Volunteer Opportunities - Extend your horizons and gain new skills while helping our work to grow

Keep up to date with the Archive and Study Centre News Blog

People and Places

Bill Malcom
and
Childscourt

Reprinted by the kind permission of Maurice Bridgeland from his PIONEER WORK WITH MALADJUSTED CHILDREN, Staples Press (London), 1971, pp. 209-216.

The career of Bill Malcolm is, to some extent, typical. Through it we can see a development from pre-war models and the pre-war pattern of the dominant individual moulding an environment pragmatically; through the testing time of war towards attempts at conceptualization; and ultimately, perhaps, to a sort of isolation as treatment became more systematized and organization was centralized.

Childscourt by John Coleman, Malcolm's biographer, although, like Burn's account of Lyward's work, unfailingly panegyric, gives a picture of a human being, often changeable and inconsistent, grappling with real problems with the power of conviction and in the light of insight. The interest lies not in a method, for there appears little capable of conceptualization, but in the way in which Malcolm's career highlights the difficulties of this transitional period.

In some ways Malcolm resembles Neill, his early mentor, in his dogmatism and in the way in which he constantly re-fights the battles of his youth, some of which have already been won. Even Coleman admits that Malcolm's early experiences in an unimaginative and tough Derbyshire council school `left an image of what he is inclined to imagine all other schools are like today'. His apprenticeship in `toughness' was continued during the depression when he emigrated to Australia for twelve years' experience on sheep stations and in the Sydney Sailors' Home.

Friends helped him to rethink his moral attitudes and he returned to Cornwall where, at the beginning of the war, he had his first successful contact with difficult evacuees in his own home. His interest in problem children grew after a period of work at Summerhill (then evacuated to Wales) in which he was introduced to ideas of freedom, self-government and child-centred education which, from this time onwards, seem to have fought a running battle with his personality.

His management of the Bryn Conway hostel, of which he became warden in 1942, is fairly typical. Initially a `self-governing structure' was used as an instrument by which Malcolm, as chairman, could gain support for his authority, which was directed mainly towards the breaking down of gangs and power-seeking individuals, but gradually the children felt sufficiently secure to form an effective law-making and law-enforcing body meeting weekly to discuss the condition and structure of the hostel, the social behaviour both of children and staff and the use of the school fund (all personal money was pooled).

This appears to have had a good effect on the social and emotional adjustment of the children and a report by Dr D. E. Parry-Pritchard, the medical officer of health, on thirty-one very disturbed children who passed through the hostel indicates that of sixteen who were `beyond control' all made satisfactory adjustment to hostel, school, home or work; of seven who were incontinent five became continent, and, of the whole thirty-one, whose conditions on admission varied from `nervous instability' to epilepsy, only seven appear not to have progressed successfully in the years immediately following their stay in Bryn Conway and, of these, two were there while awaiting placement at an approved school, to which they went subsequently, one was transferred to an epileptic school and two absconded from the hostel after the Malcolms left.(19)

Interest in Bill Malcolm's success grew and he was asked to take over the Regional Evacuation Hostel at Penybrin which was for the most difficult evacuees in the six counties of North Wales. With the assistance of a nucleus of staff and children from Bryn Conway he instituted the same regime at Penybrin. Most of the children were extremely socially deprived, emotionally disturbed and frequently delinquent. The hostel was unpopular in the area and the children scarcely popular in the local schools which they attended.

In 1945, however, it was possible for the clerk to the Gwyrfai R.D.C. to write: `The hostel has become a happy home and we have had no trouble with any of the children.'(20) The children appeared to progress very well at the local schools and to profit by a great freedom to use the facilities which the countryside offered for play and adventure. It is interesting to note that as the home became more established hostel meetings and children's tribunals were gradually replaced by a more family-based principle of community interest. This may have been partly Malcolm's need for a more realistic paternal role but it is, in fact, interesting to speculate how far the machinery of `shared responsibility', in a small community, hinders the development of family relationships, and how much more fundamental the latter are in residential establishments for socially and emotionally deprived children, whose primary need is a strong affective relationship with someone who is not only adult but is perceived to be playing an adult role. This may have been particularly true during, and immediately after, the war when many children clearly suffered from the absence of any effective father-figure. At Penybrin, Malcolm offered the `ordered freedom' of a good and liberal family in which, while decisions were based on the discussion of individual needs, there was no doubt where the ultimate security rested.

