Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/308

 290 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

"What shall we do with our children during the long summer vacation?" is the problem that confronts all parents who live in the densely populated districts of large cities. Any movement that tends to care for the children and keep them from the dan- gers and debasing influences of the streets is heralded with delight. If they are interested but a few hours per day, it has a softening and directing influence upon the plays and manners of the children for the remaining portion of the time, gives the child something to think about, and temporarily closes the devil's workshop.

It was in the attempted solution of the vacation problem that the vacation-school movement originated. Within the last five years all of the large cities have been grappling with the situa- tion, but the experimenting has been entirely along industrial lines of education. The children have been taught to cobble shoes, recane chairs, mend old clothes, etc.; each good in itself, but not especially conducive to the highest development of that power within a child which makes for individuality and character building. It was left to the women's clubs of Chicago and vicinity to attempt a solution through purely educational meth- ods, and for this purpose sufficient funds were raised to establish and maintain five schools. The committee selected the Jones, Seward, Montefiore, Adams, and Polk Street schools, where the greatest need of vacation schools was apparent — schools where there is so little that is natural and so much that is artificial, among people that have formed the bases of nearly all socio- logical theories, people upon whom innumerable volumes have been written and many experiments tried.

Cards of admission had been distributed among the principals of surrounding public, private, and parochial schools, with instructions to give them to those children who in their judg- ment would be most benefited by attending a vacation school. The truant officers of these districts were also used to ferret out the worthy ones.

The principal of each vacation school was told to accept the first four hundred children that presented admission cards. The number by necessity was limited to four hundred, as it was