were not reciting. It takes time and experience, of course, for one to comprehend the character and mental states of the boys in a school like this, and to discover the best way of arousing and holding their interest. At the teacher's request I took a class in United States history and another in arithmetic, and in both cases had as eager and wide-awake a class of scholars as I ever saw. Manual Training. - Up to the present there has been no instruction in manual training of the kind that we have in mind when we speak of manual training. The superintendent was arranging for the early introduction of it into the school. The industrial training of the boys heretofore has been exclusively by farm work, and this, though not sufficient, has been excellent. The boys have been taught to prepare the ground, to plant and care for the crops and to harvest them; they have been studying nature at close range, and, while harvesting beans and potatoes, have been harvesting another moral and intellectual crop of infinitely greater value. Mr. Johnson has been very successful in utilizing these influences for good. Whatever may be done in the way of manual training in these truant schools, I believe that farming and gardening and caring for animals should be a part of it. The Small Number of Pupils. I was much surprised at the small number of pupils at the Oakdale school, and especially to learn that some of those that were there were not there for truancy at all, but by the request of parents, who wanted their boys put where they would be under control and surrounded by good influences. Out of the twenty-seven or twenty-eight boys at the school, hardly a dozen were actual truants. This seems remarkable, as, with one hundred and fifteen boys at the Middlesex County school, we should be led to expect about seventy at the Worcester County school. Inquiries of a general sort which I have made as to the reasons for so small a number sent to Oakdale for truancy have always elicited the statement that the truant laws are very slackly enforced in most places in Worcester County. I have taken no special steps to verify this statement, but it is everywhere asserted. A police officer in one of the cities of the county is reported to have said that he could find more habitual truants in an hour in that city than there are pupils altogether in the Oakdale school. If this is true, it shows a most lamentable indifference among school officials for a class of boys that can very largely be saved from becoming criminals only by being early brought under the good influences of the Oakdale school. GENERAL COMMENTS ON TRUANT SCHOOLS AND TRUANCY CONDITIONS. The secretary has occasion to repeat what he said last year, that the magnitude of the field of truancy, the number and the novelty of its problems and the scant time at the service of the secretary and the agents for their proper study make it impossible to do full justice either to what is doing in the field or to what yet remains to be done. So far as enforcing the law is concerned, it may be said: That the great mass of the people are law-abiding. The compulsory attendance law, therefore, is faithfully respected by the people as a whole. There are many more children in school than there would be if there were no such law. 2. Many of the cities and larger towns faithfully enforce the law. 3. In some of the smaller towns there is probably little or no truancy. 4. Still, in many places there is believed to be a serious laxity in enforcing the law. Truant officers are appointed, indeed, but, not inclining to activity themselves or not being spurred thereto by the school committee or the public, their service in enforcing the law is a nominal rather than a real one. The special difficulty of enforcing a law among friends and neighbors exists, and hinders action. 5. A pressing need exists, therefore, for one or more State attendance officers, clothed with authority to supplement the local officers, to act, if necessary, in their stead, to require reports from them, and in general to stimulate, by visitation, advice, giving and receiving information and otherwise, the enforcement of the law. Such an officer would naturally hold close relations to the truant schools, and be able to render them valuable service. Certainly, it would be helpful to the State, as a whole, to know authoritatively just what the three hundred and fifty-three towns and cities are doing or failing to do in connection with the attendance laws. School committees generally report compliance with the truancy laws, but compliance too frequently stops with the appointment of truant officers, when it should extend to a vigorous pressure upon them to be vigilant in the discharge of their duty. As to the truant schools themselves, it would seem: 1. That six out of the seven (the seventh having no inmates) are rendering a genuine service to the pupils committed to them and to the public. 2. That the majority of them are giving their pupils good outdoor facilities for work. 3. That the environment of the pupils is far superior to any they had at their homes. 4. That the teaching varies from that which is very strong to that which is not adequate to the peculiar demands made by the pupils of such schools. 5. That there is still room in most of the schools for formal instruction in indoor manual training, especially when the conditions do not favor outdoor work. 6. That the pupils generally enjoy the work of the truant schools better than that of the public schools from which they ran away. 7. That the majority of the pupils discharged are probably saved to good citizenship. 8. That many public schools have something valuable to learn from the best of the truant schools, in the way of reaching, holding and inspiring the class of pupils that gravitate towards the truant schools. As to the causes of truancy and the spirit in which truant schools should be conducted, the trend seems to be towards conclusions like these: 1. The causes of truancy are to be found (a) In unfavorable home conditions. (b) In unfavorable school conditions. (c) In original or acquired perversity that defies conditions, however good. 2. The treatment of truancy should hold some relation to the causes. Inferior school conditions can be and should be improved. If in addition the larger towns and the cities would each organize a school or two, with exceptionally strong teachers and with exceptionally complete provision for manual occupations, and assign thereto those whom the ordinary school fails to reach and inspire and whom it justly regards both as burdens to the schools and as obstacles to the progress of others, a distinct relief would be effected for the schools and a distinct gain as well for pupils so assigned. This plan would not, however, change bad home conditions, and it might still be powerless with cases of exceptional perversity. It is here that the truant school comes in. It substitutes good home conditions for poor, reaches the whole life where the school reaches but a part of it, and enforces a sterner, though not an unkinder, discipline for the perverse, who should be taken charge of before they reach the criminal stage. The truant school exists not primarily to punish boys, but to save them. It is better that it should be known as a parental school than a truant one, for the former epithet emphasizes educative aims, while the latter gives undue prominence to the punitive idea. |