The Child Buyer (17 page)

THE CHILD BUYER

controversy was building up among the teaching staff in the town's elementary schools, and particularly at Lincoln Elementary, over the Rudd case, and he asked me to come down and set forth some fundamental doctrine, straighten the teachers out, the misguided ones.

Mr. BROADBENT. So a lecture was set up?

Miss HENLEY. Mr. Cleary assembled all the primary and elementary teachers in the Lincoln auditorium, on orders from Mr. Owing, the Superintendent.

Mr. BROADBENT. Would you describe exactly what happened on that occasion?

Miss HENLEY. It will be important for you gentlemen to understand a little about this boy and his particular problem as a backdrop for what happened. May I—?

Mr. BROADBENT. Please.

Miss HENLEY. I think perhaps I should introduce my remarks to you gentlemen on the subject of this boy's problem exactly as I did in my ... brahaha . . . unfortunately interrupted lecture of last Tuesday. It's so hard for people with a limited background on educational psychology—

Mr. BROADBENT. Proceed, madam.

Miss HENLEY. I'd like to give you a few insights into the learning process. We have to look for individual differences in terms of the reaction threshold, for the laws of operant behavior are the same for all. Learning depends on the restructuring of the Gestalt field. Learning starts with failure, the first failure is the beginning of education. The essence of learning by repetition is the effort to reduce the tendency to hesitate or fail in relay. The significance of the Pavlovian work is that there is no physiological limit to the power of association, for anything that affects the nervous system can come to 'mean* anything else. The repetition of bonds, according to Thorndyke, strengthens the bonds, if the connections are rewarded, and the Gestaltists tell

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us that repetition has not merely a cumulative effect but brings new insights and the perception of new relationships in the learning situation. In Hull, as in Thorndyke, mere repetition produces only reactive inhibition; improvement depends on reinforcement by reward. The Forty-first Yearbook of the N.S.S.E. attempted to bring a rapprochement between the asso-ciational and gestaltist theories. Guthrie accepts contiguous conditioning only—similar to Thorndyke's association-shifting and Skinner's S-type conditioning. Hull's reinforcement theory is related to Thorndyke's law of effect and Skinner's R-type conditioning. It is curious, by the bye, that a theory based on observable minutiae—proprioceptive stimuli precisely coincident with specific muscular responses—should gain its support from purely anecdotal observations. At any rate, habit strength—

Senator MANSFIELD. One vowel, Senator!

Miss HENLEY. I beg your pardon?

Senator MANSFIELD. I was just pointing out something about the word 'strength' to Senator Skypack, ma'am. Please excuse the interruption.

Miss HENLEY. Habit strength increases when receptor and effector activities occur in close temporal contiguity with primary reinforcement, that is to say, diminution of need, or with secondary reinforcement, a stimulus or reward associated with need reduction. Kohlcr's apes could use a means to an end— e.g., moving a packing box in order to reach a banana. Whether they could, in time, use a typewriter to write War and Peace is another question, clearly opposed to the bundle hypothesis, that a percept is made up of sensations bound together by association. Am I making myself clear, sir?

Senator VOYOLKO. Huh? You talking to me?

Miss HENLEY. Do you follow me, sir?

Senator VOYOLKO. Yeah, sure. Not real close. Like I'm a few feet back.

THE CHILD BUYER

Miss HENLEY. All right. Now, when we come to the intra-psychic motive—

Senator MANSFIELD. I think maybe that's enough background, ma'am.

Miss HENLEY. I had only just begun—

Senator MANSFIELD. Do you think that's a sufficient fill-in, Senator?

Senator SKYPACK. Ample. Ample.

Senator MANSFIELD. And you, Senator? You satisfied?

Senator VOYOLKO. Me? I'm up to here in it.

Senator MANSFIELD. Very good. Miss Henley, where did you psychologists learn all this?

Miss HENLEY. From mice. Mostly from mice. We put hungry mice in mazes—

Senator MANSFIELD. I see. So the Rudd boy—

Senator SKYPACK. What I want to know, miss. Just one thing. Are you for this boy or against him?

Miss HENLEY. In cases where the need reduction—

Senator SKYPACK. For or against?

Miss HENLEY. I was getting to that. . . . To oversimplify, the purpose of my lecture was to give a dire warning to all the teachers present on maladjustment on the part of these extreme deviates at the upper end of the bell curve.

