Education: Report Card

¶ To get a firsthand view of what a nonsegregated school is like, ten white boys and girls from Washington and Baltimore paid a visit to the New Rochelle (N.Y.) High School, where about one-fifth of the 1,610 pupils are Negroes. Their conclusion from the trip, according to one girl: "If ever there was any doubt within me that integration would work, it has been completely dissolved." But the visitors also wanted New Rochelle to know just who was causing all the trouble back home. Said Robert Rodgers of Baltimore's Southern High School: "Don't blame the pupils for the demonstrations against non-segregation. A few parents began to agitate, so pupils stayed away from school. It was as simple as shooting off a gun to start a herd of cattle running."

¶ For the first time in history, Vice Chancellor A. H. Smith of Oxford University broke tradition by delivering his welcome to incoming freshmen in English as well as Latin. Noted the vice chancellor sadly: "Latin is not quite so familiar as it was a few years ago."

¶ The weekly Roman Catholic review America picked up some startling figures on the historical knowledge of U.S. scientists. In a test of 15 Ph.D. candidates, Botanist Harry Fuller of the University of Illinois found that only a third of the students could give a satisfactory identification of the Reformation and Voltaire; only half knew much about Plato; and only four could properly identify Bismarck. Out of the 15, ten had never even heard of the Medicis, and seven knew nothing whatever about the Magna Carta.