Ready or Not . . .

In downtown Chicago, the posters had been up for days--"State Street is ready for school." The shops had been ready with new wardrobes, the stationery stores with book bags and fountain pens. Last week, schoolchildren in Chicago and elsewhere were reluctantly ready, too. Their jeep-hats bobbed in school corridors, their scat-talk filled the classrooms, some of their jackets bore the inscription "Bebop is spoken here." In bebop or any other language, vacation was definitely over. Across the country, some 30,000,000 public, private and parochial schoolkids, the biggest crowd in history, were back in class or getting ready.

Opening day was a nerve-racker for some. High-school students in Hazleton, Pa. went on strike when they learned that the school board had voted to abolish football. "No sports--no school," cried their picket signs. "Township unfair to students." Worcester, Mass, was trying to find a teacher of Lithuanian to satisfy the parents who wanted the language taught. Otherwise, Worcester was all set; for the first time since the war, the city had enough teachers. San Francisco and Denver reported the same.

In almost every city and town in the U.S., the big problem was finding room for the war babies. New York City expected its biggest enrollment in seven years; it had eight new school units to accommodate it, was building 20 more. Los Angeles had built 835 new classrooms for elementary pupils alone, then found that that was not nearly enough. Detroit had raised $55 million for new grade schools, but it knew that its troubles were just beginning. "This part is easy," said one school-board member. "Just wait till this crop hits the high schools in 1956!"

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