Senator SKYPACK. I still want to know—

Mr. BROADBENT. Excuse me, Senator, could I have the witness a minute? Can you tell us quite simply, madam, what happened —how your lecture was interrupted?

Miss HENLEY. I certainly can. I was standing here, behind the lectern. The edge of the stage was here. Mr. Owing and Mr. Cleary were sitting back here. Everything was going along very smoothly when I heard this curious pop, I couldn't tell exactly where the sound came from, I was concentrating on my train of thought, and then—here, just in front of the lip of the stage—I

Monday, October 28

saw billowing up a curious yellow cloud. I thought at first—I have a thing about electricity, thunderstorms, defective wiring— I thought at first it was a short circuit of some kind, and I'm afraid I uttered a rather piercing summons to the fire department. Shortly thereafter a response to an extcroceptive stimulus on the part of my olfactory apparatus—

Senator MANSFIELD. You mean you smelled the stink bomb.

Miss HENLEY. I certainly did. Putrefaction such as you have never—like that of one of those horrible ditches in the Inferno, where the sinners lay in a river of excrement: were they the Flatterers? If there's anything I hate, it's a saccharine compliment.

Mr. BROADDF.NT. Have you any theory as to who may have thrown the bomb? We understand it probably came in one of the auditorium windows, so that would rule out any of the audience. Have you any theory? Know anyone who might want—?

Miss HENLEY. I can't imagine that it was anyone but the subject of our meeting. Who else could feel that way about me? It was obviously a small boy's kind of trick. I feel so badly about that youngster, because we school people have failed him somehow.

Senator SKYPACK. All right. That's all I wanted to know. Let's have the next witness.

Senator MANSFIELD. Just a minute, Jack. Anything else you'd like to say, ma'am?

Miss HENLEY. Well, yes. I'd just like to say that where you run into trouble with these children is in singling them out. Hie kind of thing Dr. Gozar has done in the lab work with this boy. I came right out and said this in my lecture. We talk about the defense of democracy—how undemocratic can you get? Why shouldn't the next child get the extra help—the slow learner? The extremely gifted child should not be removed from the common-learning situation. He's the last one who needs extra

THE CHILD BUYER

attention. And don't think, just because I'm a specialist on your deviates—

Senator MANSFIELD. I must say, ma'am, you make them sound like little sex fiends.

Miss HENLEY. I may specialize in deviates, but I don't forget the norm. The norm is the bedrock of our society. You can't neglect the median child in favor of the exceptions. You remember K.D.R.'s great declaration: 'This is the era of the common man.' That's democracy, gentlemen! Not a society where you have an elite telling the rest of us how to live.

Senator SKYPACK. I agree with you, miss. We can't have these double-domes getting in there and—

Senator MANSFIELD. All right, ma'am, I think we have the drift of it. Thank you for coming here and helping us out.

Senator SKYPACK. You heard what she said about who threw it, Aaron.

Senator MANSFIELD. Your next witness, please, Mr. Broad-bent.

Mr. BROADBENT. Word has just been sent in to me, sir, that the librarian has arrived. I will call Miss Elizabeth Cloud.

Senator MANSFIELD. Well, that was quick. It isn't often that I give myself occasion to congratulate you, Mr. Broadbent. . . . Over there, please, Miss Cloud. Just stand there to be sworn.

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you arc about to give this committee on its present business will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Miss CLOUD. I do.

TESTIMONY OF Miss ELIZABETH CLOUD, LIBRARIAN, TOWN OF PEQUOT

Mr. BROADBENT. Please identify yourself for the record, madam, as to name, address, and occupation.

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Miss CLOUD. Elizabeth B. Cloud, 27 Maple Street, Pcquot, Chief Librarian of the Town Free Library.

Mr. BROADBENT. You are acquainted with a school child named Barry Rudd?

Miss CLOUD. Acquainted! Jchoscphat, I should say I am acquainted with Barry. I've been nourishing him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper—or, as I guess he'd put it, as tall, or perhaps as short, as the ginglymus joint between the femur and tibia of Melanoplvs spretus. You may have gathered, Barry's a great one for saying things the accurate way, even if it's the hard way. And so, for that matter, am I. He may have caught a bit of that from me—or I from him. We've been making a game of it together for years.

