Academics

Boys Receiving Instruction

"This department serves a very definite two-fold purpose.  As a State Institution, it is required by law to furnish certain academic opportunities to all boys who have not finished the eighth grade or who are sixteen years of age.  As this is a training school for special types of boys, this department is expected to give the boy the necessary academic background for the special training.

All boys who are received here are either industrial, academic, or social misfits.  In some cases, a boy is a combination misfit of two or more.  It becomes the job of the Academic Department to analyze the causes for the boy being a misfit and then to formulate a remedial program.

      
Classroom Scenes

A large number of boys are academic misfits.  Ninety-four percent are retarded one or more years according to the best educational tests.  They are misfits in all but a few of our larger school systems.  When there misfits are compelled by law to continue in a system where no special provision is made to take care of their special needs, they develop a dislike for the conventional school program.  By using  'Intelligence and Achievement Tests,' the boy can be classified so that he can make the greatest progress.  This also gives the teacher an understanding of the needs of each boy and make his or her work more effective.  This builds up a sympathetic spirit between teacher and boy.  The boy soon loses his dislike for school and in its place has developed a wholesome attitude..."1

"Since so many of the boys are below average in many respects, the visual education provided by moving pictures has been of great help in the general school educational program.  Regular showings of trade, industrial, and historical films have been made possible through enrollment with the Bureau of Visual Instruction of the University of Colorado.  Films have been shown on an average of twice weekly throughout the school year and these have been supplemented with films borrowed from Western Electric Company in Denver."2

           
School Studies

"A boy of 15, whom a bad case of stammering had deprived of schooling and who could neither write his name nor pick a single letter from the alphabet, started two years ago to study and work alternate days at this school.  Now he writes his own letters to his mother twice per month and is not ashamed to stammer his thanks for what he has learned here.  We have records of hundreds of similar cases we might point to.

The wonderful progress that boys, who have dodged school in early life, make when once subjected to discipline that brooks no truancy or tardiness, but emphasizes the feasibility of busying the fingers and minds of little children with pleasant work that does not overtax the body or mind, and then permit them to tackle real study with a maturer and clearer mind later on."3

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1.    Colorado Industrial Training School for Boys, Year Book and Twenty Fourth Biennial Report 1927 - 1928, Golden:  Industrial Training School Press, 1929.  Stored at the Colorado State Archives RCC 10150.
2.    State Industrial School, Twenty-Seventh Biennial Report 1933 - 1935, Golden:  State Industrial School Press, 1936.  Stored at the Colorado State Archives RCC 10150.
3.    State Industrial School, Twelfth Biennial Report 1903 - 1904, Golden:  State Industrial School Press, 1905.  Stored at the Colorado State Archives RCC 10150.

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Last modified June 18, 2003