Pride and Beatings Nearly Ruin Boy

Pride and Beatings Nearly Ruin Boy Pupil of Gales Special School Saved From Insanity by Good Care By Thomas R. Henry in the "Washington Star" NOTE — This is the third of a series of articles telling of the remarkable experiment in the redemption of boys who have proved unmanageable in ordinary schools, which is being carried on by the District of Columbia Public School System. Harold D. Fife, the teacher, is a "Mormon" boy. THE home is an extremely vital factor in the molding of child personalities, Harold D. Fife, principal of the Gales Special School, has found in his studies of the children problem in the D. C. school system. The case of James carried him far into the depths of psychic life. James is the oldest of ten children. He lives on the outskirts of the District, about 6 miles from the Gale School. His mother has a Ph. D. degree from one of the great Eastern universities. She speaks fluently six languages. She is a woman of charming personality and selflessly devoted to her children. His father is a watchman — a powerful, domineering, un- gracious personality. He is a product of the hard school of the sea and the docks, the school of fist, club and knotted rope. He believes a father should be the boss in his own home and has no use for any new-fangled notions of rearing children. If they don't behave, he holds, the only thing to do is to beat it out of them. Father Beat Him WHEN James got in trouble with his teachers the father knew how to handle the case. He beat him within an inch of his life. He repeated the treatment again and again. The child's back was covered with livid scars. Instead of reforming, he got worse. He became incorrigible, the teachers said. He was sent to the Gales Special School. Here among strange children he was a still stranger child. Fife could find no point of contact. The boy took no interest in any- thing. He would sit in a corner by himself all day long, refusing to join in the class work or games of the other boys. He insisted he had done nothing to be sent there. When the teacher tried to pat him on the back he ducked. "I ain't done nothing to be hit for," he said

982 IMPROVEMENT ERA Oct.. 19 29 It looked like an incipient case of dementia praecox. The child had three mental breakdowns in the schoolroom — Fife called them "mental breakdowns" for want of a better word. He identified himself with Napoleon. He couldn't be con- vinced he wasn't Napoleon. Once he galloped across the floor on a broomstick for a horse, flourishing a stick for a sword. "Forward, my brave men!" he cried. When the teacher and some of the other pupils grabbed him he fought desperately. He seemed to have an abnormal strength. Never Be Sent to Elba I'LL never be taken alive," he cried. "I'll never be sent to Elba." • Generally he was Napoleon at Elba or St. Helena, not Napoleon the conqueror. These hallucinations were short-lived. After the broomstick incident he came to Fife's desk. "I don't know what happened. My head was gone," he said. A child with such hallucinations naturally is sent to a psy- chiatrist. The phychiatrist was puzzled over James and didn't make definite recommendations. Most of the time the boy seemed normal although far too much given to day-dreaming. He was a worshiper of idols. He lived the lives of his idols, rather than his own life. The father's lashings had driven the poor child out of the real world into this dream world. Yet Fife found, curiously enough, that he couldn't make a contact through the boy's idols. He resisted conditioning on the Napoleon complex. It was impossible to graft upon this an interest in school history, for example. Now it was observed that James never ate lunch with the other boys at the school. During lunch time he always disappeared up the street. He told the other boys he went to get a hot lunch — that he didn't have to eat cold lunches like them. Given No Lunch Money FINALLY the facts came out. James was eating no lunches at all. He was given none to carry to school. He had no money to buy any. He was not even given car fare. Every morning he walked the 6 miles from his home to the school and every evening walked back — very likely to another beating. When Fife charged the boy with not eating any lunches he denied it indignantly. He wasn't poor trash that couldn't afford

Oct.. 1929 PRIDE AND BEATINGS NEARLY RUIN BOY 983 to eat what they wanted, he said. He went to a restaurant and was waited on. He didn't have to put up with cold stuff like these Greek and Dago boys. He came from a home of wealth and luxury. The teacher didn't try to argue him out of this story. Instead, he told some of the other boys about it, in confidence. He asked them to save some of their lunches each day and offer them to James, telling him that they had eaten all they wanted or arousing his curiosity about Greek or Italian food. These boys, good lads at heart even if they were thieves, gun- toters and knife-throwers, were moved by the story and carried out their part of the deception. James merely flew into a rage when the food was offered him. Did they think he would eat such miserable stuff? he asked. Hadn't he just dined on hot roast chicken? They tried to give him car fare. They tried to provide him with an opportunity to earn money. He only flew into ungovernable rages. He retreated further and further from the personality of James into the personality of Napoleon. Great Personal Pride HERE was a beautiful case of an inferiority complex in a child of enormous personal pride. His strange behavior was a com- pensation for the hurt pride which was killing him. There may have been some other element involved, but it was not found. He had an abnormally acute sensitivity to pity or patronage — to any suggestion that he couldn't stand on his own feet. One way to show his superiority was by being bad. Attempted sympathy he interpreted as pity and acted accordingly. After a few visits to the home Fife became convinced that noth- ing could be accomplished without a change of environment — yet, strange to say, he found that the mother, when she was herself, was an almost ideal person to have charge of James. The change of environment must be a change of environment inside the child's own home with its strangely mated couple — the cultured, gentle mother and the crude, bullying father. The trick was turned by Lieut. Mina Van Winkle of the Woman's Bureau. The father had to be locked up for a time before he was willing to admit that what children needed was not lashing and then more lashing — and that any attempt to interfere with a father's licking his son was tyranny. Since that time James has picked up. He is in the second year in junior high school — still a proud, sensitive. Spartan, day-dream- ing child. But he is doing well in his classes. He joins in the

984 IMPROVEMENT ERA o«..i9Z9 sports of his fellows. The obvious symptoms of incipient dementia praecox have disappeared. The future, of course, is another story. But there is every indication that this misunderstood boy who was starving himself because of his pride and going insane in the process has been saved from a life either of lunacy or crime. There may be a great future for an individual who combines so active an imagination with so egoistic a drive and so indomit- able a courage. From the ranks of such are recruited the rulers of the world. The lad had chosen a good idol with which to identify himself. Of just such stuff was the great Napoleon. A Missionary's Prayer 0 Father, as the night draws in And darkness blurs the eve, 1 come to thee on bended knees. Thy counsel to receive. Each day I labor for thee. Lord. I love thy Gospel more: Kind acts of mine redound with love And blessings, o'er and o'er. I thank thee for the Gospel light Thou givest me each day; For strength to serve thee in the field Against proud sin's array. I thank thee for my lineage. My parents, and each friend: For brothers, sisters — and for those Who kind assistance lend. I thank thee for my loving wife — Thy daughter, firm and true; For health and inspiration, and The wish thy will to do. Oh. help me. Father: with thy light. My understanding clear; Show me the way to follow thee In faith, each moment here. Mav all thy servants speak the truth. Nor hide when spoken to; Send forth thy Priesthood's choicest ones — "The laborers are few." And. Father, let thy blessings come To those who stand in need; Let all the world thy Gospel know Through kindly word and deed. Liverpool. England WESTON N NORDGREN