SCHOOL AND CRIME

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 82, 3 October 1931, Page 22

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 tho "New York Times"). By ovcrstressing iuterest 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 Prance and England with tho increased number of crimes here, asserting that while other nations were maintaining a 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 the 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 tho. teachers, had been men. "InI'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 tho teaching service for only three or four years at most. "Fortunately this condition is rapidly passing in so far as the immature, transient, and untrained teacher is concerned," ho said, "but there is very little likelihood that there will be in tho near future a significantly larger proportion of men in the elementary schools." • ■ • i "" 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 our 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 arc signs that the situation is likely to get worse before it gets, better." . ,