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A new school was opened the other day in East Twenty-first Street, New
York City.

Though girls will be admitted into it, it is especially a school for
boys, as you will understand when you learn that it is a Truant School.

It is one of the laws of our country that children must attend school.
Parents who do not send their children are fined, and children who play
truant when they are sent to school are also punished.

For years it has been the custom to arrest all truants, or children who
will not attend the public schools. If the magistrate found that the
culprit was a bad boy, who continually stayed away from school, he would
commit him to a Reformatory.

Many people have felt that this was not the right thing to do, for,
while boys who play truant are certainly very naughty, they are not
necessarily wicked boys who need to be sent to a Reformatory. The
truant school has therefore been founded to prevent this. This school
is in fact a big boarding-school. The truants who are brought in are
housed and fed and taught. They are treated with the greatest kindness,
but are constantly under the eye of the teacher, and forced to study.

Any boy who misconducts himself in the Truant School is sent to a
Reformatory; but the other lads are kept at their work for a certain
period, and then allowed to go back to their homes, if they agree that
they will attend school regularly in future.