YOUR BOY ANDHIS TRAINING
YOUR BOY ANDHIS TRAINING
YOUR BOY AND HISTRAININGCHAPTER ITHE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM
YOUR BOY AND HISTRAINING
He who helps a child helps humanity with a distinctness, with an immediateness, which no other help given to human creatures in any other stage of their human life can possibly give again.—Bishop Phillips Brooks.
He who helps a child helps humanity with a distinctness, with an immediateness, which no other help given to human creatures in any other stage of their human life can possibly give again.
—Bishop Phillips Brooks.
BOY-PROBLEMS, like boys, are always with us. Wherever there is a boy there are problems to be solved. The perfect boy may live somewhere—but not in my immediate neighborhood. Even though he possesses many of the attributes of perfection, he will be found wanting in industry, or thrift, or orderliness, or courtesy, or studiousness. He may even show suchtraits as disobedience, untruthfulness, selfishness, truancy, thievery, or immorality. The complete boy does not just grow—he is builded and the parent is both architect and builder.
All parents at some time, and some parents at all times, regard boys as necessary evils, to be endured with varying degrees of patience. We formerly believed that boys should be seldom seen and less frequently heard. The young barbarian was and is now tolerated for the time being because of our hope that he will outgrow his rowdyism. We are disposed to let nature take its course with the juvenile savage instead of bothering our heads with the effort to understand him or to solve his problems. But to train the boy intelligently we must first train ourselves so that we can understand him and guide him through the various stages of his development.
Intelligent training is the birthright of every child. If he has not received it, he has been cheated. The training of the child up to perfect maturity is the highest duty as well as the most difficult task which devolves upon parents. The performance of this duty is, fortunately, lightened by the pleasure of association with the joyousness of childhood, but the real reward of the parent for years of patient, watchful, intelligent supervision is not only the consciousness of duty well done but the profound joy experienced in aiding the unfoldment of an immortal soul.
The study of childhood possesses a fascination for the student commensurate with its importance to humanity. It is both easier and pleasanter to study the child in the concrete than children in the abstract. But it is obvious that no comprehensive conclusions on the subject of child-training can bededuced from the study of a single child. The varying manifestations of different natures and temperaments require wide observation, covering many subjects, before correct conclusions as to cause and effect can be drawn or a systematic philosophy can be evolved. We must study the concrete boy in large numbers to be able to formulate abstract principles of boy-training. “The proper study of mankind is man,” may be paraphrased into “the proper study of boykind is boy.” Today we know the boy better than ever before. He has been studied, watched, weighed, analyzed, synthesized, tested, classified and labeled in all his varied aspects. We have transformed our personal knowledge of him into scientific knowledge; and various manifestations of his activities which were formerly called “pure cussedness” are now recognized as ebullitions of superabundant vitality whichhave been denied a natural outlet and therefore find expression in prohibited forms.
The present-day tendency in the education of American children is to emphasize the importance of knowledge, health, and character in the order in which they are here set down. To confine the term “education” solely or chiefly to the acquisition of knowledge is to limit its meaning to its usual synonym of instruction or teaching. In its truer and broader sense it implies the discipline and development of the moral, physical, and spiritual faculties, as well as the purely intellectual faculty, for it is only through such comprehensive development that ideal maturity can be approached. Sheer intellectual power, resulting from the systematic acquisition of knowledge and training of the mind, produces a one-sided individual who lacks the restraints and guidanceimposed by moral and ethical concepts. He is like an ocean liner of tremendous speed and power but without chart, compass, or rudder. It is obvious that the intellectually brilliant crook, devoting his mental gifts to the accomplishment of his criminal purposes, is a less worthy and less useful citizen than the laborer of high character but limited knowledge.
The entire trend of our present system of education is to overemphasize the importance of the acquisition of knowledge and to underemphasize the necessity for the building of character. And this is the chief fault with our otherwise excellent public-school system of education, which, circumscribed by public prejudices grounded in widely differing religious beliefs, steers clear of comprehensive moral training because of its intimate coherence with religious and spiritual training. The meagermoral training which the public school affords is merely incidental to its primary function of imparting knowledge. This deficiency must be supplied primarily by the home, and secondarily by the Sunday school and the church in laying the foundations of character strong and deep before the child reaches the school age and by continuing the work on the moral and spiritual super-structure until maturity beholds the building completed on all sides. When we come to realize that the true function of education is first of all to build strong character, second to develop a virile physique, and last of all to impart knowledge and discipline the mental faculties, we then will have evolved an educational system which will be effective in accomplishing its real purpose—the evolution of the child into the symmetrically equipped adult. This is the eternal boy-problem.
