The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1924-04-28
TrlIarlcy.
By n. .ADDINGToN BRUcE

To those sincerely desireus of seeing that
all the boys in their town be given really
fair chance to develop into good citizens, l
recommend personal inquiry of the local
school authorities regarding the way the
truancy problem lis handled by them.
There still are places, it is unhappily the
case, where triancy is treated by the anti
| quated cure-all method of detention in jail.
| Aside from. the barbarity Of this method. ex-
perience has long since shown that it usually
does harm, not good.
Leaving the underlying causes of truancy
untouched, it has the added defect Of ere
ating or strengthening in the truant anti
social sentiments. The saying that truancy
| is the kindergarten of crime owes much of
its force to the Jail remedy for truancy.
Few are the truants who would become
criminals If, instead of being jailed, they
were made the subjects of sympathetic in
yestigation to determine the real reason for
their playing truant. ~
That reason is seldom, If ever, Unborn bad
ness 1t may be, and professionally 1t
Sometimes is, an Unborn weakness of mind
that so units for ordinary school work as to
make attendance at school positively tor
turesome.
But in this case, clearly nothing is to be
gained by temporary failing of the truant.
failing cannot improve his mentality or
make school less agonizing to him. 1t can
only embitter him and arouse in him des-
perate desire to hit back. Then a criminal
is truly in the making,
Very different would the outcome be, if,
instead of being jailed, his mental limitations
were ascertained by psychological testing,
and special schooling in accordance with
these limitations provided for lrim That. is
what is done in all progressive communities
today, to the gain of both the community and
its defective trpants.
Or. istead of being mentally defective, the
trRant may be boy-and truancy, BY the
way, is almost altogether boy problem,
comparatively few girls being, truant--to
whom school is difficult because of sundry
remedial physical defects of one sort or an
other. These, directly or indirectly, have
made it hard for him to profit from study,
hard even to. concentrate his attention to
study. Hence he plays truant to escape the
unduly fatiguing,
Such truant needs medical or surgical,
perhaps only dental treatment. He obtains
this in progressive communities. In these
communities it is appreciated, too, that tru-
apcy may be a product, not of Unborn or ac-
quired mental dulling, but of unfavorable
conditions in the home life, conditions that
have made the boy, perhaps a rebel against
authority in general, perhaps incapable of
adapting himself not merely to classroom
life, but to the requirements Of the play
ground as WELL.
Often. in fact, it is not the truant who
stands most in need of treatment, but the
parents who are SO rearing him as to- make
him socially inadequate. Obviously, when
truancy is thus caused, to jail the truant is
td leave the root of the trouble untouched.
The home must be visited, the parents in
structed aided and If necessary compelled
to do the right thing for the boy they are
spelling. ~
Wherever these modern views of truancy
are accepted and applied, the truancy rate
soon goes down. In Boston, for example, the
fiye-year period 1917-1922 has been A per
cent. decreasefn truancy. And Boston's ex-
perience has been duplicated in other towns.
1t could fbe, and should be, duplicated every
where,