The Newtown bee., 1904-11-18
GENERAL ATTENDANCE

The school year covered by this re
 port was marked by a winter of unus
 ual severity which, together witt
 much resulting sickness, caused con
 siderable irregularity of attendance
 especially in rural districts. Asid.
 from this unavoidable drawback there
 seems to be an encouraging growth O.
 public sentiment in support of the at
 tendance laws and in recognition O.
 the paramount necessity of adequate
 schooling for all future citizens of the
 state. There is wider recognition
 too, of the truth that habits of regu
 larity and application, order and dis
 cipline must be acquired during child
 hood aud youth if at all: and when SC
 acquired are of lifelong benefit to the l individual.
 Many towns have made special effor1
 to secure the attendance of every chil(
 possible in order that the fullest bene
 fit might be derived from the State
 Aid Law of 1903; an enactment which
 must prove double benefit to the
 towns affected by promoting better
 attendance while making possible
 more adequate salaries for teachers
 with the result of better schools. SENT TO SCHOOL
 The number reported as sent tC school does not correspond with the number reported as illegally absent. In some cases families have moved out of the state before action could be taken, in others children have been sent tU county homes, and in one case city court utterly failed to enforce the law in an instance of habitual truancy.
 PROSECUTIONS
 Aside from the cases in court, noted above, number of cases have been corrected by bringing the delinquent parents before grand juror or prose- cutting attorney and securing a prom ise that there should be no further negligence. This procedure has been fully as efficaciOuS-in these particular cases-as actual prosecution would have been and in some respects better in ultimate results.
 Probation officers have done excel lent work in many cases of truancy and your agent is strongly of the opin- ion that hearing in chambers, sus- pension of sentence, and commitment to care of the probation officer is by far the best method of dealing with truantS in all but the most incOrrigible cases.
 In nearly every case of truancy in- veStigated the cause of trouble was found to be in the home, and it is clear tbat unfit home surroundings and lack or home training cause many boys to become truant, fall into bad company, and eventually land in some reforma- tory or penal institution.
 Many boys become truant and ruin their lives because they are illegally kept from school to work: drifting from enforced absence to truancy and then to other forms of lawbreaking.
 Extended observation leads to the conviction that truancy, habitual and unchecked, points with almost abso- lute certainty to later dissipation, and crime. In too many cases incurably bad habits have been formed before preventive measures gould 60 be taken, and there is great need of some suitable institution to which | GruantS could be sent for correction | before the habit had become fixed.
 CAUSES OF ABSENCE.
 The causes of illegal absence from school are al ways the same: negligence, ignorance, obstinacy, and greed. Ab- senceS may be accounted for by a mul- jltude Of more or less ingenious ex- uses, but the real causes are always jheSe.
 Negligence is the fault of the eaSy-1 !oing, indolent, shiftless parents, too ;areless to insist upon and secure egular attendance and apparently luite willing their children should row up as Slip=shod and useless as These people are always urpriSed to learn the extent of their hildren's absenteeism, are prolific in and, when too late, are forced o wonder why their children do not urn out we'll.
 Ignorance, happily becoming less ommon, is cause of irreg- larlty where the parents them elves are without educatio or train ng and incapable of rightly estimat- 1g their value. Such a parent once lformed the agent that he was getting long very nicely without being able } read and had the right to bring up is child in the same way if he wished. Obstinacy, always closely allied with , 'norance, interferes with school at- ,ndance when the parents have feud ith the school authorities or preiu- Ice against the teacher. In one case ersonal ill-feeling towards the father ( the teacher caused a parent to keep l Vo children from school during the eater part of the year. Such parents their children incalculable harm by lthdrawing them .from school and