Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1915 — Parents of Delinquent School Children to Blame. [ARTICLE]

Parents of Delinquent School Children to Blame.

County Truant Officer C. B. Steward, who went to Tefft Wednesday to see that the children of James Davis attended school, found a deplorable condition in the Davis home. There are six children, three under school age, making a total of eight in the family. All live in an old log house and apparently all sleep in one room. The home was despicable jn the way of furnishings and was not clean. Mr. Steward says it is one of the most wretched homes he was ever in. When Truant Officer Steward accosted Mr. Davis about failure to send his children to school Davis said he had no time to talk to him, but Mr. Steward induced him to go to the house and there found the three children of school age, all very poorly clad and unt't to go to school. He offered to buy them overalls and shoes when the mother said that they did not have any clothes fit to wear to school, but the mother said her pride would not permit this and she insisted that she could not send the children to school. Mr. Steward, said that he had come there to see that the children did go to school and that he was going to stay until they did and so the parents reluctantly cleaned them up and sent them to school that afternoon.

The father, Mr. Steward says, is indolent and will not work only part of the time when he has a chance. In a letter he had sent to Mr. Steward he claimed that he kept his children out of school because they caught lice there, but indications were that the lice were indigenous in the misery of the Davis home. It is hoped that the teacher will give the children every possible chance and will see to it that they are not imposed on by the other fchildren, for an education seems the only hope of bringing the unfortunate out of the quagmire of their present environment. Mr. Steward made a trip to the river and there found some other school delinquents and saw to it that they were placed in school. He also reported three boys for “legging school” to visit the dredge, but was sorry he did so, for the youngsters were given a trouncing by the teacher. It seems that about 50 per cent of young Americans do not consider life quite complete until as youths they play “hookey” some day, and the application of a switch seems about the only thing to restore the lad again to his former standing in the school room. It weaves together as naturally as a rag carpet, this truancy and a birch stick and is a sort of epoch id the life of *a school boy. Possibly, in fact, the adventures of a visit to a mammoth dredge boat gave the child as much information as he might-have acquired in several days in school, but the breach of discipline had to be punished and the short story -ends happy with no permanent ill results.

There had been a family up at the river that is believed to have indulged in some stealing, Mr. Steward reported, but they had taken their departure, much to the peace and dignity of that neighborhood.