Crime, Children, Truant Schools: United States. Massachusetts. Oakdale. Worcester County Truant School: Worcester County Truant School, Oakdale. 4-Jan

Curator: This piece, titled "Crime, Children, Truant Schools: United States. Massachusetts. Oakdale. Worcester County Truant School: Worcester County Truant School, Oakdale" is an intriguing collection of documents from the Harvard Art Museums, created by various authors. Editor: My first thought? It feels like a haunting glimpse into a forgotten classroom, the kind of place where youthful energy was systematically, almost clinically, suppressed. Curator: Precisely. These pages, likely exercises from a truant school, offer a stark look into the social policies governing children deemed "delinquent." It forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about institutions shaping young lives. Editor: It's the ordinariness that gets me, the mundane arithmetic problems written on lined paper. Makes me wonder about the stories behind each painstaking calculation, the dreams interrupted by these exercises. Curator: Right, and how art institutions can recontextualize them, revealing historical power dynamics. Think about it: mathematical exercises as political artifacts! Editor: Absolutely. It shows how even the simplest object can reveal layers of social injustice and the human cost of institutional control. Makes you wonder about the potential lost.