ay take a new line of work and acquire a real interest."

"But they will fail in their high school work as they have failed in
their grade work," protested the doubters.

Mr. Spaulding, smiling his quiet, genial smile, tried his experiment all
the same. From the seventh and eighth grades of the Newton schools he
picked the boys and girls who were fifteen or more at their next
birthdays. These pupils, seventy in all--forty girls and thirty
boys--were transferred, without examination, into the high school.

"These youngsters were going to drop out of school for good in one year,
or two at the outside," explained Mr. Spaulding, "so I made up my mind
that during that year at least they should have some high school
training. They went to the regular high school teachers for their
hand-work; but for their studies, I put them in charge of three capable
grade teachers, who were responsible for seeing that each child was
making good. I put it to the grade teachers this way: 'Here are a lot of
children who have got the failure habit by failing all through their
school course. Unless we want to send them out of our school to make
similar failures in life, we must teach them to succeed. Take each child
on his own merits, give him work that he can do and let him learn
success.'

"We gave these boys and girls twenty hours a week of technical work
(drawing, designing, shop-work, cooking and sewing) and ten hours a
week of academic work (English, mathematics, civics and hygiene). Shop
costs, buying of materials and simple accounting covered their
mathematics. Those were the things which would probably be most needful
in life. The boys got deeply interested in civics, and we let them go as
far and as fast as they pleased. With the girls we discussed hygiene,
dressing and a lot of other things in which they were interested.

"When those children entered the school they were boisterous and rough.
The girls dressed gaudily, reveling in cheap finery. By Christmas, to
all appearances, their classes differed in no way from the other high
school classes. They all brushed their hair. The boys were neater and
the girls were becomingly dressed.["]

Most of the seventy children stayed through the year. Twenty-seven of
the forty girls and seventeen of the thirty boys entered the regular
high school course the next fall. They were thus put into competition
with their former seventh and eighth grade comrades, although they had
had only two-fift