Your boy and his training
Date: 2023-07-18T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Child rearing; Boys

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Title: Your boy and his training

A practical treatise on boy-training

Author: Edwin Seward Puller

Release date: July 18, 2023 [eBook #71214]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: D. Appleton and Company, 1916

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71214

Credits: Donald Cummings, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING ***

YOUR BOY AND
HIS TRAINING

YOUR BOY AND
HIS TRAINING

A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON BOY-TRAINING

BY
EDWIN PULLER
FORMER PRESIDENT, SCOUTMASTERS’ ASSOCIATION OF ST. LOUIS

NEW YORK LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1916

Copyright, 1916, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO
THE MEN OF TOMORROW, WITH THE HOPE THAT THE
THOUGHTS EXPRESSED IN THESE PAGES WILL AID
THEIR PARENTS AND TEACHERS, IN SOME DEGREE, TO
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF BOY-NATURE AND
BOY-TRAINING.

PREFACE

The average boy is not understood by the average parent. This misunderstanding produces not only indifferent training of the boy but also soul-stress for the parent and his son. Intelligent training will improve the quality of the man into whom your son will develop. To be able to give such training, the parent must first know how. The education of the parent in the subject of boy-training is the pretentious purpose of this volume, which I approach with full consciousness of my own limitations.

This book is the result of my association with and study of large numbers of boys from ten to twenty years of age, and in it have been embodied, consciously or unconsciously, some ideas of other writers on this subject.

I have endeavored to present in elementary form a brief, practical study in adolescent psychology and its application to boy-training, written in language which the average parent, guardian or teacher can readily understand. With this end in view, there has been an elimination of technical terms, as far as may be—even at possible risk of scientific inaccuracy of statement. It will not be necessary for the average reader to peruse these pages with a dictionary at hand. They were written not for psychologists, but for parents, in the hope that a work both readable and comprehensible will acquaint the average reader with the laws governing boy-life and their application to his training with greater clarity than a work abounding in abstruse phraseology and scientific nomenclature.

The pages which follow will be devoted to a discussion of the problems of the normal boy—the same red-blooded, harum-scarum youngster who occupies such a large place in your life—and not especially to the delinquent boy. I indulge the hope that this volume may aid you, in some degree, to a better understanding of your boy, his problems and their solution.

Edwin Puller.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER | PAGE
I. | The Eternal Boy-problem | 1

Boy-problems are as universal as boys—Boys too often regarded as necessary evils—Necessity for training—How to study the boy—Tendencies in present-day education of children—Character-culture should come first—The home is the place and the parent the agency—Boys more difficult to train than girls—The boy’s viewpoint—Parental indifference to boy-training—Each boy is an individual problem.

II. | Parental Responsibility | 15

Causes of waywardness—Wrong training and bad environment—Parental ignorance concerning boy-training—An instance—Heredity—Accountability of the parent—Spending money—Laxity of discipline—Average parent not fully equipped for his job.

III. | Child Psychology | 30

Table of psychic characteristics at several ages—Infancy and imagination—Early boyhood and individualism—Early adolescence and hero-worship—Later adolescence and thoughtful mental attitude—Age when puberty occurs—Period of motor activity.

IV. | Adolescent Psychology | 52

Adolescence the period of storm and stress—Change from childhood to manhood—Puberty—Physical indicia—Mental indicia—Psychic disturbances—Truancy and wanderlust—Lack of continuity of purpose and action—Proximity to the savage state—Humor—Sex-consciousness and its manifestations—Love affairs—Plasticity of mind—Will-power appears—Age of discretion—Cycles of susceptibility to religious influences—Age of experimentation—Hero-worship and its manifestations—Object of hero-worship—Gratitude lacking—Reflective period—Introspection—Sense of perspective is distorted—Visionary ambitions—Dislike of older boy for younger—Will-power, mental and moral stature attained.

V. | The Boy’s Viewpoint | 80

Difference of viewpoint at differing psychic ages—Youth and age contrasted—The boy’s desire for physical expression—Inability for sustained mental or physical effort—Adult must put himself in boy’s place to understand him—The natural adult leader of boys—Boy lives in the present—Parent must do child’s thinking for him—Injustice to boy from failure to consider his standards.

VI. | Obedience | 92

The cornerstone of child-training—Children’s attitude toward parents—Its causes and effects—Character is predicated on obedience—Parental prohibitions which cause disobedience—Habit of obedience formed most easily in early childhood—How obedience may be cultivated—Commands must be founded on justice and reason—Disobedience results from parental caprice or injustice—Illustrations—The rational quality in the boy—Importance of paternal example.

VII. | The Repressive Method of Training | 104

Age when training should begin—Repressive method is negative—Illustrations of repressive commands—Their effect on the boy—The play spirit in the young—A factor in mental and moral growth—The passive system of training—Evils of lavish supply of money—Effects of repression are depressing—Acts should not be prohibited without suggestion of other acts to fill the void created—Mental inspiration of praise.

VIII. | The Suggestive Method of Training | 117

Necessity for formulating definite plan of training—Impossible to state a simple rule—American habit of drifting out of touch with offspring—Duty of fathers to continue intimacy with sons through adolescence—American children not generally well bred—English, German, French and Japanese methods contrasted—Suggestion is informative and inspirational—Negative commands produce mental hostility and will combat—Illustrations of effect of suggestion—A father’s plan—The big brother comradeship of father and son.

IX. | The Habit of Falsehood | 132

Imagination a characteristic of childhood—Fantasy as real to childhood as reality—The cause of lies—Illustrations—The fisherman’s lie—Clarity of mental processes largely determines whether a statement is a lie or an untruth—The lie of the older boy—Desire to avoid punishment the chief cause of falsehood—The remedy for falsehood—Moral suasion, its definition and application.

X. | Corporal Punishment | 143

The place occupied by corporal punishment as a corrective measure—Reasons advanced for its use—Illustration from a banker’s experience—Average child does not rebel against authority—But only against authority unjustly or harshly exercised—The boy’s view of corporal punishment—Breaking the boy’s will—Unjust or excessive punishments conduce to lying—Effect of nagging on children—Mental versus physical punishment—Effective substitutes for corporal punishment.

XI. | The Cigarette Habit | 157

Effect of nicotine on human organism—A physician’s opinion—Tobacco and the adult—Age when boys acquire the habit—Effects of tobacco on adolescents—Opinion of Dr. Seaver based on physical measurements of smokers and non-smokers—Cigarette most pernicious form of tobacco—Influences which actuate boys to acquire the habit—Poisons in the cigarette—Acrolein and carbonic oxide—Moral effects—Juvenile criminals are generally cigarette fiends—Methods used to dissuade boys from beginning—Suggestion of a remedy for those who have contracted the habit.

XII. | Boy Gangs | 173

Gregarious instinct in boys—Craving for association with their own kind—Two kinds of boy gangs—The supervised gang—The unsupervised gang—Illustrations of each—The gang leader and his qualifications—The necessity for a meeting place—Morals of unsupervised gang always lower than morals of its individual constituents—Motives for gang activities—Their code of honor—Street gangs are training schools for delinquents—Gang spirit inherent in all boy-nature—Supervised gangs and their influence on character development—Necessity for urging boy to join good gang.

XIII. | The Boy Scout Influence | 183

The magic of the name Scout—The Boy Scouts of America—What the movement is—Ranks and requirements—Good turns and illustrations—Appeal of uniform and hikes to boy before joining—Purpose of organization is character-building—A former method of teaching ethics—Scout camps and hikes—The camp-fire tale as a means of training—The qualities which Scout associations develop—Boy Scout organization founded on sound psychology—A denatured gang—Opinions of sociologists—The universality of its appeal to boyhood—An efficient method of training boys in mass—It keeps the boy busy—The busy boy is the best boy—A field of social service for the adult.

XIV. | Juvenile Reading | 206

Potent influence of books on the boy—Next to environment and companions—Two-fold value of literature—Desire of boy for something to read—He reads for entertainment; studies because compelled to—Reading must be suited to mental and psychological requirements—Fairy tales—Adventure tales—Informative books—Dime novel and nickel library—Their effect on morals and literary taste—The bad book in the outward dress of good fiction—The psychological requirement for thrilling adventure tales—Comic Sunday supplements—Ideal companions for boys found in best books—Doses of literature as remedies for diseases of character—Stories of animal life—The juvenile magazine—A list of books useful for outlining a course of juvenile reading.

XV. | Agencies for Sex-instruction | 227

Importance of accurate sex knowledge—Misinformation acquired at a very early age—Necessity for scientific instruction—Former antipathy to discussion—Parent is natural teacher of sex—Neglect of parental duty—Necessity for other agencies of instruction—Grammar schools, high schools, colleges, etc.—Danger of premature sex excitation—Individuals who are best adapted to teach—Teacher, physician, biologist, special lecturer—Opinions for and against the school as agency for sex-instruction.

XVI. | On Outline of Sex-instruction | 238

Periods in child’s life when instruction should be given—Instruction should be suited to his psychological requirements—Mother should begin instruction—Method known as the biological approach—Nature and amount of instruction necessary—Father should assume instruction at puberty—Necessary admonitions—Influence of theatrical productions with a sex-appeal—Musical comedies, burlesque and vaudeville shows—Sex-hygiene societies—A list of pamphlets published—A list of books recommended.

XVII. | Children’s Courts | 254

An instrumentality for reclaiming the wayward boy—The state formerly regarded delinquent boy as a criminal—New attitude toward dependent and delinquent children—Their mental and moral concepts not matured—Infractions of law are manifestations of moral disease which it is the state’s business to cure—Child under sixteen cannot be a criminal—Delinquent child is a ward of the state—The Juvenile Court—Methods of dealing with boys—The probation officer—Laws for control of delinquent parents.

XVIII. | Conclusions | 270

Every boy has inalienable right to be well trained—Basis of boy-training is parent-training—Insight, tact and patience necessary—Boy’s need of father’s companionship—Certain physical abnormalities affect intellect and character—Effects of heredity contrasted with environment—All boys possess a common nature—Summary of rules bearing on boy-training.

YOUR BOY AND
HIS TRAINING

YOUR BOY AND HIS
TRAINING

CHAPTER I
THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM

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 such traits 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 be deduced 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 which have 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 guidance imposed 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 meager moral 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 ample evidence; 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, therefore their 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 dissimilar as 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 wholly to 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 himself as 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.

CHAPTER II
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

THE wayward boy is often the son of a wayward parent.

Waywardness results not so much from the effects of heredity as from lack of training. Wrong training, lack of training, and bad environment are the great, compelling influences toward delinquency, which overshadow all other causes of juvenile waywardness; and for such causes parents are directly and primarily responsible.

This is a severe indictment of parents, but not more severe than the consequences of their neglect of duty warrant. Many parents act on the presumption that their obligation is fulfilled by supplying the child with food, clothing, shelter, and school, forgetting the equally important duty of developing his moral and spiritual nature. Such conditions are usually the result of indifference, a sin of omission, and only rarely do they result from bad precept and example.

In the larger number of cases, the wayward parent is such because of ignorance of the scope of his duty, or because of his delegation of moral and religious training to the school or some other agency not fully equipped for the task. It is seldom that a parent does not earnestly desire high moral character in his offspring. He hopes in a blind, inchoate way that his son will become a well-rounded man—physically, mentally, morally, socially, spiritually. By what means that hope is to fructify he does not know. He is groping in the dark, hoping against hope that the miracle of evolution will result in perfection, without the employment of the methods and agencies at his command which will assist to that end.

The first step, then, in the training of the boy is the training of the parent. And what applies to the father usually applies, with less force, to the mother.

When we reclaim wayward parents, we shall reclaim wayward boys. The first step toward reclamation is the awakening of their sense of responsibility—the driving home of the consciousness of stewardship. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” has still stronger application to the father and the mother of a son. Yours is the responsibility for the child’s presence in the world; yours is the responsibility for supplying the conventional comforts on which physical life depends; but still more emphatically yours is the responsibility of furnishing the guiding hand which will pilot the frail bark of youth through the storm and stress of adolescence. During infancy he is anchored in the harbor of home, surrounded by love and physical comfort; during early boyhood his bark is drifting on the current toward the sea; while the dawn of adolescence plunges him into an unknown and uncharted ocean, without rudder or compass by which to avoid the sunken reefs of danger and the rocks which wreck the development of character. The morally obligatory duty of child-culture must be encouraged, revived, trained, and put into operation.

Eugene ——, age 13, was reared by an indulgent father, after his mother’s death. A stepmother entered the home when the lad was nine. He was a robust boy, athletic and active, handsome, lovable, but mentally lazy, backward in school, without continuity of purpose or action, inclined to falsehood and evasion, willful, disobedient, extravagant and spoiled. He remarked one day to a companion, in my hearing, “Dad’s a stingy guy. He only gives me five dollars a week spending money.”

This boy’s problem was a serious one, but not hopeless by any means. The delinquent parent was responsible for the delinquency of his son. Engrossed in the cares of manifold business interests, he “had no time” for the training of his boy. He failed to realize that making a son is more important than making money. If he had given his business no more thought and judgment than he gave his son, he would be a financial bankrupt. As it is, the son probably will be a character bankrupt. At the present time his moral liabilities exceed his assets—a poor beginning for the business of building a human life. His affairs should be in the hands of a receiver—a boy-expert who will rehabilitate the boy—or, better still, who will arouse the parent to recognize his duty and do it. The intelligent parent is the natural and best teacher of his own child.

Up-to-date horticulturists and agriculturists avail themselves of the sum total of scientific knowledge concerning their respective professions. Unscientific, misdirected, and indifferent methods produce failure; inferior fruits and grains of limited yield do not pay. The importance of many things is measured by a financial standard. When reduced to a monetary basis, production is of sufficient importance to call forth the best research, skill, and thought of the individual. Child-culture is more important than horticulture, even though its benefits cannot be measured in dollars and cents. The Department of Agriculture spends millions of dollars every year, largely in the perfection of cattle and hogs. The improvement of the breed of hogs is not more important than the improvement of the breed of boys. Personally, I prefer the boy to the hog. He is just as great a necessity in the human economy and, besides, he is much more companionable. The best crop we raise is children. Why not improve their breed? The vanity of the parent may answer that they already are splendidly endowed by heredity with all the virtues of mind, morals, and body possessed by their progenitors. But heredity is no such miracle worker. If heredity has equipped the child with a perfect physical machine it still remains necessary to teach him not only how to run it, but how to keep it in good condition. The perfect body will not, unaided, stay perfect, nor will it develop the strong mind and character. All of these—and more—are required to make the perfect man.

“Better boys” should be our slogan. The accountability of the parent for his sacred trust cannot be evaded. It is the one great, upstanding, overshadowing duty concurrent with parenthood. The failure to appreciate its importance is due to many causes. Among them may be mentioned the complexity of our present-day civilization with its incessant demands upon the time and strength of parents. In some instances the stress and struggle incident to earning a living leave little time for the development of the child. This is especially true in those homes where squalid poverty abides. The husband, exhausted by the grinding toil which he has exchanged for a scant wage, returns home at night and finds a wife worn in mind and body by her task of maintaining a home on less than is requisite for livable conditions. Neither is fit to perform the larger duties of parenthood. Add to this, sickness, accident, unemployment, intemperance, and child labor, and the cup is full. The toll of toil is wretched childhood. The children are neglected in everything except a bare physical existence. The son of such a home naturally takes to the street where he pursues his play, unguided and untaught. The result is a street gamin with all his inherent potentialities for good submerged beneath the delinquency and vice which are bred in the street. A continuous procession of such children passes through our juvenile courts every day. Such pitiable cases—and they are many—are partly grounded in the maladjustment of economic conditions. The remedy lies in a change of environment in which society as a whole must take part; in vocational training; a more equitable adjustment of wage to labor; workmen’s compensation laws; health and accident insurance; inculcation of ideas of temperance; training along moral, domestic, sanitary, and hygienic lines; and general education, including a knowledge of child-training.

Conditions are different, however, in the better homes of our citizens. There the debasing consequences of sordid poverty are absent. But still the two homes are, in many instances, identical in their lack of moral training, although the causes are different. In the one home, knowledge and capacity are wanting. In the other, knowledge and capacity are present but neglected. It is these latter cases of parental neglect of duty which warrant the appellation, “wayward parent.” It sometimes requires the alarm clock of filial delinquency to awaken the parent from his somnolence of indifference. The damage has then been done. They hasten to lock the stable after the horse is stolen, instead of taking precautionary measures at the needful time. “The difficult cases to deal with,” remarks Judge Julius N. Mayer of the Court of Special Sessions (Children’s Court) of New York City, “are the cases of children whose parents are industrious and reputable, but who seem to have no conception at all of their duties toward their children. They fail to make a study of the child. They fail to understand him. Frequently the father, who could well afford to give his child recreation, or a little spending money, will hold his son by so tight a rein that the child is bound to break away. It may seem a little thing, but I firmly believe that many a child would be saved from his initial wrong step if the parent would make him a small allowance. In the cases where such a course is pursued the child usually becomes a sort of a little business man, husbanding his resources and willing to spend no more than his allowance; but where the child has nothing it is not strange that he should fall into temptation.” The state of Colorado, in an important addition to the juvenile law, recognizes the existence of the wayward parent by declaring that all parents, guardians, and other persons, who in any manner cause or contribute to the delinquency of any child, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. Judge Lindsey of the Juvenile Court of Denver has this excoriation for such parents: “Careless and incompetent parents are by no means confined to the poor. In fact, in my experience, the most blameworthy of such parents are among the so-called business men and prominent citizens. They seem to think their duty is ended when they have debauched the boy with luxury and the free use of money. They permit him to fill his life with a round of pleasure, and let him satiate his appetite without knowing what he is doing or whither he is drifting. They are too busy to become his chum or companion, and so he soon develops a secret and private life, which is often filled with corruption, and because of his standing or influence and money he may be kept out of the courts or the jails, but nevertheless is eventually added to society as a more dangerous citizen than many men who have been subjected to both. A financially well-to-do father once said to me that he was too busy to look after his boys, to be companionable, or take an interest in them. We have no more dangerous citizens than such men. In the end, I believe such a man would profit more by less business and better boys.”

Parental laxness in the enforcement of discipline may be due to indifference, obtuseness, or a false sense of affection which rebels at stern correctional measures. Whatever may be the motive of the parent, the effect on the child is the same. Obedience is largely a matter of habit which becomes fixed, as do other habits, by continued repetition. Dr. William Byron Forbush stated the thought in this language: “In the American home, especially where there is not sore poverty, the cause of delinquency in children is, without question, the flabbiness and slovenliness of parents in training their children to obedience and to orderly habits.”

Too often the training of the boy is shunted back and forth from father to mother like a shuttlecock which is finally knocked out of bounds. The father more frequently than the mother succeeds in evading the obligation and thereafter he rarely attempts to interfere unless we consider an occasional walloping of his son in anger the accomplishment of his duty.

