Excerpt from The North Carolina High School Bulletin, 1916, Vol. 7

How Gary uses the children's time is told in a folder which I got from the school printing office: A total of nine hundred hours is the maximum school year in most cities. This is less than two and one-half hours a day for the 365 days of the year. As a rule, one hundred hours of the nine hundred are given to unsupervised recesses.

Not more than one-fourth of the city children attend Sunday School regularly, which averages only two minutes a day for all the days and all the children. In fact, the church, the Sunday School, the public library, public playgrounds, Y. M. C. A.; Boy Scouts, and other child-welfare agencies, do not occupy the time of all of the children of the city for an average of ten minutes a day.

The streets and alleys, the cheap theaters, the dance halls and gambling dens, the saloons, and other commercialized places of amusement have the children for over five hours a day. The cities are not fit places for the rearing of children because as a rule the streets and alleys have twice the time for educating children in the wrong direction that the school, church, library and playground have for educating them in the right direction. In place of using for manual training, play and physical training a part of the already too few regular school hours per year, the Gary schools attempt to se cure additional school time for work and play activities by appropri ating the worse than wasted street and alley time. The Gary schools provide wholesome activities for children for eight hours a day, and are used evenings, holidays and Sundays by adults.

We cannot finance a school program for eight hours a day, if it is to cost as much per hour for eight hours as it now costs per hour for two and one-half hours. Since the ordinary school revenues are not adequate to meet the customary day school children's needs, how are we to finance a program for adult activities in the school when more adults use the schools than children?

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