that with which we might have been familiar ourselves in the processes of growing up. It is a serious sign.

The church, home, and school are somehow failing to inculcate many, not all-not a majority, but many-young people with a sense of moral and ethical values that will help them become participating members of our society.

I gain that conviction, but I also gained another conviction: that this is a problem upon which we can act. It is a problem that, with proper national leadership, we can come to grips with; we can inaugurate and promulgate programs that can control delinquency, that can prevent it and can bring it under control.

With those words of introduction, then, our panel this morning is, as Mr. Elliott said, going to address itself to the kind of activities that might be undertaken for the prevention and control of delinquency.

To lead off, I want to introduce to you on my right Dr. William Kvaraceus. Dr. Kvaraceus has been associated for many years with Boston University. His major field is that of education. I have known particularly of his work, his pioneer work, in the development of an instrument whereby we could detect and even predict delinquency in very young children.

For the past few years, Dr. Kvaraceus has been associated with the National Education Association, working on a project that will help classroom teachers and public school systems in coming to grips with a problem that they have acknowledged as No. 1.

Now I would like to turn to Dr. Kvaraceus and ask him to tell what he thinks we might do toward the control of this problem. Mr. KVARACEUS. Thank you, Mr. Beck.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee: I might say by way of preface, I am currently working and directing a national project on juvenile delinquency for the National Education Association, which has this year invested $60,000 of its dues in an attempt to discover what the schools' role is, what the schools can best do to prevent and contain this particular problem.

It is not that this is of the schools' manufacture, nor is it of the schools' cure, but there is a role to be played. It is not too inconsistent for this national, private organization to sponsor legislation that also might make it expenditure in this same direction.

Right now, all the future delinquents are sitting in a classroom, some classroom, in the Nation's schools. The last crops of delinquents are recently from the Nation's schools. Some will come back to the Nation's schools. Some are sitting there.

What can the school do? What might the bills enable the schools to do better? First of all, let me say that we might do a great deal more prevention through earlier identification. As Dr. Beck has said, in the last 20 years, much of my research effort has been geared in this particular direction.

I would like to review very briefly some factors in these very crude instruments that need to be improved, that need to be validated further, some of the indications that would tell us that this child is ripe for delinquency.

Let us say that these signs are plainly visible within the horizons of the teacher's classroom. First of all, this is a youngster who often

has very limited aptitude. He is a youngster very often caught in the vise of an academic curriculum, and given a squeeze hoping that some learning drips out and what drips out often is a delinquent.

This is a youngster who often gets a bankruptcy statement for a report card. When he brings it home, it indicates that he is perhaps good for nothing. This is a youngster who shows a marked dislike for schools. This is a white-heat hate that pushes into rebellion. This is a youngster which comes from homes which have many addresses, which are highly mobile, which indicates that he very often has a disruptive school program.

This is the youngster who intends to leave school as soon as the law will allow, or sooner if that can be arranged. This is a youngster who takes the law in his own hands and solves his terrible school problem of failure or frustration through truancy. This is, by the way, almost of an emotional recess period, not only for the youngster, but perhaps for the teacher and the principal, too.

This is the youngster who uses the school and classroom as an arena to display his smartness, his cunning technique, his force, his excitement. This is the youngster who does not belong; he has that feeling. This is the youngster who may belong in a special class for the mentally retarded or some other deviate group.

Although he may be very well adjusted there, the community points a finger at him and very often he has to prove his status by breaking more windows, by stealing, or by some other devious route. These are only a few signs. Any one of these signs is insignificant. Yet with signs of this type that we get from the research studies of differences from delinquents and nondelinquents, we think that with these crude measures, still to be improved, that we could put our finger on them, on more than half of the delinquents. We might say perhaps as many as 70 percent of the delinquents could be identified by the teacher at the classroom level.

But there is an extreme frustration situation developing, because once we have identified him, very often we have just gone there to gaze on him. The question is what can we do in consequence of having identified this youngster? What do we have by way of child study resources? What do we have in the school and community by way of treatment resources? What do we have by way of coordinating influences within the school and the community?

