TABLE XIV (continued)
REASONS WHY 1,469 NEGRO CHILDREN AND 1,560 WHITE CHILDREN WERE RETARDED IN GROUP OF TWENTY-FOUR SCHOOLS

SCHOOLS	FAMILY DIFFICULTIES		DEFECTIVE VISION		DEFECTIVE HEARING		VARIANT MENTALITY		BACKWARD
	N.	W.	N.	W.	N.	W.	N.	W.	N.	W.
Attended mainly by Negroes:
Colman, 92 per cent Negro attendance	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	4	...
Doolittle, 85 per cent	141	...	7	...	...	...	35	...	73	...
Drake, 24 per cent	...	3	...	2	...	...	...	7	7	12
Farren, 92 per cent	21	...	3	...	1	...	12	2	18	...
Felsenthal, 20 per cent	56	15	...	2	1	...	7	1	33	10
Forrestville, 38 per cent	10	...	1	...	...	...	4	...	30	...
Haven, 20 per cent	...	...	...	4	...	...	...	3	7	19
McCosh, 15 per cent	...	...	...	1	...	...	...	...	1	1
Oakland, 26 per cent	...	6	1	2	...	2	3	6	3	5
Raymond, 93 per cent	18	...	...	...	...	...	1	...	11	...
Webster, 30 per cent	6	2	...	...	...	...	...	1	4	2
Attended mainly by White Americans:
Fiske	...	34	...	1	...	...	...	...	1	21
Rowland	...	3	...	4	...	...	...	9	...	28
Kenwood	...	4	...	...	...	...	...	2	...	5
Attended mainly by children of immigrants:
Farragut	...	6	...	3	...	...	...	5	...	23
Goodrich	...	7	...	3	...	...	...	2	...	23
Jackson	...	38	...	8	...	1	...	3	...	45
Jungman	...	1	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
Kosciuszke	...	18	...	2	...	...	...	12	...	4
Lawson	1	20	...	2	...	1	...	25	...	39
McCormick	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	1
Seward	...	10	...	...	...	1	...	2	...	13
Smyth	...	4	...	2	...	...	...	...	...	14
Swing	...	4	...	2	...	...	...	1	...	6
Totals by races	253	175	12	38	2	5	62	81	192	271
Totals of both races	428		50		7		143		463

TABLE XIV (continued)
REASONS WHY 1,469 NEGRO CHILDREN AND 1,560 WHITE CHILDREN WERE RETARDED IN GROUP OF TWENTY-FOUR SCHOOLS

SCHOOLS	LOW MENTALITY		FEEBLE-MINDED		IRREGULAR ATTENDANCE		TEMP. IN GRADE		DEMOTED FOR CONDUCT
	N.	W.	N.	W.	N.	W.	N.	W.	N.	W.
Attended mainly by Negroes:
Colman, 92 per cent Negro attendance	...	...	1	...	1	1	...	...	2	...
Doolittle, 85 per cent	10	...	...	...	68	...	8	...	...	...
Drake, 24 per cent	...	1	...	...	19	5	...	...	...	...
Farren, 92 per cent	11	2	...	...	21	1	...	...	...	...
Felsenthal, 20 per cent	3	4	...	...	13	2	...	1	...	...
Forrestville, 38 per cent	1	...	1	...	6	3	...	...	...	...
Haven, 20 per cent	2	4	...	...	4	5	...	...	...	...
McCosh, 15 per cent	1	6	...	...	3	9	...	...	...	...
Oakland, 26 per cent	4	3	1	...	12	9	1	2	...	...
Raymond, 93 per cent	6	...	6	...	19	1	...	...	...	...
Webster, 30 per cent	9	6	...	...	1	2	...	...	...	...
Attended mainly by White Americans:
Fiske	1	2	...	1	...	6	...	1	...	...
Rowland	...	10	...	1	...	7	...	...	...	...
Kenwood	...	1	...	...	...	3	...	...	...	...
Attended mainly by children of immigrants:
Farragut	...	32	...	...	...	3	...	...	...	...
Goodrich	...	10	...	...	...	8	...	...	...	...
Jackson	...	8	...	...	...	19	...	2	...	...
Jungman	...	...	...	...	...	7	...	...	...	...
Kosciuszke	...	8	...	1	...	39	...	9	...	...
Lawson	...	19	...	2	...	5	...	...	...	...
McCormick	...	8	...	...	...	1	...	...	1	...
Seward	...	11	...	5	...	20	...	5	...	...
Smyth	1	5	...	...	...	5	...	...	...	...
Swing	...	6	...	1	...	2	...	4	...	...
Totals by races	49	146	9	12	167	161	9	24	3	...
Totals of both races	195		21		328		33		3

The next most important cause of retardation among the Negroes is family difficulties. The fathers are often kept away from home weeks at a time by their work. A large number of the mothers are working, and the parents' lack of education is frequently the cause of a home life that is below standard, physically and morally.

