The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1915-03-25
YOUTH
Extracts From Lecture by Edward 7.
Devine On "The Normal Life Of
Tan" Baltimore, March s, 1915.

Of powers, the atrophy of ability, and a
loss of time. The physical transition
from boy to man, from girl to woman,
must be accompanied by corresponding
and harmonious mental and moral
changes if normal maturity is to be
reached; and to insure TINS moral de
velopment our chief social instrument
is educatiJn-mor education and bet
ter education; education for economic
efficiency, for profitable enjoyment of
leisure, for the spOnsibilities. of mar
rage. Indispensable to it are more OPP
portunities and better opportunities for
wholesome recreation. Youth demands
a positive program of guidance and
normal development to meet its own
needs. and incidently to prepare for
later life.
1t was to emphasize the Importance
of continuing the period devoted to edu-
cation past childhood, into and through
adolescence, that l refrained last week
from my reference to compulsory school
attendance and child labor laws. That
American children should 90 to school
needs no argument. There are some
children in the United States who get
no systematic schooling, either in public
or private schools or at the hands of
tutors or governesseS, because they
live in remote country districts or in
neglected centers of the city, because
they are sick, or because their parents
or guardians are Indifferent or unsym-
pathetic to The notion. Such children
are few, however, and their numbers
are decreasing. Public opinion every
where in America recognizes that it is
an elementary duty to provide a seat IN
scho0lroom for every child and see
that he occupies it with a reasonable
degree of regularity for certain num-
Der of weeks each year until he reaches
a certain age.
SCHOOL ATTENDANCE IN MARYLAND.
How long the child is to go to school
is question on which we are less I'M
animous. | presume most of US would
say, if we were discussing this question
with visitor from Mars or Peru, that
in America children go to school until
they are fourteen years old and that by
that time they have ordinarily com
pleted what we call our elementary
grades. If, however, we should 90 to
the latest census to verify our state
ment, we should find that among every
hundred fourteen-Year-o children in
the United States during the school
year 1900-10 nineteen had had no con-
nection whatever with any kind of
school. day or evening. public or pri-
vate, academic or industrial; and that
among the children of Maryland there
were twenty-nine schoolless ones in
every hundred instead of nineteen. We
should find that the proportion of child
rem in school increases rapidly up to the
age of eleven, 81 which tir'n more thar
nine out Of ten had attended school ar
some time during the wear; that it re-
mains almost as high at twelve and
thirteen; drops down, as we have seen,
to 81 per cent. at fourteen; and then
falls rapidly to so per cent at sixteen,
% per cent. at eighteen, and per cent.
at twenty.
One aid to keeping children in school
is to keep them out of the factories and
shops and mines and mills. by the I'M
compromising hand of law, State and
Federal. Another is to make school so
attractive that nothing else can COM
pete with it in interest Child-labor
laws cannot be enforced successfully
unless the compulsory education laws
harmonic with them and unless there
are schools for all children involved, and
unless the children want to attend them,
or at least their parents want them to
do so.
Gradually-much too gradualy-we
have been extending the minimum
length of childhood to twelve years, to
fourteen years. and now are irving to
push it up to sixteen. We have learned
more definitely why it would be extend
ed. The bony structure of the body is
still plastic and Welding. Important
physiological functions are in process
of establishment. A large amount of
evidence has been accumulated to show
the high cost of the pitiful wages that
can be earned in three years; the cost
in disease, in accidents. in crimes, in
inefficient maturity, in demoralized,
topsy-turvy relations of parents and
children. Boys and girls who work in
cotton mills have about twice as high
a death rate as other boys and girls.
Machinery bites off children's fingers
when they are inattentive, as children
sometimes are, leaving them "no good
for work any more" Children who
work are apt to be understood and
anemic. They are found in the juvenile
courts out of all proportion to their
numbers, are more inclined to the
serious offenses, and very much more
apt to become habitual delinquents.
THE CHILDREN's PROCESSION.