BORSTAL AS IT MIGHT BE
By MARK BENNEY
ONE day in 1926, when I had just commenced my Borstal sentence, I was called into the housemaster's office and asked what trade I should like to learn. I had no trade of my own, and I was not particularly attracted by any of the trades taught there ; but my best friend in the institu- tion was a fitter, so I answered, " fitting." The housemaster glanced at my record, saw that my I.Q. was up to fitters' requirements, and without further parley pigeon-holed me for the next vacancy in the machine-shop.
It took twelve months to exhaust my interest in the machine- shop. By that time my friend had been discharged ; so I applied to the housemaster for a change of work. After a little grumbling he gave me a. job in the tailor's shop, where I remained for the next three months. By that time it was spring, and as I was then captain of my. house and the housemaster didn't like to refuse me anything, I got a " soft job" in a labouring party. That meant, in practice, that I spent most of my remaining working-hours in Borstal lounging happily on the Portland foreshore, daydreaming of pict- uresque crimes. When at last I was considered fit for dis- charge, I was found a job as cook on a coasting-schooner.
Since then competent literary critics have informed the reading-public that I have some talent for writing. Presum- ably I had at least the rudiments of that talent while I was a Borstal boy ; I know I used to take inordinate pride in the letters I wrote at the time. But Borstal did nothing to develop self-expression in me.
I use this personal history to enforce the fact that between 1926 and 1928 there was very little vocational guidance in the Borstal institutions of those times. Now it may be, of course, that I was a " difficult case " ; it may be that my contemporaries there extracted much more benefit than I from the then available vocational instruction. But, if so, it was mainly by chance. There was certainly no effective vocational guidance. Whether a lad learnt a trade or spent his time reclaiming land depended partly on his own inclina- tions, partly on his housemaster's untrained estimate of his capacities, and partly on the state of the Borstal labour- market. If there wasn't a vacancy in one workshop, then he went into another.
This was a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs in an institution whose principal function it is to provide voca- tional guidance to young delinquents. That the Prison Commission is alive to its dangers is evidenced by the fact that in 1925 the National Institute of Industrial Psychology was approached to make a survey of the Borstal vocational situation. The results of this survey, embodying the fruits of an extensive psychological experiment, are contained in the Report issued this week by the Medical Research Council : A Borstal Experiment in Vocational Guidance.* From a committee which includes such names as Burt, Bartlett and Myers, valuable results may be expected. Un- fortunately, however, the investigator worked under great difficulties. The Intelligence and Vocational Tests had to be carried out at Wormwood Scrubs Prison, which was then the clearing-house where lads were kept whilst being sorted out for the Borstal Institutions proper. Now prison conditions are apt to play havoc with the most balanced minds. Describing the double cell in which the tests were * H.M. Stationery Office. 9d. taken, Mr. Alec Rodger euphemistically writes : " Though it was the best available, it was not, perhaps, ideal for the purpose, for it was bounded on one side by the busy central hall of the building and on the other by a yard in which work was nearly always in progress, and a choice had frequently to be made between disturbing noises and inadequate ventila- tion." Such conditions must obviously exaggerate those temperamental factors which, even at best, render scoring tests unreliable.
Nor was this the only difficulty of the investigator. With only a superficial knowledge of the circumstances of the various Borstal Institutions, the recommendations based on his tests could only be general, while the particular applica- tion of them had to be left to housemasters untrained in vocational guidance. The follow-up reports, which provide the evidence for the success of the experiment, are all written by these untrained housemasters ; the value of the experi-. ment suffers from this.
Within these unfortunate limitations the experiment has_ been well carried out. A captious critic might find fault with the inadequate treatment of temperament. _ One feels that Kretschmer's typology could have been applied here very effectively, and that in any case there should have been some attempt to measure " submissiveness," which plays a great part in Borstal life both inside and outside of the work- shops.
But again these omissions are probably due to the limita- tions set on the investigator. Four hundred lads, chosen at random, were examined and submitted to tests designed to measure intelligence, judgement of shapes, mechanical ability and manual dexterity. Besides this the investigator,. com- bining empirical observation with study of case histories,. gave ratings to temperament factors. Some of the results of these tests have interesting implications. In the conclud- ing remarks, for instance, it is stated that there is no appre- ciable difference between the average level • of abilities of Borstal boys and of those members of the general adolescent population who have attended elementary, schools. This challenges Dr. Burt's conclusions, stated in .The Subnormal Mind, that 28 per cent. of criminals are dull, whereas only to per cent. of the general population can be so described. Again, in this particular test group, the investigator found in some cases that while general intelligence was high, mechanical ability was low. But John W. Cox, in his excellent thesis on Mechanical Aptitude, shows that normally intelligence and mechanical ability are highly correlated. This, discrepancy throws an interesting sidelight on the effects of environment in such tests.
To " control " his experiment the investigator divided his four hundred lads into two groups of 200. In one group, the lads were subject to vocational guidance along the lines of the investigator's recommendations ; the lads of the other group ,were left to run their Borstal sentence without such informed guidance. " Vocational contentment" was the criterion of success. The experiment proved highly successful ; 69.5 per cent. of the investigator's recommenda- tions led to satisfactory results, while in the " control " group, who were allocated to work-parties by the house- masters of their institutions, only 45.6 per cent. did. These figures show plainly that vocational guidance, by trained advisers, will do much to make Borstal Institutions function with success. As the writer of the Report points out " A boy who is vocationally efficient tends not only to be vocationally contented but generally contented." Un- fortunately the range of vocations available in Borstal Institu- tions at present is not wide enough to accommodate the diversity of types. The Report suggests training in sales- manship for lads of a sociable disposition, and clerical training for lads of an intellectual bent. These suggestions are sound, and might be extended to provide for the sensation- and feeling-types with which these institutions abound.
If this Report leads to a systematic undertaking of voca- tional guidance in Borstal Institutions, it will have done invaluable work. But if the Prison Commission is wise it will not rest content with the percentage of success achieved by this experiment. An equally systematic investigation into the use of leisure at Borstal would probably bring the vocational successes up another 20 per cent. For if voca- tional contentment tends to produce general content, the converse is also true ; men cannot be properly adapted to their work while they are maladapted outside it. Almost the only organised _recreation in the institutions at present is sport ; and while that satisfies the desires of the majority, there is still a large minority left unsatisfied. I well remember that at Portland, where on wintry Saturday afternoons the only alternative to football was to walk round a dismal exercise yard, a hundred or so boys would trudge in circles, almost too miserable to speak to each other, for two and a half hours, rather than join in games they hated. There is no earthly reason why Borstal institutions should reproduce, with such extreme fidelity, the worst features of the worst public schools. A resident psychologist, such as this Report advocates, would doubtless change that.
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