School attendance

“ Yet, a guarantee of school attendance will never of itself fulfill the purposes of state education. The parent and the attendance officer, reinforced by the police power of the state, can guarantee only one thing,—the physical presence of the child at school. It is left to the teacher to insure his mental attendance by a sound appeal to his active interests. A child's character, knowledge, and skill are not reconstructed by sitting in a room where events happen. ”

“ My own feeling is, too, that out of the greatly increased attendance of the high school an even larger number than at present would find their way to the university, and that they would be better equipt in point of view and purpose than are many who enter under present conditions. ”

“ The more conspicuous among them may be indicated by a series of questions which are under discussion wherever educators come together, but which are also of direct interest to the pupils and to the community. To what age should school attendance be made compulsory? How can pupils be kept 501from leaving school before they have received a sufficient amount of education? How should the school course be divided? Should we have junior high schools and junior colleges as well as regular high schools and regular colleges? How may the training of teachers be improved? ”

“ Attention is called to several particulars in respect to school attendance. The actual attendance is undoubtedly increasing, but improvement in respect to regularity is not so decided as could be wished. "One of the chief hindrances to the progress of our common schools is the multiplicity of school districts and of independent local authorities. ”

“ What would Professor March have? Does he expect to find education as thorough and general among a people of whose school population less than one-half are in usual attendance at school, and less than two-thirds even enrolled as occasional attendants at school, as among a people with whom over 95 per cent. of the school population are in constant and habitual attendance? When we consider the published school statistics of this nation, it is no wonder that about one-seventh of the whole are unable to read and write. ”

“ It is claimed that at no one time is more than three fourths of our school population enrolled in the schools. Of those who do comply with the school attendance laws, there is a considerable percentage which cannot acquire an adequate education within the limits of the compulsory school period. Only about one third of the pupils who enter the first year of the elementary school reach the four-year high school, and only about one in nine is graduated. ”

“ In a recent official report it was stated that whereas the children who ought to go to school numbered about fourteen and a half millions, the average attendance was not more than five millions. But, assuming that all the children went to school, there are people who declare that the education given under the National system is by no means satisfactory. ”

“ The necessity under which many labor, of teaching school in order to pay their own school bills, makes attendance somewhat irregular. The grade of the school is being steadily advanced, and under efficient teachers and Principal, the pupils are making solid advancement. ”

“ Doubtless the compulsory attendance law and the sixteen-year labor law often are factors in continuing for a time the attendance of pupils who do poorly, and that with the close of the sixteenth year economic and social necessity takes many pupils out of school. ”

“ The practical course was planned for the children who expected to leave school at fourteen, or at the end of the eighth grade. Curiously enough, all types of children have flocked into it. Sons of doctors, lawyers and well-to-do business men; boys and girls preparing for college, and children who must stop school in a year or two are all clamoring for admission. In spite of the fact that pupils are kept in these schools six hours a day instead of five, as in the other schools, the attendance at the end of two years has outrun the accommodations. ”

“ Already the high school attendance has increased over 60 per cent. Manual training, cooking and sewing classes are now found not only in wealthy districts, but also in sections where boys and girls need such training most. ”

“ We perceive, therefore, that while a strict scrutiny may bring to light the facts that the education in the one state or section is more efficient, the terms of school attendance longer, and the amount paid for school purposes more liberal than in the other, yet this in no wise tends to invalidate the statistics heretofore presented, nor to affect the argument based thereon. ”

“ It is notorious that a very large proportion of the children of the leading bankers, merchants, professional men, and other influential citizens, who reside in the so-called court end of our large cities, do not attend the public schools, and it is [106] equally notorious that the existence of a well-conducted and satisfactory school in the district affects the attendance comparatively little. If only this element of the population, which is now so indifferent, would interest itself actively, what a vast improvement could be effected in our public school system! ”

“ In the country the frequently short period of school attendance during the year and the daily out-of-school work forced from young children by poverty-harassed parents has similar disastrous results.
Even in those states which have compulsory attendance up to fourteen, many children who are quite normal are yet very backward at that age. The child of a foreign-speaking parent, for instance, who never hears English spoken at home, needs a longer time to reach the eighth grade than the child of English-speaking parents. ”

“ Under the present compulsory attendance law a boy who enters school at the age of six and afterwards advances at the rate of one grade per year until the end of the compulsory attendance period should cover nine grades—eight in the elementary school and one in high school—by the time he is 15 years old. In actual fact, however, only about two-fifths get any high school training. ”

“ The exercise of the power to enforce school attendance is dangerous if it is not accompanied by an appreciation of the duty of seeing to it that the assembling of pupils brings to the individual no physical detriment. ”

“ There is no other public institution in the country so varied in its organization, its strength, its methods and ways as the elementary public-school system. It ranges from a shanty-like to a palace-like building, from a teacher almost illiterate herself to a teacher with an education and training which fit her for a college chair, from a few hundred dollars of yearly appropriation to tens of thousands of dollars for upkeep of a single school, from one teacher to a staff of teachers in one school, from an almost voluntary attendance to a rigid compulsory attendance. ”

