Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Aug. 7, 1969, edition 1 / Page 1
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'M WHAT LIES AHEAD FOR PUBUC EDUCATION IN THE NATION AND ESPECIALLY IN THE SOUTH? By Jack Rider No responsible person cam es cape frequent and serious study Of the question: What lies Ahead for Public Education in The Nation and Especially in The South? Massive public resistance to the outsized spending on edu cation is building and has al ready been felt with a majori ty of school bond issues and school special taxes having been voted <Jown all across the na tion this year. In North Carolina we see no leadership at either the state or local level. Those who should be carrying the ball in this vital area are either stumbling along in numbed silence or are amply bending their energies toward spending every penny they can grab from state, federal or local sources. ' But in the ranks of education a vast majority of those people who have dedicated their talents and their lives to education are frightened. Unfortunately until now too few have been frightened badly enoughg to make them act in defense of their profession. Too many still occupy thir talents with the acquisition of buildings and staffs and ever-larger bud gets to be much concerned with their first business 1 at hand which is education. In Raleigh confusion has been compounded as the result of a federal official for the sec ond time asserting Raleigh’s ra cial integration plan is in com pliance with fedferal law; despite the fact that his superiors in Washington have previously ruled that the plan iwas not legal and had ordered him to restudy the plan and come up with a new finding. There’s hardly a school dis trict in the South that has not been confronted by such official Washington idiocy. ‘^Freedom of Choice” was sold to the public and to school officials who spent hundreds of thousands of dol lars advertising and pamphle teering on this specific point, but by the time this concept had been accepted by a majority of people the official line as drawn by those same idiotic policy makers in Washington was that “Freedom of Choice” was not nearly enough and that it was the solemn responsibility of ev ery state and local school offic ial to move forthwith to do away completely with every fac et of a dual school system. This in spite of the fact that the civil rights act of 1964 specific ally forbids any such compul sion. Ini Jones County three plans in one short summer were not enough to sate the lust for pow er of a backwoods federal judge from Sampson County, who or dered instant an total racial in tegration of every facet of that small county’s schools and did all of this on the eve of school opening when the public was not prepared for such a shock and at a time when the school officials had no recourse except to dose the schools or ibow to the petty whim of this Sampson satrap. Duplin County at this moment is in the throes of an identical idiocy perpetrated by this same judidal jerk. And while this Sampson County pipsqueak has been wheeling and dealing his junior colleague in crime from Jones County has cast his thunderbolts about in Craven, Martini, Pitt, Bertie, Greene and numerous other counties. Even to such ex tremes as ordering perfctty good transfer of students into expen sive temporary quarters that had to be purchased by the co wardly school boards that sur to such judidal jerk Atop these imbecilities of .fed eral gestapo agents and federal judicial tyrants these same be leaguered school hoards have been caught on another sharp tine of this_ educational pitch fork. And that, of course, is the irate public. And more recently another needle has appeared to make life more miserable, if possible, than before in the ‘'Black Mili tants” who are demanding such things as “Black History,” “Soul Food”, and watermelons at re cess. In this sea of much discontent the poor souls who have accept ed the thankless job of serving on a public school board have staggered from one surrender to another. Their superintendents and principals and teachers want more money for less work. The several greedy paws of federal interference have no more inter est in education than they do ini doing an honest day’s work for a fair day’s pay. Their only in terest is “brotherhood” and “de mocracy” and instant integra tion. For half a century public schools have grown with the warmest and most generous Mnd of public support. This has been a nationwide phenomenon. Bach generation was not only wBllng but was anxious to spend great ly expanded amounts on the ed ucation of their children. It was perhaps more American than ap ple pie for each parent to be willing to bankrupt himself so that his children could get more education than he had gotten. But now, with permissive stu pidity taking the