children repeating are apparently incapable of normal progress. Feeble mentality, poor health, malnutrition, and physical defects are the principal causes of these conditions, but their proportionate importance can only be guessed at. At all events slow progress appears to be largely controllable.

The reasons why children leave school are closely related to the child labor problem, and the subject must necessarily receive attention in a later chapter. At this point, however, the chief reasons may be briefly discussed. The causes are in part stated by the city of Cleveland, which ascertained the facts for 2032 children leaving school in the year 1909-1910. The proportions are as follows: 55 per cent went to work; 15 per cent were suffering from illness; 11 per cent left the city; 5.6 per cent withdrew because of poverty, and the remainder were handicapped by physical defect or were indifferent to school work. The children who went to work were, however, not all impelled to do so by poverty. According to various investigations, about one-third of the children leave school because of economic necessity. The chief cause is undoubtedly dislike for school work, which depends upon a complex of causes, including inefficient teaching, unsatisfactory curriculum, and lack of ambition on the part of the child. Ill-health accounts for about one-sixth of the cases. 6. Compulsory Education.

Although compulsory attendance laws do not solve the problem of education they are a very important factor. Compulsory attendance does not secure compulsory education; compulsory education does not secure compulsory efficiency. However, if children are required to attend school, they gain the opportunity of achieving such education as the school actually affords.

The movement in favor of compulsory education laws, though very young, has made rapid strides within the last two decades. A large majority of the states have such laws applying to children under 14 years of age, but in many cases the necessary annual

attendance is limited to 12 weeks. If children over 14 remain unemployed, many states require their school attendance until the age of 16. The New York law, for example, requires attendance for the entire school year of all children under the age of 14%,

and for the entire school year of all unemployed children between 14 and 16. The South has been tardy in the enactment of compulsory education laws, yet in several Southern states such laws apply to particular counties or cities, while others have enacted state-wide laws. In most of them some restrictions have been placed upon the employment of illiterate children. Since compulsory education is the proper complement of child labor laws, these restrictions which tend to keep children in school should be required for the entire school year of all children who have not reached the working age or are not regularly employed, unless physical or mental defects interfere. Provisions of this sort are in operation in about half of the states.

Unwise exemptions from the operation of compulsory attendance laws are frequently made. Chief among these is the poverty exemption, according to which children too poor to dress adequately may be excused from attending school-precisely the group of children who can least afford to forego the advantages of an education. A community is most unsocial indeed if it fails to supply such children with the clothes necessary for appearance in school. Poverty exemptions are frequently accompanied by permission to engage in gainful work, and children of tender years are allowed to enter factories and workshops. Further exemptions are made for children who are diseased and a source of contagion, for crippled or deformed or feeble-minded children, and for those who live too far away from the school buildings to attend.

Compulsory attendance laws should contain the following requirements:

(1) School attendance until a specified grade and age have been reached.

(2) Attendance throughout the school year.

(3) Compulsory attendance of children of working age unless regularly employed.

(4) An exception for pupils unable to advance in the grades. (5) Such restrictions as will supplement the child labor laws. (6) Application of the laws to the entire state.

(7) Machinery of enforcement.

R

7. Truancy.

Compulsory education laws have suffered much from nonenforcement. In the first place, the number of attendance or truancy officers has been totally insufficient. In the rural districts and small towns there is often no provision whatsoever for law enforcement, and unless public opinion condemns the practice, non-attendance becomes altogether too frequent. Again, truant officers are often incompetent, many times because they are not socially trained, while truancy is often a mere symptom of family maladjustments and cannot be cured by police activity. In such cases constructive work with the family is necessary. It is difficult to prevent temporary absences from school, especially if regular attendance does not constitute truancy as defined by the school authorities. More officials, more efficiency, and better attention to irregular attendance would greatly lessen truancy.

The greatest proportion of truancy among boys occurs in the thirteenth year and among girls in the twelfth year. Figures from Chicago show that more truants come from the fourth grade than from any other grade, also that the smallest percentage of truancy occurs in the grades offering manual training. A limited study of the causes of truancy in New York City specially emphasized the following:1

Gang influences.

Moving picture shows.

Indifferent, ignorant, and depraved parents.

Mercenary parents.

Insufficient guardianship.

Faulty teaching or methods of discipline.

Backwardness.

Lack of interest because of unjustified retardation.

Physical weakness.

Oversize.

Opportunities for employment.

1 Report of the City Superintendent of Schools to the Board of Education of New York City, 1912, p. 245 ff.

Most of these causes are of such a nature that improvement of home or school conditions would remove them.

Irregular attendance differs somewhat from truancy, especially in regard to causes. In Chicago it has been discovered that over one-third is due to illness, more than one-sixth to request of parents, one-seventh is caused by indifference and truancy, while the remainder is due to various causes. About four-fifths of the temporary absences are excusable. Irregular attendance is, next to incapacity, the greatest cause of non-promotion in the grades, and therefore constitutes a serious social problem.

CHAPTER IV

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION

1. The Adaptation of Education.

The purpose of education should be to fit the child for life. He must be taught to adapt himself to the conditions of his environment, to enjoy the higher pleasures, and to take his rightful place in society. It is obvious at once that no school can give the child a complete education, and that this is obtained slowly, if at all, through the lessons learned from activity in the world as well as through those taught in the classroom. The predominant interests of society vary from time to time, therefore the most important elements in education will also vary. Literary education formerly received a very proper emphasis, and met popular needs quite effectually. It is still a most necessary form of training preparatory to successful citizenship, but it is now generally admitted that literary education alone is inadequate, since it does not train the hand, although the vast majority of all persons become manual laborers. Both brain and hand should be educated, each in proportion to the demands of later life. Consequently certain forms of industrial education must be provided in order to fit children for success in later life.

The most successful education not only affords the proper variety of training for the child but also sustains his interest until the essentials have been gained. In an industrial era book learning is so plainly inadequate that many practical-minded children lose interest in their work and drop out of school. One of two possible consequences may then occur; the child may become a truant and eventually a delinquent, or he may enter some gainful occupation and swell the ranks of child laborers. It is of utmost importance for our educational authorities to consider this problem and to work out a solution. If it cannot