To meet the present national emergency, the New York State Education Department, after careful consideration, issues the following regulations concerning matters that vitally affect the interests of the pupils of the secondary schools of the state.

1. The June Regents' examinations will be given as previously announced for all pupils who remain regularly in school and also for pupils who may enlist for service and who wish to take the examinations and are situated so that they can do so. For the latter class the time requirement will be waived.

2. Announcement is made to all the schools of the state that any pupil who enlists for military service or who enlists for and renders satisfactory agricultural or industrial service will be credited with the work of the present term without examination on the certificate of the school that his work up to the time of enlistment is satisfactory.

3. Candidates for college-entrance diplomas who are in the graduating class of 1917 will be granted the diploma on certificate of the principal that their work up to the time of enlistment is satisfactory. The average standing will be computed on the basis of the examinations already passed.

4. Appropriate certificates will be prepared to be issued to those pupils in the schools who shall enlist for agricultural or industrial service and who shall present satisfactory evidence of such service.

5. That all other questions regarding conditions affecting the 1918 high-school class be held in abeyance to await developments.

It is believed that principals, teachers, and pupils in all secondary schools of the state will appreciate the vital importance of prompt action in the present crisis and that each will esteem it a privilege to "do his bit" for the common good.

As soon as the schoolboys of the state knew of this letter, they all seemed to hear very suddenly of jobs on farms, but some, rather unfortunately, failed to continue to hear this call when the end of the school year came and they could no longer receive school credit for work on the farm because, of course, school had closed. It being likely that there would be the same general tendency for the boys to discover work on farms about the first of September when the schools open, it was thought well to have a clear understanding of the conditions of release of boys for farm work in the fall. Of course a great many boys were out of school during May and June and continued to work all summer on individual farms or in camps with other boys, but "slackers" wanted to stop as soon as they received their school credit, and the same slackers might be just as slack in returning to school, hence the following letter issued by the Commissioner of Education on August 11, 1917:

To Superintendents, Principals, and Boards of Education:

In answer to many inquiries as to releasing boys for farm service this fall, and in response to the appeal of the Food Supply Commission, which states the imperative need of such labor as the youth of this state can give in harvesting the crops, I would urge the educational authorities of the state in those sections where the need exists to make all possible provision for the special tuition of those pupils who may, under the labor laws of the state and the compulsory-education laws, legally engage in such service. Such special instruction, either after hours or in holiday periods, may be the special patriotic contribution of some teachers to meet the need which seems at present to demand whatever coöperation the school authorities can give. This will be most easily arranged by limiting the enlistments, as far as possible, to the upper classes, and by arranging for work in relays, so that the period of absences may not be unnecessarily long. We ought not to remit in the slightest our educational requirements and disciplines, nor take children or youth out of the educational processes, but we ought to do all that we can, on the other hand, to make it possible for the boys of proper age and strength to perform this service when it is of real public necessity.

The department, wishing to coöperate to this end, makes the following determination, effective until November 1, 1917:

The time of study requirements for admission to the Regents' examinations, in January and June, 1918, may be waived in the case of any pupil who presents evidence that

a. He was regularly registered in school at or near the beginning of the term in September, 1917. (Boys already at work at a distance from the school may, with the permission of the local principal, register by mail.)

b. He was released by the principal from school for agricultural service.

c. He was actually and satisfactorily engaged in needed agricultural service while absent from school.

This privilege should be interpreted conservatively. School authorities should excuse pupils from this service only where the need is urgent and where it is possible to maintain such supervision that certificate of the facts can be made from certain knowledge.

During the summer and fall of 1917, schoolboys from Maine to California responded to the nation's call for increased food production. Other seasons of scarcity of labor, with the shortage of farm and garden products and resultant high prices, are doubtless before us. Indeed, we are told that for five years at least we are to continue to feel the stress of labor shortage due to war and other conditions. The United States Boys' Working Reserve, through state councils of defense and state and national departments of labor and agriculture, will continue to issue proclamations calling upon youth to serve the nation. Legislatures will pass or amend laws permitting absences from school for industrial and farm service. State educational officials will issue edicts interpreting legislative action. Schools will devise methods of giving school credit for useful service. Boys will again leave school to earn and serve. Parents will continue to speak with pride of the earning of their lads or complain about their treatment. Farmers will recall their first experiences with city boys. Everything will center about products, laws, rules, school credits, and dollars.

Few of us will think of the deeper significance of what is behind. We shall hardly realize that the law-makers have thought only of a possible increase of acreage under cultivation, or increased production in factories; that the farmers and the manufacturers had visions merely of good labor at a low figure; that the parents saw only an opportunity for a "change for the boy"; that the boy had in mind only a spending account and release from school.

We shall forget our unscientific experiments, the light handling and selfish exploitation we have given to that wonderful possession of youth—the work impulses. And the question we should ask ourselves is, What educational justification have we for this service which the boys have rendered?

CHAPTER VII
ORGANIZED BOY POWER VS. MILITARY DRILL

The war has already brought about drastic economic changes in Europe. The recall of men from the trenches to perform a more useful professional and industrial service behind the lines has demonstrated the importance of the supporting civilian army. From the viewpoint of the individual, nothing can equal the supreme sacrifice of a life. "What good," wailed a Yiddish woman on the East Side of New York City, "is a free country to me if my Abie is killed?" But in the judgment of the nation the garment worker, Abie, who is drafted into service in the army is of no greater value than his friend the skilled machinist who is allowed to remain in his present occupation. The military exemptions of men in European armies, the adoption of the selective draft in the United States, are acknowledgments of the equality of the military and the civilian occupations indispensable to military activity. To include in our educational law such a recognition, adopting a measure permitting the substitution of types of vocational training for military training, is but to follow the lead of the national government in declaring such exemptions a military necessity. New York State has made a beginning in this direction.

In 1916 the legislature enacted the so-called "Welsh-Slater" bills, making military and physical training compulsory in the secondary schools of the state for boys above 16 and under 19 years of age. Such military training is to aggregate not more than three hours each week between September first of each year and June fifteenth of the next. The law further provides, within the limits of appropriation, for the establishment of military camps with attendance of from two to four weeks. While the operation of these camps and, indeed, the introduction of military drill, have been imperfectly carried out, owing to the lack of suitable state appropriation to carry on the work on the necessary and large scale for a working-boy and schoolboy population of 240,000, it is the intention of the Military Training Commission to insist on the requirements of the law.