Education: Report Card

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¶ By a vote of 7 to 1, the New York City Board of Education passed a resolution that would 1) require teachers to answer under oath questions on "any matter under the jurisdiction of the board," and 2) "authorize" Superintendent William Jansen to require teachers to name any colleagues who "may be or may have been" members of subversive groups.

¶ South Carolina's Governor George Timmerman Jr. contributed a remarkable definition to the controversy over desegregation of U.S. schools. Desegregation, said he, is "designed to lynch the character of a fourth of our nation ... It is contrary to the divine order of things. Only an evil mind could conceive it. Only a foolish mind can accept it."

¶ After a three-month test of trainees in the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Camp Gordon, Ga., the Human Resources Research Office of George Washington University had some good news for backers of educational TV. Most important findings of the test: 1) normal instruction time in one electronics course was cut in half when the course was presented on TV with visual gimmicks, e.g., closeups, cutaway models; 2) TV students remembered what they had learned as well as and often better than, students taught by regular classroom instructors; and 3) men with low I.Q.s benefited most, did far better on examinations than their counterparts in regular classes.

¶ At a meeting on juvenile delinquency, Vice Principal Meyer Berkowitz of Philadelphia's Samuel S. Fels Junior High School gave one reason for current misbehavior: "When I was young, we used to roll up the rug and dance. It's tougher now for the youngsters because of wall-to-wall carpeting and parents watching television."