From Robert Kisch.
SIMON Bellwood, in the Jersey Evening Post’s Saturday Interview on 22 November, appears to base his objections to the Grand Prix system as the fact that it started off those sent to Greenfields with a 24-hour period of solitary confinement. He has stated that this is illegal.

Mr Bellwood’s experience was in the UK, where such practice may be illegal, but one questions whether it is illegal in Jersey. As described in an earlier article in the JEP, the practice established clearly the rules, ie the carrots and sticks, which would be applied thereafter. Mr Bellwood himself concedes that ‘. . . the concept of the person holding the key is a very powerful tool’. Surely this is a natural requirement of discipline in any context.

Derek Bernard (JEP, 20 November) rightly suggests that the Grand Prix system of establishing boundaries of behaviour in children’s establishments is being wrongly attacked. Society lives by certain rules (the Ten Commandments if you like). These form checks and balances which have to be taught. How else do you train a puppy?

As children, we all have to learn; incentives, in whatever form, do work as much as punishment for transgression. To this extent, Mr Bellwood’s ‘behaviour management system’ establishes exactly the same thing as the Grand Prix system, demanding a degree of discipline.

The military impose just this sort of discipline. It is usually hated at the time of training, but the value is clear.
No one set of rules fits everyone, but a system of punishment and rehabilitation (sticks and carrots) is the best we have developed so far.
Villa Martinique,
Chemin du Moulin,
St Ouen.