and values in our classrooms. Before people can attack their common problems, they must effect satisfactory working relationships among themselves. These cannot be established where we choose to ignore the needs, values, and attitudes of the students.

The most important characteristic of the newer methods of instruction is the climate in which students are free to identify their problems, needs, and interests-a climate which permits freedom and encourages students to be responsible for seeking values, attitudes, and processes needed for the solution of their problems. In such situations students can become self-disciplined, contributing members of democratically operating teams of people working together to solve their own problems of the people in the team. Members of the team feel important because they are important.

And the first step in developing learning situations with these characteristics is the establishment of adequate human relations. A primary job of the teacher along with imparting subject matter is to effect deep and warm relationships with and among pupils.95 This is probably best done by starting with the immediate concerns and interests of pupils and the relationships pupils have with each other; the teacher's problem is to help pupils relate to each other and to her so that they can attack the problems and interests they hold in common. This is what the delinquent (like other psychologically ill people) needs. His problems have developed because of the inadequate nature of his interpersonal relationships.

Schools will increasingly have to take individual differences of children into consideration, a difficult matter because of large classes, in several communities.96 Specialists to help children in preventing problems of maladjustment will have to be engaged on a larger scale than heretofore, and school counselors to be fitted into the school system will have to be trained. For this job we will have to have teachers who are trained in not only education but with a minimum of child-behavior courses as well.

Of the institutions which exist in our society, the school is the most. logical one and in the best position to render effective aid to impoverished human relations-the root of juvenile delinquency.97 It is through establishing better relationships between pupil and teacher and between child and his classmates that the school can play its best role in helping to prevent and control delinquency.

DETECTION OF BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS AND INCIPIENT DELINQUENCY

It is of the utmost importance that the school shall be on the alert to detect emotional disturbances in children. Teachers should be well trained in child behavior and psychology, and able to recognize

Teaching is a form of communication, and an exceedingly personal form of communication. The personality of the teacher is the most important of his or her pedagogical qualifications. A State agency, working from documentary records, is in no position to judge the personality of the candidate for teaching, and therefore its certificate of teaching ability is largely meaningless.--Bestor, Arthur E., The Restoration of Learning, p. 260.

You cannot really have education for all without differentiating between capabilities. Education for everybody may break down because modern society can't get enough competent teachers. But it is not true that better teachers are secured by merely paying more money. Teachers, in fact, are paid very wellmore than most of them are really worth. The ancient law that all teachers must be paid alike regardless of abilities and effort must be repealed. So also must the law that students must be promoted at the end of each academic term regardless of whether output has been good, bad, or indifferent. If the laxy, messy, or dull receive the same reward as the energetic, artful, and bright, students cannot be expected to see the value of creative hard work.-Bell, Bernard Iddings, *** or a Bog of Cultism and Professionalism, Newsweek, vol. 46, No. 23, Dec. 5, 1955, p. 59.

Bills, Robert E., Delinquency Is the Result of Faulty Human Relationships, School Executive, vol. 75, No. 1, September 1955, pp. 84-85.

the symptoms of social and emotional disturbance when they appear. Teacher-training institutions in the future must more adequately prepare teachers for this function by strong emphasis on child study. Specialists must be more frequently available to assist teachers in this vital area of responsibility-such specialists as psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric social workers and visiting teachers.

In all probability, even today, it is the rare delinquent child whose problems were not recognized by the teacher early in his or her school career. But most communities, either in or out of the school systems, do not have the resources necessary to provide adequate treatment for those youngsters whose problems are recognized.

Given the resources-funds, staffs well trained to serve the emotional needs of children, and an adequate number of personnel specialistsschools can become the centers of delinquency control in every community.9

EARLY HELP FOR THE CHILD WITH PROBLEMS

It seems clear to the members of the subcommittee from testimony that the school could be the leading institution in the so-called "first line of defense" against delinquency." The following facts seem to make this clear: (1) Next to the family and neighborhood, the other members of the "first line," the school plays a necessary and continuing role in the personality development of children; (2) the school functions as a surrogate family, i. e., it is a center of transmitting our cultural heritage to the children and is a repository for ideas; (3) since all other institutions of the community converge in the school, it can readily be seen that the school is the most strategically located unit for enveloping the problem of delinquency.