Among the whites, late entrance, inability to speak the language, ill health, backwardness, and low mentality are the main causes of retardation. While it is often maintained that the Negro is the mental inferior of the white, these figures do not bear out that contention. Also the retardation figures do not show the home life of the Negroes to be productive of as much ill health as is the case with the whites.

Approximately the same number of Negro and white children were retarded because of irregular attendance.

In addition there were forty-two Negro children and 155 white children who were classified under two, three, or four different causes for retardation. Children who were late entering also had some physical difficulty, or children who were retarded because of family difficulties were also of poor mental endowment. In some cases such double classification represented a realization by the teacher that retardation is a complicated and delicate thing which cannot be explained by one hard-and-fast reason. Others, finding it difficult to decide whether children were backward, of low mentality, or feeble-minded, classified them under all three causes. In two instances Negroes were found to be retarded because they were late entering and "foreign"—that is, they were handicapped by an "initial lack of the English language."

Intensive study of 116 retarded Negro children.—The presence of retarded Negro children in the Chicago public schools within recent years has been regarded by many teachers and principals as a problem of Negro education. Some assume that this retardation is due to an inherent incapacity for normal grade work. Inquiries of the Commission early disclosed the fact that although the retardation rate of Negro children was higher than that of white, the great majority of the retarded Negroes were from southern states, and that Negro children born in the North had, as a rule, no higher rate of retardation than the whites. In the belief that the causes of retardation among Negro children could be found in the same factors of social background and environment which operates to retard white children, an intensive study was made of 116 Negro children taken at random from among all the retarded Negro children in several schools to learn what elements in their former life and present home environment might explain their retardation.

Out of the 116 children 101 had been in school before coming to Chicago. Of these eighty-six had lived in the South and attended southern schools. Since this group was chosen at random, the large proportion from the South tends to bear out the statements of school principals and teachers that Negro children from the South constitute the bulk of retarded children. Previous school records were obtained for eighty-four of these eighty-six southern children, and in sixty-four cases the children were retarded when they came to Chicago. Many of them were retarded two and three years, and some three, four, five, and even six years. Forty-seven of the sixty-four were retarded more than one year. In a number of cases children who were in the normal grade for their age in the South were put back one or two grades when they entered Chicago schools because they were not equipped to do the work of this grade in the North.

The states from which these children came are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Twenty-three of the eighty-six children who had lived in the South were from Mississippi—the largest group from any one state—and of these three were up with their normal grade, eleven were retarded three or four years, one was retarded six years, and one who was in the normal grade in the South was demoted two years. One reason for the poor record of these Mississippi children is undoubtedly to be found in that state's inadequate compulsory-education law which provides a school term of eighty days in districts which do not reject the law. Eight of the Mississippi children lived on plantations which were so far from school that regular attendance was impossible.

Information gathered concerning the parents of these 116 retarded children showed that in eighty-six cases the father was living with his family. In six cases the father was dead, in one case he was insane, in fifteen cases he had separated from or deserted the mother, and in eight cases there was no report on the father.

The mother was found to be living with her family in 112 cases. In two cases the mother was dead, and in two cases she had deserted father and child.

All of the eighty-six fathers who lived at home were working, though one was reported as working irregularly, and two as having deserted their wives occasionally for periods of several weeks. In two of the cases where the father had separated from the mother he was reported as contributing to the support of the child.

In forty out of the eighty-six cases where the father was living at home and working, the mother was also working, and in the fifteen separation cases where the mother was supporting the child, she was working. The fact that a total of fifty-five out of 112 mothers, or 49 per cent, were working is undoubtedly a large factor in the retardation of the children. The statement was frequently made by teachers that 40 or 50 per cent of the Negro mothers worked, and that the child was therefore neglected, and the teacher could get no co-operation from the mother, as she was never free to come to school to talk over matters affecting the child.

Some teachers felt that many mothers worked where there was no economic necessity, as the father was earning enough to support the family. It should be noted in this connection that at the time this material was gathered there were more opportunities for work than there were men to fill them. Under ordinary conditions there would doubtless be a certain amount of unemployment in these Negro families which would cause more mothers to work from economic necessity. Many of the families investigated, where both parents were working, were reported as getting on very well, though there were some cases of real poverty. In a number of instances the families could not seem to make ends meet on a good income because they were ignorant and did not know how to spend their money, or because they had not been able to adjust themselves to city life.

