only to her, but to the Prison Commission who have given her this freedom. When public opinion in England comes abreast of official opinion, imprisonment for boys and girls under 21, and many other evils, will disappear from our penal system, and the examination and classi- fication of young offenders will be carried out far away from the vitiated atmosphere of a prison.
Mrs. Le Mesurier’s book should do much to hasten that day, and to persuade the public to carry on with better equipment and on a larger scale the work in which she and her colleagues have been the pioneers.
The book is well constructed, vigorously written and adequately indexed. There is a Bibliography too short to be of great value, and it includes a mythical work ” Probation,” by Mr. Clarke Hall?presumably a mistake for his ” Children’s Courts.” This must be cor- rected in the second edition, which ought to be called for very soon.
C.M.C. CrENETic Studies oe Genius. Edited by Lewis M. Terman, Vol. Ill, The Promise of Youth. Follow up studies of a thousand gifted children. Harrap, 1930. pp. X, TV, and 508. 21/- net.
Ten years ago Professor Terman and a group of co-workers set on foot an investigation on a large scale. Interesting and valuable enough as it was to begin with, it bids fair to become more and more interesting and valuable as time goes on. For it is designed to trace the development of genius and is intended to cover a whole generation.
It began in 1921-22, when a selection was made of 1,400 ” gifted ” children in the State of California. They were selected on the basis of their achievement in the Stanford Revision of the Binet Tests. All those whose intelli- gence quotient (I.Q.) reached 140 or over?all those, that is, who at the age of 10 were at least four years in advance of the normal? were included in the experimental group.
The results of this original survey were pub- lished in Vol. I of Genetic Studies of Genius in 1926. Side by side with this was issued Vol. II of the same series, which dealt with the same problem from a different angle. In- stead of starting with the gifted child and see- ing what would become of him when he grew up (the object of the main investigation) the author started with the adult who was recog- nised by the world as a genius, and studied his childhood. And by applying modern methods of estimating the I.Q. to the early records of his life, the author was able to com- pare the beginning of his career with the end, and to relate his early promise to the early promise of the thousand odd new cases under scrutiny. The conclusion was that ” the extraordinary genius who achieves the highest eminence is also the gifted individual whom intelligence tests may discover in childhood. The converse of this proposition is yet to be proved.”
It is the converse of this proposition that is now on trial. As many as possible of the 1,400 gifted children were re-examined in 1927-28 with a view to finding answers to these among other questions; (1) How does the mental ability of these children hold up on the average? (2) How many of the children later show radical changes in intelligence rating, either positive or negative? (3) How do the sexes differ with respect to (1) and (2) ? The most important single outcome of the follow-up investigation is the abundant and conclusive evidence that for the group as a whole the picture did not greatly change in the period that elapsed between the two en- quiries. Generally speaking, the children retained not only their supernorinality but the same degree of supernorinality?generally speaking; for there were exceptions. Some went up and some went down; but more went down than went up. It cannot be said with positive certainty that the I.Q. of any given child will remain constant. The next thing that can be said is that it tends to remain con- stant. This inquiry indeed definitely estab- lishes the fact that there sometimes occur gen- uine changes in the rate of intellectual growth which cannot be accounted for on the basis of general health, educational opportunity, or other environmental influence. When we con- sider the evidence from all sources, not only from intelligence tests but also from achieve- ment tests, school marks and so forth, we find that the level of the boys tends to be main- tained, while the level of the girls tends to go down. In other words, the boys fulfil their early promise more steadily than the girls. It must be borne in mind that the aver- age age of the experimental group was, at the time of the second enquiry, only sixteen. Yet ever so many of them have already attained distinction. One has taken rank as one of the outstanding musical composers and musical theorists of America. At least half-a-dozen have produced literary juvenilea comparable to the best produced by eminent authors at a corresponding age. Three or four have shown unusual promise in art; and a surprisingly large number have evidenced exceptional ability in science.
Highly interesting results were obtained from a separate inquiry into special abilities. Great pains were taken in 1921-22 to track down all children who showed evidence of outstanding talent in drawing, painting and music. Those who obtained an I.Q. of 140 or above were admitted to the Regular group! those of lower I.Q. were classed in the Special Ability group. The special ability children h1 the Regular group retained their specif ability. The other special ability children did not?not at any rate to anything like the same degree. It seems to point out that a narrow vein of genius in the young, unless backed by a good fund of general intelligence, is liable to peter out.” It is cases of this kind that giye colour to the popular opinion that genius h] the young is nothing but a ” flash in the pan.” Many other popular conceptions have been shattered by this series of studies. It is clearly shown that the notion of the child of genius as weakly, neurotic, and unstable is wholly un’ founded. He is generally a happy, healthy and jolly little fellow. Taken as a group, the gifted children are distinctly better than the generality of children in health and physique, and tend to remain so.
Among the characteristics of gifted children ^’hich are delineated in these volumes and v*’hich may be regarded as definitely proved, the following are the most noteworthy. They conie from good family stocks, stocks, how- cyer, which have greatly decreased in fecun- ‘ty during the last two generations and have now reached a point where they are not main- aining themselves. Gifted children have, as a rule, gifted brothers and sisters. They are rarely difficult children; they do not stand i0?f from their school companions; they show n? lack of social adaptability. In fact in gen- ial character and amiability they stand above ? . average of the school population. They J0ln heartily in the school sports. Gifted boys s?nietimes show traces of feminity, but not; niore so than unselected boys of the same age. le girls, on the other hand, deviate signifi- cantly from the norm of their sex in the lrection of greater masculinity; there is an . ysual proportion of tom-boys among gifted eh u ? school progress the typically gifted ^ ^ accelerated by 14% of his age, but in . e actual mastery of the school subjects (as bv?-n by achievement tests), he is accelerated hi S?re ^lan ^0% of his age. Subject failures en high school are practically never! in- rred by children of this grade of intelligence. anrl”e ^lan ^0% ?f the gifted boys in America, coll !!10re than $0% the gifted girls, go to “ge, most of them remaining to graduate. P.B.B.
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