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THE

Ohio Journal of Education.

COLUMBUS, JULY, 1857.

Communications.

THOUGHTS ON ABSENTEEISM, AND THE POWERS WHICH TEACHERS POSSESS TO ENABLE THEM TO PREVENT IT.

Experience has so frequently verified the assertion, "as is the Teacher 80 will be the school," that it may be regarded as an established scholastic axiom.

The Teacher is to the school as the galvanic battery to the apparatus in connection with it be the mechanism ever so good or only just in working order, when the battery is weak it is hopeless to expect an active exhibition of the principles sought to be illustrated; while a powerful battery, even though in connection with imperfect apparatus, will often evolve highly valuable and interesting phenomena. So where a Teacher lacks energy; if placed in a good school, but a limited amount of good is produced; while if placed in a bad one, each only adds to to the total failure of the other.

So much has been said against absenteeism that it is not contemplated in the present article to enlarge the catalogue of evils of which it is the prolific parent. Our late State Commissioner (1 An. Rep. p. 42,) thus ably and comprehensively sums them up, and more could not well be said. 66 Absenteeism is then one of the worst evils under which our schools labor. From a good school it takes away its best influence, and a poor one it renders worse than worthless. Like a worm at the root of a tender flower, it eats away all life from the system and leaves it but a dried and useless stalk."

It may not be without profit to examine whether Superintendents and

VOL. VI.-No. 7.

14

Teachers laboring with them, do not possess such resources as, judiciously applied, would tend so far to eradicate the evil as to make it no longer a serious obstacle to the success of public education.

It would extend the present article too much, to examine in this connection whether the regulation adopted in many schools, "that pupils who are absent a definite time during a stated period shall be excluded from the privileges of the public schools," is a beneficial one. This might be discussed with great advantage at our approaching meeting at Steubenville. Few Boards of Education appear to possess nerve enough to resolve that pupils shall come regularly or they shall not come at all, and leave to the parents the choice; and even if they do possess that nerve, it is certainly not yet a settled question that this exclusion is the best course to be taken. It is proposed at present to consider how far energetic Superintendents and Teachers can succeed in eradicating absenteeism by a judicious application of the powers usually delegated to them by Boards of Education.

In the first place there are two kinds of absenteeism-that which arises from truancy, and that which arises with the parent's consent. The former is hardly included in the present article. Few Boards of Education, and, we presume few parents, will object to a Teacher's breaking up truancy in a summary manner.

It may fairly be presumed, also, that, in the present enlightened state of public opinion in regard to education, there are no Boards of Education, having the guardianship and control over village schools, who will refuse to enact that every pupil having been absent from school shall, upon returning, present to the Teacher a written excuse for such absence, signed by the parent. This will speedily lead to the detection of truancy.

It will then become the Teacher's duty to hedge in absenteeism with so many barriers that pupils shall not only find it unpleasant to be absent, but shall find it difficult to reinstate themselves after they shall have been away. This will make absenteeism unpopular with a large class of scholars, and that is a step towards making it unpopular in a community.

In the first place, let Teachers endeavor to educate the public mind to hostility to irregular attendance.

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This be done by occasional contributions to the local papers upon the subject. By a judicious selection and publication of prominent cases in which pupils have seriously compromised their scholastic standing by continued absence. Startling facts will not be wanting in any

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system of schools where the attendance is irregular; unfortunately they are too numerous and too palpable to even a superficial examiner. Exhibit judiciously, regularly attending pupils of eight, nine or ten years, rapidly overtaking and leaving behind irregularly attending scholars several years older. Publish such facts and statistics as would tend to encourage in their constancy those who send regularly; while those who. are indifferent about the regular attendance of their children will feel such home truths so forced upon them as to make them uneasy under the infliction. Make absenteeism and the difficulties arising from the practice of it, the subject of conversation, citing instances where individuals have suffered from it. Keep a private memorandum of the worst cases, so that the memory may be refreshed, and when the parents of such cases are met, they may be addressed upon the subject.

While this education of public opinion is going on, let Superintendents and Teachers enact and quietly carry out such a course of executive policy in their schools as will naturally and inevitably tend to make irregularity hateful and regularity desirable to the scholars. It is not necessary that these rules should be arbitrary or overbearing. They should carefully avoid any tendency to deprive any pupil of that public instruction which is the right of all, and which should be supplied untrammeled by the oppressive regulations and peculiar idiosyncrasies of any person.

