I respectfully submit the following report for the biennial period ended June 30, 1926.

GROWTH OF THE INSTITUTION

On December first next the State Public School will have completed 40 years of service to the dependent and neglected children of Minnesota. Established in recognition of the responsibility of the state for such children, the purpose has been kept steadily in view and circumstances have favored a progressive and consistent development of its work.

From small beginnings the equipment and material resources have been enlarged to meet increasing demands upon the institution. The present equipment includes 325 acres of land, an administration and service building, 11 cottages with accommodations for 315 children, a 40-bed hospital, an 8-room schoolhouse, a gymnasium, heating and lighting plant, greenhouse, superintendent's residence, four houses for officers and employes, two barns, poultry house and other necessary farm buildings.

ORGANIZATION

The plan is intended to afford means for an appropriate division of the children into family groups. It is not merely a method of housing, but a

community arrangement in which each child shares in the educational, social, industrial and religious life approximately as he would in the ordinary community and in preparation for such life in the household of which he is to become a member outside of the institution. Such an arrangement affords a variety of interests and opportunities and avoids the dangers of too cloistered an existence.

The campus playgrounds and gymnasium with modern equipment and a trained instructor to direct the recreational activities are able assistants to the physician and dietitian; the library of 4,000 carefully selected books and many pictures, with a children's librarian in charge, establishes in the lives of the children a permanent interest in good books and good pictures and the cultural things which have been entirely lacking in their previous experience; the day school with its many activities, conducted by qualified teachers, is the center of educational work, and prepares children to enter their proper grades in the public schools which they are to attend on leaving this school; in the industrial department a teacher not only gives formal instruction in manual training but teaches boys how to make and mend things and interest themselves in working out the practical concerns of the community, and a teacher of home economics gives instruction to girls in sewing, food values, the planning of menus and the cooking and serving of food; the farm and garden afford means of instruction in the various branches of agriculture; the chapel services in the institution with their music, ethical and Biblical instruction, and the services in the various churches in Owatonna which many of the children attend, afford means of religious instruction; and under the educational leadership of the general superintendent all of the many interests and activities of the community are correlated and directed with a view to the development of character and interpreted in terms of life experience.

While the entire organization is educational in its intent, it is designed to promote the placing-out work, and the training of the children during the months they are in the institution is preparatory to their early transfer to normal life in their own homes if they can be rehabilitated and made fit, or in foster homes if they must be permanently separated from their people. In the social rehabilitation of the child who, through circumstances of parentage and environment, has had no opportunity for normal growth and development, the training he receives in the institution and the home in which he is placed are factors which the institution contributes to his future usefulness. And the more important of these factors is the home, especially its selection with reference to the needs and capacities of the child. Of all phases of the work this is most delicate. Children must not be exploited through being placed in improper foster homes.