212 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



expended on the State wards is well spent where even half of 

 them are trained for useful citizenship, but the imposition upon 

 society of an equal number of undesirable citizens calls for a 

 policy of prevention which will work hand in hand with the 

 present one of partial alleviation. 



Most of the previous discussion has been in regard to the first 

 four generations, those individuals who are old enough to have 

 their traits fully developed and their habits firmly established. 

 There is, however, a comparatively large number of children 

 between the ages of six and sixteen years who are growing up 

 to form the fifth generation of the Hill people. A brief study 

 of the school record of seventy-five of these children may give 

 one an idea of the prospect for the next generation. 



The school record of seven of them is not known. The others 

 have been divided into two classes, those who are up to grade 

 and those who are below the grade they should be in. Brief 

 descriptions of the mental traits which they have exhibited in 

 school serve as an index of the characteristics which are develop- 

 ing. Glancing down the list of thirty-eight children who are 

 below grade, two causes for their backwardness stand out most 

 prominently. Either they are unable to fix their attention upon 

 one thing long enough to grasp it, or else they require so much 

 more time to comprehend ideas upon which they have concen- 

 trated, that they progress only half as fast as the average child. 

 They are frequently irregular in attendance so that they even 

 lose the stimulus of regular systematic work. All of these chil- 

 dren attend rural schools where no special provision is made for 

 the backward child. Because the schools are so small, this class 

 of children not only constitute a drain upon the teacher's time 

 and resources, but retard the progress of the entire class in 

 which they are studying. Occasionally they develop mischievous 

 qualities, but usually they are quiet, stupid laggards. They will 

 leave school as soon as the law will allow and go to form the 

 lower strata in the industrial world as they have in the aca- 

 demic. Five of these thirty-eight have one parent who is ap- 

 proximately normal. 



Thirty children from similar families have kept up to their 

 grade. Most of them do as well as children of ordinary parent- 

 age, though only eleven of them have one or both parents whc 



