Investigations of child labor emphasize its evils by pointing out that
these children are kept out of school, and that they miss the advantages
of American public school education. They express the current confidence
in compulsory education and the magical benefits to be derived from
the public school. But we need to qualify our faith in education, and
particularly our faith in the American public school. Educators are just
beginning to wake up to the dangers inherent in the attempt to teach the
brightest child and the mentally defective child at the same time. They
are beginning to test the possibilities of a "vertical" classification
as well as a "horizontal" one. That is, each class must be divided into
what are termed Gifted, Bright, Average, Dull, Normal, and Defective. In
the past the helter-skelter crowding and over-crowding together of all
classes of children of approximately the same age, produced only a dull
leveling to mediocrity.(6)

An investigation of forty schools in New York City, typical of hundreds
of others, reveals deplorable conditions of overcrowding and lack of
sanitation.(7) The worst conditions are to be found in locations the
most densely populated. Thus of Public School No. 51, located almost in
the center of the notorious "Hell's Kitchen" section, we read: "The play
space which is provided is a mockery of the worst kind. The basement
play-room is dark, damp, poorly lighted, poorly ventilated, foul
smelling, unclean, and wholly unfit for children for purposes of play.
The drainpipes from the roof have decayed to such a degree that in some
instances as little as a quarter of the pipe remains. On rainy days,
water enters the class-rooms, hall-ways, corridors, and is thrown
against windows because the pipes have rotted away. The narrow stairways
and halls are similar to those of jails and dungeons of a century ago.
The classrooms are poorly lighted, inadequately equipped, and in some
cases so small that the desks of pupils and teachers occupy almost all