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When a child is ready for parole the family is visited or a good home provided. The parent or employer signs a paper agreeing to report each month on conduct, progress and finances, including money received, spent and banked. Usually if paroled home a disinterested voucher also reports. Close and cordial relations are maintained by frequent visits by the social worker to the child in the home, a monthly circular letter giving full school and parole news and encouraging the graduates to visit and spend vacations at the school.

A social investigator was provided July 1, 1920. The first months were spent in establishing communication with the fifty-two children who had left the school and not been discharged and in getting them to report regularly. The present officer began service October 1st and paroled girls as fast as they could be given the necessary training and places found for them. In the last nine months 22 girls were placed in domestic service and earned over $3,000. Although as a rule it seems useless to attempt to establish as self-supporting a child of less than moron grade, two girls and two boys of imbecile type have succeeded. One promising young girl was placed in a family where she could attend school and three others were given the same opportunity in a fine old religious community. Two of the best girls placed in an infants' hospital are taking the regular nurses' training course. On account of the industrial depression there has been little opportunity to place boys during the year. On the farms most of the boys have succeeded and in the factory they have held their own.

For various reasons seven boys and two girls were returned to the school, five of whom were again paroled before the end of the year and three transferred to another institution.

Besides cases suitable for parole there is a group capable of self-support but whom it would be unwise to liberate in the community. These boys will be established in farm colonies and the girls in industrial colonies when funds are available.

O. H. COBB.
Superintendent.

APPENDIX

OUTLINE OF TRAINING

Of State institutions for the feeble-minded in America this alone is a school exclusively for boys and girls of the higher grades of intelligence. Custodial care for the less hopeful cases is not a part of the work.

The staff consists of twenty-four teachers and attendant teachers. The chronological age of the children is seven to sixteen, average thirteen; the mental age is about eight. Advancement in the moron group averages one grade in two years; in the imbecile group one grade in three or four years, few passing beyond the second grade. Mental inertia in some cases is responsible for failure to reach the grade indicated by the tests for mental capacity. Most of the children are in the kindergarten, first and second grades; a few reach the fifth grade.

The course of study follows the New York State syllabus in reading, writing, spelling and numbers. Language work is elementary; simple rules of punctuation, capitalization, correction of errors in speech, and special training in articulation. Primary United States history and geography are taught in the fourth and fifth grades. Manual training occupies at least half the day of each child in school. Boys are instructed in wood-working, loom weaving, chair caning, mattress making, bag netting, shoe repairing. sewing, baking, gardening or farming. Girls are taught hand and machine sewing, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, carpet weaving, basketry, hand machine knitting, ironing, cooking and serving. The younger children are given special sense and muscle training. These classes afford opportunity for individual instruction and development. The school maintains a band of thirty-eight boys and an orchestra of thirty girls. Defects in posture, gait and physical development are remedied by daily work in the gymnasium, supplemented by basket ball, indoor baseball, folk and social dancing.

The class period is forty-five minutes; some of the manual training groups extend two periods. Classes in manual, mental and physical work are taken up in rotation to avoid the monotony deadly to progress.

In addition to the work of the school, to promote the happiness of the children and stimulate their mental processes, several evenings each week are devoted to basket ball games with outside teams, moving pictures and social dances, the band or orchestra furnishing the music. The various holidays are appropriately celebrated and victrolas or pianos are located in each building. A record of each child's religion is obtained on admission and regular religious instruction is given.

About sixteen years of age the children exhibit a restlessness that makes desirable employment outside of school. The girls pass into the industrial department, the sewing and knitting rooms, the kitchen and laundry, working at two or more kinds of occupation. The boys become assistants to the carpenter, baker, meat cutter, painter, steam fitter, shoemaker or gardener. The more trustworthy, who live in the Garden Cottage with less supervision, have opportunities after working hours to earn a little money at odd jobs in the neighborhood of the institution and acquire some knowledge of the outside world. At the Fairmount Colony forty of the older boys learn farming and in the winter make brushes.