Juvenile Delinquents
Twenty boys, who were committed to a state institution as delinquents, participated in a short-term reading pro gram which provided structured self-instruction, high interest reading material, and reduced chances of failure.
Abstract
JAE 72:2 Oskar, the main character of Günter Grass’s 1958 novel, The Tin Drum, is a shrieking child anarchist who deliberately stops his biological growth at the age of three. He is observant and impetuous, sneering at the behavior of adults around him. The boy Oskar also makes an appearance in the scientific field of population ecology, where he is used as a namesake term for trees that “prefer the juvenile to the adult state.”1 These nonhuman Oskars occupy the understory of a mature forest, where seeds have germinated and grown up into shade-tolerant saplings, but persist as “ageing juveniles, lingering in a stunted condition” for decades (Figure 1). These individuals grow imperceptibly in diameter and height as they wait for mature trees to die and create an opening in the canopy. Once such a gap appears, the Oskars grow quickly toward the light, and advance to the next stage of biological development. While it is risky to anthropomorphize the landscape, in this case humans share a common attribute of growth: maturity is not strictly related to chronological age. Presently, there is a small population of American beech Oskars (Fagus grandifolia) on the south side of Scarboro Hill in Boston’s Franklin Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. These uncultivated exemplars lie in wait as understory below the original nineteenthcentury plantation of European beech (Fagus sylvatica), an elegant and slow-growing relative that evokes the estates and ancient forests of the old world (Figure 2).2 With their copperhued autumn leaves and smooth, silvery bark (now etched by graffiti), this aging stand of trees was designed as part of a scenographic experience from the park’s carriage roads that Juvenile Delinquents