In doing the research for the blog post, “Within A Nation Torn“, I found a few stories I thought were interesting.
-
- Vincent Riccio -Street Gangs
- School Without Walls – creativity of the Board of Education
- Boy Genius – a mystery
The postwar gangs in the 1940’s-1960’s
Unemployed teenage dropouts, the product of parents or of a society that had pushed them out of mainstream American young life.
Vincent Riccio, was a social worker (1950 – 1955) with the New York City Youth Board. The Saturday Evening Post, ran a featured article on him. He was working with street gangs, assigned to curtail a nasty situation with those deemed juvenile delinquent. Ricco’s tasks he says, primarily was to stop the killings. (Saturday Evening Post, 09-15-1962, “My Life with Juvenile Gangs”, pt.1 of 3)
[Vincent Riccio, social worker with the New York City Youth Board, three-quarter view, standing looking at graffiti (the name of a youth gang, Baltic Dukes) painted on a brick wall]; LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)
In Riccio’s story as told by, Bill Sloeum, the author of the article, he tells of the violence these kids endure as gang members living on the streets. Ricco wrote a book; published in 1962, ‘All The Way Down‘, and I found a copy of the book online at archive.org. In it he describes how it was he came to be tasked with working with the street gangs of New York and the situation as it was endured.
I explored (“Within A Nation Torn“) the vast amount of youth across the country that didn’t have a job to go to. These youngsters apparently didn’t have a home to go to, as well. The economic transformation of the ongoing development of automation, and possibly companies, restructure (high stats of teenage unemployment) of their hiring in applicants, joblessness led to a desperate need to survive. Most unfortunate, they were killing each other, as well.
New York City Youth Board (one of several, like organizations) was established in 1947 in recognition of the gang violence as a serious problem. They deployed up to 150 “Detached” (their term) street level gang workers over a ten years span. (Eric Schneider social historian – 1999)
What they did
They organized athletic programs at neighborhood recreation centers, offering advice supplemented with field trips to amusement parks, beaches, and camp sites. They provided resources for organizing neighborhood social events, block parties, and “hall dances.” Their most highly valued service by far was intended to draw individual gang members away from gang activities by locating job opportunities for them.
Mobilization for Youth (MFY) was launched in 1962 with a rich mix of federal and city funding that enlarged the substantial stream of Ford grant dollars. (Gangs in New York City, ch. 1, Justice Policy Institute)
End Result
Eventually (by the mid 60s) gang violence declined, in the mid-cities of the U.S., but not without a lot of time, effort, funding and human intervention devoted into the giving of the right kind of attention these youths deserved.
School Without Walls
And Experiment in Education
On February 17 1967, The Philadelphia District creates the Parkway program; one of the first “school without walls’ in the nation, with 143 high school students in attendance. Originally funded by the Ford Foundation, planning grant; this program was fully accredited and later received its funding from the School District of Philadelphia.
The Parkway High School of Philadelphia – 1969
The schoolroom was the city, the teachers are the city’s employees and businessmen, the curriculum is the day-to-day events of the city. Students learned about journalism at local newspapers, auto mechanics at auto shops, and art from museum historians. (LIFE Magazine’s 1969 story on Philadelphia’s Parkway program, “most radical of all current high school experiments.”)
The law requires a young people to attend school. It was a public school that accepted students for whom there was no place and were potential or current dropouts. Students were chosen by lottery; applications came from all over the city. Other students in attendance came from private institutions, as well.
It was a program that its intent was give to the students, practical community experience, and prepare them for a more useful role in society, in an alternative from the traditional manner. As of 1973 the high school offered more than 350 courses and had 850 full-time students. (Parkway Program, Philadelphia School District, Pa. Jan 73, 27p.)
Students Self-Governance
Elizabeth Cleaners Street School, was an unaccredited independent high school started on the upper West Side in New York by a small group of teenagers, in 1969. Students age ranged from 13 – 17. They decided to get two paid teachers and get volunteers to reach the rest of the classes. These students were to decide their, high school curriculum, uncertain as to what that was exactly, they only knew it would not be of the traditional, that had had before.
End Result
Elizabeth Cleaners Street School, started its life in a squatted storefront under the sign from which it drew its name. Funding for the school and its operations came from the students holding bake sales, street fairs and park concerts, as well as, writing and publishing a book, titled, “Starting Your Own High School“. The school died a natural death as the students became not interested in new recruits or fundraising to sustain its future and the last of its original founders left. (“Whose School is This? The School Without Walls and the Elizabeth Cleaners Street School”, by Sasha Moniker)
Boy Genius
Peter Winston
Sands Point Country day school 1963, enrolled Peter Jonathan Winston, it was a school that accommodated gifted children. The clinical psychologist that tested Winston, noted that at the age of 5, he tested to the equivalent of someone of age 15 years old. Which in his opinion not only made Peter, intellectually gifted, but a prodigy, as well.
Winston had poor coordination though, it was difficult for him to hold a pencil. Also, there were times he was not always a complicit child; he was apt to throw temper tantrums. Sands Point was chosen in part as a placement for his education, so as to correct and enhance Peter’s ability to get along with others. He was placed within his own age group, until which time he showed improvement in his ability to get along with his peers. (The Saturday Evening Post 12-19-1964, the remarkable life of a little genius, by gilbert millstein)
Being somewhat made famous by the article written in, “The Saturday Evening Post“, Peter’s story continues as he took up an interest in Chess. No one knows how he learned to play, but by the age of 10, his games were being written up in Chess Life. At age 14, he faced off with a man that was the six-time United States champion in chess.
He helped co-found the Elizabeth Cleaners Street School, and was the author of the book, “Starting Your Own High School“, in 1972, mentioned above in, schools without walls. However, Peter stopped attending the school in 1973.
In 1974, he played in the, U.S. Junior Championships in Philadelphia. He shared the title that year with another young man. The U.S. Chess Federation sent, Winston to the World Junior Championships in Manila, where he finished a disappointingly sixth place.
Winston started at, Franconia College, in September 1975, when he was 17. An alternative school in, New Hampshire, that was receptive to his unorthodox background.
And in 1976, it is reported that he suffered a psychotic break. Peter spent at least another year in and out of hospitals, largely at, New York Psychiatric Institute in Washington Heights. The doctors there diagnosed him as schizophrenic and prescribed heavy doses of Thorazine. He was reported to have checked himself in voluntarily in the summer of 1977, by someone that knew him.
Sometime late January 1978, he had gone to the, Meadowlands racetrack, to gamble. Around midnight the track emptied out; needing a ride, he phoned his sister. The morning after, he was muttering something about going to Texas to see, Walter Korn, author of the chess bible, “Modern Chess Openings“. He left her apartment with no ID and no one has seen him since. (Observer, Chess, The Mysterious Disappearance of Peter Winston, By Sarah Weinman • 07/18/12)
It is a mystery how a young man that can show so much promise, can simply disappear without a trace. There are speculations as to what happened to Peter Winston. Perhaps with the day-to-day pressures that seemed to consume him in his life, could be after he left, he simply changed his name, so as to escape those pressures and find some self-defined normalcy he could call his own. My summation of course.