Such resolutions as the following would interfere with the just rights of no one :

I. When any pupil is absent for any cause except sickness, (either personal or of some member of the family,) let the seat of such pupil be forfeited, and let any other pupil of the same sex and class, who may desire to do so, occupy the same. Where two desire the seat, pre

fer the most regular attendant.

II. Let there be a separate place for all absentees under every circumstance without exception. All, upon entering, must go there until excuses have been called for and examined.

III. Let the Teacher exercise a judicious discrimination as to whether the absence was justifiable and the excuse rendered is satisfactory. IV. Establish special seats for absentees, which they shall occupy after their return to school so long as the Teacher shall deem it advisable, taking into consideration the cause of absence, excuse rendered, general standing of pupil, and other extenuating circumstances.

V. All occupying these seats should be deprived of any special

local privileges which the scholars may have been in the babit of enjoying. At recess and at dismission they should also be the last to leave. VI. Any pupil missing a recitation should upon rejoining the class, stand at the foot.

VII. Where a scholar is frequently absent, if such scholar fail to maintain a definite, average, established standing in his (or her) respective classes, let such be transferred to a lower class, both as a punishment, as a warning, and as an act of justice to those who attend larly.

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VIII. Where a scholar is so sent down, take care that the act is made sufficiently prominent; and that the cause is well understood by all the scholars, for they will be certain to talk about it at home, and it will often effect more benefit among those who are not habitually absentees, than it does upon the unfortunate absentee who has been made to suffer.

IX. Publish the names of the most regular and their respective positions in their several classes; also the names of the most irregular and their positions. Sometimes it may also be desirable to append a brief notice of the grades of classes through which some of them may have risen within a given period.

Some communities take more interest in education and the welfare of their schools than others; this arises from various causes which it is not at present necessary to investigate, but the fact that it seems an evil inherent to some societies, gives rise to the thought that absenteeism in a system of schools is like consumption in the human system; suffering the body to retain the hue of health, and promising ultimate convalescence to the end, it gradually and inevitably eats up the life of a glorious structure and keeps it ever powerless for good. Nor does the resemblance terminate here. As the consumptive invalid can never hope for a permanent cure, so absenteeism can never be entirely eradicated from our schools. But as the consumptive can, by a careful and constant adherence to the laws of life, baffle and arrest the would speedily destroy him; as like the celebrated Dr. Andrew Coombe, he can keep the disease in check by a rigid and systematic regard for nature and a respect for her imperious laws, and finally sink to sleep a comparatively old man after a life of usefulness, so by the constant vigilant prosecution of a well digested code of rules, Superintendents and Teachers can so far reduce absenteeism in their schools, that it would no longer be regarded as the one great impediment to the successful working of our Union School System of Public Education.

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To effect this, however, requires patient persevering effort. To relax is to relapse, and to relapse seriously to fail. The foregoing suggestions could be carried into effect, and, if judiciously executed, could be defended successfully by any Teacher and would force even a careless indifferent Board of Education to acquiesce in them; at the same time they attack the rights and privileges of no scholar in such a manner as to afford grumbling or ignorant parents a pretext for asserting that they deprive any pupil of power to prosecute his education to the utmost.

If a few faithful laborers shall be lead to devise more efficient means for securing regularity of attendance than they have hitherto done, then it may be hoped that these few thoughts are not entirely unworthy of the pages they are designed to fill.

BUCYRUS.

NEW METHODS.

Much has been said within a few years by our educators, of the evils of memoriter recitations. To remedy these evils, some of which are real, and more imaginary, various devices have been resorted to; among which the lecturing method, a kind of "royal road to knowledge," stands very prominent: a method in which the Teacher not only does the studying, but the reciting also. With a weakness incident to our nature, the advocates of the method, in avoiding Scylla have fallen upon Charybdis. I am aware that its supporters do not state their views in very distinct terms, but by a phraseology exceedingly loose and indefinite, they deceive both the public and themselves, as to their real position.

As methods of instruction, like institutions, live forever in the society they mould, it becomes an inquiry of immense importance, as to which are the best.

In pursuing this investigation, every one must be struck by observing the radical changes a few years have introduced into all departments of education. We learn nothing as our fathers learned it. Young America like, we "whistle down the wind" their patient plodding industry, as too slow for the enlightenment of the latter half of the nineteenth century. That the ways of our fathers were perfect, none will be found hardy enough to assert, yet are we constrained to admit that there were scholars, and good ones too, before the Agamemnons of modern educational reform.

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