One of the problems is that we do not often know enough. We need some basic research. Let me pick up another area of concern. We have this problem, the tremendous problem, of the school dropouts. I think it is alarming to know that about 45 percent of the youngsters who start high school never finish. This is almost a half of the young

sters.

This fallout group, the dropout group, resembles in many ways delinquent samples as you study them in the various research surveys. I think the question is twofold: What can we do in the schools to develop a more effective, interesting, vital, meaningful curriculum, to retain the youth for their benefit and for the benefit of society and the community; and secondly, what can we do in an effort to enable him to find employment sooner?

I think many of these youngsters are caught in a vacuum. They are youngsters in exile, caught between the 16th birthday and 18th

birthday, never to go back to school again, and not finding a labor market that can absorb them.

This is an area where we need to do some research from within the school and without the school in terms of what effective curriculum changes can we undertake.

Let me say that as the critics of the school press for a particular kind of curriculum, for the academically talented, for the youngster who can stand a second course in algebra, who can stand a second course in physics, that we are right now on the verge of a greater threat to delinquency, as many of these youngsters of less ability become second, third, and fourth-class citizens, who are nudged out of the school in terms of a particular prestige curriculum, geared only to 16 percent or perhaps 25 percent of the school's population.

There is a third concern that we have, and that is what we do with the emotionally disturbed and socially maladjusted youngster who is in the classroom? Do we get rid of him?

Can the school contain every child of every parent regardless of his mental situation, regardless of his emotional ability and stability?

We think that perhaps we have promised too much. The school is not a hospital, nor a deepfreeze, nor should it become either. But there are some youngsters whose degree of difficulty is such that they might be helped in the school through some special facility, such as a special class for the emotionally disturbed or socially disturbed.

What type of youngsters are they? We need to know how to identify them, what kinds of teaching, what kinds of teaching personality, how to appraise the effectiveness of these programs.

These questions we might be able to answer with the kind of support which is forthcoming by the various bills proposed. We need to concern ourselves further with the nature of the teaching personality itself.

What kind of people inhabit classrooms? Are they as effective as they might be in terms of personality? What kind of a challenge, for example, do we have to the teaching personality, in which Elvis Presley can capture the imagination of the youth of the Nation, in a sense, who follow him and imitate his example with dress, speech, dance? Is the teaching personality so pale that we don't have a teacher of science or of Latin or of mathematics that can, in a sense, give him a good run for his money? Can we have an inspired teaching that will deserve a good imitative example?

How can we develop this tremendous potential in terms of a stronger relationship between youngster and teacher and teacher and youngster on which good teaching is based and on which therapy is based?

Last, I might indicate that the school needs to concern itself with better ways to hook into the vast network of youth and family agencies that deal with these youngsters. The school is only one agency. It happens to be a common agency, a universal agency, but it needs perhaps to reach out into the community and hook into, let us say, the work that is going on within the coordinating council, the community council of social agencies.

We see within the school a tremendous unit, a tremendous strategy. We have all the children of all the people, we get them early, we maintain close continued contact with them. We have teachers who are able and prepared to deal with this problem, and we have schools in

every community, whether we have a child guidance clinic or some other clinic, we do have the school. We feel this is a core agency that can still be strengthened and improved and evaluated with the help of the funds that might be forthcoming with passage of the types of bills which are being discussed here today.

Thank you.

Mr. BECK. Thank you, Dr. Kvaraceus.

The doctor has highlighted for us three different kinds of projects that might be furthered through expenditures. They would include identification of young people at an early stage, attention to school dropouts, and modification of the curriculums of the schools so as to retain these youngsters, and work toward the establishment of models for behavior, so that the teachers may become more the models that students emulate than the less desirable models.

Our next speaker is Chief Proetz, from St. Paul. He is the head of the police department in St. Paul, Minn., and one of our leading police administrators in the United States. The chief has been known for many years because of his careful attention to the problems, the very knotty problems, of police work with juveniles.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I know that you are familiar with the fact that police officers have contact with more juvenile delinquents, more of these youngsters, than does any other social agency. So the role of the police is crucial.

