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Definitions of the period of compulsory attendance are usually based on the number of grades in the elementary school. Laws commonly specify the age of beginning as six and fix the age of fourteen as the upper limit. Sometimes the age of beginning is higher. For example, the 1915 law in South Carolina is thus described by the Commissioner of Education:

The 1915 act of South Carolina is a local option law. Upon petition of a majority of the qualified electors of a district or “aggregation of districts,” the county board of education is required to declare the law in effect in such district or districts, or, on petition of one-fourth of the electors, an election must be held to determine the matter. All children between the ages of 8 and 14 who are physically able and who reside within 2½ miles of school are required to attend for the full term, or at least for four months. Children between the ages of 14 and 16 are required to attend unless lawfully employed or if they can not read and write simple English sentences.14

The provisions of this law show how complicated is the social situation with which the community deals in its compulsory laws. The assumption that it is simple to define the necessary schooling for a future citizen is easily refuted by a little consideration.

In the first place, pupils do not go through the elementary schools without interruption; hence the mere specifying of a given age such as fourteen is not enough. Non-promotion, or the removal of the family to another town, or some misfortune such as sickness may delay the pupil so that he reaches the age of fourteen in one of the lower grades. Intelligent legislation is, accordingly, taking this into account. In some states it is required that the child shall finish a certain grade,—usually the sixth,—otherwise he must go to school until he is sixteen. Or, as in South Carolina, he must stay in school until he has acquired the ability to read and write.

In this connection a complication in legislation may be pointed out which is of profound social significance. The definition of adulthood which is given in labor legislation has usually set the age at which a boy may be regularly employed, at sixteen, while the education law of the same state often requires school attendance only up to fourteen. The result is that the youth between fourteen and sixteen has been sadly at sea. He has not had the judgment to stay in school after he was freed by the compulsory-education law, and he has not had the opportunity to enter on regular employment. He has therefore drifted about, working at odd jobs and learning the bad habits of the unproductively employed.