Pioneer Work with Maladjusted Children

described in this book. In this field there have been a larger number of founders than permanent educational foundations. Dealing with maladjusted children has been a particularly personal matter, undertaken by people with their own therapeutic methods; they have attracted a group of followers, not infrequently exploited them crassly in terms of financial return and hours of work, and evolved methods so unique that they could be transplanted or adapted into other settings only with great difficulty. In the short biographies of these pioneers, Maurice Bridgeland often draws our attention to an unhappy childhood or adolescence. He does this not to suggest that the whole of their activity is a compensation for such experiences, but as a clue to their ability to understand the difficult behaviour of their charges. Officialdom does not appear in a very good light; often it is seen as pulling down the precarious edifice of delicately balanced relationships which is a school, without a sensitive appreciation of what is being attempted; but the Home Office and the Ministry of Education had a heavy responsibility in holding the balance between therapy and exploitation, and in ensuring that the one did not pass over into the other. It is notoriously difficult to appraise the work of contemporaries and a number of those whose work is described such as Otto Shaw and A. S. Neill-are alive