The average parent is not fully equipped for his job. He is either unskilled or underskilled in boy-training. He needs education, insight, and understanding to cope with the problems of his son. If the parents default in the training of the boy—even through ignorance—need we wonder that the boy defaults in the making of the man?

Numerous boys attain the average perfection of manhood in spite of poor training—but none of them because of it. Many a father, because his son has turned out well, is wearing a self-imposed halo—when he is only lucky.

CHAPTER III
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY

A SYSTEMATIC knowledge of the powers and limitations of the human mind and soul before maturity and the characteristic changes which they undergo at puberty will throw a flood of light on the boy-problem. Juvenile psychology may be divided into child psychology, covering the period from birth to puberty, and adolescent psychology, covering the period from puberty to maturity. Boyhood is the interval between birth and physical maturity, the latter being reached at the age of twenty-four or twenty-five, when the bones, muscles, and organs of the body have attained their complete development. Legal maturity, or majority, comes at the end of the twenty-first year, when the disabilities of infancy are removed and the boy is presumed by law to have acquired sufficient intelligence, judgment, and moral discernment to take his place in the community as a citizen, and is then vested with all the rights, duties, and obligations of an adult, even though mental maturity (reckoned at the time the brain cells cease to grow and judgment and reason have fully ripened) is deferred until he is approximately fifty years of age. We may roughly divide the boy’s life into four periods of psychic unfolding in accordance with the table on page 32.

PERIOD | AGE | CHARACTERISTICS

Imaginative

Birth to 8
Infancy

Imaginative faculty is dominant; acquisition of locomotion, speech and elementary knowledge; birth of moral concepts.

Individualistic

8 to 12
Early
Boyhood

Individualism; selfish propensities; want of regard for rights of others; imitative faculty is ascendant.

Heroic

12 to 16
Early
Adolescence

Hero-worship; gang affiliations; puberty and early adolescence; fundamental organic changes; sex-consciousness; age of experimentation; character-building period; psychic disturbances; exceptional plasticity of mind; high degree of emotionalism; susceptibility to religious influences; development of will-power.

Reflective

16 to 24
Later
Adolescence

Thoughtful mental attitude; habit of introspection; evolution of sociological consciousness; development of altruism; growth of ethical concepts; perfection of will-power.

During the imaginative period covering infancy, from birth to eight years, the child lives in a land of air castles, daydreams and mental inventions, interspersed with periodic pangs of hunger which assail him at intervals of great frequency. His world is peopled with fairies, gnomes, nymphs, dryads, goblins, and hobgoblins. Elfin images are his daily playmates. Imagination runs riot and dominates his viewpoint. It is the period in which make-believe is as real as reality, and this furnishes the explanation of many of the so-called falsehoods of this age. But the development of the imagination should be guarded, not suppressed. Through imagination we visualize the future and effect world progress. All the great inventions which have advanced civilization, the political reforms which have contributed to our liberties and happiness, and the monumental works of literature, music, art, and science, would have been impossible without the exercise of the imaginative faculty.

Imagination is not only of great value in educating the intellect and morals, but it is a desirable mental attribute which promotes sympathy, discloses latent possibilities of things and situations, and broadens one’s appreciation of life. It is needed by the laborer, ditch-digger and sewer-cleaner as well as by the musician, artist, and author.

In this period the child learns more than in all his subsequent life. He learns to talk, to walk, to feed himself and to play; he learns the rudiments of written and printed language, and the names and uses of the various objects he sees about him; he comprehends form, color, perspective, and harmony; his imagination, so useful in later life, blossoms forth; his moral sense buds and the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong unfolds; the intense desire to learn and to know is born—evidenced by his rapid-fire and continuous questions; he is possessed by a voracious appetite for knowledge which must be fed by a harvest of information; and the habit of obedience and the recognition of parental authority become fixed. His horizon is bounded by physical growth and the acquisition of knowledge. All subsequent knowledge is either a variant of or a supplement to the basic knowledge acquired during infancy.

The ascendant trait of the imaginative period is the faculty of make-believe. It is the ability of the mind to create mental images of objects previously perceived by the senses. It involves the power to reconstruct and recombine materials, already known, into others of like symbolic purport. It is exhibited when Johnny mounts a broomstick, shouting, “Get up, horsie!” and “Whoa!” The imagination builds up a mental image of a real horse, which he has seen, out of the stick-and-string substitute. Through fancy, he endows the counterfeit with all the attributes of the original and for the time being the broomstick is a real, living, bucking horse. Such make-believe is an important factor in the development and coördination of ideas and the acquisition of knowledge. And so in the innumerable instances of make-believe plays, whether he pretends in fancy to be papa, a ravenous bear, a soldier, a policeman, or what not, he temporarily lives the part he is playing and merges his personality into the assumed character with an abandon which should excite the envy of an actor.

Witness also the imagination displayed by Mary when she builds a house with a line of chairs, and peoples it with imaginary friends with whom she carries on extended conversations, and takes the several parts in the dialogue when the absence of playmates renders such expedient necessary. Impersonation is grounded in imagination. Every little girl impersonates her mother, with a doll as her make-believe self, and spends many hours in pretending to care for its physical needs, teaching it mentally, and even correcting its morals with some form of punishment with which she herself is acquainted, whether corporal or otherwise.

The stolid, dull child exhibits less of fancy and imagination than his keen bright companion and therefore is less frequently engaged in the numberless activities prompted by imagination, which require supervision. His very stolidity keeps him out of many acts termed “mischief” and therefore he is more easily “managed” in the sense that he does not require such continuous oversight and direction. The stolid one must be set going by being told how, what, and when to play, while the imaginative one, without aid, conjures up many fanciful dramas in which he plays the leading rôle and thus occupies the years of infancy. These figments of the brain give rise to stories and fanciful tales which are called “lies” by adults who fail to understand their psychology. These are of sufficient importance to warrant their discussion in a separate chapter of this volume.

It is during this period that the mother, with her Heaven-sent gift of love, sympathy, tenderness, and insight into the soul of childhood, is the effective teacher. Coming home one evening, I found a neighbor’s son of six years sitting on his front steps awaiting his mother’s return. He was sobbing to himself. I approached him and inquired, “Well, Robbie! What’s the matter?”

He replied, through a mist of tears, “I fell down and bumped my head.”

“Does it hurt you?” I continued, in my helpless way, unable to fathom the soul-depths of his disaster. “No,” was the response, “it don’t hurt, but I want muvver so I can cry in her arms, an’ it will be well.”

He needed first aid to his feelings—not to his body—and only mother with her infinite love, sympathy, and understanding could apply it. With a deep consciousness of the limitations of his sex, the author withdrew to await the balm of mother-love—that unfailing remedy for the physical and mental hurts of childhood.

Blest hour of childhood! then, and then alone,

Dance we the revels close round pleasure’s throne,

Quaff the bright nectar from her fountain-springs,

And laugh beneath the rainbow of her wings.

Oh! time of promise, hope and innocence,

Of trust, and love, and happy ignorance!

Whose every dream is heaven, in whose fair joy,

Experience has thrown no black alloy.

—Thoughts of a Recluse.

At the age of eight or nine, when the child emerges from infancy into early boyhood, he begins gradually and imperfectly to leave behind the characteristics of childhood and, with the development of his mental and physical processes, he acquires the distinguishing traits of the individualistic period.

It should be borne in mind that the characteristic changes from one period to another are not abrupt transitions, but easy gradations; a gradual dropping of the distinctive features of the period left behind for the essentials of the period just attained. The progression is by easy, continuous stages, effected unconsciously and unobtrusively. This growth may be compared to the four periods of the development of a plant; first, the bursting of the seed into life and the tender stalk forcing its way upward into the light—the infantile period; then the formation of branches and leaves and the growth of stalk—the early boyhood period; then the putting forth of the bud which is the precursor of the flower, and the formation and development of petals, stamen, pistils, and pollen—the adolescent period; and finally the blossoming forth of the full-blown flower, the fertilization of the pistil by the pollen of the anther, the whole marvelous process of reproduction culminating in the formation of the embryonic plant contained in the seed—the period of maturity. All of these stages are characterized by an evolution which is as gradual as it is silent.

In like manner it should be understood that the ages delimiting the four periods of boyhood are somewhat arbitrary and are subject to the controlling factors of race, climate, health, and individual temperament. The Latin races mature earlier than the Anglo-Saxon; the boy in the tropics reaches puberty more quickly than one in a colder zone; certain abnormalities of physical condition, as well as environment and heredity, conduce to early maturity; and temperamental characteristics contribute, in some degree, to a difference in the time required to traverse the various periods of boyhood. I have known boys of ten who were still infants, and I have in mind a boy friend of sixteen years, with the normal mental development of one of that age, in whom adolescence has not begun. Physically and psychologically he is eleven years old, although chronologically he is sixteen. He is, therefore, in the individualistic period of his existence and, in a large degree, he should be judged, governed, and trained by the rules applicable to that period. In so far as his moral concepts are influenced by mentality, his responsibility for deflection is that of one of his chronological age; but in that class of cases in which his moral viewpoint is controlled by his undeveloped physical or psychic state, his responsibility belongs to the individualistic period to which these qualities are attributable.

The individualistic period between eight and twelve is the era in which the boy regards himself as an individual not correlated to other individuals of society. He is essentially selfish, and individualism is his dominant characteristic. He has an excessive and exclusive regard for his personal interests. The great world of men forming society is beyond his perceptions. His thoughts chiefly concern himself and seldom embrace others, except when they cause him pleasure, annoyance, or pain. He recognizes them only as they contribute to his emotions. This tendency manifests itself in the selfishness exhibited in play and his unwillingness to perform the trifling services required of him by his elders, if they in any way interfere with his present enjoyment. Sociological consciousness, with its recognition of the duties and obligations of the individual toward the mass of individuals termed society, is still dormant. Its first awakening is seen in his recognition of duty toward his family, and later toward his playmates and friends, and last of all toward society—which is reached in the reflective period. His mental horizon is bounded entirely by his own activities and interests in which he is the central figure.

Carelessness, forgetfulness, and thoughtlessness of others are incidents common to childhood which gradually wane and disappear at the age when he enters the reflective period. As he lives in the immediate present, he does not plan for the future—not even for the morrow. Johnny comes home to supper from the playground, whirling through the house with cyclonic energy and leaving a trail of gloves, hat, overcoat, and superfluous garments in his wake, intent on the only thing which is of absorbing interest to him at that moment—his immediate presence at table to alleviate the excruciating pangs of hunger which are gnawing at his vitals. Everything else is forgotten in his efforts to satisfy the desires of the present. The next morning, when preparations for school are begun, all remembrance of the places where his wearing apparel was deposited is forgotten. Then ensues the daily hunt for the missing garments, interspersed with vociferous requests to all members of the household for assistance. The interrogatory, “Where’s my hat?” is as common as oatmeal for breakfast. Order and system have little place in a routine which is regulated by present necessity.

A strong sense of proprietorship in personal possessions is now manifest, and is closely allied to the acquisitive faculty. About the ninth year he begins to make collections of various sorts of junk. This is the beginning of the collection craze which lasts throughout the individualistic period. Its initial manifestation is usually the collection of foreign and domestic postage stamps, which lasts from three to five years and furnishes one of the best methods for elementary scientific training. The term science implies knowledge systematized and reduced to an orderly and logical arrangement, with classification as its basis. Such collections teach him to group and classify their component parts according to some definite plan. The intellectual training afforded by the grouping and classifying necessary to preserve his collection possesses educational value of the highest quality. Geography now has a new and personal meaning as “the places where his stamps came from.” Other phases of this tendency may be seen in collections of marbles, agates, tops, buttons, bird eggs, leaves, minerals, monograms, crest impressions, cigarette pictures, and cigar bands.

One boy proved his industry and trend toward personal acquisition by collecting and classifying several hundred tin cans which were formerly receptacles for fruit, beans, and meats, and the odors emanating from the mass in no wise diminished his pride in the collection, which he regarded in the same light as the connoisseur views his art treasures.

A wise provision of nature has made the acquisition of knowledge pleasant and agreeable. It prompts the boy to fire continuous volleys of questions and has caused him to be described as the human interrogation mark. He looks on every adult as a wellspring of knowledge whose stream of information can be started flowing by tapping it with a question. The knowledge received and digested from the answers to his questions supplies him with food by which he grows intellectually. This inquisitiveness exhibits itself, before puberty, in frank, naïve questions—even of the most personal nature. On one occasion the author appeared in evening dress at a meeting of his troop of Boy Scouts preparatory to a later attendance upon a social function. He was immediately surrounded by that part of the troop of preadolescent age who subjected his wearing apparel to minute examination, during which they felt the cloth, inquired its cost, and commented freely, frankly, and unreservedly on matters pertaining to material, cut, style, price, and workmanship, with never a thought of giving offense. While one who is the object of such attention would ordinarily feel a degree of embarrassment at such familiarity, the author recognized it as a manifestation of the curiosity inherent in the preadolescent age, as well as evidence of a complete confidence and rapport which could be possible only toward one with whom they were on terms of sympathetic and understandable companionship.

The sages say, Dame Truth delights to dwell,

Strange mansion! in the bottom of a well.

Questions are, then, the windlass and the rope

That pull the grave old gentlewoman up.

—Dr. Walcot’s Peter Pindar.

During this age the imitative faculty is born, reaches its development, and is carried over into the heroic period. He follows companions in the kind of games and the seasons when they are played. If a playmate is the possessor of a sled, a bicycle, or a pair of skates, he must needs have their duplicates. He begins to follow closely the opinions, pastimes, games, and even the style of dress affected by others of his own class. If it is the fashion of his set, he will, with a persistency worthy of a better cause, wear the brim of his hat turned down and decorated with a multicolored hat band. He revels in a riot of color because æsthetics is an unexplored and unsuspected world. His proximity to the savage state is reflected in his love of the garish colors which are affected by savage peoples.

His faculty for imitation renders him highly susceptible to the influences of his environment. He imitates what he sees and hears. Therefore the influence of companions for good or evil, as well as the persuasive control of his parents by example, is potent. To a somewhat lesser degree is he affected by the class of literature which he reads. In the absence of stories suited to his psychological needs, he acquires a taste for the dime novel, nickel library, and other blood-and-thunder stories, the reading of which, if continued through the heroic period, frequently results in truancy and leaving home to “see the world.”

Concurrent with all the psychic development of this period he shows himself to be a human dynamo of physical energy which manifests itself in ceaseless action. This period of motor activity should find its outlet, as well as its control, in play, athletics, and manual training. He is a bundle of twist, squirm, and wiggle which only time can convert into useful and productive activity.

CHAPTER IV
ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY

THE period of adolescence is truly one of storm and stress, caused by the wrecking of boy-nature to rebuild it into man-nature; it is a cataclysmic bursting of the bonds of infancy in preparation for the larger stature of manhood. In early adolescence the boy is neither child nor man. He is in the chrysalis stage of metamorphosis, which is shedding the characteristics of childhood and putting on the maturity of the adult. Neither one nor the other, he is a part of both. Adolescence covers the period of the boy’s life between puberty and maturity. Puberty is the earliest age at which the individual is capable of reproducing the species and it usually begins at the age of thirteen or fourteen, subject to the influence of the factors stated in the preceding chapter. The growth and development of the sex organs during adolescence produce changes which are revolutionary rather than evolutionary in their nature. Marked physical alterations are always attended by still more marked psychic disturbances.

The physical indicia of puberty are the lengthening of the vocal cords, which causes the voice to change from the treble of boyhood to the bass of manhood and manifests itself in sudden and uncontrollable breaks in the voice in speaking and singing; the growth of the organs of reproduction and the filling of the seminal glands; the growth of hair on the pubes and face; the coarsening of the skin; broadening of the shoulders, deepening of the chest, and general change from the slenderness of childhood to the compactness of maturity.

This is the period of rapid physical growth wherein he shoots upwards like a cornstalk under the impulse of a July sun. Elongated arms and legs are now as conspicuous as they are unwieldy, and efforts to discipline them are futile. The demand for “long pants,” heretofore quiescent or erupting intermittently, now becomes insistent and finally bursts forth with a fury produced by accumulated repression and fortified by the assertion that “Johnny Jones wears ’em and I’m bigger’n him”—the last word in argumentative conclusiveness. Physical awkwardness and ungainliness, illustrated in his inability to manage his hands and feet easily or gracefully, is due both to the extraordinary and rapid growth of the body and nervous system which takes place at this time, and to his instability of mind, wholly apart from his knowledge of social usages.

The psychic disturbances produced by adolescence are still more pronounced. The adolescent is in the throes of discarding the mental concepts of the child and adopting those of the adult. His viewpoint is lifted until his mental and moral horizon broadens to distances heretofore undreamed of and discloses new and strange moral and ethical problems. Old concepts melt away in the light of a newer and stronger vision. Sex-consciousness overwhelms him with its complexity and unrecognized import. The mental concepts of maturity clash with those of childhood. His barque is sailing on uncharted waters, without compass or rudder, while a fierce storm of uncertainty and instability beats about him as he experiences the travail of the birth of a new soul. It is truly the age “when a feller needs a friend”—one who can pilot him safely through the storm of adolescence to the calm of manhood.

Truancy reaches its flood tide during adolescence. The instinct of wanderlust appears in response to the promptings of his savage nature, his unease of mind, and his desire to know the unknown in the world about him, and culminates in runaways as a revolt against the exercise of parental authority which he believes to be unnecessarily restrictive or severe. He is now in the formative, fermenting period when he is reaching out to find himself, with indifferent success.

There is at this time a noticeable want of continuity of purpose or action. He jumps from one interest to another, evincing little stability of mind. There is want of psychophysical coördination. The transmission between mind and body is faulty; and the imperfect gear of intellect and will frequently fails to engage the cogwheels of morals. The machine works poorly because it is neither complete nor fully equipped. Workmen are still engaged on the unfinished job.

William now evinces a disposition to find fault with his home, his clothing, his food, and restrictions on his conduct and routine. He betrays a mental uneasiness unknown to prepubertal days, and a willingness to argue with his parents in a self-assertive or combative mood quite unlike his former self. Incongruities of character are shown in petulance, irritability, disobedience, stubbornness, and rebellion, sometimes even taking the form of cruelty to persons or animals. This latter manifestation has been ascribed to atavism which manifests itself in the recurrence of the savage traits of his primeval ancestors. Dr. G. Stanley Hall thus comments on this tendency in his exhaustive work on adolescence: “Assuming the bionomic law, infant growth means being loaded with paleoatavistic qualities in a manner more conformable to Weismannism, embryonic growth being yet purer, while the pubescent increment is relatively neoatavistic.”

His proximity to the savage state is shown in his appreciation of primitive humor. The unexpected which causes discomfiture or pain is excruciatingly ludicrous. It is the crude, slap-stick comedy which excites his disposition to risibility. The knockabout comedian who falls down stairs or beats his partner over the head with an inflated bladder produces the same degree of laughter in a boy as the felling of one savage by another with a war club produces in the onlooking members of their tribe. The rapier wit of keen intellectuality and the subtle humor of fine distinctions observed in a play on words all pass over his unscathed head.

