Probation methods in dealing with delinquent children have come to stay as they are natural and logical. Definite and positive results have followed their proper application.

My opinions of juvenile probation are largely the outgrowth of twelve years' experience with The Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society, which has jurisdiction in ten counties in Eastern New York, and as chief probation officer for juveniles for a shorter period. This society receives in its shelters in Albany and Troy an average of one thousand children each year and about 300 boys and girls are placed on probation yearly. Of those placed on probation less than five per cent have had to be subsequently committed to institutions and in most of these cases home conditions, that could not be corrected, were responsible for the commitment.

Juvenile probation is the happy medium between a too severe imprisonment and a thoughtless dismissal or suspended sentence by the court. It gives the delinquent child a chance to correct his conduct under proper supervision and control. It is a combination of restraint and liberty that appeals to our good sense and judgment. It is preventive rather than punitive and takes into consideration the tremendous capacity for right or wrong in the delinquent and seeks to develop that which is good and eradicate that which is bad. prevents indiscriminate commitments to institutions and replaces misplaced sympathy and thoughtlessness with a sympathetic oversight. It realizes that the environment of the delinquent is the vital element in almost all cases. Its theory of encouragement instead of punishment appeals to our sense of right and applied in a practical and common sense manner should be of untold value in working out this definite and difficult problem and do much to depopulate our prisons and reformatories.

It

The results already attained are, to my mind, an unqualified vindication of the humanitarian principles underlying the system.

But in our enthusiasm for quick results we must not overstep the bounds of reason. There are extremists in everything and we have them in our probation work as we find many who

De

seldom come into direct contact with the probationer evolving elaborate plans for the development of the system. velopment and progress is essential, but changes should be accomplished by evolutionary and not revolutionary methods and with the advice and assistance of those who are daily laboring with the children.

In my judgment the future of probation has more to fear from its friends than its foes. Some of our earnest friends see in every delinquent child an outlet for copious sentimentality and would throw aside all effort at discipline or restraint, failing to remember that all our characters are formed in part by learning self restraint and discipline. This tendency to overdo probation is very likely to bring about a reaction if it has not already done so in some quarters. Magistrates and officials keenly alive to the possibilities of the system, if wisely administered, see danger ahead from too much sentiment and too little knowledge of human nature. While magistrates in general do not agree with the harsh sentiments of Judge Biddle of Philadelphia expressed by him recently when committing a young woman, a mere girl 19 years of ago, there is reason to believe that some of our jurists are beginning to feel that probation unless surrounded by proper safeguards may defeat the very object of its existence. Loosely administered probation may create in the child an impression of weakness which would surely result in disregard for authority and be taken as a license for further acts of delinquency.

I do not wish to be understood as meaning that the probationer should be ruled by repression or dominated by fear, but only that he should be taught, to respect authority and fully understand the consequences of continued misbehavior.

I believe that the fundamental principle underlying all successful probation work is a close and sympathetic relation between the probationer and the officer, but that this all important relation can best be brought about if the probationer is properly impressed with the power and dignity of constituted authority. In fact I believe that the whole fabric of the system is built up

on this personal relation and that perfunctory or mechanical work on the part of the officer means disastrous failure.

There can be no hard or fast rules for the officer to follow in his relations with the probationer. It is important that there should not be. One boy we control by instilling into his mind a wholesome fear and respect for the law and for all the agencies that apply it to offenders. Another is of such a temperament that we easily win his confidence by sympathy and almost immediately a mutual understanding is established, and we can trust him to any extent without fear that our confidence will be violated.

While almost all probationers have a sense of honor, it is in many cases so nearly extinct that to immediately place them in positions of trust is to do them injustice. They are not ready for this treatment and do not understand it and cannot respond. While in most cases the foundation is there, we must build up the character of the boy and prepare him for the trust we impose in him. Such boys properly handled soon show a decided inclination to be worthy of our confidence.

So I say that cultivating a boy's sense of honor is an important element in aiding him to a life of decency and rectitude, but that it must be developed before it becomes a solid asset in our efforts. We should also bear in mind that good behavior is not necessarily development of character. As some one has truly said: "Good conduct is easily assumed; good character never."

In my personal relations with my probationer I strive to impress upon him that I am not trying to punish him, but to be his friend and helper. I try to maintain a broad tolerance for the immaturity of the probationer and the absence of moral training so pronounced in a vast majority of cases. For it is a proven fact that immorality, intemperance, cruelty, ignorance, thoughtlessness and neglect are forms of parental incapacity that produce and create almost all juvenile delinquency.

I try to talk with my probationer in a way that he will understand and not over his head. To get an effectual influence over him we must meet him on his own ground as far as possible, but I do not believe it necessary to stoop to the slang of the street.

Many boys are entirely thoughtless and frequently the crimes committed by them are the outcome of a thoughtless prank with no real bad intent. It is astonishing how little the average boy thinks. We try to get our boys thinking and when they are under the shock of arrest and the subsequent require

ments of their probation is a good time to do so.

