Beat the Sneezers
'CI AN it be,' Barbara Wootton asks in her criticism of the Ingleby Report in our pages this week, 'that the British really hate and fear the young?' By contrast with other nations we certainly give the impression of doing so : disciplining them in ways which might lead, if parents tried it abroad, to a lynching; and exiling them for protracted periods to distant boirding schools; and—most inhumane of all—allowing children of eight to be treated as criminals.
Need this continue? Lady Wootton's plea is that 'the educational world should' be fully equipped to provide the education and discipline required by any normal child.' This in effect is what happens in the case of the children of well- off parents; the school takes care of the disciplin- ary process, at least in term time, and only a tiny minority of persistent offenders in this class ever appear before the courts--usually not until after their schools have expelled them.
The practical difficulties would be very great. But there is no reason why this policy should not be adopted in principle—as an aim; and it is indeed odd that the Ingleby Committee should have preferred to place its reliance on a court system so unsuited to handling children.
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