Good Citizens

There are various ways of teaching "good citizenship"--presumably a major aim of education. In Scarsdale, N. Y., the schoolchildren who trip matutinally to the two elementary schools or the six-year High School are taught in terms of business. Teacher gives them a lesson which is considered a "contract." By learning their lessons, the children fulfill their contracts, achieve a sense of responsibility, advance toward their looming citizenship with proper civic consciousness. In the Montezuma Mountain School for Boys, Los Gatos, Calif., children actually live like citizens. After a two-week campaign, the upper students elect a mayor, a police commissioner, a labor commissioner. Violators of community regulations are turned over by the police to the labor commissioner who makes them work. Thus, since Montezuma, like all schools, has chronic and clonic law-violators, a student-built gymnasium was erected. Last week, in Worcester, Mass., Clark University's Dr. Vernon Jones (psychologist) revealed a new method of teaching sound citizenship to future citizens. The plan: to confront elementary school students with a problem requiring a moral judgment, to let the students, unaided, make their judgment. Dr. Jones relates a story such as: "When he was a child, the late great Labor Leader Samuel Gompers and his small cousin had to carry milk pails from the dairy to their farmhouse home. One day, the two boys quarreled about who should carry the heaviest pail. Neither would give in, both walked home emptyhanded. Spanked, therefore, and sent back for the milk, were Child Gompers and cousin." Then says Dr. Jones: "What would you have done?" Thereupon the children debate until they discover how Child Gompers and cousin could have settled their dispute, avoided their spanking. Says Dr. Jones: "The new scheme . . is far more effective than the passing along of a series of 'do's' and 'dont's' all ready-made by adults."