Less Circus, More School

On a selected school day in the spring, each senior girl in each high school in Portland, Ore. parades across a stage at her school, as prettily as she is able. A judging committee of six to ten teachers and an equal number of students pick the twelve prettiest. Each girl gives a short speech, and the list of quarter-finalists is narrowed. Then, amid plentiful uproar at assemblies timed to newspaper-edition deadlines, the prettiest teen-ager at each high school in Portland is named Princess of the Rose Festival, a civic promotion of considerable local sanctity.

Such legalized cutting of classes in the name of "activities"--pep rallies, assemblies, community projects or sports--has become a high school commonplace throughout the U.S. Last week school officials in Portland let it be known that they had had enough. A conference of principals and teachers agreed that school-and parent-sponsored activities had made "serious inroads in class attendance." Superintendent J.W. Edwards informed the city that this year the "three-ring circus" is not coming to town. Among changes:

P: Rose Festival officials will confer with schools on ways to cut down interruptions "of very serious proportions."

P: Athletes and coaches will no longer be allowed to cut last-period study halls on game days. Practice sessions will end at 5:30 p.m.

P: Assemblies, held two or three times a week in some schools, will be cut to one a week.

P: Night activities which interfere with homework will be reduced.

P:Parent-sponsored shows will not be held during school hours. Among well-meant time eaters at one high school last year: lectures on safe skiing.

P: As many activities as possible will be moved to after-school hours, and teachers involved will be paid, either by the schools or the sponsoring groups, for the additional time they put in.

Part of Portland's trouble, according to one principal, is the tendency of civic groups to regard high schools as the source of "a fine captive audience and a supply of free talent." Businessmen's luncheon clubs are too inclined to call up a school music director and ask him to "send the band over at noon." Schools, too, have been at fault; one music director, who boasted of the size of his department, explained that frequent student performances at nonschool events were "good for our public relations." Promised Superintendent Edwards: Music teachers will be encouraged to say no.

When the new rules were laid down, some Portland educators braced for cries of protest from the public. To their pleasant surprise, most of the people who spoke up agreed that it was time to have less circus and more school.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.