School Prayer
I didn’t write this I don’t know who did but I thought it was worth saving.
I wanted to share with you and your readers some interesting information gleaned from “Collier’s Encyclopedia Yearbooks” from the years 1961-63. As you know, the religious right often claims that the upsurge in crime and violence that plague this country did not begin until the Supreme Court removed “God” from the public school classroom in 1962-63. However, I have found information that proves this to be a false claim. The research I have done can be done by anyone who has access to such yearbooks, either at home or a large city library. Another good source would be “The World Almanac” which is helpful with crime statistics on a state by state basis. Some libraries have one for each year since the 1950’s. “The Readers Guide to Periodical Literature” is another good resource, especially if you can find the volumes for the late 50’s and early 60’s.
Anyway, I was reading “Collier’s 1961 yearbook” (Which discusses the final crime statistics for 1959) and it had this to say (Page 173): “Crime registered a new all-time high in 1959, some 69% higher than a decade earlier and 128% greater than the rate in 1940. According to FBI information, the crime rate continues to outpace population growth at a rate of 4 to 1, and serious crime increase 11% over last year’s figures for the first nine months of 1960.” The author of this section, Donald J. Newman, while discussing the numerous murders, forcible rapes and agravated assaults recorded in 1959, writes (Page 174): “Little wonder our world reputation is as notorious for crime as it is famous for technology.”
What is this? America has a reputation for crime? Before the Supreme Court removed “God” from the public classrooms? That can’t be! But wait!According to the same author in “Collier’s” 1962 yearbook (Page 174) he states that America’s commitment rate of 119.8 adult prisoners for every 100,000 persons in population was the “highest” commitment rate than anywhere in the world! He adds (Page 176) of the 1962 edition that crime in the United States increased 100 percent in the major cities since 1951! In the 1963 edition he wrote that crime rates had surpassed population growth at a ratio of about 5 to 1 over the previous five years (Page 185).
What is surprising is these increases in crime came during a religious revival in the 1950’s that had “God” put into the pledge of allegiance, and “In God We Trust” put on the back of our money and a 25% increase in total church membership from 1950 to 1959!
In the 1962 edition (discussing 1960’s stats) he wrote that the rate of crime showed an increase of some 13% over 1959 and some 24% over 1955. The reported robbery rate increased 24% since 1955, while burglary increased 29% over the same period. No crime decreased during this time (Page 172). Collier’s asserts in the 1963 edition that when the “Engel Vs Vitale” case was passed that an estimated 75% of the school system in the SOUTH had chapel services and Bible readings (Page 224). Yet the 1964 edition (Page 238) reveals that the SOUTH has the highest murder rates! (Can’t we play the “post hoc” game too?)
He also mentioned that attacks on police officers by mobs increase greatly in 1961. Los Angeles reported such attacks “tripled” in 1961 while New York reported during the first seven months of 1961 some 1,400 NYC police officers were attacked by similar mobs! (All this while God was still “In” the classroom). Further, in the 1963 yearbook he added that there were 13,190 reported assaults on police officers in 1961, four thousand more than in 1960. “This increase in assaults on the police is consistent with the trend of recent years and is of great concern to law enforcement officials. Many of these assaults involved attacks by groups of otherwise law-abiding onlookers while police were performing routine duties” (Page 187). So much for the idea that respect for authority was lost only after the removal of “God” from the classroom, heh?
