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Show Expert Says Truancy Is Sign of Illness Children who play hookey arc usually very sick emotionally emo-tionally The solution to their problems is not punishment, if sympathy, says Benjamin Fine, famous exnorf anrl punishment. "Unfavorable home conditions are, of course, only one of the causes of truancy. The school must also take its share of the blame. Teachers who are harsh, unsympathetic unsympa-thetic and punitive have been responsible re-sponsible for the truancy of thousands thous-ands of children. Because of insufficient in-sufficient funds, the classes in many schools are over-crowded and the equipment is inadequate. Medical supervision in most schools is inadequate. Poor eyesight, eye-sight, hearing defects and reading disabilities can hamper a child, with the result that he becomes discouraged and stays away from school. "Furthermore, many high school children object and with good reason - to the studies they are given. The curriculum is geared to the student who intends to go to college but eight out of ten children chil-dren never go beyond high school. Many would rather work with their hands. Truancy is most marked, my study found, in children attending the sixth, seventh and eighth grades the group from 11 to 14. My study also disclosed that each individual case has its own particular par-ticular cause. This was brought writer on education, in a recent' article in McCall's Magazine. "Why do kids play hookey? To find tlie answer, I recently made an extensive study of truancy, securing se-curing information from the education edu-cation departments of the 48 states, the Children's Bureau, the United States Office of Education and many local boards of education. educa-tion. In addition, I interviewed scores of educators as well as hundreds hun-dreds of truants. Most instructive of all was the day I spent sitting as a 'judge' in the office of a city attendance bureau, listening and talking to a stream of truant boys and girls. "The number of children who play hookey is in the neighborhood neighbor-hood of two million. Furthermore, the truancy rate in most places is increasing. To get children back to school, the country as a whole last year spent, at a conservative estimate, $75,000,000. But however how-ever staggering the financial cost of truancy, it is a trifle compared to the human loss. Truancy is often the first step in a career of crime. "Educators have found that you simply cannot brow-beat or shame a child into going to school. They have learned that truancy is the symptom of a serious maladjustment. maladjust-ment. Truants are emotionaly sick children in need of love, not home to me forcefully during the day I spent as a 'judge' in a city attendance bureau. , "The experience made me recognize rec-ognize the validity of the observation observa-tion made by Dr. Stanley P. Da-vies, Da-vies, general director of the Community Com-munity Service Society, who has pointed out that 'Truancy never exists alone as a child's difficulty. It is the 'top layer of a situation that is serious indeed down underneath.' under-neath.' "One of the best examples of an enlightened truancy program is to be found in Georgia, where the antiquated truant officer has been replaced by the 'visiting teacher.' Mr. Luke Greene, the research re-search supervisor of the Georgia State Department of Education, has described the visiting teacher as a 'combination welfare worker, human relations expert, teacher, preacher, diplomat, policeman and traveling salesman.' Each case of truancy in Georgia is treated individually in-dividually and sympathetically. "During the three years the program pro-gram has been in operation, school attendance in the state has jumped by 60,000. Two years ago, daily attendance in Georgia schools was 76 percent. Last year it reached 83 percent. Today it is 88 percent, or just about as high as any state in the country." |