Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1957-03-30
Curling Delinquency

TOT lIle past Three years i
have served as associate coun-
sci Of the United States SUBJ
committee to Investigate Ju-
venile Delinquency, and I am
now counsel for the minority
of the Antitrust and Monopoly
Subcommittee of the Senate.
However, write as a resident
of the greater Washington
area.
! read with interest your
editorial of March 20 dealing
with juvenile gangs. 1t is most
disturbing in this age of the
greatest prosperity in the his
tory Of the United States, with
great Announcements in all
fields. that we still have to
concern ourselves with prob
lens of juvenile delinquency
and specifically juvenile gangs.
The position taken in your edi-
torial is one shared by many
people interested in the jul
venile delinquency problem.
At one of our hearings on
July IA. 1855. in Chicago, in
which Senators Kefauver,
LANCER and Wiley participated.
a witness who appeared before
the subcommittee was DR..
Bernard Schulman. who spe-
cializes in psychiatry and is
the assistant director for pro-
fessional services Of the Com
munity Guidance Interest OF
Chicago. Part of his testimony
which is applicable to your
editorial was as follows:
What we have is a COM
pletely different relationship
between parent and child than
We had so years ago. We
cannot go back any more than
we can give up electricity and
internal combustion engines.
any more than we can blind
oGr eyes to the existence of
atomic energy. We cannot at
this stage establish the au-
thoritarian relationship that
existed between parent and
child years ago. First of all.
the community won't stand
for it. There was a time when,
If a father beat his child, the
neighbors thought it served
the kid right or. at the most, a
father who beats his child too
much. but nobody ever thought
OF dragging the father to court
for beating his child, or ostra-
ciZing him because he beat his
child. That was considered a
fathers right. Do we want TO
90 back to this? Maybe some
OF us do. but we can't. The
community won't stand for it.
We have come too long and
too far away from that posi-
ton.
The chief difference be-
tween the child of years ago
and the child today is
not the fact that the child
is more rebellious. There was
just as much of a war be-
tween adults and children
then as there is now, but
then the child did not
dare to rebel openly because
the community did not support
1t. Today, defiance is the
order of the day, and this is
the chief difference: That the
child today can be openly de-
FAINT and can get away with
1t. Why? Do we train our chill
dren to be nondeflant? No, we
encourage them TO be defiant.
We encourage them to fight.
We encourage them to get rich
quick. to look for the easy way
QUITO want prestige. In every
way in which we train our chill
dren, we are also training them
partly to be juvenile delin-
quents. Why, in this Michigan
boulevard housing project, the
RosenWald project, was there
decrease in juvenile delin-
quency? Because a community
was formed in which there was
enough social pressure TO keep
the children from going astray
into unconstructive ways OF
behavior. )"
Mr.. Chumbris: "Well. as to
this particular problem, you
say that the community at
titude guides. Now do you
think 1t would be wise for the
community's attitude to change
back toward, not quite all the
way back TO where 1t was so