Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/312

 294 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

5 per cent, colored, 5 per cent. Americans, 2 per cent. Chinese, 3 per cent, miscellaneous. Polk Street School : 35 per cent. Jew- ish, 30 per cent. Italian, 10 per cent. German, 7 per cent. Irish, 7 per cent. Bohemian, 4 per cent. American, and 7 per cent, com- posed of all other nationalities. At the Adams School : 40 per cent. Swedish, 20 per cent. Irish, 14 per cent. German, 14 per cent. American, and 12 per cent, mixed. Montefiore: 40 per cent. Italian, 20 per cent. German, 1 1 per cent. Swedish and Norwegian, 10 per cent. Irish, 5 per cent. American, 4 per cent. Polish, and 10 per cent, mixed. Seward: 32 per cent. German, '22 per cent. Bohemian, 15 per cent. Irish, 8 per cent. English, 6 per cent. American, 4 per cent. Polish, and 13 per cent, miscel- laneous. Summarizing, we find that in the vacation schools we had 20 per cent. Italian, 18 per cent. Jewish, 18 per cent. Ger- man, 12 per cent. Irish, 11 per cent. Swedish, 6 per cent. Bohe- mian, 6 per cent. American, 2 per cent. Polish, and i per cent, colored.

The discipline in the schools was something remarkable. No children were sent away permanently for bad conduct, and there was but little need of reprimands. This becomes more wonderful when we consider the mixture of nationalities and number of schools represented. Each of the five schools, excepting the Jones, had a fair representation from at least eight sur- rounding schools, public, private, and parochial, none of the four schools having over 60 per cent, of its pupils who lived in the boundaries of the district within which the school was located.

In many cases we succeeded in keeping children in school that could not be kept in regular schools, but the reformatory effect as regards "bumming" from school was not as prominent as we had hoped. A boy who has the habit of running away from school will do the same in vacation schools, and take the risk of giving sufficiently valid excuses to enable him to hold a place in his class excursions. The effect, however, of bringing such a boy under the influence of a tactful teacher and into con- tact with nature cannot in six weeks be determined. We know, however, of individual cases where boys would not attend the regular school, who never missed a day in the vacation school.