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Show llfBATTLE Creek Well sir, it's the "Age of the Short Walk." If you have any reasonable doubts, take a quiet gander around the High School block and count the number of automobiles. This writer did so the other day and came up with a total of 76. That's quite a passel of gasoline gaso-line buggies for the shtudents and teachers, when you consider that the majority of the boys and girls live within walking distance and three large busses stop at the school night and morning to discharge dis-charge and pick up loads. Well anyway, the immediate high school vicinity looks like a used car lot, with most of the i vehicles only slightly used at that. In fact, it's hard to tell which are the students' cars and which belong to the teachers, except ex-cept that the kiddie cars display a little more spit and polish. All this adds up to the idea that quite a percentage of modern teenagers drive cars to school these days and that's the point in question for this week's epistle. According to a recent state paper editorial, the faculty of Madison High of Rexburg, Idaho, conducted a survey of the scholastic schol-astic attainments of students who drive cars to school. The study covered a period of four years back. The findings were startling. Not one student in the driver category cat-egory made a straight "A" record in school. Even if this weren't enough to raise a few parental eyebrows, 83 per cent of the students stu-dents who failed in their studies or dropped out before graduation, came from the car-driving grcu;:. Looks like we have a new twist to the old adage that "he who runs may read." The latest version ver-sion could well be "he who rides don't read," or at least not very much. Of course surveys and statistics don't tell the whole story; but there seems to be a positive correlation cor-relation botween teenage car operators op-erators and success in high school. Car ownership is something akin to a bad case of puppy love; it can play hob with the study program. pro-gram. It's hard to think about two things at the same time, say the psychologists. Once when I was headmaster of the local high school, a Senior boy came in one February day and said he was dropping out to get a job so he could pay for a used car. No advice offered had any effect. His mind was definitely definite-ly made up. Finally I said, "well John, your decision today will determine what you have on next May 28. It will either be a high school diploma or a pile of junk." As it worked out, he quit school, bought the automobile and failed to graduate. For once I was a true prophet. Along about May 15, he had a wreck and reduced re-duced the vehicle to a worthless heap. Whether or not driving cars to school actually has an adverse effect on scholarship could be argued ar-gued of course; but the young swain who owns and supports one of the hungry monsters has something on his mind besides his studies and a place for his spare change. That's as true today as it was 10 years ago. So long 'til Thursday. |