"Run, Rabbits, Run!"

School started again last fortnight in Dover, most dangerous spot in England, for the first time since Dunkirk. In the teeth of big German guns across the Channel, most of the 1,300 moppets still left in the city emerged from chalk-cliff cave shelters to hour-and-a-half sessions of the three Rs in six shell-scarred schoolhouses (glassless windows were boarded, roofs patched from bomb hits).

Because Dover still gets eight to ten siren warnings daily, the first lesson in 18 months was an air-raid drill: Teacher cried "Get in the cave," and pupils grabbed gas masks, cleared out in 30 seconds. At the second lesson they learned to dive under desks at the word "Shell."

The schools were opened over the protests of Dover's school-board chairman, Captain F. R. Powell, who demanded that the Government force the youngsters out of town. Said he: "Children are living in caves and getting as pale and miserable as possible. ... If a shell from German Channel guns falls into one of our schools and kills or injures any of the children, the parents themselves will be to blame."

Despite such warnings, nearly a third of Dover's 4,300 children have stayed on. Typical was a mother of nine, who grudgingly let one child be evacuated, soon called him back because "if the [rest of us] were killed, Harry would be lonely."

Britain's Board of Education last month boasted, probably overoptimistically, that 97.8% of its schoolchildren would soon be back at full-time schooling. In the Midlands and North, the fall semester began late (October), to let pupils help with the late wheat harvest; in London it started early (August), to make up for lost time. London's 128,000 pupils, a third of normal, were on double sessions because two-thirds of London's schools were bomb-or fire-damaged. The teacher shortage is serious: 18,000 schoolmasters have enlisted. British schools this autumn plugged two new subjects: U.S. history and first aid. The carrying of gas masks is still compulsory for all school children.

Now old hands at living & learning under difficulties, Britain's youngsters have learned to amuse themselves in shelters, to sleep under kitchen tables, under stairs or at their desks. Even nursery-school tots know what to do when Teacher cries: "Run, rabbits, run!" The war has given unexampled score to children's natural instinct for collecting: they collect paper, bottles, bones, aluminium, scrap --it all goes into the war effort. Wartime schooling has also taught Britain's educators a big lesson: when they tried to cut down to the three Rs, pupils quickly became bored. To revive them, teachers had to give them a broader curriculum.

Diplomas in apple packing went to 75 laborers near Yakima, Wash, who, for five nights a week, graded, wrapped & packed wooden apples for practice in a WPA class.

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