He is a living paradox who displays at times the gallantry, courtesy and chivalry of the knight-errant with the thoughtlessness, rudeness, and boisterousness of the harum-scarum rowdy.

Sex-consciousness now asserts itself in an increased but diffident interest in the opposite sex, accompanied by blushes, embarrassment, and self-consciousness when in their presence. The desire to appear attractive in the eyes of his girl friends prompts minute and painstaking attention to dress, and the brilliant plumage of the male bird is reflected in the bright colors of his attire. Formerly he regarded girl playmates from the same viewpoint from which he regarded boys and they were placed on the same plane and received the same consideration as that accorded to those of his own sex, except where the teaching of the sex-conscious parent required him to display a gentleness toward them which his own lack of sex-consciousness failed to prompt. Now, gentleness, courtesy, and gallantry are inspired by adolescence from within. The companionship of the adolescent with pure, high-minded girls of his own age is beneficial to both in the greatest degree. Such associations are of educational value in that they project high ideals of the feminine traits of gentleness, sweetness, and purity whose influence is reflected in his improved manners, dress, and conduct. It fosters the idealistic and spiritual phase of love and removes it from the coarseness and baseness engendered by the purely sexual appeal. These love affairs are numerous but transitory—their duration being dependent upon the time required to satisfy his idealism; and at the first suggestion that his idol has feet of clay his affection is transferred to another pretty face and sweet nature. Not infrequently he bestows his affection upon a girl several years older than himself, to which he is actuated by two impulses—the half-formed sex-impulse of the man to seek a mate, and his adolescent need of “mothering,” both of which are measurably gratified by the reciprocal love of an older girl.

He begins his love-making slyly and shamefacedly. George waits after school, occupied with an ostensible engagement which will consume the time until Mary shall appear. His meeting with her, after all these elaborate plans, appears to be quite unexpected. A diffident greeting is followed by an inquiry as to whether she is going home. Her affirmative answer is seized upon as his excuse for walking in her direction. Then follows his request to be permitted to carry her books. They discuss matters of mutual interest in school or social life, while he, with furtive glances, notes the beauty of her face, the wealth of her hair, and the velvet of her cheek. Sunlight is playing hide-and-seek in her eyes, while the roses in her cheeks blush a deeper red, matching the ribbon which adorns her pigtails as she feels the flood of his unexpressed admiration surging over her. Never was there such a wondrous being in all the world! He idealizes her every attribute until she surmounts a pedestal far removed from things earthy. A smile of approval from this young goddess is treasured in his heart of hearts, sacred from the misunderstandings of a profane world. He is assailed by daydreams of knight-errantry in which he is performing some chivalrous act of heroism to which the maiden shall be a witness. Or better still, he imagines himself playing the part of a cavalier rescuing her own sweet self from distress or danger and then receiving as his reward her avowal of affection, while he protests that his heroism is nothing and that he would do a thousand times more for her.

Evidences of his tender regard for the girl of his choice are given in secret, as too holy for an unappreciative world to comprehend, and the twittings of his elders on the subject of puppy love (cruel in their unsound psychology) are met with prompt and positive denials. Such manifestations of incipient affection should be recognized as the intermediary elaboration of a high and spiritual love whose ultimate fruition will be matrimony. All the world loves a lover—provided he is not a boy. The adult who cannot see the psychology in such incidents must be blind indeed.

The exceptional plasticity of mind characteristic of this age renders him highly susceptible to influences for good or evil. It is the great character-building period of his life in which are crystallized his moral and ethical concepts which attain their latter perfection in the succeeding period. Your boy is putty in your hands. He is a superlative impressionist. His impressionistic mind is molded as deeply by evil as by good. For this reason, it is necessary that his environment—which is the cumulative influence of the precept, example, and conditions which surround him—should be good and wholesome. As the drip-drip-drip of water wears away the stone, so the constant drip of environing influences wears its way into character.

The foundations of will-power are now laid in his efforts to propel himself into a choice between the good and the bad, between right and wrong. Judgment and discretion appear in embryonic form and slowly and laboriously develop into cautious discernment and the faculty of deciding justly and wisely, which reach their approximate maturity late in the reflective period.

It may be interesting to note that the law presumes that every person at the age of fourteen has common discretion and understanding, until the contrary is made out; but under that age there is no such presumption. It therefore follows that when a child under fourteen years of age is offered as a witness in a court of law, a preliminary examination conducted by the judge must be made to ascertain whether he has sufficient intelligence to relate the facts as they occurred and sufficient moral sense to comprehend the nature and obligation of an oath. But the law is conservative in its presumption, as such intelligence and moral comprehension are, in most instances, developed in the child at a much earlier age and numerous cases are cited in the law reports in which children as young as seven or eight have qualified, after examination, as witnesses competent to testify.

During this period occur three cycles of particular susceptibility to religious influence. The first appears about the age of twelve under the stimulus of witnessing the conversion or affiliation with the church of some adult whom he looks up to, and is chiefly due to the faculty of imitation—one of the characteristics carried over from the individualistic period; the next occurs at age of fourteen, when his emotionalism is dominant, under the excitement of a powerful emotional experience; the third cycle of religious conversion appears at sixteen when he is leaving the heroic period and entering the thoughtful or reflective stage of his adolescence and such a conversion is grounded in the thoughtful promptings of the intellect, rather than the emotions.

This is also the age of experimentation in which his longing to know the unknown leads him to make short excursions into the fields of mechanics, physics, electricity, hydraulics, magic, and others which hide their secrets from the casual observer. This trend of his activities may be directed by suggestion, supplemented with the necessary equipment, toward manual training and handicraft—ideal employments for the early adolescent.

This is the age of hero-worship and every boy in this period, without exception, has a personal hero. He may not take the world into his confidence by divulging his secret, but whether admitted or not, he possesses a hero whom he looks up to, admires, and copies. I know a thirteen-year-old lad whose hero is his eighteen-year-old cousin for whom his admiration manifests itself to the extent of trying to imitate his tone of voice, his walk, his gestures, and personal appearance, including the wearing of the same kind of ties which his cousin affects. He never ceases praising the football prowess of his relative and continually quotes him as an authority on athletics.

The boy of this age worships a physical hero. Power, strength, and authority make a powerful appeal. His hero may be the policeman on his beat who is the emblem of physical strength and vested with the authority of law to make arrests; the fireman who displays wonderful courage in the rescue of imperiled persons from burning buildings; the engineer who guides the locomotive dashing like a meteor through the blackness of night; the prize fighter who has won a championship in the squared ring; or the baseball or football athlete whose name is on every tongue. His hero must be a mighty man of action, for he worships at the shrine of athletic prowess. To test the truth of this statement, ask any boy you may meet, between the ages of twelve and sixteen, whether he would rather be the winner of the Nobel prize for scientific achievement or Ty Cobb (with a batting average of approximately .370), and the unanimous verdict will be in favor of the ballplayer. So strongly is hero-worship implanted in his nature and so completely does it dominate his viewpoint that it remains, with gradually diminishing intensity, for many years thereafter. Happy the boy whose father is his hero and happy the father who is a hero to his son!

The objective of hero-worship is always an older male—never a female. No instance of normal heroine-worship has ever been noted. The wealth of love which he may manifest toward his mother, female friend or teacher is entirely disassociated from hero-worship. It lacks the sex-element necessary to inspire emulation. He wants to be a man—not a woman. For this reason, it is desirable that he should have opportunity for association, during adolescence, with men of strong character and personality. The differences between the psychologic processes of the male and the female adult are too well known to require discussion here. Widows who keenly appreciate the absence of the father’s guiding hand frequently attempt to be both father and mother to their sons, and in so doing the apron strings are knotted doubly hard and fast. Then ensues a conflict between the feminine and maternal policy and the adolescent longing and reaching out for ultimate masculinity. The mother is the last person to recognize adolescence in her son; she wants him to remain the infant she has always regarded him. His beginnings to emulate masculinity clash with her desire to keep him a child. I have in mind a mother who is rearing the most lady-like boy in my acquaintance. Her inherent delicacy and refinement of nature prompt her to develop these same qualities in her son as the ultimate end to be attained. With no qualifications for boy-training except mother-love, feminine ideals, and an ambition to rear her son to beautiful manhood, she refuses him participation in rough and tumble sports and games because they are “rude and ungentlemanly” and besides, they would soil his clothes. Many mothers of the neighborhood hold him up to their own unregenerate offspring as a model of neatness and a paragon of propriety, but the boys call him “Sissy.” The author has witnessed many examples of apron-string policy whose unpsychological and repressive tendencies cannot fail to be detrimental to the ideal development of adolescence.

Gratitude is a virtue displayed by few boys prior to the reflective period, because they fail to appreciate the motives which inspire the act which should call forth expressions of gratitude, especially if the act or service is of an altruistic nature. Of course, he will thank you for a gift of candy or a toy; but never for the time and thought expended in giving him instruction or moral training, or taking him in the woods for a day, or pointing out to him the constellations at night. He is not ungrateful. He merely accepts these things as a matter of course until he reaches the age which recognizes and appreciates the sacrifices incurred by the giver of altruistic service.

The beginning of the reflective period witnesses the subsidence of the fierce storms of earlier adolescence and is followed by comparative physical and emotional calm, although attended by intellectual agitations of lesser import. The boy now enters an era of mental development characterized by a thoughtful, reflective attitude toward the great problems of life. A serious viewpoint is developed which changes the previous aspect of the world. He devotes much thought to his life-work; to making choice of an occupation or profession and preparing for it. His future career looms large in the foreground of his problems, and prompts a close analysis of his inclinations, aptitudes, and qualifications for special lines of work. The realization that he must soon take his place among the men who are doing the world’s work overwhelms him, at times, with the immensity of his job. Introspection, as a part of his self-analysis, becomes a habit which induces him to make continual comparisons between his own natural endowments and those of others of his own age. He seeks, with all the faculties at his command, to find that niche in the business, professional, or industrial world which he can best fill and it is at this time that he needs the vocational guidance of his father.

Early in this period a morbid self-consciousness frequently appears as the result of a too minute introspection with eyes whose views of life are not correlated. He discovers defects in his personal appearance, faults of character and deficiencies of intellect which are magnified out of their true proportions. His sense of perspective is in its formative stage and this causes many molehills to loom high as mountains. He is now his own most severe critic and imagines that his immature conclusions as to his personality are shared by all others; and many hours of humility and mental depression ensue from this condition. Egotism and an exalted appreciation of his own worth are also manifest, due to the same uncoordinated sense of values. He often exhibits alternate states of exaltation and depression produced by a trifling remark or a trivial incident which is given an importance it does not deserve. As he advances through this period, his perspective finds truer adjustment, his sense of values becomes settled, his judgment ripens and these anomalies disappear. But he may be saved many hours of soul-stress by the father who is able to diagnose his condition, or who is on sufficiently intimate terms of confidence with his son to inspire a frank avowal of his troubles. Here is the opportunity for the father to apply his common sense, ripe judgment and experience to the solution of these problems of the later adolescent.

Attention has already been called to his impressionability to religious influences during the early part of this period through an appeal based in intellectualism (as distinguished from the emotionalism of the preceding period), to which the ethical concepts now being formed are closely related.

Another distinguishing trait is the evolution of his sociological consciousness through which he recognizes himself as a unit in the social economy, with all its attendant rights and duties. He discards the selfishness and individualism of an earlier era and adopts the obligations of altruism. His desire to be of genuine service to his fellow man seeks expression first in visionary plans to reform the world, followed afterward by practical work in help for others, such as leadership in boys’ clubs, secretarial duties or teaching in Sunday schools, or similar employments of altruistic purport. Government under processes of law takes on a newer, clearer and more personal meaning. And with it comes recognition of civic responsibility.

Intellectual storms gather when vague, unassorted, inchoate, and impossible theories of social and political reform—long since tried and discarded—loom big on his horizon and are eagerly seized upon and advocated as original discoveries. His opinions are expressed with a dogmatism which characterizes the cocksureness of youth. Verbal limitations inspired by sound judgment and broad experience, as well as the cautious phraseology of scientific conservatism have no place in his vocabulary. His theories are all promulgated with an arrogant assertiveness born of the optimism of inexperience. He is now fairly bursting with self-importance. But all these manifestations are important only as indicating his desire to solve the great problems of life and are the precursors of a sounder judgment which will come with maturity of intellect and experience.

It is at or near the beginning of this period that the youth looks down on the younger boy, whom he characterizes as a “kid.” The dislike and even positive aversion of the older boy for companionship with the younger has its basis not so much in their differing physical and mental attainments as in their differing viewpoints caused by their unequal psychological development. Illustration of this may be observed in two boys, both of whom are sixteen years of age and of equal mentality and physique, one of whom has and the other has not entered the reflective period. Such boys are out of harmony with each other in every taste, desire, and predilection which is actuated by psychological impulse, and find a common ground of companionship only in athletics and classroom studies.

Will power, born during the heroic period, is now stimulated to rapid growth which culminates during the latter part of the reflective period. No longer is he a straw borne on every passing wind of influence, but a human being capable of exercising a moral choice between two courses of action.

His mental and moral stature has been reached by gradual and almost unnoticed gradations; and such growth, which had its beginning in blank chaos, has been even greater and more marvelous than his physical growth between birth and maturity.

Self-flattered, unexperienced, high in hope,

When young, with sanguine cheer and streamers gay,

We cut our cable, launch into the world

And fondly dream each wind and star our friend.

—Young’s Night Thoughts.

CHAPTER V
THE BOY’S VIEWPOINT

A CORRECT understanding of boy-nature is conditioned on one’s ability to obtain his point of view, which differs widely from that of the adult. It has been stated in a previous chapter that the viewpoints of a boy at six, ten, fourteen, and eighteen years of age differ as widely from each other as those of four adults of remotely differing natures and temperaments. We frequently make the mistake of assuming that the boy is a small edition of a man, possessing faculties, emotions, desires, and understanding the same as in the adult but developed in a lesser degree. On the contrary, his mental and psychological processes differ fundamentally from those of maturity. Boys are not little men and should not be judged by men’s standards.

The ignorant peasant who views the masterpieces of the Louvre sees them through dull, uncomprehending eyes. He sees but does not perceive, because his appreciation of artistic beauty is limited by a circumscribed capacity. Just so, the boy, circumscribed by the limitations of his mind and soul, views life and its complex manifestations with such capacities as he possesses. If your mental and psychological limits were those of a boy in the hero-worship period, your tastes, desires, judgments, opinions, and actions would conform exactly to that boy-standard. Your standards of ambition and achievement would be purely physical and therefore you would prefer the prize fighter to the scientist.

The physical and mental requirements for youth and age are as wide apart as the two poles. As reminiscence characterizes old age, so enjoyment of the present typifies young age. The Bard of Avon has thus compared their physical and mental characteristics:

Crabbed age and youth,
Cannot live together;
Youth is full of pleasure,
Age is full of care:
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare;
Youth is full of sport,
Age’s breath is short;
Youth is nimble, age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold,
Age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild and age is tame.
Age I do abhor thee;
O, my love, my love is young:
Age I do defy thee;
O sweet shepherd hie thee,
For methinks thou stay’st too long.

An elderly maiden sat one sunny afternoon in May engrossed with her knitting, while a crowd of boys were engaged in the great American game of baseball on the lot beneath her window. It would be superfluous to say they were noisy. From her viewpoint both noise and violent physical activity were unnecessary, disagreeable, and trying to one’s nerves. The nuisance must be suppressed. Accordingly she poked her head out of the window and directed a shrill scream at the disturbers of her peace, “Go away from here, you bad boys, and stop making that noise!” In a flash came back the retort, “G’wan away yourself!” while a boy grumbled to his companion, “She don’t know nothin’ ’bout having fun.” Both were right, judging from their respective points of view, and both were wrong when considered from the other’s viewpoint. Neither understood the other. Old age requires peace, silence, and cessation from physical activity. Youth requires noise, bustle, and violent exercise for its growth. Activity symbolizes success. Passivity spells failure.

The boy in athletics, like the adult laborer in his daily toil, uses the primary muscles of his arms, legs, and torso. With the development of his mentality, he develops and employs his secondary muscles. Psychology is intimately related to athletics. For this reason, the gymnastic apparatus which is suited to adults is wholly unsuited to boys, and this is quite apart from differences due to the unequal size and strength of the users. Witness the aversion of the boy to the use of Indian clubs whose intricate manipulations require the employment of the secondary muscles of the wrist and arm, while he willingly uses dumb bells which call into play his primary muscles.

His inability for sustained mental effort is coördinated with his disability for sustained physical effort. Hence he passes by, with a curiosity-satisfying trial, the chest weights and rowing machines of the adult which require the continuous expenditure of energy. So also the competitive spirit of boyhood must be gratified by the use of such gymnastic apparatus and games as develop competition. The boy will not exercise for exercise’s sake. He will not even do it to achieve the altruistic result of a strong physique. But he will exercise and play games to excel the other fellow. The boy who is alone in a gymnasium has as stupid a time as the boy who is compelled by necessity to play baseball with himself.

It would be interesting to learn the boy’s opinion of certain adults if he were able to accurately analyze and express his conclusions. The crabbed demeanor of the pessimist out of touch with boy-life is as offensive to the boy as the latter’s noise and giddiness are objectionable to the former. Observe the mental rheumatics of the misanthrope in these grouchy grumblings from Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Wit Without Money”:

What benefit can children be but charges and disobedience? What’s the love they render at one and twenty years? I pray die, father: when they are young, they are like bells rung backwards, nothing but noise and giddiness.

And from what a different vision-vantage were penned these lines, overflowing with love and understanding of childhood, which are a model of sympathetic comprehension of the child’s needs:

Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,
To pour fresh instruction o’er the mind,
To breathe the enlivening spirit and to fix
The generous purpose in the glowing breast!

—Thomson’s Seasons.

To understand the boy’s viewpoint we must be able to put ourselves in his place. We must renew our youth. The trouble with so many of us is that we never acquire juvenescence until second-childhood. We should be able to assign the boy to the psychological period to which he belongs by reason of his development, and thus knowing the mental and moral status of an inhabitant of that period, we are able to see things through his glasses. The mental myopia and moral astigmatism of youth will then be recognized as a defect of immaturity which training and years will cure. Juvenility may be reacquired in maturity if we string-halted adults would only seek rejuvenation at the fountain of youthful understanding where we may obtain a flood of knowledge concerning boy-life. The journey is apparently too long and too difficult for the lazy or indifferent grown-up. The heart of a boy is not worn on his sleeve. He reveals it only to those who command his perfect confidence and such confidence is given to those, and to those only, who understand him. The aloofness of children toward certain adults is because they have nothing in common. Each misunderstands the other. As it is obviously impossible for the child to understand and attune himself to adult mental processes, it becomes necessary for the adult to comprehend child-nature and to put himself in harmony with it.