The chief is going to tell us from his experience what he feels might be done toward the enhancement of this role.

Mr. PROETZ. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman and members of the panel: May I say for myself, as a police officer, that it is a pleasure to be here with you and bring to you some of the problems which confront us as police.

To qualify myself, I have been an officer for the past 22 years. To give you an idea of what the officer is, the picture has changed completely from several years ago. The officer is no longer given a badge, a gun, a nightstick, and put out on a beat. He is a highly trained individual. He is out there on the street.

May I say this, that throughout the United States, the folks that you see here on this particular panel, we as police officers keep them in business, because from us we contact the whole public. We contact the normal youngster as he is on the street and going through his normal life, growing up to take the positions even now that you are enjoying, I am enjoying, and the rest of the members are enjoying. Someday they are going to take our places.

It is my feeling that you may have a question of how this concerns our Nation? From my standpoint, it is an important national concern. This is practically as important as our national defense. We need strong families. If we don't have them, we will not have a strong country. I am sure you realize that.

Another question you may have is: Is this just a city problem? It is not a city problem at all. This is a rural problem also. Because of television, because of our newspapers, because of our automobiles, our world has shrunk.

Everyone knows what the others are doing. Our very concepts and impressions are changing, and the youngsters right along with

us.

Here is what I want to impress upon you. I am not going to be able to cover everything that the police officer is confronted with in the way of problems. But very briefly, I would like to see this happen: I would like to see that we improve the understanding of the officers, on the whole, of this problem. When I say juvenile delinquency, I don't mean that. Let us be realistic. This is juvenile crime. I would like to see the improvement of their understanding this problem, so that this officer who is on the street dealing with the youngsters, is able to understand why this kid does not conform, why this kid rebels to him, why these kids perhaps sometimes openly dare them to strike them; they openly resist them in arrest; or they spit in their faces, and many other discourteous acts.

I want the officer to understand why these kids are doing that, because for this officer it is important to him and his family that he does not take these things home with him, get a churning and boiling and bubbling inside and take it out on his own family.

I want the officer to understand the whole picture so that he is a good officer, so that if he comes into your home he is going to be able to handle your problems because he is not carrying this other one over into your home, nor will he take out on the next individual, if he issues them a tag, or something like that.

The horizon has to be pushed back. As I said, the old days are gone. We now have a highly trained officer out on the street. He is dealing with the overall public, the overall youngster, not just the abnormal youngster, but with the kid that is going to take all of your positions. To me, another important thing is on these first contacts, it is important that he can screen them and, in our juvenile division, important that policemen understand the delinquent kids.

Remember, our juvenile police handle 3 out of every 4 youngsters themselves, 3 out of every 4 being handled by the police officer within the police station or in his contacts on the street. Only the fourth one goes to the other agencies, to the juvenile court and so forth.

It is important to him to make a good decision. The Supreme Court can wait for months to make decisions. We as officers have a matter of seconds, a minute, at the most an hour, on occasion. This is important in that kid's future. When I say kids, I mean youngsters. I am using a fast term.

Three out of every four we handle, the police handle themselves. On trouble spots, remember that the police officer is the bird dog, so to speak, out in the field. He recognizes the spots and it is important to the rest of the agencies to come together and work on the spots that he has identified as trouble spots.

When we think of that, remember the officer is the only one on these neglect cases who is actually making a contact when the family is frequenting the taverns, leaving them alone at night, or in the car locked up on the street. These youngsters are going to be future citizens.

How does the officer handle them? How does he identify them? What does he do to make a disposition of that particular case? This is important for 20 years from now, not just today. These kids can grow up to be frustrated or abnormal, if a decision is not made.

In the border States, there is work to be done. The legislation from one State to another is conflicting. It presents problems to police officers. For example, a boy can go from one State to the next, a matter of 20 miles away, and disorderly conduct follows. He comes back