To the very disturbed children with whom he came into contact Malcolm offered a sympathetic home and his own insight and intuition which was his greatest strength, although perhaps at times relied on too implicitly. A good example of his approach at its best is given in a welfare worker's account of Malcolm's treatment of a boy who had been sent to him by a local hospital after the boy had threatened the staff with a carving knife : The boy `was an uncouth lad hating everything and everybody'. His first action was to smash half a dozen windows and flatten a fireguard. Malcolm was patient and tolerant but

Malcolm's success in the comparatively limited hostel situation, both at Penybrin and after the war in a hostel for difficult delinquent boys at Maidenhead, brought him to the notice of Dr Marjorie Franklin and Children's Social Adjustment Limited who, in 1948, were endeavouring to found a school, Arlesford Place, on `planned environmental therapy' lines (see Chapter 15). This conjunction of the pragmatic exponent of environmental therapy and the person most concerned with giving it a sound theoretical base seemed auspicious but proved fatal. Malcolm had no place in his scheme of things for psychological theorists, psychoanalytical interpretations or psychotherapeutic `interference'. Dr Franklin was endeavouring to meet the criticism that had been levelled at earlier experiments, that they lacked a sound theoretical justification by conducting `on-going' research, was herself of a Freudian persuasion and, as honorary psychiatrist, believed that psychotherapy was necessary for cure. The latter was also chairman of the management committee, which body had more members than it was intended there should be children in the school. At no point was there any fundamental agreement on policy. While Malcolm considered, as did Dr Fitch, that `maladjusted' children were mainly normal children reacting to abnormal conditions, the psychiatrically orientated committee frequently sent him extremely emotionally disturbed children whom he admitted that he could neither understand nor treat.

When, in pursuit of their own expressed treatment policies, the committee encouraged psychiatric intervention and the appointment of psychologically trained staff Malcolm saw his authority threatened and his concept of a normal community centred round a normal school damaged. Inevitably, in this situation, the psychiatrists' visits were followed not only by what might be seen as therapeutically desirable regression of individuals but a regression in the life of the community. While Malcolm legitimately saw himself as able to do normal, if difficult, work with normal, if difficult, children, the managers, equally legitimately, saw the school as one in which specialized techniques were used to treat `special' children.

At no point does there appear to have been a meeting of minds. Even `environmental therapy' in its narrowest sense was an area of conflict. While the committee, still thinking to some extent in Q Camp terms, believed in the therapeutic value of the children converting impoverished surroundings to their own use, Malcolm believed in the importance of introducing a sense of luxury and superiority into the surroundings so that no child or parent should think of the school as inferior to others.

Again, while both sides believed in the value of `shared responsibility', neither was really consistent in its use. The committee represented an authority which could radically affect the life of the community while not being responsible to it, the will of the school was, in the context, necessarily subordinate to the needs of psychotherapy, and Malcolm appears also to have continued his own inner struggle. He was always alert to threats which individuals or groups posed to the authority of the community. These he opposed with his own authority (ostensibly in the name of the community), sometimes by displays of force.

An example of this occurred when Malcolm returned to Arlesford Place after he had resigned in 1951 and had then been recalled when the school dissolved into chaos. Four large boys, accepted in his absence, challenged his authority by insisting on going out. `In an instant Bill saw what they were doing and instinctively felt that the one thing they must not do on that afternoon was to go out. They were intent on attack. Bill attacked first and before they had time to think what was happening he'd knocked their spokesman flat on the ground. "What are you going to do about your bloody friend?" he asked in the same tone of voice as that in which they'd announced their intentions for the afternoon. "There are odd occasions when you have to step out of line and act against all your principles and if you don't all your work will be destroyed," said Bill afterwards. In his opinion that occasion was one of them and in fact it was mainly a matter of self-defence. "They were big, powerful boys intent on destroying me and the school. For a moment I felt like a cornered fox taking the only way out."(22)

Such behaviour earned Malcolm the reputation of a `muscle man' but, while opposing corporal punishment and retaining his pacifist views he rationalized these actions as the need to `forcibly restrain badly disturbed children, who are in a primitive state of hate against the whole world and beyond reason, from being cruel to each other, or to animals, or interfering malignantly in the peaceful pastimes of their companions'.

With such an approach to the establishment of the security of the community and to the treatment of the most disturbed members in it, it is not surprising that Malcolm did not co-operate with psychiatrists of an analytical persuasion nor welcome the intervention of psychologically orientated staff and observers.

