higthepig said:
it all started to go wrong when they stopped chidren going up chimneys.
There was a time while I was at Mercury in the early 80s that the behaviour of the New Entries gave some cause for concern - luckily somebody decided quickly that what they really needed most was a more rigorous routine in their lives and less leeway for sloppiness etc. - Situation improved within a month, everybody happy.
What do you do to 'naughty' kids who have no sense of responsibility? My wife was a teacher, and she knew....... Yes, you give them responsibility - in school it's the 'blackboard monitor'. 'milk monitor'. 'keeper of the goldfish' etc. In a service environment you put them in charge of ever-more important little areas of their work - (including, for Nutty, Captain of the Heads).
I've just been working in a prison for six months - It had a section for 'Young Offenders', but in general they mixed with adults. They were the worst behaved of all the prisoners. They'd been handled time and time again with kid gloves, by the 'do-gooders', with ASBOs and probation until they'd finally gone too far and earned themselves a prison sentence. What good had the leniency done for them? Nothing. (And prison is NOT a punishment - that word is hardly ever used in the service - the most important words are 'Care and Custody'). Of course, most of the younger inmates reoffended and returned to prison quite soon after their release.
I'd often wondered what would have happened to the 18 - 21 year olds in prison if they'd been kept separate from the adults. And what might have happened if they'd been subject to shorter sentences, but following a regime similar to DQs, or more particularly the regime of what I knew as the Military Corrective Training Centre (Colchester).
Anyway, that's getting off the point - what I'm suggesting is that young people need a rigid framework of organisation, routine and discipline in their lives - in the past, place like Ganges and St Vincent certainly did it, and I expect Raleigh does that job now. In the past, though, even once us ODs had got to sea, we were guided (more or less) by the badgemen and Leading Hands and Senior Rates - both at sea and on our runs ashore, it's the same thing. Can all the serving badgemen, LHs and SRs claim to be continuing that routine?
O