Report Card

P:In an indirect reply to Psychologist Frank McGurk of Villanova University, who claimed in U.S. News & World Report that Negroes have less capacity for education than whites, 18 psychologists and social scientists from such institutions as Harvard, Columbia, Michigan and the Menninger Foundation flatly denied the McGurk thesis. Though Negro children generally do not do as well in school as the whites, said the 18, their showing has nothing to do with native intelligence, but is only the result of inferior background and schooling. "The conclusion is inescapable that any decision to use differences of the average achievement of the two racial groups as a basis for classifying in advance any individual child, Negro or white, is scientifically unjustified."

P:The powerful National Education Association appealed to Presidential Candidates Eisenhower and Stevenson to give teachers the same tax breaks as other professionals. The N.E.A.'s argument: if a lawyer goes to a legal seminar or tax institute, he can deduct his expenses; the same goes for a doctor or dentist attending a medical convention. But in all but a few cases, teachers who go to summer school can deduct nothing. "It is just as important," said the N.E.A., "for teachers to continue their professional development as for doctors and lawyers to keep up with new medical techniques or legal interpretations."

P:Appointment of the week: Quaker Hugh Borton, 53, to succeed Geographer Gilbert White as president of the nation's oldest Quaker college, Haverford. A Haverford graduate ('26), Borton studied at Tokyo Imperial University (now Tokyo University), got his Ph.D. at the State University of Leyden in The Netherlands. From 1942 to 1948, he served in the State Department, rose to be chief of the Division of Northeast Asian Affairs. When Haverford picked him out of 250 candidates, he was professor of Japanese and director of the East Asian Institute at Columbia University.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.