The failure of Arlesford should not obscure either the important principles involved in the unfortunate but inevitable conflict or the value of much of the work which was done. Considering that his role was mainly to help deprived children weather the normal storms and stresses of growing up, Malcolm continued to put his faith in the structure of `shared responsibility', community life, in freedom from unnecessary social or moral pressures and in a wide and sympathetic tolerance-once described by a B.B.C. reporter as 'Christ-like'.

In school work, in which he battled constantly against that lack of concentration which is the maladjusted child's chief educational handicap, he demonstrated his belief that `get rid of the pressures, and many of the standards which to them are meaningless and 90 per cent of them improve automatically'. He believed that in a free environment most of the children could `cure themselves' with the support of other children. Mental health and educational progress would come largely by expecting it. In his discussions with children and with parents he stressed reality - the real capacity of the children, the real demands of society, so that the child's expectations on leaving Arlesford were not inflated by a feeling that since he was `special' a `special' position awaited him.

In 1960, Malcolm gave up the struggle at Arlesford, which closed shortly afterwards and, with the support of friends and admirers of his work, set up his own school - Childscourt - at Long Bredy in Dorset, moving to Lettiford House near Wincanton in 1963. His work here, in moulding the sort of community he desired, is not properly within the scope of this study but may be mentioned briefly as illustrative of the personality of an early worker in this field, who, like many others, was the centre of controversy, convinced of his own rightness but often inconsistent, developing round himself an extended family to whom he was at the same time elder brother, stern but loving father and, at times, God.

At Childscourt, Malcolm, although continuing the `meetings', which John Danser considers might be more appropriately called `grouse and trial sessions',(23) seems always to have been sensitive to any challenge to authority. He appears particularly to be sensitive to the threat of what he refers to as `Nazi' gangs and also to the expressions of individual aggression. This threat was used as an explanation of such actions as physical assault, restrictions on camping, and the bulldozing of bushes around the school. His suspicion of doctors, and of psychiatrists in particular, did not diminish and, in fact, he was inclined to remark 'Ah, they're a nutty lot these people who go around prying into you', which could hardly have been helpful to those children who were still under treatment.

This attitude may have been partly an expression of his need to be the central character, a need to which at Childscourt he gave overt expression. In school plays he wrote, produced, and acted the leading role. In games he was automatically the captain of his football team (taking children away from other activities to play). He considered it necessary to the community that he should play the hero both to the boys and to the girls.

His attitude to the girls appears either suspicious or possessive. They are harangued on St Valentine's Day because they make a beeline for an attractive new boy : `You're not going to turn this school into a bloody night-club, it's got to be a place where boys and girls can live together, normally.' Like Homer Lane, Malcolm also evolved a policy of retaining certain children as junior staffmembers, thus continuing their dependence on the community.

In a more positive way Malcolm hopes to equip his children with a realistic and questioning attitude to life, a belief in their own worth, and as much educational attainment as is found consistent with the needs of emotional adjustment. The school work, which covers a full range of subjects for both boys and girls between five and fifteen with I.Q.s ranging from 80-130, and at various stages of emotional adjustment, is arranged into small groups of six or seven with a class teacher. Division is largely by two-year age groups. The ability to achieve in school work is seen as a necessary part of the child's personal and social adjustment and C.S.E. passes are sought after both as a boost to morale and as desirable equipment for re-entry into a competitive society.

From A. S. Neill, Malcolm has taken his rejection of religious and moral restraints although they reappear in his demand for conformity to the perceived social needs of the school. From Arlesford he has taken his rejection of the psychiatric approach as damaging to the idea both of a normal process of individual development and to social integration. It is from his wartime hostel experience that he has taken his most fundamental guideline, a belief in the importance of `common sense' based on practical experience as superior to all theories and general principles.

19. Coleman, J. Childscourt, pp. 30-32. Macdonald, London, 1967 [Return to Text]

20. Ibid., p. 46. [Return to Text]

21. Ibid. pp 47-8. [Return to Text]

22. Ibid. p. 65. [Return to Text]

23. Danser, J. Review of Childscourt in Therapeutic Education, pp. 21-23, January 1969. [Return to Text]

© Maurice Bridgeland

Association of Therapeutic Communities	PLANNED ENVIRONMENT THERAPY TRUST	Charterhouse Group
Therapeutic Community Open Forum		RadioTC International
The WebSearch the Site

This page authored by: Craig Fees

© 2005