Of the eighty-six fathers who were working, few were in skilled occupations which would command a substantial wage. Most of the mothers were engaged in work that took them away from home. A few did sewing, hairdressing, and laundry work in their homes, but the large majority went out to work. Work carried on in the home frequently has as bad an effect on the child's school attendance as the mother's absence, for the child is sometimes kept at home to help and often finds the work more interesting than school.

The following occupations of mothers of retarded children were noted:

Day work	22
Stock Yards	12
Hairdresser	4
Laundry	4
Maid	4
Barrel factory	3
Seamstress	3
Domestic service	2
Box factory	1
Car cleaner	1
Cleaning (hospital)	1
Dishwasher	1
Elevator	1
Foundry	1
Housekeeper	1
Lamp-shade factory	1
Waist factory	1

Education of parents.—Of the eighty-six fathers, thirty-one were illiterate, and forty-eight had gone to elementary school but had completed only the second, fourth, or sixth grade. Five of the fathers had gone to high school, and two were college graduates.

The figures are slightly better for the mothers. Out of 112, twenty-one were totally illiterate, seventy-six had gone to elementary school, ten had been in high school or college, and five were not reported on. Eighty-eight per cent of the mothers, therefore, and 91 per cent of the fathers had less than a high-school education. Though there were many illiterate or poorly educated parents who were eager for their children to have advantages which they never had themselves, others, as in any illiterate group, no matter what the color, failed to appreciate the importance of school.

Home discipline.—A number of teachers reported that they were unable to discipline the children in school because they were undisciplined at home. In seventy-three of the 116 homes there was found to be discipline, in twenty-two a lack of discipline, and twenty were not reported on. Discipline seemed to be the responsibility of the mother in the large majority of cases, and many of the twenty-two undisciplined children were boys who were beyond the control of the mother. In every case but four where there was no discipline the mother was working, so that the child did not receive much care during the daytime and the mother was too tired to bother about discipline at night. Lack of discipline can also be traced to the fact that the child has not always lived with the parents but with relatives who have been lax in the matter of discipline.

Home care.—The physical condition of the home, the preparation and substance of the meals, may be expected to affect a child's health and therefore his attendance at school. The homes of eighty-four children were reported to be clean and twenty-five not clean, while seven were not reported on. In twenty-one cases out of the twenty-five reported not clean, the mother was working. In forty-seven cases out of the eighty-four reported clean the mother was working. In many of the forty-seven cases there was an aunt or grandmother who took care of the house.

In many homes the ignorance of the parents was obviously responsible for failure to provide the kind of food adapted to the needs of the children. A great deal of fresh meat, usually pork and bacon, potatoes, rice, and coffee were the staples, while green vegetable, fruits, cereals, and milk were noticeably lacking. Also, when the mother is away all day the food is hastily prepared, which usually means that it is fried. The girl who gets home from school before her mother has finished her day's work usually starts the dinner, or brings something from the delicatessen. Many children are given twenty-five cents with which to buy lunch, and in three extreme cases the children were given money to buy all their meals, with no supervision over what they ate.

Difficulty of adjustment.—When all the causes contributing to retardation were taken into consideration in the histories of the 116 retarded children studied, it was still obvious that the greatest stumbling-block to normal progress was previous residence in the South. The retardation of children from the South is explained in a variety of ways.

Some of the children from the South did not get along well because they had not been able to adjust themselves to city life. They had been accustomed to the freedom and outdoor life of the farm and did not like the confined life of the city. They felt timid and shy in the midst of so many people, as they did not come much in contact with people when they lived on southern farms four or five miles from the nearest town. Most of these children had never gone to school for more than a few months at a time, either because the school term was short or they lived too far from the school to attend regularly. Consequently some of them found the nine months' term irksome.

Demotion.—A number of children were found to be over-aged for their grades because they had been demoted one or two years when they came to Chicago. Some of these had gone to school regularly in the South and were of normal age for their grades, but the school term was so short that it was impossible for them to complete the same amount of work in the same number of years as children in northern schools. Children who were in the fifth or fourth grade in the South had been put back to the third or second grade on entering Chicago schools. This sometimes discouraged them so much that they dropped out of school on reaching fourteen, the age limit of the compulsory-education law.

