tented, dissatisfied and disobedient. Time after time he ran away
to Boston. He went on from bad to worse, falling in with vagrants,
learning their talk and their ways, acquiring a love for wandering and a
distaste for regularity and direction. Taken into custody by the
Juvenile Court, and placed on probation with a family outside of Boston,
James again ran away to mingle with a crowd of his old associates in
Boston. It was at this point that the court decided to send him to the
Reform School. It was likewise at this time that some friendly people
took him in charge, found him a home in Newton, and started his life
anew in the Newton Technical High School, which James entered with a
special transfer class. Promoted to the regular freshman class on trial,
James has renewed his interest in education and bids fair to make his
way through the high school.

James is doing well in the Newton Technical High School. Though he does
not like all of the regular high school work, he has a full course, and
is working at it persistently. Heretofore school has never appealed to
him--in fact, he hated it cordially--but the school at Newton offered
him such a variety of subjects that he was able to find some which were
attractive. Since then he has been working on those subjects.

There are many cities in which every school door would have been closed
to James, because he did not fit into the school system, but the
superintendent of the Newton schools believes in making the school fit
the needs of the boy. A fantastic theory? Well, perhaps a trifle, from
one viewpoint; nevertheless, it is the soul of education.

IV The Help-Out Spirit

As a result of this special promotion policy, there are practically no
over-age pupils in the grammar schools of Newton. Instead of square pegs
in round holes, the Newton High School can boast of sixty or seventy
children who come, each year, in search of a new opening for which they
are technically not ready, but into which they may grow. After coming to
the high school, two-thirds of them find an incentive sufficient to lead
them to continue with an education of which they had already wearied.

The Newton High School, recognizing its obligation to serve the people,
strains every nerve to enable boys and girls to take high school work.
The printing teacher pointed to his class of twenty.

"Only three of them do not work on Saturdays and after school. They
couldn't come here if they didn't work. Hi