Education: The Day

Down the streets of Hingham, Mass. one day last week marched five little boys in lock step, gloomily chanting, “The last mile . . . the last mile.” Last week, over most of the U.S., boys & girls were grudgingly trudging back to school.

New York City’s Board of Education issued a special pamphlet. A parent, the pamphlet said, should explain to a child that school would not be so bad. “Tell him … he will draw, sing, play games . . . He will make many new friends . . . School will be an enjoyable . . . experience.”

It was an experience not equally enjoyable to all. In King George County, Va., ten Negro children, led by a Negro lawyer, tried—and failed—to enroll in the white high school; and 29 more tried to do the same in Gloucester County. Their own schools, the Negroes said, were “wholly inadequate.” The Negroes of King George County were especially discontented with their library. Sample books: The Love Letters of a Worldly Woman, a 1937 Bell System Technical Journal, a 1905 Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress, and a 1925 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Yearbook.

All schools had one common complaint: too many students. In many a U.S. city and town, schools would operate in two shifts. Youngsters would be going to school in cafeterias, churches, and prefabs —and no immediate relief in sight. Said a Detroit school official: “It will be tough through 1955.”