place of pa ternal sternness on college and, university campuses all across the nation and with more em ployees charging vastly more for; teaching fewer people there is; a growing per cent of these free spending parents who are begin ning to question this Sacred Ed ucational Cow. Counties such as Jones and Duplin are looking for alterna tives, but more than alternatives their crying need is leadership, and recently in the field of ed-i ucation it has been a game of! follow-the-leader with Washing ton doing the leading while local officials — bribed with their own money — stumble meekly along trying to keep step with, the quick-step-change artists wtoo| waste the public funds in theirs petulant tyranny. . • There are alternatives, but j none will walk up and bite the j beleaguered. Jones and Duplin j Counties, and every other coun-j Receive Approval In action other than the CTG’sj appearance at the Commission ers meeting, the Commissioners' approved the change of Neuse River Economic Development Commission to the Neuse River Regional Planning and Devel opment Commission. Also Hor ace Phillips made a motion that the Neuse Mental budget he revised from $3,814.00 to $3,014. 73. The motion was carried un animously.__ GREEDY GUEST The Kinstonian Motel west of Kinston 'had one unwelcome guest last week. When he checked out he took with him a television set, two bed spreads, four pillow cases, 'two pillows, three sheets and broke open a vending machine and took $25 in coins. , _ UNUSUAL CHARGES Last week Kinston police in dicted Mary {Elizabeth Whitfield : of lOORailroad Street for con- ; tributing to the delinquency of : minor children after they had < arrested: her daughters aged j eight and nine for stealing chick ens. < ty under attack have enough church school rooms and other private meeting places to easi ly house every child. Education does not come from a building, but from teachers and textbooks. But to use these available fa ilities takes leadership and hard* work and courage. And it would vastly surprise even the people on many school boards to learn how much more economically children can' re ceive quality education private ly than publicly. Private schools operate at from 20 to 50 per cent more ec onomically than public schools. This is true locally and nation ally and the chidren from these private schools do better in col lege entrance exams than those attending the far more expen* sive public schools. The reason is not that less well equipped people work in private schools and in public schools but that private schools do not have so many unproductive drones on the payroll. It may be the greatest godsend to education and to the taxpay er if enough private schools are started) as a result of this chaos in the public schools to give the general public a yardstick fori comparison. Far too many people automa tically equate private schools with the expensive prep and fin ishing schools used iby the weal thy and the near wealthy, and since these schools are all board ing schools where food, shelter, medical care, recreation and con stant supervision must be pro vided they are necessarily quite expensive. But a private school without all of these burdens of the board ing school only needs to provide comfortable classroom space, a teacher for each class and the very minimum administrative staff. It is easy to understand' that a class of 25 students per teach er with each teacher being paid $6000, with 10 per cent for ad ministration and reasonable amortization of building opera tions can 'be provided for some thing in the order of $300 per child per year. Last year the Le noir County schools spent $488.46 ■per child and this was just for operations and not for amortiza tion of building costs which would have pushed the cost past the $500 mark. With the state average class of 30, this means, among other things, that the taxpayers are putting up something like $15, 000 per class per year. The class room teacher surely is not get ting anything like that amount, but the deadheads cluttering up administrative offices and other non-essential factors eat up that $15,000 per classroom, in spite of the fact that the teacher is getting no more than a third of that expenditure. Teachers leaving the public schools to teach in ' private schools find a great relief from the endless tedium of non-edu cational activities forced upon them by the make-work projects of administrators, who have to come up with something to jus tify their reason for being. As trying as these present times are, and1 they are hell on parents, teachers, principals, superinten dents and school boards; they may just very well be the most productive labor pains education has suffered! and they could give birth to a vastly improved ed ucation system — both public and private in the very near fu ture. It