Education: Boys Will Be Savages

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It was a quiet Sunday afternoon in Shreveport, La., and two schoolboys (9 and 11) were playing cowboys & Indians in the schoolyard. One of them slung a rock—and accidentally broke a window. That set them off. With a whoop, they threw rocks and more rocks. Great was the slaughter—156 windows—in Alexander School.

To mop up the prostrate enemy, they broke into the schoolhouse, whirled through classrooms, smashing pictures, vases, chairs, and lamps. They tipped over bookcases, tore up maps, scattered papers, threw books out the windows. They went to the principal's office, threw ink over the walls, smashed up a radio, a phonograph and every record in the room. At the end, they went back to a classroom and wrote on a blackboard: "I'm sorry we had to do it," and "Too bad—from the people who done it."

In juvenile court last week the boys tried in vain to explain what had come over them. Said one: "We like the sound of falling glass."