Happy the man who can make himself a boy again! He retains a thousand joys which other adults have irretrievably lost. Such a one is a natural leader and teacher of boys. They delight to make him their hero. His influence with boys is commensurate with his understanding of life in Boyville. You must go to this juvenile city and live there, learn its laws, customs, and manners, and if possible place yourself in a sympathetic attitude of understanding without which you can never hope to be initiated into the mysteries of adolescence. The honor of being admitted to the confidence and fellowship of boys is not permitted to all men—only to those who have retained or who are able to acquire the boy’s viewpoint. “There is a wall around the town of Boyville,” says William Allen White, “which is impenetrable when its gates have once shut upon youth. An adult may peer over the wall and try to ape the games inside, but finds it all a mockery and himself banished among purblind grown-ups. The town of Boyville was old when Nineveh was a hamlet; it is ruled by ancient laws; has its own rules and idols; and only the dim, unreal noises of the adult world about it have changed.”

The boy lives in the present, with little thought of the future; he is concerned with today, not the next decade. His mental processes do not prompt him to speculate as to the effect of present acts on future character. He has neither the mental nor moral equipment for such foresight or deduction; it is a task beyond his capabilities. This burden must be shouldered by the parent who should not only do the child’s thinking for him until the latter is able to do it for himself, but should also drill, train, and educate the boy until he is able to make nice distinctions between right and wrong, and should cultivate his will-power until he can school himself into an acceptance of the good as against the bad. Until the child’s mind, will, and moral sense have reached this stage of growth, the parent must substitute his own mind, will, and moral sense. In determining the degree of capability of a child’s offense, we should ask ourselves the question: “What is the developmental stage of his faculties which made the offense possible?” Harsh and stern estimates of childish frailties usually result from the application of the adult viewpoint and the adult standard. The failure to consider the viewpoint and standards of the adolescent causes much injustice to the boy and results in many mistakes in his training.

The brightness, joyousness, and optimism of youth suffuses life with an iridescent glow. All the world is bathed in roseate hues when seen through the rose-colored glasses of youth. When we get so old that we delight in sitting by the fire, toasting our slippered feet, and prefer to listen to our arteries harden rather than to hear the noise and laughter of boyhood, we are out of tune with the harmonies of boy-life.

CHAPTER VI
OBEDIENCE

THERE hangs in the bedroom of the children of a certain devout mother a large frame which contains, in illuminated letters, the twentieth verse of the third chapter of Paul’s “Epistle to the Colossians”: “Children, obey your parents in all things; for this is well pleasing to the Lord.” In commenting on this visual injunction she said: “Obedience is the chief cornerstone of child-training and I have thus endeavored to fix it in the memories of my children for all time.” The commandment—“Honor thy father and thy mother”—is just as real and vital today as it was in the time of Moses, although present-day home conditions are not always conducive to its observance.

Too many children of the present, especially during adolescence, regard their parents with an attitude of tolerant sufferance—as necessary evils to be endured by them but exhibiting little patience in their toleration. They consider them old-fogy, behind the times, uncomprehending and unsympathetic with their interests, plans, and aspirations. Father is esteemed largely in proportion to his success as a producer; while mother is valued in accordance with her contributions to their physical comfort; and this imperfect recognition of parental aid comprises the sum total of their gratitude; for no acknowledgment is ever made of their obligation for the years of watchfulness of health or solicitude for morals or cultivation of the spiritual life. This attitude is due partly to the psychological unbalance of the adolescent and partly to the slovenly, inconsistent, and wishy-washy methods of government used by the parent, which inspire in the youth not only disobedience but contempt for parental authority which is as vacillating as a weather cock. Without obedience the child drifts aimlessly and develops a character as unstable as the parental system of training is fluctuating. Confirmed cases of juvenile disobedience can be traced, almost without exception, to the jellyfish methods of spineless parents. An increase in rigidity of parental backbone will result in a corresponding increase in filial obedience.

Obedience is the fundamental law of child-training and upon it the development of future character is predicated. Obedience in children is too frequently regarded by parents as the chief end of training, and not as the means to the end, which is character. The young child has neither code of morals nor a standard of ethics, but is a rule unto himself, propelled only by impulses of selfish interest. The chief objective of child-training is the cultivation and fixation of a high moral code which produces character. The secondary objectives are the conservation of health and discipline of the intellectual faculties, the latter including the communication of knowledge.

Parental prohibitions of undesirable acts, as well as suggestions of wished-for conduct, should be so uniform, constant, and consistent that the child will be able to deduce from them what his course of conduct should be when confronted in the future with the desire to do or not to do an act of similar nature. It is thus that he builds up his standard of conduct and formulates his code of morals. Trivial objections to acts or conduct, not grounded in reason and justice, inspire disrespect for parents and disobedience to their authority, and befog the moral vision of childhood. If the child is to respect parental authority, he must have been so habituated to obedience by the parental system of government that he will obey easily and involuntarily from force of habit. Habit is the tendency to do naturally, easily, and with growing certainty those things which we are accustomed by constant repetition to do. The habit of obedience is formed most easily in early childhood and when obedience becomes crystallized into habit, a strong foundation has been laid for the building of strong character.

Obedience is cultivated by consistency in parental commands which invariably must be founded on reason and justice and enforced with a firmness of will which cannot be swayed by sentimental considerations of leniency. Consistency is a jewel which shines nowhere so brightly as in the crown of child-training, but it must be mounted in resolute adherence to fixed ideals of character-culture. Obedience should be distinguished from unwilling submission to a superior force. The former implies subjection of the will and actions to rightful restraint and not servile submission to authority which is exercised unjustly. The founders of our republic were obedient to the highest promptings of liberty and justice when they revolted against the many acts of injustice imposed by the mother country. Likewise the obedience of a child can be enforced only through parental commands which are founded on justice and reason; and we should even go a step farther and convince him that they are just and reasonable. Here is a typical case: A boy requested permission of his mother to go swimming—as boys are wont to do.

She replied, “No! you may not go!”

“But why not, mother?” was the natural and reasonable inquiry of her son.

“Just because I don’t want you to go,” was the unconvincing answer.

“Ah! that’s no reason, mother. Why can’t I go?”

“Because I have said no! Now, that settles it!” And with this answer she concluded the colloquy.

Defeated and depressed, but unconvinced, the boy shuffled sullenly around the corner of the house and out behind the barn where he raged and rebelled at the autocratic exercise of the authority of which he had been the victim, until present desire overcame the fear of future punishment and soon the old swimming hole resounded with the splash of another lithe, young body. His disobedience was the logical sequence of an attitude which violated both the principles of psychology and the dictates of reason and justice. If the mother had assigned any reasonable excuse for withholding her permission she would have measurably satisfied her son’s sense of fairness and justice, however reluctantly his acquiescence, prompted by the denial of personal pleasure, may have been given. Instead, she unconsciously chose a course which planted the seed of disobedience and evasion whose ultimate fruition might even be rebellion against all maternal authority, and following that—delinquency.

The boy is a rational human being, however much we may ignore his capacity for reason, and the continued violation of his standards of right and justice will ultimately destroy those standards and compel him to adopt a code based on expediency instead of morals. Laws are obeyed by adults in the proportion that they are supported by public opinion as being just and reasonable; and, conversely, they are disobeyed when deemed unjustly restrictive or violative of personal rights. Witness the disregard for sumptuary laws in certain local communities which entertain convictions against the abridgment of their so-called personal liberties, where such laws have been imposed by the legislative enactment of a state the majority of whose voters favor prohibition. Some of our reputedly good citizens evade the payment of a large part of the taxes imposed on them by law for the reason that they believe the tax laws to be inequitable and unjust in placing too great a burden on one class, with a corresponding exemption to another class.

From general observation, as well as from the records of our penal courts, we may deduce the proposition that obedience to statute by normal men rests largely on their belief in the justice of law and the reasonableness of the exercise of the authority which is predicated on such law. Law, in the domain of childhood, is parental command; and even though the child’s sense of justice may not be as discriminating as that of the parent, nevertheless it is strong enough and deep enough to impel him to resist, by evasion, subterfuge, deceit, or other means at hand, those parental laws which he believes to be founded on mere caprice or positive injustice. We must promulgate reasonable commands if we are to expect reasonable compliance with them, and we shall suffer no loss of dignity by frankly explaining to our children the reasons which underlie our mandates. Although the child may be unable at all times to follow our line of reasoning, or to agree wholly with our conclusions, he will, at any rate, be convinced that our orders do not emanate from capricious fancy, but have a semblance of justice as their basis.

Even paternal example is not without its influence on the keenly observing mind of youth. The seventeen-year-old son of a neighbor was detected smoking a cigarette the day following the direct injunction of his father that he should not do so. When reproved by his father for disobedience, the son retorted: “Well, dad, why don’t you obey the law? You shot ducks out of season.”

The delinquent children who flow in a steady stream through our juvenile courts are undisciplined, self-willed, and rebellious against authority and are governed only by impulse which is as spasmodic as their conduct is abnormal. Obedience has never found a place in the poor moral equipment with which they are endowed. Practically every moral derelict stranded on the human scrap-pile can trace his failure in life to his disobedience in childhood; and the fault is not wholly his own but rests largely on the shoulders of parents who failed to compel obedience in the early years when compulsion was possible through firm and just regulation.

The boy who is early indoctrinated in obedience becomes plastic material ready to be shaped, through training, in the stature of a man of fine moral quality.

CHAPTER VII
THE REPRESSIVE METHOD OF TRAINING

THE training of the child should begin as soon as it is able to comprehend spoken language. A venerable mother who had reared eleven children and had seen them attain successful and honorable positions in life was asked the question: “At what time should the training of a child begin?” Her answer was: “In the cradle.” And, it is needless to add, it should be continued to maturity. There are, broadly speaking, two general plans of training which may be termed respectively the repressive method and the suggestive method.

The repressive method of training is founded on the principle of negation. It seeks to make the boy do right by constant admonition not to do wrong. It proceeds on the theory that elimination of the bad will, leave the good. It is indirect in its methods as well as its results.

The negative system of training manifests itself in such commands as, “Don’t make that noise;” “Don’t bother me, I’m busy;” “Don’t slide down the cellar door;” “Don’t talk so loud;” “Don’t play in the house;” “Don’t tease sister;” “Don’t eat so much;” “Don’t soil your clothes;” “Don’t bring those boys into the house;” “Don’t scuff out your shoes;” “Don’t get your hands dirty;” “Don’t be tardy at school;” “Don’t wear out the seat of your pants;” and so on without end.

No boy ever thrived on an indigestible diet of don’ts.

Jacob Riis, writing in the Outlook, says: “Write the one word ‘Don’t’ there, and only that, and the boy if he has any spirit will take to the jungle. Every father knows it; every teacher has learned it, if he has learned anything.”

While this system has a modicum of worth in certain of its applications, it lacks the comprehensiveness and directness necessary to accomplish the best results.

The prohibition of reading dime novels, nickel libraries and other blood-and-thunder tales, without the suggestion of adventure stories of definite ethical and moral value to fill the vacuum thus created in his emotional life, is another conspicuous example of the repressive method of training—which does not repress but impels the boy to continue his lurid reading in secret.

The error of the system lies in taking something essential away from the boy without giving him an adequate substitute. It is damming up the stream without providing a spillway, and is as ineffective as it is unpsychological. The current of his activities will find a channel as surely as water will find its level. Instead of attempting to check the flow, we should direct it into channels for good. This repression, if persistent, will dwarf the child’s initiative and compel him to grope in the dark to find out what is permissible. It is as fallacious in practice as a system of teaching, if such could be conceived, which would give the boy a hundred guesses to learn a fact, instead of the teacher’s direct statement of the fact. It is the maze of a labyrinth which envelops the traveler in hopeless confusion and its effect can only be depressing and disheartening to the child. We frequently make the mistake of underestimating the reasoning powers of our children, which prompts us with autocratic dogmatism to forbid their acts without an explanation of the reasons why or the suggestion of a substitute to fill the void caused by the prohibition.

“Stop making that noise!” is a command hurled at the playful boy with such frequency that it no longer excites comment. It is natural for boys to play, yell, make a noise, and wear out clothes. They are the exuberant manifestations of his physical and emotional nature; the expression of the atavistic tendencies of man; the safety valve which relieves the pressure of superabundant vitality. As he is in the savage period of his life he yells like a savage. You may as well tell a pup not to bark as to tell a boy not to yell. It is the nature of the animal. We should recognize this fact by conforming to nature—not opposing it—because it is the normal condition of the normal boy. I have a profound pity for the boy who prefers to sit by his mother’s knee and read a book on his holiday, instead of joining the gang in playing tag or getting up a scrub game of baseball. Such a boy is abnormal; he is not “all boy”; he is either sick or mentally deficient and either condition should inspire the grayest solicitude of his parents as to his future. We do not want to rear a race of anemic runts.

The young of all mammals manifest the play spirit as a means of growth. Colt, calf, lamb, kitten, pup, and boy all exhibit this tendency of nature. These things are the cause of growth, not only physical, but mental and moral as well. The educational value of play is one of the most important factors in the boy’s evolution. It is the expression of his being, his growth, his aspirations and his future. By play, he trains his eye, his hand, his mind and his muscles; his moral conceptions are formed; he learns to distinguish between right and wrong, and the recognition of individual and property rights begins to emerge from his nascent moral consciousness. Games with companions develop the social instincts. Through them he first realizes that he is a social unit—a thread in the social fabric of humanity. Action, constant action, is the keynote to his present and the hope of his future. He aches for action. If the boy’s play and noise disturb you, do not squelch him, but rather provide him with a place in which he may exercise these manifestations of his nature without causing you annoyance. A playroom in the house or barn, a tent, the lawn, the park, the great woods of the country are all ideal playgrounds for boys which satisfy the savage spirit of his nature. There ought to be ample room in this great world of ours for the growth and development of our future men.

Objection is sometimes made that sports are a non-productive form of energy—a waste of time and strength which might be employed in manual training or in work of economic value capable of being measured in terms of money. It is true that the athletics and games of boys have no money value, nor are they designed for such purpose, but the energy expended is not wasted. On the contrary, it is highly productive of both physical and moral growth. It is productive of strong bodies, clear eyes, speed, agility, strength, quick thinking, sound judgment, a sense of fair play, self-confidence, control of temper, coördination of brain and muscle, and respect for the rights of others. Their value is educational and cultural—a means to an end and not the end itself. The boy who by reason of financial necessity is required to become a breadwinner is deprived not only of a large part of the joys of boyhood which should be his as a matter of right, but of many physical activities, educational in their effect, which would otherwise train and equip him both mentally and physically for service in adult vocations and good citizenship. The repression of play and its attendant noise is always inspired by motives of consideration for the convenience of the adult and never by a thought of its effect on the boy himself.

The repressive method of training, alone, is ineffective at any age, but if it is used sparingly in early childhood and then only when combined with suggestions and directions for activities to replace those prohibited it produces good results. As the child grows in years the positive, constructive, suggestive method of training should be employed exclusively.

Quite as pernicious as the repressive method is the passive system of training—in effect no training at all—which permits the boy to have his own way in everything. It is the resource of the indulgent and lazy parent who seeks the line of least resistance. When combined with a lavish supply of money, its effects are usually ruinous. I know a boy now fifteen years of age, a typical spoiled son of a wealthy father. At our first meeting, a year ago, the sartorial display on his stunted physique was loud and elaborate and was the work, he volunteered, of his father’s tailor. He was decorated with a gold watch and chain, an elaborate scarf pin and two finger rings conspicuous for their size. He immediately began to boast to the little group of boys who surrounded him of the cost and superiority of his clothes, his rifle, his canoe and his pony. At first, the group looked on in mingled awe and admiration. Then their keen insight and sense of humor were betrayed in the knowing winks and nods which they exchanged, followed by a volley of questions designed to hold him up to ridicule, until the poor little sham of a boy, unable to bear their raillery longer, finally blurted out in an attempt to silence his inquisitors, “My father’s got more money than all of your fathers put together.”

I have long held the belief that the boy is the mirror of his home. A subsequent acquaintance with the lad’s father and his home life confirmed my impression that the sum total of this boy’s training consisted in gratifying his every wish. For the boy to ask was to receive. While the father expended a wealth of money, he did not expend a single thought concerning its effect on his son. Only pity can be evoked at the plight of such a boy handicapped as he is by these false ideals and standards of life. It is doubtful whether even the unsympathetic, stern and harsh discipline of the brutalist is more conducive to crippled character than the methods of the lavish, coddling and cosseting parent.

Parents have the choice of two plans in correcting faults and developing character in the boy. One consists in the prohibition of acts and the application of censure for wrongdoing, and proceeds on the theory that the consequences of wrongdoing will be made so unpleasant that he will abandon the acts complained of to avoid the resulting censure. The other plan is to suggest the desired course of conduct and to praise the boy for his good acts and qualities to the extent that he will continually seek to earn approval by doing the things which call forth approbation. The boy, like the adult, is keenly susceptible to praise. The exaltation of spirit which follows the word of approval given as a reward for good deeds is a continued inspiration to future goodness. The effects of blame are depressing; of praise, stimulating.

A certain boy has hanging on the wall of his bedroom an honor shield on which silver “merit stars” are placed for conspicuous good deeds, deportment, and scholarship. As each unworthy act or failure of duty causes the removal of a star, the owner is keenly alive to keeping his escutcheon bright with evidences of merit.

The boy is intensely human, although we may not at all times treat him like a human being. As our own best efforts are inspired by commendation or reward, so the boy is quickened to highest endeavor by praise and not by blame. Rewards are more effective incentives to excellence than demerits or punishments. The constant repression of a child’s actions by prohibition is a cruel form of punishment which drives him farther and farther out of the range of the parent’s influence for suggestive helpfulness.

“Do this!” is more effective than “Don’t do that!”

CHAPTER VIII
THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD OF TRAINING

EVERY parent of a son should formulate some definite, determinate plan for his training, and this can be done even though original research and the formation of plans deduced therefrom are not always possible to the parent whose life is bulging with other activities necessitated by our hurrying civilization. Any definite plan of training is better than no plan, inasmuch as it will cause us to think and to use our best judgment on this important topic and so tend to a clarification of preformed vague or inchoate opinions.

Would it were possible to state a simple golden rule for boy-training! Unfortunately such a complex subject cannot be reduced to fixed rules or mechanical formulas. The complexity of the problem is grounded in the complexity of life; its solution is found in methods as variant as the diverse needs of mind, soul, and body. The author has stressed parental responsibility and the need of parental training as a basic preliminary to solving the boy-problem. The far-flung necessity for parental instruction is made imperative by the racial habit, of Americans especially, of drifting out of touch with their children during adolescence. In the preadolescent period—when our children are childish—we preserve the closest intimacy and companionship by unbending our mature dignity, at least in the privacy of home, to a degree which puts us in perfect accord with their natures. Under such conditions we are the recipients of their confidences and intimacies which they give freely, naïvely and trustfully. In return for the gift of our love, our own lives are rejuvenated by association with the light, joy, and laughter of youth.

