One boy, for example, was kept to watch fires for a sick father while his mother "got a day's work"; another had stayed at home because his sister's baby was in convulsions and his mother had not been able to get him ready to go to school; John was staying at home because his mother had gone to see a doctor and wanted him to look after the children, who did not like to go to the day nursery; Bruno, aged twelve, was found at home helping his mother wash, but he explained that he had really stayed out to go "to tell the boss" that his father was sick; Genevieve, aged twelve, who had been absent fourteen half days and tardy twice within a month, was found alternately tending the shop and taking care of three younger children and of a sick mother, although her father was well able to hire some one to come in and help care for the family while the little girl was at school.
In the rural districts the failure to understand the necessity of complying with the compulsory education law is even more marked. In the Rolling Prairie group of Polish families many of the children were not sent to school until after two families had been fined for not sending them. There was the expense for clothes and books, and the extra work for the mother. The roads were bad, the children often had no shoes, even in winter, and, above all, the parents had no understanding of why they should go. After the prosecution, however, the school law was obeyed.
The parents' attitude toward the problem of keeping the child in school comes out quite naïvely in the answers given to visitors for this study. The following comments, given in the quaint but forceful English of our foreign-speaking investigators, show what is meant:
Mother (a Russian woman with three children) visited school when teacher demanded her to send daughter to school when she wished her at home to help.
Mother (a Polish woman with six children under fourteen) feels that children study too much and ought to help their parents more.
Father (Italian) thinks there should be laws for protection of parents as well as child labor.
Following the child's progress at school is a difficult matter for parents who themselves have not had the benefit of education, or even for those who have been educated under a different system. It is, however, not impossible for them to do so; by means of reports in the language they can understand, by talking to the teachers or some one of the school authorities who knows about the child's work, they can keep closely enough in touch with his school record to enable them to give help at the point where it is most needed.