To The Point

With

Percy

Chatterton

The gang, with engaging frankness, called itself “The Rascals”. Their speciality was petty thieving from parked cars. When they were finally rounded up by the police their ages were found to range from eight to 13.

4 the “South Pacific Post I read: “A 15-year-old girl has been re mded in the custody of a welfare icer in Port Moresby to appear in : Children’s Court on charges of ring stolen some rings from a /eller.”

N is one of a family of six. > parents are squatters in a shanty tlement, sharing a shanty with }ther family. N is a drop-out; it is, he left school before corn ting the primary course. Hi s mces of getting a job were there e fairly slim.

He made his first court appearance the Children’s Court on a stealing rrge. He was admonished and dis rrged. His next appearance was being drunk—probably on the ;gs from other drinkers’ glasses.

He was now over 16, so could no iger be dealt with in the Children’s urt. He went to gaol for a month. 5 next gaol term was six months: im not sure what it was for that ic.

Slext he was up for breaking and ering. This time he was luckier; was put on a bond for five years, months have gone by, and he now > a job behind the counter of a de store. Will he last out the re ining four and a half years, I nder? He is still only 19.

He had a certificate

\ lad from one of the territory’s aller townships came to see me t week. He left his primary school the end of last year, couldn’t get ry to a secondary school, and came Port Moresby to look for a job. ’s still looking. “It used to be y for a boy from standard six to get ob,” he said plaintively, “but now high school boys are getting all jobs”. [n the villages of Papua-New inea, the problem of juvenile de quency is practically non-existent, many villages age-old customs and ictions still regulate behaviour, en where these have broken down,

How can we tackle P-NGs growing teenage problem?

the smallness of the villages means that everyone knows everyone else’s business, so no one can “get away” with anything without detection.

The bright boys from the village school go away to secondary boarding schools, and later get jobs in the Administration or with private enter prise, or perhaps go on to tertiary education. Those who show less promise accept the inevitable, perhaps a bit reluctantly at first, and fit back into the village picture, hunting, fish ing, gardening, perhaps growing cash crops, and soon their years of school ing are a forgotten irrelevance.

Some, alas, not realising the in adequacy of the schooling they have received, drift into the towns in which they have little hope of securing em ployment.

In the towns, the very processes which produce matriculants for entry to university turn out misfits as a by product—and quite a tally of misfits for every tertiary student. In the urban schools the pace is hot, and youngsters who can’t keep up are tossed out before they even reach the top of primary school. Both these, and those who do complete their primary education but fail to qualify to go further, find it even more dif ficult to get jobs as the trickle of leavers from the high schools be comes a spate.

Into the Big Smoke

Then there are the youngsters who started their schooling in the village school, where the pace was leisurely and age-standard norms were not strictly enforced. Dad gets a job in the Big Smoke and the whole family moves into town, only to find that the children can’t gain admission to the

town schools, where the screws are on and age-standard norms are strictly adhered to. They may find them selves too old at 10.

There are the kids who have never been to school at all, or have en gineered themselves out of school by truancy. Nobody knows how many of these there are; but there are certainly more of them than the De partment of Education is willing to admit.

Finally there are, as I have already said, the Dick Whittingtons, who have gone through the village school and heard the seductive bells calling them to an urban affluence which they can never attain. Back in the 1950’s it sometimes came off; but the Whittington days are over now.

No thorough survey of the size of this problem has yet been made, but it is certainly sizeable, and it will certainly snowball during the next few years unless some very rapid ex pansion of secondary industry creates work opportunities which are not now apparent.

It’s mainly a boys’ problem, but not entirely. The problem of the girls is lesser in quantity and more elusive in quality, and tends to be resolved after a few years by marriage, but it is none the less real. When it comes into court, it is generally a matter of rings and other trinkets, or small change left carelessly about.

But mostly it doesn’t come into court at all. After all, it isn’t prostitution or even soliciting when a girl with a taste for the pretty clothes she can’t afford accepts a drive in a car and its sequel. But it can become a habit.

In the villages which Port Moresby is swallowing up, one notices many differences from the old days when

A farm school may be one answer

they were truly rural. Not the least of these differences is the number of elderly couples who are caring for their “educated” daughters’ illegiti mate children. The girls seem to take it for granted that that is what the old folks are there for.

Here then is the raw material for delinquency.

Teenagers who in the villages would fit into the rural economy are washed up jobless on the pavements of the town. Many of them have been born and bred in the town and know no other way of life. What else can they do but take to petty thieving and other forms of juvenile crime?

Sooner or later they are found out, and find themselves in the Children’s Court. Our children’s courts are en lightened and well-conducted. The youngsters get a fair go. But what happens when they are found guilty?