Inadequate schools.—Overcrowded and poorly taught schools also are responsible for the retardation of southern Negro children. One girl attended a school which was in session only three months a year and where there were 100 to 125 children under one teacher. Consequently this girl was retarded four years. A boy who, when he came to Chicago, was fifteen years old and six years behind his grade had always lived in small country towns in the South. In one of these his teacher was the iceman. "He didn't come to school until he was through totin' ice around," said the boy. "Then if anyone wanted ice they comed after him. He wasn't learning me anything so I quit." This boy was found to be ambitious and was attending school regularly in Chicago in spite of the fact that he was conspicuously over-age for his grade.

Other causes of retardation.—Some over-age children are extremely sensitive about their size and are irregular at school on this account. A fifteen-year-old boy who was 5 feet 8 inches tall was in the fifth grade. He refused to go to school because he was larger than anyone in his class. At one time he was so ashamed of being seen in the room with smaller children that he would go out of the classroom every time a girl passed the door.

As in many white families where the importance of regular school attendance is not fully understood, work at home or work after school hours is sometimes permitted to interfere materially with school attendance. Older children are kept at home to look after young children while the parents are away at work and sometimes when the mother is home. A fourteen-year-old girl who was three years retarded had always been kept out of school to do housework. The five younger children were all in the normal grades for their ages but the fourteen-year-old girl had been out of school so much she had lost interest. Other children were working after school hours selling papers and delivering packages and wanted to leave school as soon as possible so that they could work all the time.

The attitude of the teacher seemed in a few instances to be responsible for the child's lack of interest. In one case the teacher threw a paper at a boy instead of handing it to him, and the boy had refused to recite to her ever since. He went to school but recited to his mother at home. Another boy had been kept back in school by a misunderstanding between his mother and the principal. The principal took the boy home with her to do some work around her house and kept him until nine o'clock. The mother became so worried she had the police out looking for him. When she found out the cause of his lateness coming home, she went to the school and threatened the principal. The principal afterward refused either to promote the boy or transfer him to another school.

Recreation.—A study of the favorite forms of recreation among 116 children, aside from the few who reported that they had no time to play, showed the movies to be in the lead. Children economized on lunch, buying potato salad and pickles, in order to have enough left from their lunch money to go to the movies. One boy who worked outside of school hours made $3 to $5 a week and spent most of it on the movies; he went three or four times a day if he had the money. A few children played truant in order to go to the movies.

TABLE XV
Favorite Recreation of 116 Retarded Negro Children

Movies	85
Baseball	32
Reading	31
Marbles	29
Skating	20
Jumping rope	11
Music	6
Jacks	6
Vaudeville	5
Running games	4
Singing games	4
Sewing	3
Basket-ball	2
Target practice	1
Pool	1
Mechanical toys	1
Drawing	1
Dolls	1
Bicycle	1
Typewriting	1
Swinging	1
Rolling hoop	1
Card games, checkers, etc.	1
Total	248

Most of these children had two and even three forms of recreation, and the second was usually some form of outdoor recreation—baseball, marbles, or jumping rope. Most of the younger ones went to the playgrounds, except those who had housework to do or the few who did not care to associate with other children.

A reference to the section on "Recreation" will show that Negro children are limited in their recreational activities by lack of recreation centers where they are welcome. There are playgrounds for the younger children in the areas of Negro residence, but no recreation centers with their varied indoor facilities for the older children.

2. OPINIONS ON SCHOLARSHIP OF NEGRO CHILDREN

Progress of the southern Negro.—The retarded Negro child, usually from the South, who is conspicuous in the elementary schools, has been referred to in the section on "Retardation in Elementary Schools." In some schools such children are put in the regular grades, where they receive no special attention and can progress only one year at a time, though most teachers agree that retardation is due to lack of educational opportunity rather than to inability to learn. In other schools there are special rooms for these children where they are advanced through several grades as rapidly as possible.

Doolittle School (85 per cent) had six first-grade rooms for such children. In one of these rooms there were about twenty-five children from twelve to seventeen years of age doing all the lower-grade work up to the sixth. The teacher said that many of these children who were unable to read or write when they came from the South showed remarkable progress in a few months, and in less than a year were able to do fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade work.

"One big girl of thirteen, when she arrived from the South," this teacher said, "pretended to read with her book upside down, but in a little more than a year she was doing sixth-grade work. One twelve-year-old boy from the South, unable to read the primer or write his name, after about nine months of applied work just ate up everything I gave him and during the following year read sixty library books."

A thirteen-year-old girl, just five days in the school, had come from Alabama, where she had never attended school. "There wasn't room for me," she explained. She read for the investigator on the tenth page of the primer, haltingly but with understanding. The teacher was confident that she could put her through several grades next year. She said further: