| OCR Text |
Show Page 4 EDUCATION NEW “NOT SO GOLDEN RULE DAYS” it follows that they must see that Pitman 1969 Our compulsory school attendance laws stand in the way of good education. They should be relaxed, amended, repealed, or overturned in the courts. I once felt this was necessary in the interests of children. I now have come to feel equally strongly that it is also in the best interests of the schools. It is time for our schools to get themselves, or us to get them, out of the jail business. No one can doubt that this is where they are. The public has, in effect, said to our schools, “Lock up our children for six or more hours a day for a hundred and eighty or so days a year, so that they will be out of our ~ hair and out of trouble--and, by the way, while you have them locked up, try to educate them.” The two demands are contradictory and self-canceling. The schools can be in the jail business or in the education business, but not in both. To the extent that they are in the one they cannot be in the other. There are many reasons why it would benefit our schools to get out of jail business. One of these has to do with money. I have heard the assistant superintendent of schools in Baltimore, Maryland, describe the millions of dollars his sytem has to spend every year to repair broken windows and other kinds of vandalism. Who broke those windows? Who did _ the damage? Kids who hated being in school and therefore hated the school they were in. Vandalism by students is an act of revenge. Do away with the cause for hatred and the need for vandalism revenge, will and stop. the Teen-age attendance - corridor-watchers, found in intelligent and articulate young man in one of our major cities suggest, quite seriously, and altogether apart from any other kind of rioting, that all the schools in his community should be burned down at once. There is no way of estimating how much time, effort, and money the schools spend trying to find ways to take care of the many youngsters who do not want to be there. Countless special schools, special classes, special personnel, special disciplinary regulations, special therapeutic guidance programs, etc.--all exist almost solely to handle the problem of the child who hates being in school.. It is also impossible to assess how much of the time and energy of teachers is taken up with the problem of controlling unrully prisoners. The jail business is expensive in still another way. Since the schools have been given the job of keeping all our children in prison for a certain number of hours each day, and so on who libraries, even in the stresses such concepts as poverty, ‘urbanism, family structure, and prejudice. Miller and Woock have written a broad, imaginative, impeccably documented book. Their presentation of such key sources as the Coleman report, their selective use of tabular and graphic toughest parts of our cities. There is no need for them. If the school becomes a fesoure to be used by the people who want it, there wil! be no need for such policing there statistics, and their attention to such controversies as_ that either. surrounding Arthur R. Jensen’s But it is in the clierooi itself contentions concerning that the jail business does the most recent harm. It wholly corrupts the genetics and IQ make for a relationship between the teacher . noteworthy contribution to the and the student. It makes the literature. Wide readership awaits this title. teacher into a _ mixture of taskmaster and cop. It means that, however many smiles there may be, however much the teacher may enjoy his material and want to get it across methods drugstores. It is the schools they hate; it is the schools they try to destory. Not long ago I heard a very will not be infest our schools--to say nothing of armed, uniformed police--are not windows hotels, - this =. eading primary banks, laws, E; MEXICAN AMERICANS: PROBLEMS & PROSPECTS by 184 Joan W. Moore. Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, 1966. M5 M6 (Available for us free of charge) This study, prepared by the Assoc. Director of the Mexican American Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, “Presents background information and perspectives relevant to the new policy oriented look at the M.A. minority.” It discusses: population; education; income; unemployment and the labor market; urban problems; culture and the community; leadership; and_ policy implications. It was prepared for the Office of Economic Pep ay in November 1966. needed. I see a great many students, of all backgrounds, in the Boston Public Library. They behave as reasonably, _ sensibly, and considerately as anyone else. Nobody has _ ever Social Foundations of Urban hinted that their