is a possibility and with each additional pressure this happy thought becomes a more reasonable probability. THE JONES COUNTY JOURNAL NUMB® 1® TRENTON, N. C., THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 1969 VOLUME XVH Carolina Legion to Boost Tobacco, Help Needed on Project In the parade of the National Convention of the American Le gion to ibe held in Atlanta Aug ust 22-28, The North Carolina float will proclaim the state as the number one tobacco grow ing area of the world. Members of the state delega tion will march behind the float and pass out leafs of tobacco to delegate onlookers, many of whom have never seen a leaf before except in a picture. Fifty states and eight foreign nations will be represented at the con vention. An appeal for a supply of to bacco for the purpose is being made by •fixe Joseph Dixon Roun tree Post 43 df Kinston. Post adjutant Ed West has set up the collection point at his office at 706 N. Heritage Street. He asks that anyone who can give a few pounds of good to bacco to bring or send it to Mm before August 13th, so it can be tied into “hands” and shipped ahead to the North Carolina headquarters in Atlanta At least seventy-five pounds will he needed. Monday Night Wrecks Injure Two In Lenoir County Wrecks In Lenoir County Monday night sent two men to the hospital. In the first at 9:15 p.m. Frank Turner of LaGrange route 1 suffered leg injuries when he rammed an embank ment on the Jim Sutton Road near his home. And just after midnight Sam my Maiming of Kinston route 7, a passenger in a car driven by Herring Smith of Ayden, suffer ed serious face and head inju ries when the car rammed the repp of a tractor-traiiesr just north of Kinston on the Green ' Mi ,r s&lfefc: Civic Interest Group Presents Another List of Grievences Cannon Goes Off! Kinston police were looking Andrew Cannon of Kinston route 6 with warrants charging him with stealing a car and resisting arrest Friday night. Highway Pa trolman Earl Smith went along in his car to help Detectives Aaron Brooks and Carl John son. Cannon roared by both po lice cars and was finally push ed off the road east of Kinston after which he was additionally charged with drunken driving, reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident, failing to stop For police cars and once more resisting arrest. LAND TRANSFERS The following land transfers were reported during the past week by Jones County register of deeds Bill Parker. Prom Clara Phillips Hadnott and C. M.-Hadnott to Mary Eliz abeth Conway Bull 25 acres in Pollocksvllle township. From Ed Johnson to Thelma Rhodes .5 acres in Trenton town ship. From Mary O. Thomas Weede to Charles F. Dixon .26 acres in Trenton township. From Leslie Lee Parker to Benjamin Leroy Parker 4.|25 acres in Trenton township. From Sue Brock Jones to Charles C. Jones .1 acres in Trenton township. From Patricia Allison Thomp son to John H. Thompson 4 tracts of land in Trenton township. From Lawyer Dove to Em -mett D. Flemmings .5 acres in Trenton township. ville Road. Investigation of both accidents has not yet been completed by the Highway Patrol Members of the Jones County Civic Interest Group (CIG) pre sented a list of demands to the Jones County Board of Commis sioners during the Monday meet ing of the board. Although the CIG’s four de mands were purported to be from “the people of Jones Coun ty” various Negroes in the coun ty have stated that the CIG did not represent them. The groups presenting the list of grieveno es to the Commissioners report edly had less than ten adults in the crowd of 67. The statement issued by CIG read as follows: “We the people of Jones County demands that the following list of grievences be approved and acted upon by the Jones County Commissioners being the governing body of the County: A- TIiat the Medicaid and WIN programs be accepted and put in force in Jones County. 2. That all Jones County agencies have Black Personnel. 3. That Blacks be appointed to committees that is appointed by the County Commissioners. 4. That Black Registers be ap pointed to the polls.” Commissioner Clifton Hood said they were told the only demand they could help them with was the first one. As for Negro personnel for all Jones County agencies, Hood said ap pointments were made for two year terms and those terms would not be up until Decem ber of next year. The group was informed that a Negro was re cently appointed to the Social Services Board. CIG replied the person was a "colored person” and1 not a “black,” the difference being colored” people are ma nipulated by whites and ^blacks” are not. CIG is the same organization chat recently presented a list of demands to the Jones Coun ty Board of education. ,
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Aug. 7, 1969, edition 1
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