If their offence is not a very serious one, they may be admonished and discharged, or committed to the custody of their parents.

For more serious offences they may be gaoled though this doesn’t often happen. They may be fined, which means that dad pays the fine and they are free to start again.

They may be caned. This easy way out (for the magistrate) is less used than it was, which is a good thing.

I am not one of those who object on principle to corporal punishment, but it is difficult to see what good it can do to cane a jobless young delinquent and then throw him again on to the jobless streets.

They may be placed in the custody of the Director of Child Welfare, and we are fortunate in having as Director of Child Welfare a most humane and understanding man. But what can he do with his youthful charges?

There is as yet no institution specialising in this field, and no Ad ministration institution, except for the gaols, dealing with it at all. So he has to go cap in hand round the missions trying to find a mission in stitution which will take them.

The missions are co-operative enough, but they have their problems, too—for example, to what extent are they justified in mixing in young delinquents with children whose parents have entrusted them to the mission’s care and perhaps are paying to keep them there?

Moreover, most of these institu tions, though they may be located in rural areas, are boarding schools geared to the standard course of academic schooling. So the young

delinquent, though he may have benefited by the kindness with which he has been treated and the moral and religious influences brought to bear on him (and these are no small things), may nevertheless emerge little more competent to earn his liv ing in a competitive world than he was before.

True, the number of young people involved is not yet great—only about 150 a year for all the territory’s towns. But this may not tell the whole stoiy. The Child Welfare Council, in its latest annual report, surmises that “the current situation may well reflect a reluctance on the part of police officers to charge young offenders”.

Be that as it may, it seems clear that sooner or later the build-up of unemployed teenagers in the town, whether they be actual or merely potential delinquents, will have to be tackled by some plan for re-educating and re-orientating them to fit them for the rural life which some of them have never known and others have learned to despise.

Percentiles?

One way in which this could be tackled would be by the establishment of a farm school, conducted either by the Administration or by a mission or other voluntary agency subsidised for the purpose by the Administra tion. Such a school would provide for the compulsory enrolment of teen agers committed to its care by a Children’s Court or by the Director of Child Welfare, and for the voluntary enrolment of school drop outs and leavers who find that they can’t get jobs in town.

At the start there would no doubt be reluctance on the part of the latter group to enrol; but if the setting and life of the school were attractive enough this reluctance might be over come.

Such a school would have to have a flexible programme unhampered by red tape, and an entrance standard which recognised no qualification but human need. Syllabuses prescribed by Konedobu would be taboo. Per centiles, too.

Until recently I didn’t know what a percentile was. They didn’t have them at the school I went to. Then one day a lad came to see me from a village I used to know very well indeed. He had completed his primary education in his village school and had come to town with a certificate in his little hot hand. This certificate

he had toted round the high schoo] and technical schools of the Bi Smoke and he had been turned awa from every door.

Then, knowing he could pour oi his troubles to me in his place-tall he came to see me. One look at hi certificate told me what the troubl was. (When I was a kid I used t get a belting for failing my exam: but in P-NG they give you certificate, which is what he had).

Anyway, I took the lad along t the nearest Boys’ Vocational Schoo These are what we used to cai Junior Techs, but they’ve been give: a new look, and I was under the im pression that they had been tailore to give drop-outs another chance The teacher in charge was a nic bloke. “Yes”, he said, “I’ve still go a few vacancies, but I can’t take hir unless the District Inspector gives th okay.”

So I went to see the District In spector. He scanned the profferei certificate without enthusiasm. “Mus look up his percentile,” he said, tak ing out a flat file. A few minute later he looked up. “I couldn’ possibly let him be enrolled,” he sai< firmly. “His percentile is too low”.

I crept out. I didn’t want him t< find out that I didn’t know what ; percentile was. Since then I havi tried to find out.

Rat-race mentality

I’m not sure that I’ve got it righ yet, but if I have, the difference be tween a percentage and a percentih is that a percentage tells you hov well (or badly) you have done in ai examination, while a percentile tell: you how much better (or worse) youi fellow examinees have done.

A typical product of our century’: rat-race mentality. These nasty little things must not be allowed in m) proposed farm school.

Of course, there will be nc gurantee that the young folk whe go through this school will take up a rural way of life and not drift back to the bright lights. The most we can do is to be organised to help them settle on the land if they want to.

To carry out such a scheme will cost a lot of money now, money hard to come by in a country obsessed with the primacy of economic develop ment. But at least some of these young people would become assets to the country’s economy.

To do nothing about it will cost a lot of money, too—in 10 or 15 years’ time. And it will be money poured down the drain; because it will be money spent in maintaining habitual criminals in our gaols.