As several witnesses testified, however, the school in urban society is growing out of the structure of the local community, leaving it worse off than the community, because the teachers are often isolated from the real problems which exist on all sides of them. Dr. Albert J. Reiss, Jr., in his statement before the subcommittee said:

* * *the school in urban American society functions primarily as a bureaucratic agency of formal education.

Some of the specific functions that the school should perform in reducing delinquency are as follows:

1. It can do much to cut down the number of dropouts from schools, by developing special curriculums for retarded children. Some special assistance may be offered to those who are intellectually capable but financially unable to remain in schools.

2. Further improvements of vocational training and guidance programs in public schools need to be made to meet the need of the pupil at the time he finishes school.

3. The school can offer better civic education as well as carefully thought out courses in sex education.

4. The school can do its function more effectively by cooperat ing better with all other institutions in the community

family, the church, and recreational institutions, particularly the latter.

See, The School's Role in Preventing and Combating Juvenile Delinquency, School Executive, vol. 75, September 1955, pp. 73-85.

"See Glubok, Norman, Dealing With Delinquency, Nation's Schools, vol. 56, No. 3, September 1955, pp. 47-50.

5. The school can do much to teach the young how to read newspapers and to learn from other media of mass communication. 6. The school can offer better education in community problems.1

TYPES OF BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED BY SCHOOL PERSONNEL

Upon examination of schoolchildren who are maladjusted it is generally found that the reason for referral to an agency was a symptom of the basic problem rather than the problem itself. For example, children who are referred because of their failure to make adequate progress or because of hyperactive behavior in school are often found to be insufficiently mature for the program offered them. Sometimes children who are referred because they display some form of aggressive behavior are found to be reacting to their inability to attain success in acceptable ways or to failure to recognize sufficient purpose in their particular studies. Frequently, these children are thought to be seriously retarded intellectually and, while this is often true, examination sometimes reveals that the child possesses sufficient intelligence to master his school assignments. Other factors within the child, however-his home, or his school, or some combination of themare responsible for his failure. Physical handicaps are sometimes found to be a fundamental cause of poor academic achievement. In other instances, personality defects or inefficiency in study habits is found to be the principal cause. Sometimes children are found to be educational problems largely because their homes are unstable or insecure, or because their parents or siblings are displaying negative attitudes or forms of behavior. The school, too, is sometimes found to be an important factor in the development of an educational problem. This seems to be true because there is sometimes a discrepancy between what the school offers, or expects, and what the child needs and can achieve. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of this problem is the too frequent failure of the school to recognize the level of maturity of a child and to provide him with the training which is appropriate for him.

SPECIAL SCHOOLS FOR MALADJUSTED CHILDREN

3

In many communities there has been an increase in delinquent children who do not respond to the efforts of their teachers, and the special services available in some schools. These children have disturbances which are too far advanced to be handled on a part-time basis or many times are of a nature that they are upsetting to the rest of the class. For example, the regular school cannot readily reach the truant who may not attend classes enough to make rehabilitative efforts successful. Also, a delinquent whose behavior is detrimental to the rest of the class, such as stealing, sexual activities, and threats of physical harm, should not be allowed to attend regular classes. There is a need for special schools that can provide the

1 Roberts, S. O., statement in hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 84th Cong., 1st sess., Education, August 11, 1955, pp. 196-199. 2 Newburger, Maurice, The School and the Maladjusted Child, Understanding the Child, vol. 17, No. 1, January 1948, pp. 14-21; see also Powers, Edwin, and Helen L. Witmer, An Experiment in the Prevention of Delinquency-The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.

Bettelheim, Bruno, The Special School for Emotionally Disturbed Children, in National Society for the Study of Education, 47th Yearbook, pt. I, Juvenile Delinquency and the Schools, pp. 145-171.

necessary professional treatment on a full-time basis which these children must have for an adequate adjustment to society.

Special programs of this type may range from a special class to a school providing 24-hour care. Such special programs usually include, and should invariably include, both a curriculum modified to meet the special learning problems of delinquent children and the full battery of social and psychological services required to assist them with their problems in human relationships.

The readjustment of a delinquent consists of a combination of two interrelated processes. First, his inner controls, which up to his entry into the school have been too weak to prevent him from embarking on antisocial behavior, must be strengthened. Second, his environment must be so changed that it exposes him neither to unmanageable deprivation nor to temptation.

