Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 73, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1912 — END TRUANCY IN LOS ANGELES [ARTICLE]

END TRUANCY IN LOS ANGELES

Plan of 8ma!l Classes, With a Little* Expert at the Head of Each, Makes High Attendance Record. Los Angeles, Cal. —Through an entirely original Idea of teaching' world and play the board of education is fast) reducing the work of the juvenile court in passing on truancy cases. The* idea, as suggested by Professor E. J. Lickley, has reached the stage where there is now an average attendance of 99 per cent for the entire year, in special ungraded schools made up of obstreperous boys. The schools were started as an experiment following the assertion of W. L. Bodine, supervisor of mh> pnlsory education to Chicago, that there were more truants to Los Angeles than any other city in thef United States. * r '.'/ ' “We had to do something to w duce the number of boys going before the juvenile court” said Professor Lickley, head of the department of compulsory education. “There seems to be but one cure for the trouble, and we have at last found it The remedy for such cases lies in grouping the boys to small ole sees, never more than 15 to a room, and putting them to charge of a man instructor who is to sympathy with the work. Not only must he know how to deal with boys, but he must be proficient in athletics to the extent tost he can educate the boys to play M well...as work.”. ........