SCHOOL AND CRIME

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21544, 16 January 1932, Page 12

SCHOOL AND CRIME

Holding the schools largely responsible for the crime wave in this country, Dr William C. Bagley, Professor of Education at Teachers’ College, Columbia University, recently attacked lack of discipline and the new psychology taught to pupils (says the New York Times). By overstressing interest and by tolerating lack of effort by students, the schools must accept censure for political and social laxity. Dr Bagley said. He compared the decreasing crime ratio of France and England with the increased number of crimes here, asserting that while other nations were maintaining a “ formal system of education” and reducing their prisons.’ the United States had thrown out discipline from its schools and at the same time increased its prisons. _ Women teachers, together with inadequate training of the teaching personnel, were cited by Dr Bagley as being possible reasons why American education had failed to “turn the crime wave downward.” He decried the " almost complete feminisation ” in the elementary schools, adding that in European schools a larger proportion of the teachers had been men. “ In our country the typical adult citizen spent his elementary school years under a succession of young women teachers, some of them very immature girls, themselves just out of school, and remaining in the teaching service for only three or four years at most. “Fortunately this condition is rapidly passing in so far as the immature, Iran-, sient, and untrained teacher is concerned,” he said, "but there is very little likelihood that there will be in the near future a significantly larger proportion of men in the elementary schools.” Dr Bagley declared that "we should recognise clearly that a school system characterised by loose standards and dominated by educational theories that in effect open wide the lines of least resistance are likely to compound rather than to correct such social ills as find expression in bur heavy crime ratios, our abnormally high and rapidly mounting divorce rates, and the apparently increasing prevalence of political corruption. “In some of these schools disrespect and even insolence toward teachers must be tolerated on the theory that the impulses of children must not be repressed. There are signs that the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.”

An engineer has been sent per parcel post by air from England to Rhodesia. This human parcel is Mr William Eibbins. a civil engineer, of Portsmouth, who was urgently summoned by his firm to bo to Northern Rhodesia, to take charge ot the building of a bridge over a big river before the heavy seasonal rains begin. It was necessary that Mr Eibbins should go at once by air mail. This was only possible by his being sent by parcel post, as air mails do not carry passengers in the ordinary way. Accordingly Mr Eibbins was weighed and he was carried at the rate of 7d for the first half ounce and fid for every other half ounce, the trip coating £2O. Mr Eibbins flew to Paris from Croydon, travelled by train to Brindisi and thence by stages to Mwanza, Tangan. yika, where he took a private aeroplane to his destination in the heart of Northern Rhodiesia. .The trip takes seven days instead of nearly five weeks by ordinary land and sea passage.