Report Card

P: After completing a statewide survey on desegregation, the Texas Poll, a service financed by Texas newspapers, reported that the U.S. Supreme Court will have considerable difficulty enforcing its decision against Jim Crow schools. Of 1,000 Texans sampled, 45% said they favored maintaining segregation either by disobeying the law or finding a way to circumvent it. In other words, said the poll, any attempt at immediate integration will "stir up a storm of protest in Texas verging on public disrespect of the law."

P: The activities of Bryant Bowles, head of the Negro-baiting National Association for the Advancement of White People, finally caught up with him in Delaware's Kent County courthouse. Last week Judge Arley Magee fined him $600 for 1) urging the parents of Milford, Del. to violate the state school-attendance laws, and 2) conspiring with others to violate the laws and thus interfere "with the orderly administration of the school system."

P: The Primary School Inspector of Paris reported that the nation's teacher and classroom shortage is raising havoc with the French school system: three out of ten pupils in preparatory courses, four out of ten pupils in second-year elementary courses, nearly half (46%) of all nine-to-eleven-year-olds, and up to 75% of those in their final elementary school classes, are at least a year behind their age groups.

P: The Lake County (Fla.) school board added a sordid postscript to the saga of the Platt children (of Irish-Indian descent), who were barred from school in Mt. Dora because Sheriff Willis McCall arbitrarily decided that they are Negroes (TIME, Dec. 13, 1954 et seq.). By unanimous vote, the board fired Math Teacher Don Conway for giving his blessings to a high-school student petition urging that the Platt children be allowed to stay. Conway's only comment: "If giving the kids my moral support in what I consider a Christian act is guilt, then I guess I'm guilty."

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