“ In the other neighborhoods, the population is very sparse, and the parents very ignorant. The consequence is, that the daily attendance falls short of one half the whole number of scholars, and cannot be called regular at that. Many do not get to school earlier than half past eleven, and very few earlier than ten, and half past ten. Those who attend regularly, evince a capacity to acquire knowledge, equaling the whites, and one of our schools will suffer nothing, in comparison with common country schools. ”

“ The aggregate average attendance for the original schools was 60 pupils, according to the records, while the average attendance now in the consolidated school is 110 pupils, with an enrollment of 125. There are only 9 children of school age in the district not in school. ”

“ Many boys having attended school for the required number of hours, when they return to school after the expiration of their six months’ work in the print work, are in the same condition as when they first attended school as print-work boys, that they have lost all they gained by their previous school attendance.... In other print works the children’s attendance at school is made to depend altogether upon the exigencies of the work in the establishment. ”

“ Eligible school attendance areas.—For the purposes of this part— `` (A) the term `school attendance area' means, in relation to a particular school, the geographical area in which the children who are normally served by that school reside; and `` (B) the term `eligible school attendance area' means a school attendance area in which the percentage of children from low-income families is at least as high as the percentage of children from low-income families served by the local educational agency as a whole. ”

“ School attendance is compulsory for twenty weeks each year in rural districts and for thirty weeks each year in cities of the first and second class for all children between eight and sixteen years. In 1900 the percentage of illiterates at least ten years old was 3.1. ”

“ Some states have enacted laws which make it necessary to build another school-room and employ another teacher when the attendance of the school reaches a maximum number, say sixty. Through consolidation of schools and the transportation of pupils a widespread movement is going on to decrease the number of small, poorly attended and isolated rural schools, and at the same time to encourage longer and more regular attendance of pupils. ”

“ Within a single generation, while population has increased but a hundred per cent., the attendance upon institutions of higher education has increased four hundred per cent. The expansion in secondary education has been no less significant. In 1880 there were no four-year high schools in the United States, and the whole number of secondary schools, public and private, was only 1,400. In 1907 the number had risen to 10,238, an increase of over 700 per cent. And the modern high-school course comprehends a broader training than was given by the college of fifty years ago! ”

“ My evening school for adults is full of interest; there is an average attendance of three, hundred pupils. Over one hundred have learnt to read since they began to attend, and almost two hundred pupils will soon need a more advanced book than the one they are now using. ”

“ Investigators found from consultation with the principals of the schools largely attended by colored children that they are irregular in attendance and often tardy; that they are eager to leave school at an early age, although in one school where there is a great deal of manual work this tendency is less pronounced. ”

“ Many children must leave school at the age of twelve or thirteen years, and even younger, in order to help earn money enough to support the family; and they never can go back again for the same reason. In the United States in 1896, out of a total school population of nearly twenty-one million, less than half of that number were in average daily attendance. ”

“ In almost every colony visited the writer discussed with the settlers the advisability of compulsory attendance at evening or afternoon classes. No one was against compulsion, though a number suggested qualifications. For instance, the evening school should operate in the wintertime; the teaching should include subjects useful in farming; in the case of hired men, the school time must be paid for by the employer; the evening school should be a public institution, not a private, charitable, or religious enterprise ”

“ After they enter their trade, their special education for their job is looked after in the continuation schools as well as in the shop. Their attendance at the continuation schools is compulsory. This compulsory attendance does not only insure supplementary training for a particular job, but holds the children to the industry which was chosen for them. That is, a boy is compelled, if he works in the dining-room of a hotel, to attend the continuation school for waiters, until he is eighteen. ”

“ The growth of the school, in all that counts to strengthen and confirm its influence and usefulness, has been steady and uninterrupted from the beginning, with its attendance of 250 pupils of low [Pg 150] grades, to the present year, with an enrollment of over 700, distributed through its twelve years of study and training, over 200 of whom are in the Normal Department fitting for the work of teaching. ”

“ A scheme to give a number up to eighty additional afternoons on which the older children can be employed on the land, managers to be informed that a school year of not less than 320 attendances will be accepted as fulfilling the requirements of the board, instead of a minimum of 400 as heretofore. On up to eighty days, older children, above prescribed age, may be released at noon for employment on the land, whilst the school will be open as usual for the younger children, and their attendance recorded, though not in the official register. ”

“ The visiting teacher’s province lies outside that of the regular teacher, the attendance officer and the school nurse, though like the attendance officer and the school nurse, she goes into the child’s home. To her is assigned the group called the “difficult” children, and it is her aim to discover, if possible, the cause of the difficulty which manifests itself in poor scholarship, annoying conduct, irregular attendance, or the need of or desire for advice on some important phase of life. ”

“ The community should do all they can to help forward this beneficent voluntary scheme of public education, acknowledge their real obligation to the teachers, offer them rooms in their public school buildings, and by the pressure of a sound public sentiment, increase the uniform attendance, particularly from the ignorant and neglected classes. ”

“ In the second place, it is doubtful whether we can much longer continue the policy of increasing the regular attendance of youth at school without giving some consideration to the educative value of labor. The educative process taken in its largest sense goes on for twenty-four hours a day. It concerns health, character, mental capacity, citizenship, and useful work. To most people the educative process merely centers around the schoolhouse, and such think of education in terms of schooling. ”