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University Daily Kansan Monday, March 16, 1964
New Yorkers Concerned Over Lawlessness in Classrooms
NEW YORK—(UPI)—New York sends 900,000 children to public school every day, then waits for the newspapers to report how many of them attacked their teachers with knives, chairs, fists or teeth.
Lately, the attacks have averaged three a day. Some teachers say the average would be higher if some principals, seeking to keep a clean slate in the front office, did not quietly overlook some assaults.
Day after dreary day, the newspapers tell of attacks by 13 or 14 or 15-year olds upon no greater provocation than a teacher's instructions to his pupils to take off their coats or take their seats or stop running in the hallways.
A FEW TEACHERS have been carried away in ambulances, their glasses smashed, their clothing ripped, their hands bearing bite marks. Other teachers, well-trained in educational theory but short on courses in the art of self-protection, are scared to go to school each day.
Many New Yorkers are alarmed. Charles Cogen, president of the Teachers' Union, is so alarmed he proposed legislation to increase retirement and death benefits for teachers "who die or are hurt in the line of duty." Dr. Calvin E. Gross, the superintendent of schools, went along with the idea.
No one knows why the number of attacks increased so drastically within the last month and some teachers insist the only thing that has increased is the number of attacks reported to board of education headquarters in Brooklyn, which tries, to oversee 843 schools.
The problem is of such proportions that the school system reissued a 1962 directive telling which attacks to report and which to ignore.
"ON THE ONE hand, we don't want to overwhelm the police with trifling incidents," it says. "On the other, we do not want to neglect situations which could become serious to us. When in doubt, report it."
The Feb. 3 school boycott, organized by Negro and Puerto Rican groups, which kept 360,000 children out of school to demand faster integration, is blamed by some teachers for provoking the assaults by teaching lawlessness.
"The two girls who attacked me wouldn't have done so before the school boycott," says Mrs. Oliva Vale, whose eyes were blackened in an attack 24 days ago.
Nancy Pakelik, a pretty substitute music teacher, had her dress torn by an unruly student. She blames the boycott, saying it was an open display of contempt for the authority of teachers and schools.
PUBLICITY ALSO IS blamed.
Mrs. Adele B. Tunick, president of the United Parents Association, whose group says it represents 400,-000 parents, encourages "some evidence that publicity encourages more" attache-
But the chief villain blamed by everyone is a school system which is grossly overcrowded and understaffed and which had to resort, more and more, to double sessions.
The lack of money is the root of this evil, most authorities agree. The children who attack their teachers—nearly all of them Negro or Puerto Rican — invariably come from the city's poorest neighborhoods.
And a lack of money in the school system frustrates its attempts to pay attention to rowdy children before they become troublemakers.
KNOWLEDGE OF HOW to prevent the pupil attacks is abundant, insists Louis Hays, who directs classes which serve troubled children. "We know more than we'll use in 100 years," he says. "What we need is a whole range of resources for which the know-how is available, but the money is not."
Money is not likely to be soon forthcoming. Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, pledged not to raise taxes, has discarded a suggestion by the leaders of his majority Republicans in the legislature, to raise school aid this year.
New York has one school psychologist for every 10,000 pupils. That's not enough, says Dr. Simon S. Silverman, head of the board of education's Bureau of Child Guidance. The assaults will continue, he predicts, "until we have the resources—money and manpower—to take care of our emotionally disturbed pupils." His bureau, with a staff of 400, handled 22,000 cases last year.
Charles Staloff is the principal of junior high school 149, in a Bronx neighborhood of three-story tenements, a school built to accommodate 1,200 pupils but with an enrollment of 1.700. He blames broken homes, common in his neighborhood.
“AS LONG AS there are homes where the father is not present, or where he has no authority, there will be children who will present problems in a school situation,” he says.
The attacks themselves throw little light on their cause. They seem to be provoked by the most minor admonitions.
In the Bronx, teacher Irving Goldman told a 15-year-old boy who was blocking the entrance to the school cafeteria to move along. The boy went after Goldman with a chair and had to be wrestled to the floor by other teachers.
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