But the arrival of puberty marks a change in our attitude toward our children of which we are not wholly conscious. At this age the boy is neither man nor child, but part of both, and we become impatient with the idiosyncrasies of his nature and conduct which constantly assert themselves at this period of life. Our annoyance at the manifestations of his psychic changes, which is caused by our failure to understand them, arouses in him the suspicion that he is neither loved nor appreciated and he drifts farther and farther out of the range of our influence until he reaches the hinterland from which little tidings of his inner self ever reach us. The realization of this fact comes to the boy much earlier and with more poignant force than to the parent. The consciousness of his isolation is evidenced by his secretiveness, his opinion that he is not understood and his belief in parental lack of sympathy. The former relationship of chum and comrade has been superseded by an attitude of unresponsiveness or even hostility. The secretiveness of the boy toward those who do not have his confidence is only equalled by his frankness toward the adult with whom he is on terms of intimate companionship.

How many fathers take the time to tell a story to their sons after puberty? Or to explain the phenomena of the business, banking, industrial, or mechanical world? The busy parent usually esteems himself fortunate if he can escape the importunate inquiries of his offspring concerning the facts of the man’s world; and the boy, seeking the companionship of men for which he yearns during adolescence, is led to the society of the drunken hostler who is ever ready to regale him with a collection of stories replete with profanity and obscenity.

American children, during adolescence, are reputed to be the most ill-bred children in the world. The apparently lax methods of the French and the Japanese as well as the severe discipline of English and German parents are both attended by a greater degree of filial respect, obedience, and reverence for their elders than is exhibited by our own children. Americans have been characterized as bringing up their children by a series of fits and starts, which accounts for much of the disrespect shown them by their children. At any rate, it must be admitted that we have no settled, definite philosophy to guide us in this important function, and the lack of a determinate system may justly be assigned as a cause for such indeterminate results. The delightful camaraderie between the French youth and his father is conspicuous in this country by its relatively infrequent occurrence. Our slap-bang, haphazard plans of boy-culture produce results in conformity with the methods employed. But whatever may be the system used, any definite, thoughtful, continuous policy is better than no policy at all. The author is of the opinion that intimate companionship continued through adolescence, combined with a median course between French laxity and English strictness, will conduce to virile character and manhood, and love and respect for parents.

Happy is the man for whom time has not rung down the curtain of oblivion on the scenes of youth; for only in this state of mental attunement is he able to retain the boy’s point of view which is an indispensable requisite to chumship and comradeship with his son. A delightful state of intimacy and confidence with his son makes it possible for the father to guide his conduct by suggestion and counsel which carry a weight and potency unattainable under other conditions; and that counsel is most productive of results, which is positive—not negative—for the reason that it is founded on sound psychology. The evils of the repressive method of training find their antithesis in the happy results of the suggestive method which is constructive in principle. Suggestion is informative, optimistic, and inspirational, and finds quick lodgment in the inquiring and acquisitive mind. As negative commands are unwelcome because they produce mental hostility and will combat, so constructive suggestions are welcomed because of their friendly helpfulness.

Witness how enthusiastically a group of boys will accept the suggestion of an adult who proposes a new game, sport, manual activity, or work along the lines of social or civil service! A patrol of Boy Scouts, under the suggestion of their Master, provided food, fuel, and clothing for three destitute families during a winter of unusual severity, until the heads of these families had recovered from sickness and resumed their places as breadwinners. The intensity of their boyish enthusiasm for this work of charity drove from their minds all thought of the peccadillos which, to a greater or lesser degree, occupy the minds of idle youths. The idle brain is still the devil’s workshop.

The boy hails as a friend and companion the adult who understands his needs and who points out to him the clean activities which he loves and for which he is blindly groping. No one is more “open to suggestion” than the boy.

One winter’s day a gentleman encountered a lot gang who had captured a stray cur, bound him to a post, and were bombarding him with snow balls and chunks of ice as an expression of their desire for mental and physical excitement. The yelps of pain which told that the missiles had found their mark were greeted with shouts of exultation. Instead of reproving them for their cruelty, he incited their curiosity by tactfully inquiring if they had a mascot. On receiving a negative answer, he suggested that every crowd of boys ought to have a mascot and then began to discuss the fine points of the cur—more or less hidden from the non-expert eye—and finally suggested that the dog would make an ideal mascot, provided the boys knew how to take proper care of an animal occupying such an exalted station. Spontaneous yells of assent elected the dog to this honor and then the crowd, at the suggestion of the adult, spent the remainder of the day bringing him food and building a kennel which was copiously furnished with discarded bed coverings, after which, on their own initiative, they combed his hair and manicured his claws until he presented the well-groomed appearance of a lady of fashion. Many subsequent hours were spent in earning pennies with which they purchased a license and a collar on which was a plate engraved with the name “Rags” which had been unanimously conferred on him. The quarrels and disputes which arose over their respective rights to the possession of the dog were settled, at the suggestion of this same gentleman, by the organization of the gang into a club which elected officers and adopted by-laws, the president of which awarded the custody of the dog daily in turn to each member—beginning with himself. The necessity for more pets to occupy their attention resulted in the addition of a rabbit, two chickens, a guinea pig and a goat to their embryonic menagerie. Their next step was the giving of a “show” (admission one cent) in which the menagerie was the chief attraction, closely followed in popular favor by “Rags” doing tricks which the gang had taught him. Then they added more fowls to their collection which proved to be the forerunner of a successful poultry yard from which they made a profit by selling eggs and chickens.

A boy in an Iowa city, rejoicing in a superior physique but lacking the brains to use it wisely, had bullied, beaten, and terrorized the smaller boys of his acquaintance in spite of parental commands, reproof, and repeated chastisements. A continuation of his brutality finally landed him in the Juvenile Court, the judge of which was sufficiently versed in boy-psychology to attempt the experiment of making him a “boy-policeman” decorated with a tin star, authorizing him to preserve order among the boys of his neighborhood and especially charging him with the duty of protecting the smaller boys from the assaults of the larger. From that time forward, the bully was prepared to “punch the head off’n any feller wot licked a kid.” It is needless to say that there were no more assaults on small boys in that locality. Suggestion had diverted the exercise of his physical prowess from unlawful into lawful channels.

James ——, age 15, was changed from a prodigal to a thrifty boy through a plan for saving suggested and encouraged by his father who opened a bank account in his son’s name and offered to add a dollar for every dollar earned by his son. It proved to be a tremendous incentive to industry as well as to thrift.

The foregoing incidents furnish typical illustrations of the application of the suggestive method of training as distinguished from the repressive method; and it may be applied either to the individual or to the group with equally good results. The mental and physical energy ordinarily expended in various forms of lawlessness can be directed, unconsciously, into fields of economic and ethical value by the application of suitable suggestions.

Negation arouses the spirit of combat; and obedience under these conditions tends to inspire a feeling of surrender and defeat whose influence on character is obviously prejudicial.

A father once said, “I have never commanded my son not to do a thing. Instead, I have suggested that I would prefer him to do the other.” In this way, conflict of wills was avoided and the youth was required to make a voluntary choice between two courses in which the father’s preference invariably turned the balance in the desired direction. On one such occasion the boy replied, “Dad, I wish you would tell me I cannot do it and then I would go and do it to show you I can; but when you tell me that it would hurt you, I just can’t do it.”

The prohibition of a proposed action arouses all the resentment of thwarted desire and unfulfilled attainment. Such consequences may be avoided by the suggestion of better plans, methods, or acts, concurrent with the reasons why such change is desirable or necessary. The substitution of other activities or another course of conduct fills the void made by denial and satisfies his psychological requirement of being kept busy. Every normal boy is a safety-valveless steam boiler, stored full of dynamic energy which expends itself in constant action—usually physical—and failure to provide for the utilization and consumption of this energy will result in an explosion in some form of delinquency.

Cheerful, helpful, informative, intelligent, and inspirational suggestion is the boy’s greatest need and he will accept it willingly from a father who is joined to him by ties of sympathetic comradeship which are long enough to encompass his needs within their bonds.

If a father’s influence is to count for much, he should be both a chum and a big brother to his son.

CHAPTER IX
THE HABIT OF FALSEHOOD

THE continued reiteration of a fantasy produces an impression on the brain cells akin to the impression produced by a fact. The fantasy of imagination roams without check or hindrance by childhood until it reaches a land which is believed to be reality. The borderland between fiction and fact is not always clearly defined and the immature mind of youth generally fails to distinguish the line where the one ends and the other begins. Fantasy is as real to childhood as reality.

Who cannot recall in his own childhood an event which illustrates the point? I was once the happy owner of a snare drum which filled a large place in my life. But I repeatedly and proudly claimed the ownership of two drums—a bass as well as a snare drum. My claim to the possession of a bass drum was founded on the discovery of a board in the wall of the barn, which, when struck with the fist, gave forth a sound which my childish fancy decided could be only the boom of a bass drum. While a companion beat this sounding board with his fist, I played the snare drum in unison. I never realized that I was lying when I said I owned two drums. I was not. The sounding board was as real a drum to the mind of my childhood as it is unreal to the mind of my maturity.

A little lad rushed into his mother’s room exclaiming, “Mamma, a hundred big Indians tried to catch me. I shot ’em. I killed two or free.” He was arrayed in an Indian suit, with a toy bow and arrows. The back yard was the battle field which his imagination filled with blood-thirsty warriors seeking his scalp. His vivid imagination was running riot. It made every bush and tree an aboriginal. Shooting an arrow into a bush he shouted, “I gotcha, you bad Indian! I killed ye dead!” until his victory was complete and he ran to share his conquest with his mother.

Painters, while at work on a residence, climbed up and down a tall ladder extending to the roof. When the owner of the house returned home from business he was met by his five-year-old son who, pointing to the ladder, said proudly, “Papa, I climbed to the top of that ladder today.” It was physically impossible for a child of such tender years to accomplish this feat. His statement was not true but the child had not lied. With intense admiration he had watched the painters climb the ladder until in boyish fancy he himself was playing this heroic and dangerous rôle. All day long he had marveled at the feat in which he pictured himself placing the principal part, until his obsession became a conviction. The actual facts photographed themselves in a blur on the poor film of his brain, already impressed with the clear-cut picture of his imagination, until the composite result was a mental image in which fancy predominated. If a lie is the voluntary and conscious perversion of the truth, he did not lie. An untruth is a misstatement of fact due to ignorance or misconception. He was not conscious of a misstatement of fact because he stated the facts as his mental processes recalled them. His inability to distinguish between the real and the unreal resulted in an error for which he was not morally responsible. He related the incident as a fact because his brain, powerfully impressed by the fancy, believed it to be a fact; therefore the boy told it as a fact.

Fancy is a fairy, that can hear,
Ever, the melody of nature’s voice,
And see all lovely visions that she will.

—Frances S. Osgood.

When his mental development advances to a stage where he can differentiate clearly between fact and fancy; when the maturity of his mind enables him to draw clearer distinction between the real and the unreal, when, in a word, imagination is superseded by reason, then such errors will be impossible. His mistake was mental—not moral. Therefore, he was not culpable. I knew a loving mother who washed out her child’s mouth with soap as punishment for a similar “lie.” No graver injustice can be perpetrated by a parent than punishment for such an alleged offense. It should be recognized and accepted as an incident which is natural to mental immaturity. The thought is expressed by Dr. G. Stanley Hall in these words: “Sometimes their fancy is almost a visualization and develops a kind of mythopic faculty which spins clever yarns and suggests a sense, quite as pregnant as Froschmer asserts of all mental activity and of all universe itself, that all their life is imagination.” But I hear a mother, holding up her hands in horror, exclaiming, “I cannot let my child prevaricate! I must punish him or the habit will become fixed.”

Her solicitude for the child’s moral welfare is as commendable as it is necessary and her desire to prevent such incidents from becoming a habit is praiseworthy. Her methods, only, are wrong. Instead of punishment the child is entitled to instruction which will develop his mentality until he can distinguish between fact and fancy. With growth in mental stature comes coördination of ideas and a clearer discernment of the line of demarcation between the real and the unreal, and when the child becomes mentally able to distinguish between the two, such misstatements of fact will be at an end. Falsehood in young children has been characterized by Dr. Hall as “a new mental combination independent of experience.”

In rare cases this mental fog continues, with diminishing intensity, through maturity. Everyone knows of the man who told a story so often that he himself finally believed it. It chiefly manifests itself in adults in exaggeration of the qualities, abilities, or prowess of the teller. Witness the fisherman of your acquaintance whose account of the weight and size of his biggest fish grows with each succeeding recital. He does not mean to lie. He thinks he is telling the truth. In the beginning he justified his exaggeration of weight and size by doubting the accuracy of the scale and rule by which he weighed and measured the fish. The continued repetition of his yarn produced an impression on his brain closely resembling actuality. He deceived himself. Pride in his piscatorial prowess made deception easy. His error was partly mental, partly moral, the latter being in direct ratio to the clarity of his mental processes. It is a tremendous tribute to the mental stability and moral discernment of a fisherman to be able to refrain, in after years, from overstating the weight of his biggest fish.

We now consider another phase of misstatement of fact—the falsehood of the older boy. At the age of six or seven the mental fog begins to clear. He sees things in a truer, brighter light. The relationship of facts to each other becomes more and more cognizable. His moral faculties are emerging from a chaos of mental impressions. This age, approximately, marks the birth of moral consciousness. His conception of right and wrong takes form and begins its process of development. At this period he begins to distinguish between fact and fancy and as his mental processes become clarified by increasing maturity, so in a corresponding degree his confusion of the unreal with the real disappears. Mentality begins to dominate imagination.

What of the boy, under these conditions, who tells a lie? An inquiry into the motives which prompt his falsehoods may clarify the problem and afford a solution. The study of a large number of untruthful boys has developed the fact that their motives for mendacity are few and are usually comprehended under one class—the desire to escape punishment for an offense. Other and lesser incentives to lying are envy, boasting, revenge, jealousy, and imitation, but none of these is as potent as the fear of a reprimand, a scolding, or corporal punishment.

A scolding and a whipping are both painful—one in mind, the other in body. It is natural for one to seek to avoid pain and suffering. It is equally certain that punishment must inevitably follow the violation of law—whether parental law, physical law, or the law of the land. Loading the stomach with indigestible food brings its own punishment in the disturbance of the bodily functions. The commission of a felony necessitates a term of imprisonment after conviction; and with equal certainty punishment should follow the violation of parental law. But if that punishment is unnecessarily severe or if it violates the boy’s sense of fairness and justice, he will seek to avoid it by the most effective weapon of defense at hand—falsehood. Nothing is more conducive to deceit than frequent scoldings or floggings for trivial offenses, and the elimination of corporal and unduly severe mental punishments will remove the chief incentive to falsehood.

The remedy for the falsehoods which have their origin in the lesser provocatives referred to above is moral suasion, a hackneyed phrase often used and little understood. Literally it implies the persuasive influence of moral teaching. In its broader aspect and as a cure for lying, it comprehends the culture of moral consciousness; training of the will; fixation of the habit of obedience; teaching the evil results which always follow falsehood; the development of mentality (without which there can be no comprehension of moral concepts); and the influence of parental example in the exact and scrupulous adherence to truth. All these combined produce the composite result called moral suasion, which is generally effective.

CHAPTER X
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

AMONG the corrective measures used in child-training since time immemorial, corporal punishment occupies a large and conspicuous place. While such punishment is, at present, on the decline, still it is sufficiently widespread and frequent in its application to warrant a discussion of its effectiveness in accomplishng the ends desired, as well as a word concerning its moral effect on the child.

The infliction of corporal punishment implies the inability of the parent to govern the child without it. It must be predicated on the belief of the parent in its superior merits, which causes him to submerge its humanitarian aspects beneath its supposedly utilitarian effectiveness, or because he is unacquainted with other methods. It would be difficult to conceive a parent who would beat a child from personal choice when there were other corrective methods at hand which he believed to be of equal efficiency.

The author recalls a man of high standing in the financial world—successful in business, but cold, stern, austere and puritanical in his personal code, who thrashed his son, from his tenth to his fifteenth year, frequently as often as once a week. Then the boy ran away from home to escape the tyranny and is now a wanderer over the earth, his heart filled with bitter hatred toward his father, while the latter deems himself a much abused parent and his son an ungrateful and wayward boy. At no time during the many hundred beatings which he administered did it occur to him that bodily punishment was not a salutary corrective; he failed to realize the futility of a means which did not accomplish the desired results. Had an analogous problem arisen in his business, he would quickly have discarded any plan which so thoroughly demonstrated its uselessness. This man had a profound and earnest desire to rear his son to perfect manhood. He adopted the method which seemed to him best designed to accomplish that result. Today he is a broken-hearted man grieving over his lost son. Again we hark back to the wayward parent. “Fathers, provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged.” Col. 3:21.

The average child does not rebel against authority but only against authority which he thinks is unjustly or harshly exercised. He invariably revolts against corporal punishment because he believes any degree of it to be excessive. From the boy’s point of view he is a Lilliputian whom the Gargantuan parent abuses because of greater brute strength. A fourteen-year-old boy who was being beaten by his father for failure to perform some chore shouted in his face, “You wouldn’t dare do that if I was as big as you.” And the boy spoke the truth. The father who is addicted to the corporal form of punishment is deterred, when his son approaches maturity, as much by fear of being vanquished in the contest as by a realization of its futility as a corrective of the later adolescent.

This form of punishment is commonly adopted to “break the will” of the disobedient and rebellious boy. If breaking the will of the boy means making it conform to that of the physically stronger father, the attempt is as ineffective as it is brutal, for acquiescence under such circumstances never is evidence of mental consent. Servile subjection of will is out of harmony with that growth of will-power which is necessary to the ideal development of the adolescent.

Persistent, unjust, or excessive punishments, either of body or mind, furnish a powerful incentive for the boy to invoke his chief means of defense against superior force—evasion and prevarication. Such conduct is guaranteed to produce a youthful Munchausen.

What are a boy’s means of defense against a beating which he regards, either rightly or wrongly, as excessive or brutal? He has only two—flight and falsehood. He knows that he is incapable of matching physical strength with his parent. This knowledge, combined with whatever love for the parent has not been extinguished, prevents a contest of strength which the child realizes would be futile. Flight is frequently out of the question because of the boy’s dependency and his inability to earn his own living. His last means of defense is falsehood, the use of which he justifies as his only method of escape from unwarranted or excessive punishment. Fully conscious of the wrong of lying he considers it the lesser of the two evils.