Most boys who commit crimes are in my judgment quite natural, both physically and mentally, many scientific philanthrophists to the contrary notwithstanding, and most have ordinary ability and a few show marked ability. The crime committed is not in many instances the result of physical defect or lack of mental faculties, although we find a sprinkling of such, but the natural outgrowth or culmination of waywardness unchecked; self will and self indulgence unrestrained and of long standing parental neglect. My experience leads me to believe that our "scientific" friends in their desire to find new causes for delinquency have greatly overestimated the existence of criminal instinct. We are told that post mortem examinations of the brain reveal little difference between the educated and refined and the criminal and ignorant, and I believe that most practical workers agree with this statement.

Heredity, advanced so often as the cause of delinquency, has also in my judgment been exaggerated. Admitting that the child comes into the world with

any of the defects of the parent, we know from our knowledge of many children who started life supposedly with every handicap of heredity, who, after being removed to good moral surroundings, have responded to such environment and developed into upright men and women. Indeed our work would be well nigh hopeless did we believe in the old theory that like parent like child. There can be no doubt but that environment, for good or bad, is much stronger than heredity.

Many of our probationers come from homes of drunkenness and viciousness, while many more come from homes where the parents, though not immoral or vicious, have no sense or judgment; no appreciation of their responsibilities and absolutely no methods of training and the children learn to lie and deceive as a matter of self protection. Notwithstanding this tremendous handicap we find most of our boys have all the emotions and ambitions of children reared in homes of purity and love. They are undeveloped and may appear deficient and in a class by themselves to the thoughtless, but how intensely human we find them after we know them. If the mental or moral faculties are undeveloped it is their misfortune, not their fault. Conscience may seem to be entirely lacking, but usually it is only dormant or hardened by hard knocks received from infancy. By all means let

(Continued on page 23.)

While only three were brought in for excessive smoking, the figures show that two-thirds of the boys smoked. Personal observation showed that this habit has been checked in a great measure.

Of forty-eight sentenced for larceny, only one-third were committed. That this percentage is lower than that shown in other cities is due probably to the fact that we have comparatively no places to send the boys to, except the Illinois State Reformatory at Pontiac.

The work of the Juvenile Court of Peoria county was begun about three years ago by Judge W. I. Slemmons, assisted by representatives of the various women's societies of the city. The reporting system was adopted, requiring the children on probation to report to the judge every other Saturday. The visiting is done by fifteen volunteers. year ago this work was mapped out by dividing the cases into groups of three or four residing in the same locality. Each visitor took a new group each month, thus affording opportunity of be

A

coming familiar with the circumstances in each instance and studying the home life.

But after this plan had served its purpose, each visitor was allowed to take several probationers permanently, choosing those cases where each felt they could do most good.

Although our work is handicapped for want of a detention home and a paid probation oшcer who can devote all of his time to the work, yet we feel that great good has been accomplished. The past week fourteen boys were brought in charged with larceny. Five of them were from families which had children on probation, but none of our old probationers were involved. Although our influence in these cases had not reformed. the parents or the home, yet we felt that that we had control over our boys sufficient to keep them out of the "gang" to which those boys belonged.

Over twenty per cent of the larceny committed by the boys was in the railroad yards. In many instances the child is sent by his parents to gather up coal, and often the first wrong step is taken when, not finding enough on the ground, the child takes it off the cars. Others sweep grain cars, and as they find they can sell the grain to unprincipled persons, are often tempted to break into

MR. RITTER-Ladies and Gentlemen: As I look over this audience tonight my thoughts go back to my schoolboy days, with its ever present temptation to play hooky, as we called it in those days, and then they return to the busy humdrum of every day life, and I am impressed with the fact that life, after all, is a great school in which we as pupils have our lessons, our tasks and our problems to solve, and so tonight you are gathered here in this class room, as it were, and the Great Teacher has given you a problem, the problem of truancy, not the truancy of adult life, but the truancy of childhood.

Let me say to you that in my opinion once you have solved that problem you will have gone a long way towards a proper solution of the problem of truancy of adult life. You have your problem, and I know from the interest you have shown in coming here tonight that you will try to solve it and solve it well, so in behalf of the Board of Education of the City of Chicago I bring you encouragement and the assurance that the Board of Education will welcome any ideas, suggestions or recommendations that may emanate from this conference.

The gentleman who has been selected to preside over this meeting this evening needs no extended introduction from me. He is known to you as a leader among those who are in sympathy with this work. His record is unimpeachable evidence that his heart is right, that his sympathies are with his work, and, above all, that he has the courage of his convictions, as was ably illustrated in this very hall a few weeks ago. I have the honor, and it is a great pleasure to me to introduce to you the chairman of the evening, Judge Mack, of the Juvenile Court of Cook County. (Applause.)