behavior might be Education, by Harry L. Miller and a problem. Why not? For one thing, Roger R. Woock (The Dryden when you are in a place because Press, Inc., 433 pp., $6.95), comes you want to be there, you tend to modestly priced and _ richly behave in an appropriate way. In informative. Balanced about social the second place, the students and economic factors influencing know that if they raise hell in the city schools on the one hand and library they will not be allowed to the schools’ manifold communities return. Nothing else need to be on the other, this splendid work said. The kind of monitors, spies, youths rarely throw stones through of UNIVERSITY LIBRARY | all the prisoners are in fact there, and if they are not there, know why not, and where they are instead. This is a major source of the inordinate amount of paper work that plagues administrators and teachers alike. All the complicated attendance records that schools keep have one main purpose--to prove that all the prisoners were there or that they had a lawful excuse to be absent. If we overturn the compulsory. By John Holt to the children, function must however his be, by subtle, to threaten and coerce. In short it makes the schoolroom into a battleground. Nothing in the way of teachnological or other educcational devices or gimmicks can do much to change this. The results are plain. People who go into teaching full of hope and good intentions gradually become used to thinking of themselves as policemen and of the children as their natural enemies. They become cynical about their teaching and helping functions and in many cases grow, in time, to hate and despise the children they are working with. This is not their fault, and very little can be done in the way of special training or special selection to change it. It is no more possible to have open, friendly, and mutually helpful relationships between most teachers and students than it is between prison guards and prison convicts--and for exactly the Oakland’s Not for Burning, by Amory Bradford. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1968. 248 pA firsthand report of a dynamic experiment in urban development which serves as a guide to Federal and local action in similar cities that seek understanding and help in dealing with one of America’s most paralyzing problems. SUPPORT OUR BEAUTY PROOUCTS critics, sociologists, novelists, EBONY MALL no. 11 so. 3rd west Salt Lake City and tel. 355-9497 ‘eerass from American Dream affects Jewish life Artis and culture and why Jewish people often choose tradition are assimilation among & inser bank over U.P. depot Ruth C: Ross, cards prop.@ welcom ed the subjects discussed. ARES neAsemere 572 s&. 4900 @e a riend [ y store When School Bells Ring... ee | ADVERTISERS our outstanding selections, for everyone from kindergarten to college. Wordpower Newspaper, staff and subscribers extend a sincere thank you to the fine companies who have advertised in our pages. We urge our ‘readers to support these businesses - as they have demonstra- SALT LAKE CITY AND OGDEN ted their concern for the community and a desire for equality for all people. “WORDPOWER” Wordpower is published ev ‘| Thursday ROTTUERAS. BEARD on Wilfred Simpeon, NAACP by Wordpower, Linda Muntu, BBOS _ non-profit organization. Jorge Arce —Larreta, Manpower Marie Darling, UWRO Lucy Black, South County _ Tel. 486-9371 Don Ray Sampson, CAP Administration EaetR Marlene Marie Young ACCENT EMPLOYMENT SERVICE ‘TAYLOR'S CAFE specialty-barbecued ribs no. 7 south 3rd west Selt Many jobs available—skilled and unskilled—men and women. 978 33ro0 So. Suite 1 486-9371 Leke 84101 Phone City, Utah 356-0715 E. Wes. Ophelia 6. Taylor CONTMBUTING ENTERS Ed Brown, Glen K. Douglas, Sports Lucy Biack, “Whose Pond” Column “Theough a Child’s Eyes” Staff, Advertising Department Roberta Herschfield ea Center Re Advertising & Sales Director: Manny Rojas, Marie Darling “From the President's Desk” Clen K. Aan Tolicy, Jobs Cathy Jamison, Central City Editor Mary Jones Social Security and Medicare Jorge Arce-Larreta, Assistant Project Director | , | for him &-her religious leaders which explore the Jewish experience. How the : (To be continued next issue) high fashions and Afro-American products The Ghetto and Beyond: Essays on Jewish Life in America, by Peter I. Rose. New York: Random House, 1969. A collection of essays written by Phe same reasons. If, on the other hand, compulsory attendance were abolished, the relationship would be entirely different, for the teacher would not be a jailer, therefore not an enemy. AVAILABLE BOOKS ie Douglas Publicity Director: Shirley Shields rates available upon request. Manpower Planning Council |sea: “avertising |
