Education for Juvenile Defendants in Chicago

J.W. Groves, “Education for Juvenile Defendants in Chicago,”School and Society 18, no. 466 (December 1, 1923) pp. 659-60.

School and Society was the journal for the New York-based Society for the Advancement of Education. Despite its deceiving title, this article is about a survey of students in a small California town. It describes movie attendance, money spent, and days of week with most attendance. Listen to the authors’ conclusions as they try to find a correlation between movie spectatorship and grades.

In order to learn certain facts concerning some of the effects of attendance upon the movies as it affects the school and the children of the school a survey was made in a small California town. Some of the results of this survey are offered in this report as being enlightening to those interested in the statistical approach to the movie situation and some of its aspects.

The material was collected by questionnaires placed in the hands of public school pupils in grades of four to eight inclusive and answered voluntarily by them. Teachers of the pupils believe that the answers are reliable.

Conclusions

More than one fourth of the pupils in elementary schools in this particular community do not attend movies. Another one fourth attend but once a week. Nearly another one fourth attend only occasionally. In grades seven and eight about one fifth attend three or more times per week. (There is a distinct rise in these grades.)

Saturday is the favorite day for attendance by elementary school pupils. (This is probably accounted for by the fact that there is a Saturday matinee which is intended to attract this group of children.) no doubt parents are cooperating with the school to some extent, for Friday ranks next to Saturday in popularity as to the day of week attended.

One third of the pupils n the seventh and eighth grades supply their own funds for attending the movies. One fourth of the pupils in grade five and six do the same

The total amount of money spent for movies seems to be a considerable sum for a small community. It is 13.8 cents per pupil per week for the number of pupils who reported.

Sidelights from the Survey

There were many other facts collected in the study that are not shown in the tables submitted herewith. Some of the data were treated statistically. The following paragraphs indicate some of the conclusions reached.

There is no significant correlation between the variable factors of attendance at movies and school marks, the figures obtained for the entire group being 0.214.

When these variables were considered for the group of pupils who attained the movies three or more times per week the correlation obtained was 0.768; ie, pupils who attend movie three or more times per week may be expected to make low school marks.

Questions and answers calculated to bring out the affect of imagination aroused by the movies seemed to indicate that the movies stimulate the imagination considerably. Memory is not deeply affected in some directions at least less than 5 per cent of those pupils who attend movies three or more times a week mentioned the name of a screen favorite or a title of a movie play that had been given more than three weeks prior to the time of answering the questionnaire.

Of the pupils who attend movies three or more times per week 96 per cent are given the entire price of admission. Of those who earn the entire price of admission 82 per cent attend but once per week or occasionally.

Thirty-two per cent of those pupils who attend the movies three or more times per week claimed that they were sometimes troubled with their eyes while trying to study.