The Incorrigible Boy

The problem of the incorrigible boy is an ever present, and a necessarily interesting one. We are compelled to be interested in this boy for our own sakes, as well as for his sake, since, if we do not help him to adjust himself he will become a menace. In twenty-one years work with these boys, the writer feels that she has just scratched the surface. Of late years the term "incorrigible" has been softened to "ungraded" but the problem remains the same. Observation of several hundred cases convinces one that it is very difficult to group these fellows in any satisfactory way. Every boy is an individual study, everyone a misfit, and everyone a living example of some failure of "how to handle the bad boy". William Healy says that the dynamic center of the whole problem of delinquency will ever be the individual offender.