[Arrangements should be made for] pooling the juvenile court’s probation officers, the truancy department’s numerous officers, the school nurses, the medical instructors, the special schools and reformatories, and all the rest of the specialists on the physical, mental and social troubles of school children into one department of adjustment.... Only the most determined blindness could prevent [the school board member] from seeing how the school truant officer and the probation officer overlap.... He could surely see the waste of having the schools, on the one hand, build up a staff of doctors and nurses and the juvenile court on the other trying to duplicate this machinery—both sets to serve the same group of children.[102] These writers argue also that the juvenile court does not afford so good an opportunity as the school for the study of the child and for record-making, that the stigma placed on the child by an appearance in court deprives him of the chance of future favorable recognition, that the court cannot prevent delinquency, that the child is frequently incorrigible before he reaches the court, that the courts have a very limited range as propaganda and general educational agencies, since they have no power over the child’s life before he comes actually before the bar of justice, that the power of the probation officer is relatively slight and casual, and that vocational placement should be connected with the school. Further than this, the depraved family conditions which I have emphasized are due not only to bad economic conditions but to the failure of community influence. You may have very good family life with bad economic conditions but you cannot have good family life without community influence. I have shown in Chapter II how strong was the influence of the community on the family. It is not too much to say that the community made the family good. Human nature often appears at its worst in connection with pair marriages and small families. The records of the societies for the prevention of cruelty to children are filled with sickening details of the brutality of parents. An organic connection with a larger community is necessary to the maintenance of moral standards and fine sentiments. If we look, therefore, as we are forced to look, for a social agency whose influence may penetrate the family we find it in the school. The school is not a natural organization like the family, but an artificial organization capable of rapid changes and adjustments. In this respect it has almost the freedom of a scientific laboratory. It receives all children early and keeps them a relatively long time. Its function is the setting and solving of problems and the communication of information. Its representatives are far superior to the average parent in intelligence and understanding. If we invented any device to replace social influence lacking at other points it would be the school. It is probable that the school could be a