Similar in its effect is the nagging of children, in which mothers are more prone to indulge than fathers. Exhibitions of constant scolding, faultfinding, and querulous temper, interspersed with boxing of ears, smacking of cheeks, and slapping of hands, all tend to thwart the child’s mental and moral growth and contribute to the making of a wayward son. Such punishment is largely mental but none the less reprehensible because it lacks the element of physical pain. To slap a child’s hand as a correctional measure, with the sharp word of reproof which accompanies it, gives the child a mental instead of a physical shock; a slap of the same degree given in a playful mood will cause him to laugh. When a boy, especially in the adolescent period, begins to complain of the injustice of constant nagging, scolding, and corporal punishment, it is a danger signal which should cause the parent to stop, look, and listen. Such conduct on the part of the parent alienates the love and sympathy of the child, conduces to lying, secretiveness and evasion, and is productive of truancy and the development of the wanderlust. Its psychological effect on the parent is the loss of self-respect which is the inevitable accompaniment of punitive injustice.

The punitive theory of the correction of youthful offenses is archaic and should be relegated to the Paleolithic era from whence it sprang. To mete out punishment as such is vengeance pure and simple; an eye-for-an-eye-and-a-tooth-for-a-tooth policy which has no place in modern child-culture.

With our present-day scientific knowledge of the boy, as distinguished from our personal knowledge of him in the past, we recognize the trend of tendencies and understand the portent of symptoms which formerly were either unnoticed or disregarded. We have brought minute investigation, analysis, and cold logic into the solution of his problems over which we were wont to blunder. We have made no greater blunders in the past than those we have committed in connection with the corrective measures which it has been the custom of certain parents to employ. The necessity for physical punishment has been superseded by persuasive methods based on a more accurate understanding of the boy’s mental and moral processes and his impulses for good and bad.

Love, sympathy, and justice beget loyalty where fear fails. Moral suasion, mental development, the cultivation of will-power, the appeal to reason, the deprivation of liberties and privileges, rewards for merit, the exhibition of love, insight and sympathy, the use of tact and the honor system, all are effective substitutes for physical chastisement.

The preponderating weight of authority among sociologists and penologists supports the view that the attitude of the parent toward his filial offender and of the state toward the adult misdemeanant should be on the one hand formatory and on the other reformatory—but never punitory.

The desire to avoid punishment which the prospective recipient regards as unjust, whether rightly or wrongly does not matter, results in the concoction of many ingenious stories and schemes. Again the author draws on his own boyhood experience for an illustration. At the age of nine I was threatened by my mother with a severe switching for an offense the nature of which has long since been forgotten. The timely arrival of callers postponed the dreaded event and afforded me ample time for reflection. The anticipatory torture which I suffered during the hour preceding their departure was greater punishment than the actuality.

My mental processes during that hour were these: “I didn’t do anything very bad. I don’t deserve a whipping for it. I am sorry for what I have done and won’t do it again. It’s unfair to whip me for such a little thing. How can I escape this unjust licking?” At last, after long and labored mental effort, I evolved a scheme which to my youthful mind seemed the last word in ingenuity and effectiveness; it would appeal to her pity and give her an object lesson she would never forget. My plan was to obtain some oatmeal from the pantry, chew it until my mouth was filled with froth and saliva and at the first blow of punishment I would fall to the floor in simulation of unconsciousness, frothing at the mouth.

These alarming physical symptoms were designed to touch the wellsprings of pity in my mother’s heart and I would thus escape this threatened chastisement, as well as future ones. At last the callers departed and the hour of my doom arrived. She cut two switches from a peach tree and entered the spareroom—that chamber of horrors—and I followed reluctantly with halting steps.

When the first blow fell, my instinctive and unconscious activity in endeavoring to avoid it caused it to strike my ear instead of my back at which it was aimed. “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.” The lusty yell of pain which followed the contact of the switch with my ear caused me to eject the oatmeal; and with succeeding yells vanished all recollection of my carefully laid plans for pseudo-fainting.

Boys frequently show great power of invention in minimizing or evading punishment about to be inflicted. One boy pads the seat of his trousers to mitigate the ordeal, where the anticipated weapon is the slipper; another puts on three undershirts where the customary instrument of torture is the switch or rod. Still another, suffering the indignity of being compelled to cut his own switches, has been known to exceed his instructions and cut the castigatory branch half way through in many places.

The spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child policy has lost its significance in these latter days. The rod is the emblem of parental ignorance and incapacity. To beat a defenseless child is proof of lack of ability to govern it through moral forces. It is a humiliating admission that one is not qualified for his job as parent. The confirmed user of the rod is either the parent whose neglect of training or wrong methods of training have already produced delinquency in his offspring, or the parent who believes that a liberal application of the birch will atone for his ignorance on the subject of boy-training. To all other parents the resort to the rod is as unnecessary as it is abhorrent.

The final question remains: Should the rod ever be used, and, if so, under what circumstances? When lack of training or poor training has produced delinquency in the boy and all other corrective measures have failed—as they usually will fail when applied too late—then corporal punishment, if not carried to the degree of brutality, may be attempted as a last resort before confinement in the reform school or house of detention.

I have profound pity for the fathers who expend less gray matter in the training of their sons than they do in the training of their hunting dogs. Give each the same thoughtful, intelligent, patient training and the boy will surpass the dog in docility, obedience, and understanding. With better knowledge of the boy and his psychology, and with better trained parents, the necessity for the use of the rod has disappeared.

“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Prov. 22:6.

CHAPTER XI
THE CIGARETTE HABIT

THE widespread use of tobacco has given rise to an equally wide discussion as to its effects on the human organism. Medical men are divided into hostile camps by their diversity of opinion as to the effects of nicotine on the adult. The subject has engaged the attention of reformers, educators, physical directors, scientists and physicians for many generations. Without attempting an exhaustive discussion of the subject, the author quotes the following from Dr. Clouston, an eminent English physician, as to the effect of tobacco upon the adult male:

“The use of tobacco has become the rule rather than the exception among the grown men of Europe and America and of some parts of Asia. If its use is restricted to full-grown men, if only good tobacco is used, not of too great strength, and if it is not used to excess, then there are no scientific proofs that it has any injurious effects, if there is no idiosyncrasy against it. Speaking generally, it exercises a soothing influence when the nervous system is in any way irritable. It tends to calm and continuous thinking, and in many men promotes the digestion of food. To those good results there are, however, exceptions. It sometimes sets up a very strong desire for its excessive use; this often passing into a morbid craving which leads to excess and hurt. Used in such excessive quantity tobacco acts injuriously on the heart, weakens digestion, and causes congestion of the throat as well as hindering mental action. In many people its use tends towards a desire for alcohol as well. I have repeatedly seen persons of a nervous temperament where the two excesses in tobacco and alcohol were linked together. Tobacco, properly used, may, in some cases, undoubtedly be made a mental hygienic.”

Notwithstanding the insufficient scientific data available as to the results of nicotine on mature men, there is a strong belief on the part of numerous physicians and others that its effect is deleterious. There is no diversity of opinion, however, as to the injury wrought by nicotine on the morals, mind, and body of the adolescent boy. Authorities who have given the subject exhaustive investigation and careful thought are unanimous in their conclusions that the use of tobacco in any form before maturity is injurious. Physical deterioration as a result of tobacco and especially of cigarettes has been conclusively demonstrated by measurements and tests of large numbers of young men in colleges, which show beyond question that physical growth is stunted; lung capacity, without which an athlete cannot achieve distinction, is lessened; the nervous system is irritated and the heart action is depressed. The lungs are rendered susceptible to pulmonary and tubercular infection and the mental development of the boy receives a serious check. Such physical and mental influences cannot fail in producing moral defects as well.

Dr. George L. Meylan of Columbia University has compiled some interesting data from his observations of a large number of college students covering the three and one-half or four years of their undergraduate life at age approximately of seventeen to twenty at entrance and twenty-one to twenty-four at graduation. The following instructive table prepared by him shows the age when smokers acquired the habit:

Age | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21
Number | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 11 | 11 | 18 | 30 | 23 | 16 | 0 | 1

It will be observed that the largest number of boys contracted the habit at age seventeen, with ages sixteen and eighteen next in point of numbers. Few boys of the one hundred and fifteen observed in the above table began the habit before the fourteenth year, the age near which adolescence begins. Dr. Meylan reached the following conclusions based on many years of medical examination of boys and young men and his experience in teaching hygiene:

“1. All scientists are agreed that the use of tobacco by adolescents is injurious; parents, teachers, and physicians should strive earnestly to warn youths against its use.

“2. There is no scientific evidence that the moderate use of tobacco by healthy mature men produces any beneficial or injurious physical effects that can be measured.

“3. There is an abundance of evidence that tobacco produces injurious effects on (a) certain individuals suffering from various nervous affections; (b) persons with an idiosyncrasy against tobacco; (c) all persons who use it excessively.

“4. It has been shown conclusively in this study and also by Mr. Clarke that the use of tobacco by college students is closely associated with idleness, lack of ambition, lack of application and low scholarship.”

Dr. Jay W. Seaver of Yale University has expressed the following opinion as the result of his examination of thousands of university students:

“The effect of nicotine on the growth is very measurable, and the following figures are presented as a fairly satisfactory demonstration of the extent of the interference with growth that may be expected in boys from sixteen to twenty-five years of age, when they are believed to have reached full maturity. For purposes of comparison the men composing a class in Yale have been divided into three groups. The first is made up of those who do not use tobacco in any form; the second consists of those who have used tobacco for at least a year of the college course; the third group includes the irregular users. A compilation of the anthropometric data on this basis shows that during the period of undergraduate life, which is essentially three and a half years, the first group grows in weight 10.4 per cent. more than the second, and 6.6 per cent. more than the third; in girth of chest the first group grows 26.7 per cent. more than the second, and 23 per cent, more than the third; in capacity of lungs the first group gains 77.5 per cent. more than the second, and 49.5 per cent. more than the third.”

The figures quoted above furnish a powerful and convincing argument against the use of tobacco in any form by the person who has not attained maturity. The cigarette is generally considered the most pernicious form in which tobacco can be used and this is the form in which boys generally begin its use. Both before and after puberty the boy is imitative of his elders. “The boy apes the man” and the desire to appear “manly” in the eyes of his companions is one of the strongest incentives to acquire the habit. As smoking is common among men, he seeks to acquire this evidence of masculinity by adopting its semblance. It possesses an insidious attraction in its daintiness and apparent harmlessness. The phenomenon of combustion, the ascending ribbon of smoke which vanishes to nothingness, the cohesiveness of the ash, the experiment of blowing smoke rings in the air and the curiosity to learn the effect of smoking on the individual, all are powerful incitements to the inquisitive mind of a boy. The cigarette habit is usually contracted during the period of adolescence, or even earlier, when the organs, glands, tissues, and muscles of his body are in a formative stage of development. It requires no corroboration from medical experts to convince the man of average intelligence that such a powerful narcotic as nicotine cannot be beneficial to growth under these conditions. Common sense as well as expert opinion join in condemning the nicotine drug habit of children. You will find nicotine classified in pharmacopœias as a drug whose effects are somewhat similar to those of opium and morphine. From 3 to 8 per cent. of tobacco is composed of nicotine, of which 50 to 60 per cent. is inhaled in smoking, the remainder being consumed in combustion.

The use of tobacco in the cigar or the pipe is less objectionable than in the cigarette for many reasons. It is the almost universal custom of those addicted to the cigarette to inhale the smoke, which is the exception with the pipe and cigar smoker. But nicotine is not the only poison generated in the cigarette even where tobacco is not combined with opium or other drugs used to contribute to its flavor and aroma; the combustion of tobacco with the rice paper in which it is rolled makes a compound which is neither tobacco smoke nor paper smoke, but an alkaloid known as acrolein, “the name of which is known to all scientists and the smell of which is known to everyone.” Another injurious product of cigarette combustion is carbonic oxide. These two products of the cigarette are far more virulent than tobacco smoke. They enter the blood through the mucous membranes of the mouth, throat, bronchial tubes, and lungs and act as powerful depressives on the heart. Cigarette poisoning manifests itself in lung and throat irritation, restlessness, nervousness, petulance, inability to concentrate thought, and depression of the nervous system.

The effect is not only physical but moral. The keen sense of discrimination between right and wrong is blunted and the finer moral conceptions become obtused. The highest scholarship in our colleges and universities is attained by men who are non-smokers. The famous college athletes have a smaller proportion of smokers than those who have not achieved distinction in athletics. If these facts are true of college men approaching maturity, they will be still more apparent in younger boys. Unfortunately, there has been no scientific investigation along these lines among boys in our secondary schools. But the head of one of our leading preparatory schools is authority for the statement that tobacco is the bane of his school and that more boys break down in health and are sent home from its influence than from any other. A recognition of the evil results of cigarette smoking by minors is crystallized in the enactment of laws in more than a dozen states against selling cigarettes to minors, as well as making it an offense for adolescents under specified ages to smoke cigarettes on the streets.

The records of juvenile and criminal courts disclose the fact that the cigarette fiends furnish 90 per cent. of their young criminals. Dr. George F. Butler of Chicago gives this testimony as to the moral weakening of the boy from the cigarette habit: “In my work some years ago at the Chicago police stations and later as county physician in the detention hospital I found that almost without exception the young criminal, dement or delinquent, was a cigarette fiend. I am forced to believe that this habit has largely to do with these mental and moral infirmities.”

The boy at the rear end of a lighted cigarette has little chance of obtaining a position from a business man. Even the telltale yellowish discoloration of the fingers and the cigarette stench of his breath give sufficient warning for the employer to inform the applicant that he is not wanted. It takes a strong body and a clear mind to succeed in competitive business. The boy handicapped in the race of life by the cigarette habit is in the same condition as the sprinter who is hopelessly handicapped in a hundred-yard dash; neither has any chance of winning. John V. Farwell, the Chicago merchant, is quoted as saying: “I would as lief employ a boy who steals sheep as one who smokes cigarettes. One is no more to be trusted than the other.” To the same effect is this warning of a well-known English physician: “A boy who early smokes is rarely known to make a man of much energy and character and he generally lacks physical and mental as well as moral energy.”

This subject is big with importance for the boy’s future. It is one of the great boy-problems and it should be discussed frankly by father and son before puberty, soon after which period so many boys acquire the habit. It may be difficult for the father, with a cigar in his mouth, to persuade his son that tobacco is injurious, but whether the father is a smoker or not, a thorough discussion of the subject in all its aspects is sure to prove beneficial. As the boy at this age is in the hero-worship period and as his heroes in early adolescence are always athletes, an appeal to his innate longing to attain physical perfection and athletic distinction will be found more potent than the appeal for mental or moral perfection, although the latter should not be neglected. The additional grounds of abstinence from motives of personal purity and self-respect have their effect, although the argument that he should not needlessly cause annoyance or discomfort to others has little weight with a boy prior to the reflective period. If such warning is given to the boy before he contracts the habit it will usually prove effective. Some parents conclude their instruction with the statement that the son, on attaining his physical maturity at approximately twenty-four years of age—when the danger of nicotine poisoning on the growing boy has passed—may then make his own decision as to whether he will or will not smoke.

In conclusion a word of suggestion is offered as to the means which should be employed with boys who have already contracted the habit. Dr. H. Krebs of Chicago, Secretary of the Anti-Cigarette League, has used in his practice a simple remedy for the cigarette habit which is reputed to be of great effectiveness. Its base is the chemical reaction of a weak solution of silver nitrate with nicotine, which creates an intensely disagreeable taste in the mouth. After the smoker has rinsed his mouth with this solution and draws in a whiff of cigarette smoke, the chemical effect of the nicotine in combination with the solution produces such a nauseating taste that further smoking for that day is impossible. The treatment should be protracted until desire has waned and will-power has become reëstablished.

CHAPTER XII
BOY GANGS

BOYS are as gregarious as sheep. Their desire to herd together and have a leader is one of the requisites of play, a most important factor in their educational development. The call of the wild to you is not half so loud as the call of the lot to your boy. It is as natural for boys to run in gangs as it is for minnows to run in schools; youth calls to youth. There they find others possessing the same viewpoint, tastes, desires, ambitions, and occupations as their own. To the active boy the gang is a democracy made up of those of his own kind in which he is a free citizen without paternal or maternal restraint. In his new world there is no querulous nor uncomprehending adult to shout repressive commands directed at conduct or action. All is as wild and free as his own wild nature.

There are two classes of organization to which boys belong—those formed by themselves without supervision; and those formed and supervised by adults for them. In the former class are the street and alley gangs, the “Dirty Dozen,” the “Noisy Nine,” the “Pirates’ Crew,” the scrub baseball team, the “Swipers” (organized for petty depredations), the lot loafers, school fraternities, school “crowds,” “bunches” or cliques, and other loose organizations whose only bond of cohesion is some common interest. The latter class comprises boys’ clubs; Boy Scout patrols; Sunday-school classes; nature-study clubs; baseball, football, and basketball teams under the direction of a coach; and numerous other boy organizations having a common interest, which are controlled by an adult.

The gang spirit is strongest between the tenth and fifteenth years and it is at this period that boys spontaneously form themselves into a gang. The leader of the gang is the member who is best equipped for the position by reason of age, courage, physical prowess, and inherent qualities of leadership and the selection is never made by formal vote but by tacit recognition of the leader’s superiority and by willing obedience to his commands.

A place of meeting or “hang out” is essential to every gang. It may be a room behind a shop, an attic, a stable loft, a dugout, or a shack built of old boards, scrap tin, and paper. Such shelter supplies the place for their meetings, houses their communal property, and satisfies their atavistic desire for cover, privacy, and security. They exhibit a strong sense of proprietorship in such a retreat. It is all their own and is guarded from intrusion by other boys with all the physical force necessary to accomplish this result.

The morale of an unsupervised gang (just as of a mob) is never so high as the individual morale of its constituents—while in the supervised gang it is higher. The gang will steal milk bottles from a back door-step, loot a fruit stand, or smash a window, when no individual in it would commit the same acts.

The love of excitement and adventure and the desire to be “doing something”—including the joy of being chased by the police without capture—are the motives which prompted a certain gang to grease street car rails and to derail cars by placing spikes in the switches; none of which depredations would have been committed had the interest of the members been directed to legitimate activities and sports which would occupy their leisure time and satisfy their need of physical activity and mental occupation. Such offenses are unnatural manifestations of natural tendencies—exuberance run wild, because unrestrained. The contest of matching wits with the police is thrilling in its possibilities for adventure. Hours of time are occupied in planning depredations and much ingenuity is afterwards shown in evading detection and capture. Their common danger is the bond which knits them together. They have a code of honor—exhibited principally in their dealings with one another—the first and chief rule of which is that no member shall “snitch” on any other member of the gang. And woe betide the gangster who violates this cardinal principle! He may confess as to himself, but under no circumstances may he include the others, under the certain penalty of a beating—or worse still, in the eyes of the boy—ostracism by the gang. Psychologically considered, this trait is a manifestation of loyalty gone wrong. It is as unwise as it is useless to attempt to stamp it out, when it can and should be directed into its proper channel of manifestation in which it becomes one of the highly prized virtues.

