Boys just naturally like to go to circuses, both the small and the grown boys. This fact weas demonstrated clearly last Thursday when a circus visited the city. A number of vacant desks were found in several of the schools when the roll was called Thursday morning and investigation by the school attendance officer, J.W. Beavers, revealed the fact that a large number of them attended the circus. This was especially true in the colored schools, according to the officer.
Under the system in use by the attendance officer, each school is visited every day and the names of the absentees secured. The officer then begins a round of inquiry. Every home represented by the absent pupils is visited and information requested as to the cause of the absences of the children from school. Some of the cases revealed the fact that the boys had played hookey from school in order that they might feast their eyes upon the splendors of the circus. Others, of course, were out of school because of sickness and other good reasons. In some cases, it was found that the parents allowed their children to remain out of school in order that they might attend the show.
Mr. Beavers apparently has the school attendance situation well in hand. He shows a thorough knowledge of the conditions existing in each school and can give from memory the streets and house numbers of many of the children absent from school each day. Through his visits to the homes wherein children live who are absent from school, he has been enabled to learn the conditions existing in the various homes. His job is to see that every child of school age is in school. If they show a disposition to pay no heed to his advice, it becomes his unpleasant duty to enforce the law.
Oftentimes in his rounds of investigation the absentee is found to be sick. If such the case should be, the school nurses are informed and one of them gives immediate attention to it in an effort to bring the child back to its usual good health.
Occasionally the parents of children out of school show the wrong spirit, Mr. Beavers stated, and seem inclined to interfere with his performance of duty. Several cases were recited where children have not been entered in school or the term because of various reasons which the parents deem sufficient to keep them out. These are a source of concern and worry for the officer, but he has only one alternative and that is to enforce the school attendance law. The law will be enforced in these cases unless the children are entered in school, he said.
From page 2 of the Sunday Durham Herald, Sept. 21, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn84020730/1924-09-21/ed-1/seq-2/#words=SEPTEMBER+21%2C+1924
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