Truancy: A Study of the Mental, Physical and Social Factors of the Problem of Non-Attendance at School (Classic Reprint)

From its inception, the Public Education Association has regarded the enforcement of compulsory school attendance and its kindred problems of child welfare of primary importance in its program of service to the New York City schools. While it has approached this question from many angles, it has not until now presented an intensive study of the mental and physical status of the children coming to the attention of the attendance department. Through its Committee on Compulsory Education it has taken active part in the evolution of the legislation culminating in the establishment of the present Bureau of A ttendance, Census and Child Welfare in the Department of Education, and through its present director has made several studies in the administrative problems involved, three of which have been published by the Association in the last two or three years. Through its visiting teacher staff, for the last seven years, it has not only been treating cases of maladjustment to school requirements growing out of adverse home, school and neighborhood conditions, which only too frequently lead to irregularity of attendance, but it has endeavored to get back of the causes of truancy by taking up cases of irregular or intermittent attendance referred to it by the school principals. The work of the Association in this direction has been published for the period ending with the school year 1911, and a more comprehensive and exhaustive description and analysis of the work for the past two years is nearing completion and will appear shortly. The study comprehended in this report was begun in the autumn of 1913 by Miss Elisabeth I rwin, field worker of the Committee on Hygiene of School Children of the A ssociation, who was eminently fitted for the task because of her previous experience with problems of mental defect in connection with her work for the Association in co-operat
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