Mr. BROADBENT. Would you give a little background of your relationship?

Miss CLOUD. There isn't much background. Mrs. Rudd brought Barry all the way over from Treehampstcad when he was barely five. Treehampstead is a regular city, but as is so often the case they have a blah library, stacks and stacks of Victorian pablum and rental-library trash; and I guess Mrs. Rudd had heard about me and the child-heaven I keep—my story-telling hours, the space I give the kids' books; they come first with me. I don't have a Children's Corner; I have an Adults' Corner in my library. And besides, my humpback, there's something about the luck of my back: the tykes think of me as a gnome or a magic thing—a living apple stump, something like that. We get along. Anyway, here came Mrs. Rudd shaking and fretting because some school idiot had made her think that Barry's being able to read so early was a form of sickness. So I took him over. We had an afternoon together each week till the Rudds moved to Pequot, and from then on—well, we're just pals.

Mr. BROADBENT. Would you say that your, ahem, misfortune, madam, has made the boy Barry Rudd feel specially close to

THE CHILD BUYER

you, with his, ahem, exaggerated mentality?

Miss CLOUD. Why don't you come out from behind those euphemisms, Mr. District Attorney, or whatever you arc? 'Misfortune?' You mean my hunchback? You mean that Barry's brilliant mind is like a crooked back, and that's why we're pals? Deformity is our bond? More like it that you have a twisted mind, sir.

Mr. BROADBENT. I was only trying—exceptional—

Miss CLOUD. This is one of the reasons I like children better than adults: they haven't learned yet that honesty between human beings is a form of social blooper, like belching, to be apologized for if it accidentally bursts out.

Senator MANSFIELD. I'm sure he meant no offense, Miss Cloud.

Miss CLOUD. I like it better when the offense is intended, sir. I know then where I stand. Perhaps I'm like a child myself in that particular respect.

Senator MANSFIELD. If we could go on with our questioning.

Mr. BROADBENT. Would you tell us, please, madam, about the boy Barry Rudd's reading interests?

Miss CLOUD. Well, like many of my young ones, he started in with I^ewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame and Robert Louis Stevenson—difference being that he read the books himself, mcmori/cd them, improvised from them. I'll skip the feeling-out period. Recent years he began to get into geology, zoology. Before the Ddwn of History by Charles R. Knight. Monsters of Old Los Angeles by Charles M. Martin, about the prehistoric creatures of the La Brea tar pits. Then, suddenly, Mofey Dick, on account of the stuff on whales. Insects, their origin. Then he had a period of Robert Frost—he has a strong lyrical urge, loves to talk about natural things. Thurber by the measured mile. He has a persistent mind. When he gets on a track, he traces it down and gets what he wants— all of what he wants.

Mr. BROADBENT. Dr. Gozar told us—

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Miss CLOUD. I know: biographies. Dr. Gozar has been a wonderful prod to that boy. She goes along behind him with a pitchfork aimed at his seat—and how he runs! He's read biographies by the dozen. Boswcll's Johnson twice. He doesn't like the Maurois-type popular biography; he prefers your tartar-steak kind of thing. Facts, original sources, lean meat. He roots around in footnotes like a boar going after truffles. The last year, year and a half, he has been reading the biographies of 'the biggest brains who ever lived'—I've had to send off for a lot of them through our library exchange system. Newton, Goethe, Pascal, Leopard i, Voltaire, Conite, Michelangelo, Arnnuld, Wol-sey, Laplace, the younger Pitt, Schelling, Grotius.

Senator SKYPACK. I don't sec we're getting anyplace. When Mr. Jones told us to talk to this person, Mr. Chairman, he must have . . . Look, miss, this boy been coining to you for sex books?

Miss CLOUD. Matter of fact, he has. Indirectly anyway. Just recently.

Senator SKYPACK. I thought so! And you dished them up to him?

Miss CLOUD. I dish up whatever a young mind wants and needs, sir. Barry became interested first in courting rituals between mammals, fishes, birds—you know, the drumming of ruffed grouse, bill-clapping of nesting storks, the throaty chant and spiral climb of the woodcock.

Mr, BROADBENT. A fish called the stickleback?

Miss CLOUD. You know about that? He told you about that? I found him that one!

Senator SKYPACK. So you're the one's been feeding him this stuff. . . . Is that a public library down there, miss?