Joy & Happiness Schools

In Roslyn, a small suburban village on Long Island's north shore, live estate owners, commuters and many Polish, Italian and Negro families whose breadwinners work on the estates. In Roslyn's schools children from all these groups sit side by side. Ten years ago these schools began to go "progressive." Since tall, athletic Superintendent Frederick R. Wegner (a onetime Cornell baseball player) arrived four years ago, they have won fame outside Roslyn. But progressive education, though less costly in Roslyn than in some other towns, is more expensive than old-fashioned schooling and a year ago Roslyn taxpayers began to circulate a petition for a return to the three Rs. The petition struck a responsive chord. It soon had 340 signatures, turned out 400 parents one night to beard the Board of Education and argue about the shortcomings of Roslyn's three elementary schools. One by one they denounced Superintendent Wegner's highfalutin' notions, complained that their children could not read. Up jumped one taxpayer to snort that a class of boys had spent an entire day learning how to make nut bread.

With progressive education as much subject to attack as the New Deal, Roslyn's school troubles drew wide attention. Its school board quickly asked the New York State Department of Education to investigate. Last week, after a year's thorough probing, the State delivered its verdict in the case of Progressive v.Traditional Education in Roslyn.

Instead of a formal curriculum, Roslyn's schools have an activities program. Thus its schoolchildren build boats or Indian tepees, and in so doing learn incidentally to read & write, learn something about history, science, art. When Roslyn's boys make nut bread, Superintendent Wegner explained, they not only enjoy a creative activity but learn to add, subtract & multiply.

New York's Department of Education set out to determine how well Roslyn's children read, wrote & multiplied. The investigating committee, headed by Assistant Commissioner John Cayce Morrison, sympathetic to progressive education, also tried to measure how well Roslyn was getting along toward good social and moral habits, an understanding of the world, "joy and happiness." Last week Dr. Morrison produced a 56-page report, announced these salient findings:

P:In reading, arithmetic, language usage and spelling, Roslyn's 900 elementary schoolchildren are slightly below normal, but the reason is not a failure in instruction but the fact that their average intelligence is below par (median I. Q.: 96).* The committee concluded the children were performing up to their ability.

P:Truancy has been eliminated. "Quarreling, fighting, stealing, abuse of public property and use of objectionable language have been reduced to nearly negligible proportions. Such traits as initiative, cooperation, dependability, consideration of others and self-confidence have been made generally characteristic of the whole pupil body."

P: In 1924 Roslyn's fourth-grade children ranged from 7 to 16 in age. Now fewer children are retarded. Instead of keeping backward pupils with younger children, Roslyn's schools promote them, give them coaching in their weak subjects.

The investigators did not let Roslyn's schools escape without a few reproofs. In particular they asked skeptically, "What relationship is there between fostering 'joy and happiness' and developing the will to do a hard task that needs to be done?"

* A score only four points below the normal I. Q of 100 is not a significant deviation for an individual, but is for a group.

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