The great mass of male offenders haled to our juvenile courts are members of uncontrolled gangs and only rarely is there seen a member of a controlled gang. Street and alley gangs are the training schools for delinquent boys and from them is graduated the juvenile criminal. The arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of such offenders will not work their reformation. It can be accomplished only through the parent on whom the duty naturally devolves, or, in the event of parental default, through the Judge of the Juvenile Court, by patiently pointing out the evil results of such lawlessness to themselves as well as to others, by the stimulation of their pride and honor, and most of all through diverting the gang’s activities, by parent or probation officer, to lawful channels such as the school, office, workshop, athletic field, and supervised society.

Here may be seen the beneficent results flowing from the application of positive suggestions for employments which will supersede those of harmful import. The inhibition of a lawless activity without the substitution of a lawful one to fill the void thus created has always proven resultless. The gang spirit is inherent in boy-nature and can never be suppressed. No one who understands the boy would attempt to suppress it. Objection should not be made that your boy belongs to a gang—and he does belong to one of some sort—but only to the kind of gang with which he is associated. It is your concern whether he belongs to a Boy Scout gang or a Dirty Dozen gang. The good gang should be encouraged; it is good because it is supervised; and the bad gang should be converted into a good one by adult direction. The recognition of the psychologic necessity for gangdom has changed the former prohibition against gang association to the encouragement of the boy to join a clean crowd engaged in clean activities. This innate tendency to gangdom furnishes the cue for his reclamation. Supervised gangs are the tongs by which many boys have been pulled from the fires of delinquency. They furnish the means for his reformation as well as for his formation. It is an everlasting stigma on the parent that his son needs reformation. If the boy’s formation has been properly nurtured there will be no need for his reformation. The supervised gang forms the normal boy and reforms the delinquent boy, while the unsupervised gang unforms both.

Recognizing this intuitive tendency of boys to organize and maintain gangs, in whatever multifarious forms it may take, and the pernicious influence of unguided and unrestrained organizations on his moral and physical life, it is incumbent on parents and those standing in loco parentis to supply him with an organization which will satisfy the gang spirit in his nature. A failure in this regard will drive the boy to association with the unsupervised gang which is frequently the school for dishonesty, untruthfulness, bullying, profanity, unclean speech, disregard of the personal and property rights of others, cigarette smoking, and social impurity. The unclean gang exerts a powerful pull toward criminality, while the clean gang stands as a barrier between the boy and delinquency.

Your boy is a natural gangster, therefore encourage him to join a clean gang.

CHAPTER XIII
THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE

WHAT magic there is in the name of Scout! It calls up before the mind’s eye the vision of a buckskin-clad pioneer, inured to the hardships of the trail and endowed with the virtues of strength, fortitude, clear thinking, and courage which boys admire so much; one whose everyday life is made up of a series of thrilling adventures and hairbreadth escapes. Is it to be wondered at that the hero-worshiping boy, still in the semi-savage state, should desire to emulate such a romantic figure in our national life?

The organization known as the Boy Scouts of America is a national movement, rather than an organization, whose primary object is character-building. It is non-sectarian and non-military. It furnishes the adolescent boy with facilities for the expression of his growing body, mind, and soul and inspires the virtues of patriotism, chivalry, honor, courtesy, loyalty, self-respect, faithfulness, cheerfulness, thoughtfulness, and obedience.

There are three classes of Scouts; the tenderfoot, the second-class Scout and the First-class Scout, advancement being made according to the proficiency shown by examination. Suitable badges awarded for each class are prized as great honors and furnish the incentive to further progress in Scoutcraft. The reader is referred to the official handbook of the organization for a detailed statement of the many subjects included in their curriculum. These subjects cover practically the entire range of an adolescent’s interests and activities apart from the home, the school, and the church.

Not the least important among the many requirements of the scout is the good turn or kindness which he must do for someone every day without financial reward. The performance of the daily good turn develops courtesy, gallantry and social consciousness and fixes in his mind a realization of the fact that he is one of the threads in the social fabric of humanity. The boy-training of today, whether parental or organizational, should emphasize the importance of service to others, and the boy in whom this altruistic idea is grounded will not give his parents great cause for worry. If this organization had no requirement other than the daily good turn, that fact alone would be sufficient excuse for its existence. These samples of good turns, taken from the records of a Scout troop, are as varied as the natures and opportunities of the boys themselves and afford an interesting study in adolescent psychology:

1. I helped a blind man ’cross the street.

2. A steam roller was passing and frightened a horse, I held the horse until the roller went by.

3. Fed a starving cat.

4. I gave a dime to a orfun asilam.

5. Picked up a broken bottle from the road so it wouldn’t cut a horse’s foot or an automobile tire.

6. Gave a lady my seat in a street car.

7. I helped my mother clean out the garret.

8. I gave a nickel to a poor lame hobo.

9. I loaned your chauffeur a dime when he was broke.

10. I picked up a girl’s slate in school when she dropped it and sharpened her pencil.

11. Helped an old lady with a lot of bundles get on a street car.

12. Put out a fire in the weeds in a lot.

13. Ran after a girl’s hat which blew off and brought it back to her.

14. A team hitched to an ice wagon was walking down the street and I climbed in the back way and stopped them and drove them to the police station. Just then the driver came running up for his team and cussed me for driving them off, when I was only doing him a good turn.

15. I found a borde in the street with a nail stickken up and I threw it in a vacunt lot and pushed the nail in the ground.

16. I uncanned a dog (i. e., removed can from dog’s tail).

17. I build a bird house in my back yard.

18. I licked a big boy for licking a little boy.

19. I run errands for my mother when I ot to have bin playin ball.

20. Took some pervisions to a pore fambly near the gas wurks.

21. Helped a boy with his arithmetic lessons.

22. Showed a man where Washington street was.

23. I stopped two kids from fighting.

24. When my mother was sick, I worked all day helping her on Sattiday.

25. I went and staid with a sick boy and cheered him up.

26. I found a dog which was lost and I ast Scotty who belonged to the dog and he sed he thot Mr. Edwards up the street, so I took the dog back to Mr. Edwards and he sed thank you and offured me a quarter and I sed Boy Scouts do not take tips.

27. I swore off smokin cigerets.

28. I turned in my wages to my mother.

29. I cleaned up the alley back of the house.

30. I helped a little girl pick up a bag of potatoes when the bag busted and made another kid quit laffing at her.

31. I went for a can of beer for Mrs. Schwartzberger.

It is evident that the last good turn was performed by a slum boy who had recently joined the troop.

It requires no student of psychology to recognize the different developments of moral concepts shown in these replies. Some betray the first signs of the dawning of moral consciousness, while others show a keen appreciation of altruistic ideals, the result of ennobling home influence and proper training.

The performance of the daily good turn develops the faculty for the formulation of ideals. A new relationship to duty is thus fixed and the boy’s moral nature is builded, slowly but surely, until one can visualize the completed character of the future. Of all this, the boy himself is wholly unconscious.

The boy knows little, if anything, of the principles or purposes of the Boy Scouts before he becomes a member. For that matter, the average parent has made no great effort to inform himself on the objects, scope and workings of the organization, as too frequently he assumes it to be a method devised for his son’s amusement, which will relieve the parent of the duty of personal supervision while the boy is so occupied. He regards it as a species of boy entertainment, wholly disassociated from its educational and ethical import.

The youth knows only two things about Boy Scouts, which he has learned from observation—that they wear uniforms and go on hikes. Both of these make a powerful appeal to his imagination and interest. The uniform and the parade satisfy the spectacular and dramatic needs of his nature and the hikes gratify his savage and atavistic tendencies which prompt him to seek the wilds and live temporarily as did his remote ancestor—the primeval man. He joins the organization to satisfy these primitive desires and thus effects a return to the simple life, which furnishes, to the city youth especially, an antidote for the injury wrought by our increasingly complex civilization and hurried methods of living.

He does not dream nor care that the fundamental purpose of the organization is character-building; indeed, if he were informed of this fact, his interest would probably wane. He dislikes character-building in the abstract, but is intensely interested in concrete scout activities which silently and inevitably produce character.

The system of teaching a boy ethics and morals by lecturing him or by feeding him with tracts which hold up to view the abstract beauties of morality has long since been thrown into the discard as archaic and useless. It is one of the relics of unscientific training—Puritanical, wasteful, inefficient. The keen discernment of the boy’s mind sees the dry bones of such methods. The boy is red-blooded and alive and wants live methods. Some of our forefathers truly believed they had found the secret of boy-training in the cultivation in him of a sense of self-abasement, personal unworthiness, and insignificance which they fostered by requiring the boy to sing hymns which likened him to a poor worm groveling in the dust. I have never yet met a boy who admitted his relationship to the worm—apart from his compulsory expression of the sentiment in song.

The Scout idea is to get back to elemental things by contact with the earth, the ozone of the open, the wild life of the forest and stream. These things not only make him a strong, healthy animal, but teach him the joy of living and how to live. They train the boy to “Be Prepared” for all the various contingencies of life and thus exemplify the motto of the organization.

Scout camps and hikes are a school for training the imagination in the legends of the woods and of animal life, which are inspired by the mystery of the camp fire and the glorious solitude of the starry night, faintly stirred by the wind in the tree tops. The gleam of wavering lights from the camp fire transforms the faces of the circling scouts into animated sprites. Ascending flames split the darkness into dancing shadows which people the surrounding woods with living myths and fables. A kaleidoscopic riot of color mounts upward, painting luminous images on the retina as it sketches in chromatic outline the heroes of fantasy. It is such things which inspire the poetry of life. Nothing furnishes such stimulus to the imagination as the camp fire. It calls into play all the mystery and mysticism of the human mind; it discovers the hidden wellsprings of romance, legend and adventure; it inspires the art of the story-teller as nothing else can do and furnishes a perfect stage setting for the dramatic tale which unobtrusively carries its own moral. It is here that the raconteur can weave his tale from the warp of adventure and the woof of romance until the resulting mantle of heroism fits every boyish auditor. Deeds of daylight loom large with valor against the background of night. The potent influence of such surroundings for driving home lasting impressions on the imaginative and sensitive mind of youth has never been equaled.

Around the nightly camp-fire “council” are recounted the events of the day; awards for merit are given; songs breathing the martial spirit which boys love so well are sung; the Scout Master’s story of heroism and adventure is heard with eager ears and is followed invariably by frank comments indicating the manner of its reception; finally a drowsy song like “My Old Kentucky Home,” reflecting the somnolent spirit of the lengthening hours, brings the “council” to a close; soon the soft tones of “taps” are heard droning from the bugle and, rolled in their blankets, the little tourists quickly journey to slumberland.

Scout associations foster esprit de corps and team work, as well as a recognition of relative rights and duties which is in the highest degree cultural. The appreciation of property rights is cultivated to such an extent that a scout will not willfully damage the property of another. Not the least beneficent influence exerted by the organization is its inculcation of obedience, discipline, loyalty, truthfulness, chivalry, courtesy, respect for women, helpfulness to others, patriotism, and manliness. These qualities are unconsciously and unobtrusively impressed on his plastic character during the formative age until they become a component part of it. A scout is taught that he is always “on honor,” and that his word is accepted unreservedly, as the truth. The youth feels more needs than the home, school, and church can supply—the need for companionship, play, sports, adventure, and romance. His gregarious and social instincts must be fed by association with those of his own age; his love of adventure and physical expression must be gratified by the clean activities of the forest, the stream, the ball field; his love of romance needs find expression in the extraordinary experiences of woodcraft, pathfinding and cave exploration; and his love of play must be satiated by rough sports, games, and athletics through which he attains his physical, mental, and ethical development. It is an application of Froebel’s epoch-making theory of training and developing boys by means of play. It is the utilization of his “wild period” by systematic direction and oversight for the upbuilding of character and manhood.

The Scout movement is playing a huge joke on the boy in supplying him, under the guise of fun, play, sport, and adventure with work, study, and developmental activities whose real import is the upbuilding of character, mind, and body; but this ulterior motive is never suspected by the boy until after these results have been accomplished. If the instinctive tendencies to companionship with those of his own age are not normally gratified by membership in a supervised gang they will find expression in his association with an unsupervised gang with the evil results which inevitably flow from such association. The Boy Scout organization is the ideal gang because it satisfies his natural desires for gangdom while it is silently and surely building both body and character.

“Of all present-day organizations for the improvement and happiness of normal boyhood,” Dr. G. S. Hall has written, “the institution of the Boy Scouts is built at once on the soundest psychology and the shrewdest insight into boy-nature. The Scout Patrol is simply a boy’s gang, systematized, overseen, affiliated with other like bodies, made efficient and interesting, as boys alone could never make it, and yet everywhere, from top to bottom, essentially a gang. Other organizations have adopted gang features. Others have built themselves around various gang elements. The Boy Scout Patrol alone is the gang. The whole Boy Scout movement is a shrewd and highly successful attempt to take the natural, instinctive, spontaneous boys’ society, to add nothing to what is already there, but deliberately to guide the boy into getting completely just that for which he blindly gropes. The obvious answer to the whole gang problem, therefore, is this: Turn your gang into a Boy Scout Patrol.” A troop of Scouts is only a denatured gang whose activities have been changed from vicious to character-building tendencies, a result which is accomplished by the systematic, helpful, and inspirational guidance of the Scout Master along the lines of the Scout curriculum. The potent influence of activities disguised as play, which produce physical and moral betterment, is nowhere more apparent than in this organization. The things for which the unsupervised gang was blindly seeking have been completely furnished by the supervised Scout Patrol. Judge Edward Porterfield of the Kansas City Juvenile Court paid this tremendous tribute to the influence of the Boy Scouts: “If every boy in the city would join, the gangs would disappear, the juvenile court would soon be a stranger to the youth, and we would rear a generation of men that would not require much police protection. I have never had a boy scout in my court and there are twelve hundred of them in Kansas City.” President-emeritus Charles W. Eliot of Harvard stated in a recent address: “I feel sure that nothing but good will come from the educational or training qualities of the Boy Scout movement as a whole. It is setting an example that our whole public-school system ought to follow.”

The scheme supplies the companionship of those of his own age and the opportunity, under competent supervision, for the exercise of physical, mental, and manual activities which make for his betterment. Its effectiveness lies in the universality of its appeal; it touches the life of every boy regardless of social status or religious affiliations; it gets a moral grip on boys of every phase of temperamental condition; and its moral virus gets under a boy’s hide like a hypodermic injection.

The universality of its appeal to boyhood is shown by its membership which is recruited from all ranks of society—from the slum to the palace. It touches the boy on every side of his manifold interests. The best proof that the organization is founded on correct psychologic principles is its popularity with the boys themselves and the splendid caliber of the boys who are graduated from it. Its strong appeal is grounded in its harmony with boy-nature. Without understanding his mental processes or the psychology of his preferences, the boy knows what he likes and what he dislikes. He loves the Boy Scouts because it is an organization which satisfies the cravings of his boy heart. One Scout expressed the thought in these words, “Scouts are always doin’ things and they have the most fun.” Always doin’ things! What a world of psychological truth is crystallized in this youthful statement! It drops the plummet in the wellsprings of truth. Continuous action is the key to his evolution and by it the budding boy blossoms into the mature man. In a word, the entire Scout plan consists of crowding the boy’s life so full of agreeable activities of useful and ethical import that he has no time for noxious things. The busy boy is the best boy. The Scout influence is one of the most powerful factors for good in the boy’s life and is the most potent supplemental agency which has yet been devised for adolescent development.

We hear much, in these latter days, of business and industrial efficiency. Experts in this line are able to systematize a business, a railroad, or a factory so that a given amount of labor will produce a maximum of results. Even such unskilled labor as shoveling is susceptible of scientific improvement. An efficiency expert employed by a great corporation decreased the number of movements of ore shovelers one-half, with a corresponding increase in tonnage of ore handled, and without an increase in the expenditure of physical energy.

It is equally important that efficiency methods should be employed in the training of boys. Scientific methods applied to boy-culture will increase the quality of the output as well as make the work easier for the boy and the parent. The Boy Scout movement is an efficiency method of scientific boy-training in mass. It supplements perfectly the work of the home, the school, the church. It furnishes a kind of training which none of these supplies and in making this statement I do not undervalue the inestimable influence of these institutions on the life of the boy today.

The home is the primary and most important agency for the boy’s general training, the school for mental development, and the church for moral and religious culture; but in the wide field of boy-nature not reached by these agencies the Boy Scout organization directs his development from the child into the man.

The organization has passed the experimental stage and is now on the highway of proved success. Thousands of boys are clamoring for admission which must be denied until Scout Masters can be enlisted and trained to take charge of troops. Here is a wonderful field for social service, ripe for harvest, awaiting the man who loves boys and who recognizes his duty in having some part in raising the standard of our future citizenship.

CHAPTER XIV
JUVENILE READING

NEXT to environment and companions, books exercise the most powerful influence for good or evil on the life of the boy. His companionship with books is as intimate as his companionship with playmates and usually occupies as large a portion of his life, especially after puberty. The value of literature is two-fold: it molds the character and develops the taste, both of which processes are closely related. It is natural for the boy to want “something to read” and this desire is not satisfied by schoolbooks, biographies, or histories. History which is a mere recital of facts, names, and dates in which the human element is little emphasized becomes wearisome and unprofitable. The boy voluntarily reads for entertainment; he studies because he is compelled to.

It is, of course, apparent that the child’s reading should be suited to his mental and psychological requirements. He begins with nursery rhymes and jingles and then follow fairy tales, folklore and wonder-tales told by the parent. These serve as an introduction to tales and stories of mythology, which are in turn stepping stones to history and biography. At the age of nine or ten he begins to develop a taste for fiction, tales of adventure, chivalry, and daring experience which exploit the virtues of some hero, on which he feeds for a number of years.

Still another class of reading not denominated literature is contained in the so-called “useful” books which are purely informative and educational in character. Shortly before the “teen age,” when he is interested in experimentation and construction, he seeks books giving information about gardening, handicrafts, mechanics, physics, magic, and manual training, the latter usually accompanied by plans and diagrams for making such things as sleds, boats, model aëroplanes, and electrical apparatus.

The boy whose reading has been properly directed graduates from tales of adventure into the better forms of literature, including standard fiction, imaginative narration, history, historical novels, essays, and poetry. Few children, unaided, develop a taste for good literature; it must be cultivated by judicious direction. The best literature is as potent in its influence for good as trashy reading is for evil. The boy’s love for the thrilling, exciting story of adventure beyond the realms of his own experience leads him to devour the so-called “nickel library” and “dime novel,” which may be easily procured from certain news-stands and provides his private reading of which the parent knows nothing.

These paper-back pamphlets are usually brilliantly illuminated in colors to attract the eye and exhibit a thrilling picture illustrating some incident in the story. A few of the titles of these “yellow” books afford ample evidence of their contents and influence. I recall through the aid of boyhood recollection such titles as “Hobo Harry, the Boy Tramp”; “Reckless Rob, the Red Ranger of the Rockies”; “Dare Devil Dick, the Boy Bandit”; “The Jesse James Weekly,” devoted to the exploits of that outlaw gang; “Slippery Sam, the Boy Detective,” and others of that ilk. The widespread demand for such stories is shown by their circulation which now exceeds a million copies annually.

