Readin', Ridin', & 'Rithmetic

Before he joined the Kennedy Cabinet, Connecticut's Governor Abraham Ribicoff was feared and cheered in his home state for cracking down on speeders. "The lesson of safety cannot be learned too early," he often said, and this year the Rotarians of Rockville, Conn. (pop. 11,000) took him at his word. Ardently backed by School Superintendent Raymond E. Ramsdell, himself a Rotarian, they financed a "pilot project" at Rockville's Northeast School that may be the nation's most feverish excursion into "safety education": driver training for first and second graders using itsy-bitsy pedal cars. Why make motorists out of moppets of six and seven? "We chose them because they fit the only cars we could buy reasonably," a leader of the Rotary program disarmingly explains. Last fall the school installed a model traffic layout in one tots' classroom, and a half-acre complex of "streets" out on the playground. After the state police commissioner himself cut a ribbon to open the new highway, top Connecticut officials gravely watched as little Rockvillians played cops and rodders.

At first, all 180 kids wanted dibs on the Rotary's dozen cars, but eventually the kids upped the rolling stock with their own scooters, wagons and doll carriages. They also learned "what was right and what was wrong," says First Grade Teacher Ruth Barlow, since the kiddy cops handed out speeding tickets with Ribicoffan severity ("usually to the same youngsters," says Mrs. Barlow). Transgressors were tried by a "judge" sitting atop teacher's desk and wearing teacher's sweater backward as a robe. By the first graduation exercises, even kids once addicted to pedaling along at dizzy speeds were reformed enough to win coveted safety certificates. If the lessons stick with the children through the ten years or so before they can drive, the scheme promises to be a big success, and the only complainers are parents who bridle at advice from back-seat drivers of inconsiderable years.

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