The ordinary reader will perhaps find it difficult to get answers to these questions. He should make himself a student of the reports of the Commissioner of Education of the United States and of the superintendent of schools in some city which publishes an annual report.
From some school record find out what percentage of enrolled pupils attend school regularly.
If there is a school nurse or a school physician, find out what time in the year is most likely to exhibit small attendance. Verify the finding from the school record.
What substitutes for attendance on public schools are permitted? How many children in the town attend schools other than public schools, and why?
Ayres, L. P. Child Accounting in the Public Schools. Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation. (Copies may be secured from the Russell Sage Foundation.) This is one of the volumes of the Cleveland survey and is the only brief statement of the whole matter that there is.
Reports of the Commissioner of Education should be studied as suggested above.
[CHAPTER IV]
INVESTING PUBLIC MONEY IN A NEW GENERATION
The Cost of Educating an Individual
We all know something about how much the family invests in its sons and daughters. The provision made by the father for his children is recognized as an expression of the parent’s willingness to give to the second generation as good a start in life as the family can afford. We are less likely to realize the extent to which the community is drawing on its material resources for a similar purpose. The city of Chicago—to choose a single example—gives to each boy or girl who goes through elementary school and high school an aggregate of six hundred and thirty dollars. If a child were notified to go to the city hall when he is eighteen years of age and receive this sum of money, we should recognize what it means for a community to pay for the education of its new generation. We should understand that the children of a city are its wards. When the matter is obscured by the complexities of the social machinery through which this bonus is distributed, we lose sight of the magnitude and directness of public expenditures for education.
The example of Chicago can be pursued even further. The sum stated above is too small, for it is based on the annual expenditures for conducting the schools; it does not include the large outlay for school buildings and for real estate which the city is called upon to make in order to provide rooms in which the education may be given. Nor do the figures cover irregularities. If the pupil does not get through each year’s work in regular order, the city is often called upon to provide more than the normal number of years of training.