ent001319-087

c tflt $ Only honor students can belong to the Rhythmei ' Vegas, New, a precision dance group rated by Ed Sullivan as "second only to the Radio City Rockettes" dow. " Tf^here then can it come from? An intelligent oymmtmity program is one source van i /Ia Unfortunately, too many American parents are too preoccupied with thens- i'own problems to "glow" for their children. How then explain that remarka- fble figure of 97 kids out of every 100 who never get into trouble? The answer, says psychiatrist Kiser, is that something else provides the right kind 1$of love and guidance to supplement what might be missing in the father and i mother. "There are many kinds of substitute 'glows' that keep a youngster :^on the right path," says Dr. Kiser, "but perhaps the most heartening has | been that provided by intelligent community programing." I Of the many ways in which intelligent American communities have * guided their children, here is one of the best: : In the heart of the worst juvenile delinquency area of Chicago is an ali- ^Negro private housing project, the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apart- Sments, more popularly known as the Rosenwald Houses. It is in the teeming ! South Side of the city, just two blocks from the 48th Street Police Station, ?·v which has been described as the busiest in the world. The juvenile crime Irate in that section is the highest in the city of Chicago, and yet a check of |police records. Juvenile Court statistics and children's welfare agencies re- $ veals that there has not been a single recorded case of juvenile delinquency among the more than 8,000 youngsters born and raised in the Rosenwald Houses. "It is," says Robert McRae of the Welfare Council of Metropolitan .Chicago, "an island in a sea of troubles." True, the residents of the Rosenwald Houses are screened and are of a '|slightly higher economic level than the people of the surrounding neighborhood?╟÷but that isn'tgnough to explain "the island." It was good common sense and hard wq$fo0p?· did it. Soon after th%j||gplhg%rpject was built, manager Robert H. Taylor ^established a nurserylfgchool |gr tenants in the basement of one of the '?╜buildings, under the direction of?Mrs. Anita Cockrell, a member of the fac- julty at the University of Chicago. The-theory behind the school, as Mrs. Cockrell explained it, is this: "If you get the kids when they're young | enough, it's easy to keep them on the right path." In the school, neglected ^zB^fL^y^\ children are given affection and overprotected children are taught self- Cj6>-st**s\Q/ reliance. The parents, moreover, are urged to participate. They are given u^Jt J lectures on how to raise children properly, and trained professional workers ?·t*d>t-?·-^ help correct their children's emotional problems in the formative stage. Next, Taylor established a "Field House" for older children. There the teen-agers play basketball, learn ballet and belong to Boy and Girl Scout troops. There is something interesting for them to do from the moment they "get out of school. Also, there are dedicated adults and outstanding teenagers who lead the younger kids. There are Halloween parties and square dances and visits to the Home for Aged Colored People (to teach them community responsibility). The result? The Rosenwald "island" has produced several top college basketball players, the city's finest amateur ballet company, a dozen graduates of MIT, Sarah Lawrence and other fine universities, a Korean war hero in Earl Renfroe, and a top industry physicist in Otho Kerr, Jr. But the Rosenwald Houses program has reached out beyond its own limited area to affect the surrounding slum neighborhoods, too. The Field House is open to all kids who want to use it. A few years ago, for instance, a bitter twelve-year-old boy (who lived in a nearby tenement) threw a stone through a window of the Field House. The athletic director, Walter Farmer, a former college pole vaulter, ran out and caught the frightened youngster. Instead of turning him over to the police, he invited him inside. The boy?╟÷ whose father had just died and whose mother was away at work every day ?╟÷hasn't missed an afternoon at the Field House since. Today this youth is nineteen. He joined the Boy Scout troop at the Field House, and he learned how to play basketball. Farmer helped him work out his problems at home and at school. The boy became an all-city basketball player at Du Sable High School and is the idol of a dozen younger kids who are learning the fine points of the game from him. When asked recently what he wanted to be when he gr^uj-kp^^nifg^ lege, he replied: "I want to go into settlement work, like Mr. Farmer." \JU COLLIER'S JANUARY 4, 1957 19