Education: Outrage in Brooklyn

It was another grim chapter in one of the more shocking tales of modern education—the continuing story of a great city apparently unable to cope with the teen-aged hoodlums who terrorize its streets and public schools.

Though the 1,214 students of Brooklyn’s John Marshall Junior High School are a melting-pot group (45% are Negro, 10% Puerto Rican), the school until last December seemed an orderly place in a comparatively orderly neighborhood. Then suddenly things began to go wrong for John Marshall.

One day two students, one armed with a shovel, the other with a knife, attacked a third boy in the cafeteria. Last fortnight a 13-year-old girl was reportedly raped in the school basement. Later a hoodlum from the outside punched a policeman on the school grounds, and two other hoodlums, also from the outside, assaulted the school’s recreation director. As a result of these incidents, Principal George Goldfarb, 55, was twice called before a special grand jury investigating juvenile delinquency in the schools. He was supposed to appear a third time last week.

Without a Word. An intense and dedicated man with 33 years’ service in the New York City school system, Schoolmaster Goldfarb seemed worn down and overwhelmed by the troubles that beset him. The night before he was to testify before the grand jury he had mailed a letter to the police department asking that a patrolman be stationed inside his school. Next morning he appeared as usual at his office before 8, took up some routine matters with his staff, at 9:30 left the building, having said that he was due to go to the courthouse.

He never arrived. Instead he headed for his own six-story apartment house, climbed to the roof and, without leaving a word of explanation behind him, plunged to his death.

Threats & Torment. Just when or why Goldfarb made his decision, no one could say. But instead of responsible action, the tragedy merely provoked the ugliest kind of recriminations. At the funeral, President Charles Silver of the Board of Education and Superintendent of Schools William Jansen charged to newsmen that Principal Goldfarb had probably been driven to suicide because a grand juror had threatened that he might “be indicted.” The jury’s foreman immediately denied the accusation, countercharged that the suicide was the result of Goldfarb’s fear that his superiors would take revenge on him for cooperating in the grand jury’s inquiry. The grand jury, which had already angered school officials by recommending that a policeman be stationed in every school, added its log to the fire by hinting that it would summon those officials to quiz them about the pressures they had put on Goldfarb.

While the dispute raged, the real issue seemed in danger of being lost. Among the teen-agers picked up in Brooklyn alone last week: a 16-year-old boy accused of raping another 13-year-old girl at P.S. 20; six drunks who stabbed two girls in a subway station; 21 boys found with an arsenal of knives, clubs, and wire whips; a 17-year-old boy nabbed while trying to hide a hunting knife under a jukebox; three boys arrested for stealing a car; two boys accused of killing a man of 21; two other 16-year-olds charged with trying to rape a 12-year-old girl in a tenement hallway while her little brother, 7, looked helplessly on.