THE FUNCTION AND ROLE OF THE TEACHER

In his book Who Are the Guilty?, Dr. David Abrahamsen wrote: Important as it may be to learn about the three R's, it is time to start learning the fourth R, relationship that is, emotional relationship. The way the child behaves toward his teacher or toward other children reflects his own feelings, and it is necessary for the teacher to know about that child's emotional attitudes."

Teachers can learn to understand children and youth with whom they are working and can adapt their work effectively to help these children, to help learn what they need to know, to help them adjust to the school and to their life situations, and to become responsible citizens. Teachers, by the ways in which they deal with children, could prevent a great many of the difficulties from arising which now require psychiatric and clinical help.

There will always be the need for clinical services and psychiatric services because some combinations of the factors that produce maladjustment are greater than a teacher can neutralize, but teachers can neutralize a large number of these factors so that the expansion of clinics and psychiatric services does not need to go on indefinitely. Every child needs daily contact with someone who understands him and values him as a person, someone who believes that he has developmental potentialities for social usefulness and for significant personal becoming. Every child needs daily living experience with people who are acting in accord with a code of ethics appropriate to our society, who are consistent in their expectancies and demands upon him, who are reasonable and not arbitrary and harsh in the manner and timing of their discipline, who maintain a climate of friendliness and considerateness in their interactions with all other human beings. Very frequently this does not occur at home. The school then has this opportunity. Each child or youth continuously should have at least one teacher at school who maintains a close personal relationship with him, based upon a genuine understanding of what he individually is up against, of what his resources and limitations are, of what his major needs and motivations are.

• Abrahamsen, David, Who Are the Guilty? p. 267. 5 Bills, Robert E., op. cit., pp. 84-85.

THE CONCEPT OF THE VISITING TEACHER AND HER FUNCTIONS

A visiting teacher not only must be qualified as a teacher but also must have training in techniques of social casework. Some visiting teachers spend not more than a small part of their time in the classroom and devote a major portion of it to attempts to help children in becoming better adjusted. These workers are encouraged to investigate the causes of maladjustment. Such investigation may frequently require home visitation and the solicitation of such outside assistance as can be offered by the physician, psychologist, or the psychiatrist. The principle involved in the use of the visiting teacher or school social worker maintains that each child is an individual who reacts in terms of his own personality and the stimulation of external events. The use of the visiting teacher represents an attempt to understand the basis for the child's problem and the establishment of a plan which, if pursued, will bring about its reduction or elimination.

Lawrence G. Derthick, superintendent, Chattanooga public schools, stated before the subcommittee that the central resource in the Chattanooga public schools for locating children with problems and who are the potential delinquents is the visiting teacher. These school social workers do not wait in an office until a child with a problem comes to them for help. They have regular schedules for visiting in the schools to confer with principals, teachers, and pupils. A child who has a problem in school achievement or behavior, which may be caused by improper placement, a health problem, or a home situation, may be referred to the visiting teacher. Behavior problems such as truancy, aggressiveness, overpassivity, and the like are all symptoms that a child needs help and may result in his referral to a visiting teacher. The visiting teacher's function is to study the case as fully as possible and work with the child, his parents and teachers or to make referral to other agencies such as a guidance clinic, family service agency, and other organizations and coordinate their efforts to help him.

When the visiting teacher program was first established in the Chattanooga school system, the majority of the children referred were those whose problems had gone to an advanced stage in which many were delinquents or near delinquents. As the visiting teacher program progressed and expanded, however, more and more children were referred when their problems were in the early stages of development and yielded more readily to treatment.

Through the visiting teacher, much more extensive contact with the homes can be had than is possible on the part of the classroom teacher herself. As Mr. Derthick described the program,

It might be said that the principal and the teachers carry the educational ball on the main field. The visiting teacher is a player who can go farther out, past that field into the community, enlist the skills of other agencies to help principals and teachers in understanding and dealing with the behavior which is creating problems in school.'

Derthick, Lawrence G., statement in hearings before the Subcommittee To Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, U. S. Senate, 84th Cong., 1st sess., Education, August 19, 1955, pp. 303-322.

Derthick, Lawrence G., op. cit., p. 306.