Parents & Pedagogs

Berkeley, Calif., has two shrewd criminologists. One is Police Chief August Vollmer, University of Chicago crime expert (TIME, May 27, Sept. 16). Less widely known but far more versatile is Edward Oscar Heinrich, onetime police chief, onetime city manager, chemist, pharmacist, sanitary engineer, crook catcher. Since 1919, hawk-nosed, bespectacled Criminologist Heinrich has plied the trade of scientific crime-solving, being called in from time to time as consultant in many a west coast cause celebre.

Invited to speak before the California congress of parents & teachers last fortnight, he piqued pedagogs, pleased parents with uncommonplace views on the subject of juvenile delinquency, pedagogy, parenthood.

"The 'problem parent,' " said he, "is a pedagogic alibi--There is no such person. Home conditions can only be indirect causes and are responsible for only a small part of juvenile delinquency. . . . The American home is all right; for example, there are 69 factors of juvenile delinquency that I know of, and of these, broken homes contribute only a small percentage of offenders. . . . From the age of six on, children now spend a large part of their waking hours at school or with schoolmates. . . . The school and its regime have become a wedge between parents and children. Schools should slow up in their emphasis on the present custom of giving children free rein in expressing individuality; conflicts develop when they try to adjust themselves to an unsympathetic community or when parents try to curb them within reasonable limits. . . . Educators complain that parents dump their children on them. Parents do no such thing; they support universities and nor mal schools for the specific purpose of training teachers to educate their children and to give their full time and best efforts to it."

Of spinster schoolmarms, said Criminologist Heinrich after his address : "Love and marriage is a normal part of human experience. Women suffer more than men if these are denied and tend to become psychopathic as they get older. It would be better to eliminate women over 30 who lack this experience rather than subject children to teachers who are frequently emotionally abnormal."

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