"Hot Potato"

When Painter-Decorator John Larson and his wife moved five years ago into tiny (pop. 557) Johnsburg in northeastern Illinois, about the first thing they did was to head their two children for the town's public school. They soon found that the school was no ordinary public school.

For one thing, all the teachers were Roman Catholic nuns. There were Catholic pictures on the walls, and most of the textbooks were written by Roman Catholic authors. For prizes, the school gave out small religious statues; it taught Catholic songs, said Catholic prayers, and on holy days, it was apt to shut down. Even its report cards were different: they not only graded pupils on their progress in religious training, they also bore the heading "Diocese of Rockford."

Idea of America. In Illinois, all this is perfectly acceptable: to save them the cost of maintaining both public and parochial schools, the state allows about 18 predominantly Catholic communities to combine the two. But acceptable or not, the Lutheran Larsons did not like the setup. "It seems to me," said Dorothy Larson, "that it's part of America that a public school is one thing and a parochial school is another. When nuns are the teachers in a public school and the atmosphere is all Catholic, then that's getting the idea of America all mixed up."

Mrs. Larson's complaints got only small results. Though it did change some of the texts used in the classrooms, the school board had at first obviously no desire to change much else. To avoid trouble, it even offered to pay the Larson children's tuition to the public school in nearby McHenry. But Mrs. Larson would have none of it. The daily bus ride, said she, would be too long, and "besides, Johnsburg is our school, too. Why should our kids have to go some place else?"

Basis of Civilization. As the years passed, the Larsons found themselves more & more alone in their battle. Their Catholic friends began to drop them, and some of their Protestant friends began to resent the trouble they seemed to be causing. Meanwhile, the Larson children continued to learn Catholic songs and to study Catholic books. "This text," said one of their books, "is an attempt to infuse into the English activities of our modern day the spirit of the Church through a consciousness of her liturgy." Said another: "The basis of our civilization is Catholic civilization."

Finally, last week, after a year's consultation with the Chicago office of the America Civil Liberties Union, Mrs. Larson took her case to court, charged in a lawsuit that her children were being forced by law to attend a "Roman Catholic institution ... in which sectarian instruction is given." If she wins, Illinois will have to do some quick revamping of its policy in Catholic communities. Said one school official of Mrs. Larson's test case: "A hot potato."

The Vanishing Fossil

At the University of Mexico (enrollment: 28,000), nearly everyone can spot the phenomenon known as a "fossil." He is the overage student with the bored look who hangs around the campus year after year without ever getting much nearer to his degree. Last month, as the new term began, Rector Nabor Carrillo Flores decided that something had to be done. With the university already hopelessly overcrowded, there just is no room for the fossils--especially when their numbers had reached the astronomical figure of 4,000.

Some of the fossils, the rector conceded, are harmless enough--the students who have jobs and cannot take more than a course or two a year. But. the rest are a nuisance. Some are so stubborn that they refuse to budge, even after flunking their courses seven or eight times. Others have grown so fond of university life that they spend their time repeating courses they have already passed. The medical school has students who have been around for as long as twelve years. They while away their days at the nearby cafes, cook up an occasional riot, sometimes extort money from freshmen by threatening them with particularly dire fraternity initiations.

Last week Rector Flores announced that he was beginning a campaign to make the fossil extinct. Henceforth, said he, any student who fails a course three times will be dropped from that course; any student who fails in his school ten times will be expelled; any student who passes a course four times will simply have to sign up for something else.

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