Fred's World

Radio can, when it wants to (but it seldom seems to want to), broadcast the inimitable accents of real life. Last week, on ABC's Child's World (unrehearsed, wire-recorded discussions among children, moderated by famed Educator Helen Parkhurst), a chilling whiff of real life came from the lips of a 14-year-old New Yorker named Fred. The boy had recently served three weeks in a children's detention home for stealing two radios and wrecking a school. Fred's story:

"I was mad. . . . Teachers pick on you, put you in a class with the small kids. I got disgusted. . . . So we went in after school . . . about 5 o'clock . . . started wreckin' the classrooms. When we was all set to go, my friend says, why not take the radios? So we take the radios in a shopping bag. . . . Sometimes you don't know what you're doin'."

In the Court. "Sometimes they grab you and you take a beating. . . . Sit you down in a corner, talk about you, write on pieces of paper. . . . Then they call up your mother. . . .

"When you go to court at 9 o'clock you see a couple of boys going to school. You say to yourself, 'I wish I was those boys.' When you go to court they grab you by the collar, they just push you in. You sit down. '. . . They don't tell you nothin'. You don't know what's going to happen.

"When you get to the judge, he's just sitting down. He don't even look at you. He's got his head down, he's looking at papers. Then somebody comes in and gives him a drink of water. Then he looks at you and he looks at the papers. Then he tells you, is it true that you did this, did that? . . . He asks me if I have anything to say. So I tell him. I tell him I'm sorry for what I did; if I can have another chance? He don't say nothing. 'Why don't you think of having a chance when you did it?' So after he's all finished talking, he tells you. Put the boy in the youth house for two weeks.' "

At the Home. "Your mother comes crying. She tries to be friends, she treats you the best she could, she brings you fruit and comic books. After about three days you forget about being sad. You get happy. It's against the rules to hit you. . . .

"When you're in the school you figure, you say to yourself, I don't wanna get into no more trouble. I wanna be good. But when I get out . . . a lot of mothers tell their kids don't play with me, I'm too bad, I might get them into trouble.

"The trouble is, you want to be trusted. You don't want to have all the teachers, they hear you got put away, watching every move you take. 'O.K. I'm watching you . . . I don't want to see no trouble.' If I was trusted it would help me."

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