The Penn's Grove record., 1912-11-01
HOME WINS BOYS
ON A NEW PLAN
Hampered for Funds and Over
crowded Does Fine Work
IT DlsCARDS OLD METHODS
Lads Victims of Environment Soon
Learn Value Of Uplifting Atmos-
phere - Institution Has Lost
Terrors of Reform School.

Terrors of Reform School.
Especial Trenton Correspondence
Trenton.-Need of new buildings at
the State Home for Boys at James
burg that will make unnecessary the
herding of so or so or more boys in
a single cottage, and will enable the
management to increase and make
more efficient the through
which effort is made to reach individ-
ually the 500 unfortunate young wards
Of the State at this remarkable insti-
tuition will be urged before the next
Legislature by Superintendent John
G. Kalleen. The wonderful success of
the institution, which under the pres
ent management has lost the terrors
and crudities of a so-called reform
school," have been demonstrated by
the hundreds Of boys diverted from
future criminal careers into useful
citizens, but crowded conditions and
lack of facilities are ~handicapping the
plan for broadening the noble work.
A new school building, costing $780,
600, is nearing completion, and will
aid materially in the reconstruction
Of the system as it is being planned
by Superintendent Kalleen, permitting
as it will the centralizing of teaching.
Glasses have heretofore been conduct
ed in the cottages in which the boys
have lived. One Of the new buildings
urged by the superintendent and
trustees is an assembly and amuse-
ment hall in connection with the new
school building. There is only the
chapel in which the boys at the home
a be called together, and as this is
now too small for the entire enroll
ment, a larger hall for lectures and
educational moVing-picture shows has
become essential. This hall can also
be used in inclement weather for
physical development, play and amuso
ment Of the boys.
More Individual Care.
Instead of housing three score boys
in a home school dormitory building,
as at present, Superintendent Kalleen
believes the number should be re-
duced to 25 or 80. This will permit.
he says, more individual attention to
each boy, and individual attention, he
declares, is ven more important than
in general schools Of education. each
boys case presents a separate prob
lem that must be solved if he is to be
prevented from becoming a menace
to society and saved instead for USE
full citizenship" says the superintend-
ent. Our present crowded quarters
make this difficult, lessen discipline,
and are in other ways a handicap to
u aim Of saving the boys. The fam
lily father and family mother, or, in
other words, the officer and matron
In charge of each cottage, now not
only care for the boys daily life, but
also do the instructing in either school
rooms or the trades shops. Under the
new system we shall have SEPARATE
teachers, and with the smaller familV
groups more attention can be given
to each boy"
He Understands Boys.
Superintendent Kalleen is a 4 an
who understands boys. His methods
have revolutionized the old system
prevailing at the school, but they ac-
complish results as the reconstructed
lives Of hundreds of boys could testi-
fly. The average citizen who thinks
of the home as a penal institution,
with stone walls, cells and many of
the surroundings of prison life, gets
a new idea and vision of the work and
aim of the school when he visits the
place. About three miles from James
burg, the homo is located on a 700
acre farm in a picturesque section of
country, and strolling about the place
the visitor might well imagine he was
in a small college town. He looks in
vain for the prison wall. On some
sections 70 the farm there is not even
a fence. He sees no guardhouse-for
even the little cells in which the rule
breaking boys were punished under
the old system have been torn out and
the space they occupied is used in
stead for playrooms. If the visitor
finds a boy with a hang-dog, doleful
look, the lad is the exception. "Keep
smiling" is the most conspicuous sign
at the home. 1t appears in school
rooms, shops and on the Fairgrounds,
and the boys live up to the rule.
Superintendent Kalleen says a long
list of stringest rules is impossible in
the successful conduct of such an in
stitution, but the Smile" rule applies
to every boy.
Merit System a Success.
In the place of the old punishments
melted out to rule-breaking boys, such
as imprisonment on bread and water