Report on Discipline

New York City's concern over its juvenile delinquency is growing. Its school discipline is poor (TIME, Dec. 14). Last week Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia asked a 16-year-old lad to give the delinquency committee the benefit of his advice. Reason: the lad, solemn Seymour ("Sunshine") Schantz, has been chairman of a group of boys who surveyed their schools and sent the Mayor "the most constructive" report he had received.

Seymour Schantz and his committee are members of a club called the Boys' Brotherhood Republic, whose motto is "So long as there are boys in trouble, we too are in trouble." The Manhattan B.B.R. enrolls some 300 "citizens,"* occupies a lower East Side tenement, is supervised in a hands-off way by just one adult -- short, dark Director George Ougourlian. The club is supported by a philanthropic board of directors and dime-a-month "taxes" from the citizens.

B.B.R.'s citizens elect their own mayor, lawmaking council and other officers, together with a judge and prosecuting attorney. If one boy slugs another, the victim may enter a bill of complaint. The slugger is tried, either pleading his own case or being defended by a "lawyer." If guilty, he is sentenced to such chores as window cleaning or is exiled for several days from the B.B.R.'s library, ping-pong tables, sports, etc. "None of us ever gets in trouble with the law, except our own laws," said the B.B.R.'s report.

Newspaper stories of a reign of terror in the schools aroused the B.B.R. to investigation. Gist of Chairman Schantz's report: pupils are misunderstood; teachers and pupils should regularly talk over personal and school problems; courses should be revised by people "with modern ideas for modern students"; pupils should be allowed "any choice of subjects which they feel might be of use"; there should be more recreational centers, etc.

The report adds: "We caution that the contents of this report should not be taken too literally, for after all the compilers still have much to learn about human nature. . . ."

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