These church membership figures are found on page 506 of the 1961 “Collier’s” yearbook. The article on church membership states that in 1900 total church membership was only 36% of the US population. By 1926 the US Protestant membership was 27% of the total population while Catholics were 16% of the population. However, by 1958 the Protestant membership was 35.5% of the population and Catholic membership had raised to 22.2% of the total population (63% combined total of all faiths). The year by year total of the 1950’s shows the “total” numbers of Protestant church membership (and how it grew):
1950 50,021,960
1951 52,162,432
1952 54,229,963
1953 55,837,325
1954 57,124,142
1955 58,448,567
1956 60,148,980
1957 59,823,777
1958 61,504,669
1959 62,543,502The total population on the other hand increased from 151,325,798 in 1950 to 179,323,175 in 1960, an increase of 18.5% In the 1963 edition the “total” church membership for the year 1961 is given as 116,109,929, up from 114,449,217 in 1960. Total church membership represented 63.4% of the estimated American Population (Page 51%). Donald J. Newman in his article on crime in the 1961 edition of “Collier’s” (Page 179) writes:
“The immediate outlook for crime and delinquency prevention is discouraging. There every reason to believe that crime rates of all kinds will continue to increase during the sixties and that in many areas major crises of a nature now only dimly perceived will occur. Certain problems such as heroin and morphine addiction have every possibility of reaching epidemic states. Youth gangs show no inclination of lessening and we have yet to develop generally satisfactory methods of focusing their activities in Gazooks! That sounds like a newspaper right from our own time! The writer adds that the US adjudicated 200,000 children delinquents in 1940, which increased to 280,000 by 1950 and to a whopping 700,000 by 1958! Newman
writes that these stats came from the “Children’s Bureau” databases and were considered the best available.In the 1963 edition he writes that 1961 was the twelfth consecutive year of increased juvenile delinquency (Page 187). The problems with schools did not begin with the removal of state sanctioned prayer either, contrary to the claims of the religious right. According to “Collier’s” there were grave educational concerns in the early 1960. In the EDUCATION section the author writes:
“The year 1960 witnessed a continuing concern over the state of education in the nation, along with evidence that changes were demanded by the times. Among major developments during the year were: (1) the 16th consecutive year of increased enrollments in public schools; (2) acute shortages of classrooms and teachers at ever educational level” (Page 203) “Most of the strident voices in criticism of education had become muted. The views of Vice Admiral Hyman G. Rickover continued to receive some publicity. In testifying before a Congressional subcommittee, he restated his views about the ineffectiveness of American education and the need for a European pattern of academic rigor in the nation’s high schools.”
The quality-in-education theme was also reiterated by the “New York Times”. Taking issue with a statement by President Eisenhower in which he termed as “spurious” assertions about deficiencies in American Education, the “Times” editorialized that such assertions were genuine. It added: “The problem of American education goes deeper than the lack of buildings or lack of equipment or lack of scholarships or even lack of personnel - it involves quality; quality of teachers, quality of instruction, quality of curricula, quality of students, quality of output, quality of standards” (Page 205). On page 208 I read this: “There seemed to be accumulating evidence that discipline was the number one student problem. Dr. Lawerence Vredevoe of UCLA reported discipline to be the chief concern among parents and prospective teachers. Reporting from a study he had conducted, 80% of a group of 3,500 future teachers said poor discipline was their main worry. Of a group of 2,400 parents, 80% listed poor discipline as their chief complaint against the schools. In a group of 160 school administrators, 124 stated that the major cause of dismissal of faculty was ineffective ability to maintain discipline.”
The Gilbert Research Survey, which usually polls student opinions, turned to a sample of 900 teachers for their opinions about teenagers. The number one complaint was lack of courtesy and respect for their elders. Other peeves of teachers included carelessness, poor grammar, and incessant talking. The teachers blamed poor parental supervision (Page 208) It became obvious as I read these yearbooks that the problems with our schools DID NOT BEGIN WITH THE REMOVAL OF STATE SANCTIONED PRAYERS FORM THE SCHOOLS. They were already there. The writer even writes on page 208 that the dropout rate in 1959 was almost 50% of all those who had entered the first grade, and 21% of those who had reached the tenth grade! The author adds: “Shortages in school housing, in adequate facilities, and in teaching staff presented one dilemma. The values, morals, attitudes, ambitions, and behavior of young people-particularly the adolescent, presented another. Questions of antisocial and delinquent behavior and the weak holding power of the schools (dropouts) seemed to receive prominent attention (Page 207).