ADDRESS OF THE HONORABLE
JULIAN W. MACK.

ents, vile surroundings and environment contribute in a very marked degree toward the production of this delinquency that we are endeavoring not merely through the Juvenile Court to cure, but through the Juvenile Court and other much better agencies to eradicate at the roots. If, however, we shall, in the course of time, be able to enforce our compulsory education laws and enforce them fully, as against the parent, by compelling the child to attend school regularly; as against the child, by attracting him to attend school regularly, we shall in a very considerable measure stop the growth of this juvenile delinquency, and the resulting adult criminality.

In order to know how to deal with the ploblem we must understand the problem itself. We must look at it from all points of view. We must examine it in all of its relations: In its relation to the school, the influence of the school and how in and through the school itself truancy may be diminished and ended. The influence of the home, the question of poverty, viciousness and neglect in the home, the questions of sickness and the resulting detention at home, or, at any rate, away from school, of the child, the problem of society at large, the general question of compulsory education, and the relation of the court, representing the public, as the means of enforcing the laws, and, in addition to that, the question of how best the laws are to be enforced through the agencies that the court has: the probation officer, the truant officer, the parental schools, the detention schools and the state institutions.

This conference aims to study these various relations, to endeavor to find out the causes of truancy and how each of these either contributes to the cause or may contribute to the cure. Tonight we shall consider the first and fundamental problem, the question of the causes from within the school itself, that is, in how far things that are wrong in and about the school bring about truancy; and having considered the causes we shall then endeavor to find some of the means within school itself of preventing the truancy through greater manual training courses and industrial education, and through the application of those narrow

methods that the general delinquent idea stands for.

TRUANCY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE TEACHER.

The Curriculum. Address of Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, Principal of the Chicago Normal School.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Although I deeply appreciate the lines of work for which the Juvenile Court stands, yet it is my great pleasure this evening not to speak regarding compulsory measures in education, but to speak from the teacher's standpoint, and first I should say, with regard to truancy, as with regard to tardiness and whispering and all the other things of that sort, the teacher of today takes no account of what might be called preventive measures. The course of study is not planned with the thought in mind of preventing anything. Today we view children in the light of beings who are with us, ready for action, and through whose action and activities character is developed. There are those who would say that that theory of education forgets or ignores the fact that inhibition is an important thing in life, and that there can be no self-control unless there is the power of inhibition; but, on the other hand. in training a child through his activities, we endeavor to train so that the development shall be in proportionfollow the old Greek idea, always, observing the development in proportion, and such being the case, there must be inhibition, but the inhibition comes from the child himself, not the evolution of his recognition of the true proportion and symmetry of whatever he does, and so the modern teacher stands for the development of child life, childhood and youth, through the activities of the individuals and not through repression or inhibition on the part of the teacher. But it is one thing to hold the theories which have been worked out by child study and specialists and students of education, students of child life, students of psychology, particularly of genetic psychology, it is one thing to hold the views or theories which should be based upon their conclusions, and to make objective those theories in the life of the school. If those theories are made objetcive in the life of the school, then in the curriculum of the school there will be from the day that a child enters the school until he graduates from the high school at least constant opportunity for the play of these activities which are dominant at the different periods in his life. and one is obliged to confess that our curriculum in a very slight degree meets

the requisites of the theory which we hold.

When children come into the kindergarten, thanks to the advanced work of kindergartners, there is given way to the tendencies, the impulses of that age, and in the first grade in the majority of schools, I speak particularly of Chicago, the children lead a happy life, an active child life. Upon entering the second grade our curriculum begins to come short of our theory and there settles down upon the school and into the life of the child a monotony which he begins to shrink under, and in course of time begins to break away from.

Now, this is not true of all children. Teachers will say to you that the majority of children like the work of the school, they have no desire to get away from it. They have no desire to take up something else. They are active enough. That may be true-it may be true that the children in our care actually don't know what they really do want, because we substitute a certain something, a routine of life, and praise them for living carefully and well under that routine, and so they go on believing that they are doing the things which cheer their parents and cheer their teachers, and therefore they are good children. But when they get into the third grade it is then quite different. At that time a child about 8 or 9 years of age has a craving for knowledge of things that can be obtained only by way of these organs of special sense, but instead of giving that information in that way, instead of placing in their hands work wihch will give play to those sense organs, we give them books to read about all of those things which they ought to, or put them to work on their number work. (Laughter.) What was that? What did I say?

Without going into that farther I want to make this point, that in the third and fourth grades-and the fifth gradesmany teachers refuse to enter the grades that even the young ladies at the Normal know are hard grades to take care of. They have heard about the third and the fourth and the fifth grades. Instead of giving those children who at that age have that strong desire for concrete sense impressions, instead of giving them those things which will strengthen them and prepare them by a forerunner for learning in another stage beyond that and above that and developed out of it, we will cling to the old ideal of what education is-that it is learning from the book.

The curriculum should be changed. I think, very markedly, so that in the primary grades children, not occasionally once a week, but every day, love that work which will make them stronger for