The home is the place and the parent is the agency for character-culture. Every father of boys ought to be a boy-expert. And he can be, by devoting to this most important of all subjects a tithe of the study which he devotes to his business or to his profession. Many parents rely entirely upon instinct or natural inclinations—which are influenced largely by mental and temperamental conditions—as their guide in boy-training. An inactive liver too frequently determines our attitude toward our offspring. Is it fair to the son that the parent blindly and blunderingly pursues his natural inclinations in training his son, instead of availing himself of the results of the research and the thought which have already been given to this subject?
More boys go wrong than girls, of which fact the records of juvenile courts, reformatories, and houses of detention bear ampleevidence; and they are more difficult to train, develop, and discipline than girls. This is due to the differences in their psychological processes. Girlhood finds ample opportunity for its development in the seclusion of the home. The future function of the woman child is to be the home-maker and the bearer of children, and her training for this divine responsibility can be accomplished best amid the refining influences and protecting care which the home affords. The future of the man child is to be the breadwinner of the family and the burden-bearer of civilization. The training necessary to produce such diverse results must be as different as the respective life-works of man and woman. Boyhood requires, among other things, adventure, rough sports and out-of-door activities for its development. Boys are less obedient, less tractable, and less amenable to discipline than girls, thereforetheir training is correspondingly difficult and involved. We should not expect to understand the heart and soul of the boy more easily than his anatomy and physiology.
The boy sees things from a point of view different from that of the adult, based on psychological differences. The mature individual cannot obtain the boy’s viewpoint unless he is able to put himself in his place. To do this he must know the child’s changing mental processes and the evolution of his moral perceptions which are manifested in the four periods of his development, in each of which he exhibits a personality as far apart as those of four individuals of widely differing natures. The boy at six, ten, fourteen, and eighteen years of age is four different personalities, and he requires four different methods of treatment. These psychological prescriptions are as dissimilaras the medical prescriptions for boils, measles, influenza, and typhoid. The methods and plans suited for one period are unsuited for another. The realization of this basic truth is the first step toward the solution of your boy’s problems.
No parent who stops with provision for the physical and intellectual demands of his child has done his full duty. It may appear trite to say that he should go further and train the character and the soul; but failure in this essential is a standing indictment against many Christian homes today. Parental indifference to and ignorance of boy-psychology are the causes which have produced untold thousands of delinquent or semi-delinquent boys. Your boy may, and thousands of boys do, weather the storm of adolescence, guided only by the blundering but loving heart which has neither accurate knowledge nor understanding of his nature;but such results are fortuitous rather than certain.
More parents have mastered the rules of bridge than have mastered the principles of child-culture. The training of the boy, despite its tremendous personal significance to him and to our homes, is less frequently and less seriously discussed than politics, the weather, or the latest style of dress. Too many boys are reared like their colored sister, Topsy, who “jest growed.”
Deep down in our hearts we feel that we know much more than our neighbors about the upbringing of a son, because of our superior intuition and better judgment, even though we have never qualified for the job by study, research, or thought. Too many of us believe we are “natural-born” boy trainers. When our boy goes wrong, it is our profound conviction that it is due whollyto the influence of the bad boys with whom he associates. As a matter of fact, it is just as likely that our Johnny has corrupted his associates as that they are the cause of his moral infractions. Never, under any circumstances, do we blame ourselves either for the poor quality of his training or for permitting his evil associations. His delinquencies reflect on us and hurt our pride, but we palliate the hurt by attributing them to causes which do not involve us. We are too ready to prove an alibi when called to the court of conscience and charged with responsibility.
The average parent bitterly resents personal advice relating to the upbringing of his children, but this resentment probably has less relevancy to reading a book on boy-training because it is impersonal in its application and affords the reader the election of taking as much or as little of it to himselfas his reason, judgment, vanity, or egotism may dictate.
All boys have a common nature whose development proceeds according to fixed laws; but diversities of temperament and character differentiate individuals and thus make each boy an individual problem. The solution of that problem is your job.