In all these lurid tales, the detective, outlaw, vagabond, adventurer, bandit, or tramp is made the hero. Their pernicious effect on the boy’s character results from idealizing the reputed virtues of the criminal or semi-criminal hero until the lad’s moral sense is debased; and this is quite apart from the vitiating effect on the boy’s literary taste which is the inevitable result of feeding on these potboilers and penny-a-liners. Such reading matter may be instantly recognized by the parent from its outward dress and should be as promptly banished.

But not all trashy reading bears such open and extraneous evidence of its character. Another equally vicious class of books appears in the outward form of good fiction, bound in boards, with attractive titles and covers, and sometimes written by authors of well-known reputations. They consist of stories that fascinate the boy with their thrills but inspire false ideals of life even though they do not always possess the fault of openly idealizing vice; the story of the cabin boy who advanced to captain through some impossible deed of heroism or adventitious circumstance, without the training or experience necessary to qualify him for the position; the story of the boy who achieved honor and distinction by trickery or sharp practice; the story of the hero who gained wealth by some get-rich-quick method, all are as vicious in their suggestion and influence as the “nickel library.” And the poison of such literature is as subtle as it is fatal. Mr. E. W. Mumford is authority for the following statement: “Many a parent, who would promptly take John out to the woodshed if he learned that the boy was collecting dime novels, himself frequently adds to John’s library a book quite as bad.”

The author once requested a twelve-year-old boy friend to tell him about the best book he had ever read. Here is his reply: “It is a story about two boys who went to Florida in an aëroplane to explore the Everglades. They got lost in the swamps and jungles and were captured by a tribe of wild Indians. These Indians had also captured a little white girl who had wandered away from her parents. One night, the boys killed nearly all the Indians with tomahawks as they slept and escaped with the little girl in the aëroplane followed by a volley of poisoned arrows which just grazed ’em but didn’t hit ’em.” The impossibility of the situations, the false ideals presented, the mock heroics and the lack of literary quality in the story all were unnoticed by the boy. He saw only a youthful hero engaged in a thrilling adventure which culminated in a rescue of chivalric idealism.

The danger from such books is even greater than from the “nickels” because, coming in the guise of good fiction, their appeal is more insidious. The average boy knows, either by intuition or by direct statement of the fact, that the “blood-and-thunder nickel” is prohibited by his parents; hence he reads them in the barn or in the privacy of his room and hides them meantime where they will be safe from the inquisitive eyes of spying parents.

I once asked a boy who was engaged in this prohibited reading if he knew the reasons for his parents’ opposition. His reply was characteristic: “They don’t want me to read nothin’ excitin’.” They committed the mistake of attempting to crush his natural desire for exciting tales of adventure and heroism by confiscating “nickels” without giving him equally exciting books of daring enterprise which breathed a high moral spirit. Instead, they fed him on goody-goody books which he accepted with the same grace with which one takes a dose of bitter medicine, until finally he rebelled. By outside suggestion, conveyed through his parents, this boy is now reading “thrillers” of some ethical and moral value, which already give evidence of becoming the gateway to a desire for good literature.

The “yellow” tale bound in boards should be confiscated and destroyed by the parent as quickly as he would cast an armful of paper-bound “libraries” into the furnace. The reading of this stuff by boys is much more common than is ever suspected by parents. Boys exchange these books with each other until they become dog-eared and dirty through repeated readings, and the supposed merit of each is passed from lip to lip as the reader lends the book to a companion with the statement, “It’s a pippin.” The continued reading of this trash cannot fail to have its effect in a lower standard of morals and a longing to achieve the fruits of industry, ability, and experience by impossible short-cuts; in addition to which it keeps him out of touch with good literature.

Equally detrimental in their influence are most of the comic Sunday supplements of the newspapers, especially where they picture the small boy engaged in vicious or mischievous acts alleged to be humorous. No parent would wish to see his own offspring copy the examples set by these comic heroes—yet the inspiration to emulate them is furnished when the parent hands the supplement to his son.

There are many books of fiction which give the boy the thrills he seeks for and at the same time present high ideals, a decent standard of morals, and such reasonable approach to probable conditions as will not destroy the boy’s perspective by their illogicality or impossibility. Such books do not always possess the highest literary quality—but they do serve as stepping stones by which the blood-and-thunder addict mounts to better literature, and, as such, they have a definite and valuable place in juvenile reading.

It must be apparent that morals cannot be acquired by committing to memory a set of rules, but are unconsciously fashioned by every influence which strikes the impressionistic and receptive character of youth and leaves its indelible imprint for good or evil throughout the life of the individual. Character is formed during the short period of boyhood. It is, therefore, of superlative importance that all character forming influences to which the boy is subjected, including his reading, shall be of the best and highest type.

Ideal companions for our sons are more difficult to find in real life than in fiction. The perfect boy may live somewhere—but not in my immediate neighborhood. The companions of our boy are usually worse than he—at any rate we think them so; if one is good-natured he may be a bully; if another is of high moral character he may be so lazy and untidy that his influence is unwholesome; a third may be untruthful, while still another may be so goody-goody that his influence is positively depressing. But in the carefully selected literature of today may be found suitable companions for your son—the heroes who exemplify in the achievement of enterprises of adventure and daring the virtues which all boys should seek to emulate. Manly models are unconsciously copied. From the intimate companionship with such heroes gained by reading, the boy obtains inspiration for bravery, truth, obedience, honor, loyalty, industry, manliness, courtesy, and ambition. Chumming with virtue inspires virtue.

“There is a world,” says Walter Taylor Field, “into which children may enter and find noble companionship. It is the world of books. Let your boy escape for a time from the meanness of the boy across the street, and let him roam the woods with Hiawatha, sail the seas with Sindbad, build stockades with Crusoe, fight dragons with Jason, joust with Galahad; let him play at quoits with Odysseus, and at football with Tom Brown. These are playmates who will never quarrel with him nor bully him, but from whom he will learn to be brave, self-reliant, manly, quick to do for others, and set with his face toward the light.” The character-building qualities of such books are as unquestioned as their intellectual value.

A library has been termed by Lord Lytton a “literary pharmacopœia” which contains the remedies for mental and moral shortcomings. Modified to suit the requirements of boyhood it means that doses of literature should be administered as specifics for diseases of character, as well as to act as tonics to build up the moral virtues. For the boy inclined to deceit books are prescribed in which truthfulness and honor are exalted; for the lazy boy is prescribed the tale of monumental achievement through industry; the anemic bookworm should receive a course of reading concerning athletics, sports, and life in the open; disloyalty and disobedience would call for a diet of stories in which the antithesis of these defects is exploited. In a word, it is an attempt to correct his moral and temperamental deficiencies by placing him under the influence of the heroic characters of fiction who exhibit the moral qualities which the boy lacks. This device is no longer a mere theory; it has been tried in innumerable instances and always with good, if variable, results. The effectiveness of this unique plan will doubtless be in proportion to the skill of the diagnostician in recognizing the exact moral ailment and the accuracy of the literary physician in prescribing the corrective reading.

Every boy admires a hero and seeks to emulate him. If his hero is one of questionable morals, the effect of his companionship on the boy reader will be almost as pernicious as the influence of an evil chum in daily life. On the other hand, companionship with the noble characters of fiction cultivates in the reader the same virtues as those exhibited by the hero and inevitably establishes moral standards. When the boy demands that virtue shall be rewarded and vice punished it is an evidence of his ethical evolution, and the continued recurrence of these instances in his reading finally fixes for all time his criterion of moral values.

The dust-covered books which formerly filled the shelves of our Sunday-school libraries depicting milk-and-water characters and heroes of immaculate goody-goodyness, happily, have been replaced by books portraying virile, red-blooded, intensely human heroes who are not afraid to get their clothes dirty. No dust ever accumulates on such books but they do become worn and soiled with constant reading.

Stories of animal life are valuable when informative of their customs and habits and they generally inspire a love for animal heroes which prompts a manifestation of kindness toward all dumb creatures. Not infrequently the hidden moral contained in these stories is driven home as forcibly as in the best fiction in which human beings play the principal rôles.

A well selected juvenile magazine should find a place on every boy’s reading table, not so much for the value of its fiction—which is so variable in quality—as for its news features concerning the things which loom big in the boy’s life—school and college athletic events, Boy Scout meets, new games and sports, the latest improvements in wireless construction, and new ideas in handicraft. It is from such a journal that he obtains information of current events which are commanding the attention of all boys and he thus keeps abreast of the times in Boyville.

The book which furnishes entertainment as well as inspires interest commands the attention of the adolescent in the direct ratio that these elements conform to his psychological development. Juvenile fiction is usually interesting to the adult only when read from the juvenile viewpoint. When so read it may prove a fascinating recital of human aspirations and achievements as well as a profound study in the covert psychological impulses which actuate the several characters of the story.

“The great problem in juvenile reading for the parent,” to quote Franklin K. Mathiews, librarian of the Boy Scouts, “is to choose from the huge mass of boy’s books the ones the boy will like best and yet those which will be best for the boy.” It is obvious that he will not read what he does not like, but it does not follow that he should be given all books that he likes irrespective of their influence. Rest assured that your boy does not himself select a book because of its high moral tone or its qualities of uplift. He would doubtless side-step it if he suspected such influence. He is looking for thrills, excitement and adventure—something outside the domain of his everyday experience. If he finds them he is satisfied with the book irrespective of its tendencies for good or bad. I am now speaking of the average red-blooded boy and not the halo-crowned youth of supernal goodness. As long as we supply him with the needed thrills coupled with good influence, he will not go after the thrills coupled with bad influence. Juvenile fiction which does not count for character-culture is worthless. As he advances in years and increases his intellectual equipment his love for lurid tales will wane, and if his reading has been supervised, a desire for the best fiction, history, biography, essays, ethics, and poetry will easily and naturally take its place.

The limitations of this chapter have prevented more than a brief discussion of the influence of literature in shaping the boy’s character and intellect and the reader is referred to those books which will be found useful by the parent in outlining and directing a course of reading for the boy at his several periods of development from infancy to manhood. The first two volumes given below are especially valuable for their comprehensive lists of suitable books.

TITLE | AUTHOR
The Children’s Reading | Olcott
Fingerposts to Children’s Reading | Field
How to Tell Stories to Children | Bryant
How to Teach Reading | Clark
Special Method in Primary Reading | McMurray
Special Method in the English Classics | McMurray
Books and Libraries | Lowell
Books and Culture | Mabie
Biblical Masterpieces | Moulton
Readings in Folklore | Skinner
History and Literature | Rice
Childhood in Literature and Art | Scudder
Little Folks’ Lyrics | Sherman
Counsel upon the Reading of Books | Van Dyke
Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks | Wiltse

CHAPTER XV
AGENCIES FOR SEX-INSTRUCTION

THE importance of educating the young in the physiology and hygiene of sex is no longer doubted. The widespread ignorance and misinformation among boys concerning the human sexual function is proof of the necessity of substituting therefor normal, accurate knowledge which will conduce to hygienic and eugenic betterment. However much one may close his eyes to the fact, it is nevertheless true that many children acquire distorted information about matters of sex at a very early age—much earlier than the average parent ever suspects. Among boys, misinformation on sex matters is the rule and correct information the exception.

The necessity for scientific knowledge on the subject is based on (1) the preservation of individual sex health, (2) the improvement of the progeny; (3) the relief of boys from the mental disquietude caused by certain normal manifestations of adolescence; (4) his rescue from the clutches of quack “medical specialists”; (5) the suppression or control of venereal diseases; (6) the abatement of false modesty which prevents sane discussion among adults of a question so important to humanity, to pave the way for sex-education backed by an enlightened and coöperating public opinion, without which a general dissemination of knowledge covering the dangers to health and morals resulting from wrong sex habits is impossible.

There is an ever-present disposition to ring down the curtain of taboo on the discussion of sex. A subject which so vitally affects the health and morals of both the individual and the community should warrant such discreet discussion and thoughtful consideration as will best conserve these vital fundamentals of life. The former antipathy to any reference to the subject is now being slowly superseded by a nobler and purer sentiment which invites the formation of plans and methods designed to obviate the grave physical and moral dangers attendant on ignorance and misinformation. A healthier public opinion and enlightened conscience will clear the way for the instruction not only of the young but of adults concerning the sacred processes of human reproduction.

It is obvious to say that instruction on sex can best be given the child by his parents; they are his natural teachers, possessing the confidence of the child and having the intimate relationship, affection and sympathetic understanding which renders personal instruction effective. But the neglect of this parental duty is so prevalent even among educated parents who are solicitous for their children’s future, that courses of instruction in our grammar and high schools and colleges are now being advocated to supply this parental omission. Indeed, one or more public high schools in our large cities have already added sex-instruction to their course of study, while a number of normal schools and colleges have for some years included it in their curriculums. Such a revolutionary innovation has not been unattended by opposition, chiefly from parents and public school boards, but only rarely from the heads of educational institutions of advanced grades. The introduction of such a course is attended by some impediments, not the least of which is the difficulty of procuring teachers who possess both the tact and the pedagogic knowledge necessary to give instruction on the subject in its biological, hygienic, and ethical aspects in such a manner as will inform and warn the child against the dangers of premature sex excitation and satisfy his curiosity without stimulating his interest. Another difficulty in the way of teaching the subject in public and other schools—even when classes are segregated by sex—is the psychology of the mob, evident in a large group of boys who already are possessed of copious misinformation which tends to a more flippant and prurient reception of the subject than when the information is given privately. This is evident even in advanced schools. One of our greatest institutions of learning has two courses of lectures on sex-hygiene for freshmen and seniors, which are generally referred to by the students as “Smut One” and “Smut Two.” The American Federation for Sex Hygiene is perhaps the leading advocate of the policy of sex-education in graded and high schools, to be given in conformity with a thoughtful and conservative plan which has its basis in biological study. The heads of many prominent colleges and universities have given their indorsement to this plan which is endowed with such elasticity that it may be varied to meet the needs of the differing mental and physical requirements of the young.

Conceding that the average public-school teacher has one essential qualification for giving such instruction, i. e., the confidence of the children, her incapacity because of the lack of a broad scientific knowledge of the subject, or youth, or both, is generally recognized. The other alternative—special lecturers of known scientific qualifications—is open to the suggestion that they would soon be known as “sex specialists” and the presentation of the subject under these conditions would place upon it an undue emphasis instead of having it taught in its natural and orderly sequence as a part of nature-study, biology, and ethics where it belongs. So, also, the children’s lack of confidence in an outside lecturer would minimize the good results of such information. Physicians are generally regarded as the proper persons to give this instruction, although the suggestion has been made that inasmuch as the ideal instruction must concern the normal function of sex, and that a physician’s work is chiefly along the abnormal line (disease) and a tendency to the development of certain morbidity necessarily results therefrom—the biologist, especially if a regular instructor, is the one best equipped for this delicate task. There is an ever-present danger, either from unqualified teachers or wrong pedagogic methods, of unduly emphasizing the topic in such a manner that the curiosity of the child will be stimulated. This is the very result which should be avoided; the boy should be given only enough instruction, as an incidental part of one of the broader subjects with which it is intimately related, to satisfy his natural curiosity and suffice the physical and ethical requirements of his particular stage of development. On the other hand, the difficulties connected with sex-instruction should not be unduly stressed, for they are not insurmountable.

By whatever instrumentality the instruction is given to classes it is agreed that, as in private instruction, the information should be only sufficient to satisfy the psychological and physical needs of the child at the period of development which he has then attained. During the period of adolescence the scope of information is, therefore, greatly broadened to meet the requirements of that period. The opponents of sex-instruction in schools believe that it will obtrude the subject too prominently in the consciousness of the youth and thereby destroy the restraints of modesty which were intended to be conserved.

The advocates of the school plan insist that the beneficent results of such instruction will greatly outweigh any possible evil which may follow from it. They submit that the moral and physical dangers to which children are subject as the result of ignorance, and the presence of venereal disease in boys to a degree not understood by the general public, are sufficient warrant for such instruction—wholly apart from other considerations.

The entire subject is of tremendous moment and worthy of the careful study, thought, and judgment of parents and scientists for the formulation of a future policy which can adequately cope with this great problem.

In a report of the Special Committee of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene on the matter and methods of sex-education this recommendation is made: “Your committee would emphasize the necessity of good judgment and tact in introducing sex-instruction into schools. It should not be introduced prematurely, but only so fast as teachers can be found or trained who are competent to give it, and so fast as public sentiment will support it. On the other hand, undue weight must not be given to the difficulties attending such instruction even under present conditions, inasmuch as even occasional mistakes will do far less harm than allowing children to continue to gain this knowledge, as many of them now do, from impure sources—receiving a pernicious first impression which induces in them an attitude of mind toward the subject that makes it extremely difficult later to give them the best instruction. In not a few such cases subsequent sound teaching is practically fruitless.”

CHAPTER XVI
AN OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION

THE limitations of this chapter will prevent more than a mere outline of the periods in a child’s life when sex-information should be imparted and the character of it. Familiarity with the boy’s psychology given in Chapters III and IV will be of value in its application. From birth until the child is six years old—the prescholastic age—he is at home under the care and guidance of his mother, excluding the kindergarten which is attended by a small proportion of children. During this period the mother’s chief concern should be the hygienic care of the child’s body and the prevention of danger which may come from an injudicious or immoral nurse. The only sex-instruction should be a simple answer to his question as to the origin of human life—usually prompted by the birth of a baby whom he has seen or of whom he has heard. This may be done by the statement that God sent it in a human basket and the doctor delivered it, or other phraseology which carries the same import and will satisfy his curiosity for the time being until another inquiry is made. It is desirable to remember that the child up to approximately ten years of age will continue these interrogatories to his mother from time to time and that whenever he ceases to make such inquiries it is evidence that he believes he has obtained full information on the subject either from parental or from outside sources.

The mother, not the father, should begin the sex-education of her son. The most effective method of imparting sex-information is by what is called the biological approach. At age seven or eight the foundation for sex-instruction should be laid by information concerning plant production; that the pollen dust of the father plant becomes attached to the legs of the honey-seeking bee and is transferred to the mother plant, where it fertilizes the seed from which a baby plant grows. The function of the wind, also, in effecting the conjunction of pollen with the ovule of the stigma should be explained; and how the pollen or male principle fertilizes and gives life to the female ovule, making seed from which a new plant is born.

Now by successive stages and in detail his mind should be directed to the processes of reproduction in the lower forms of animal life, such as fishes, snakes, and frogs; then to the higher forms of life represented in birds and domestic fowl, and then to the still higher form of mammals, and finally to reproduction in the human being, emphasizing its biological and sacred aspects. The wonderful workings of nature should be made predominant in explaining the reproduction of the lower orders of life while the pure and spiritual phase of human reproduction should be stressed. Coincident with the conclusion of such instruction, there should be given a brief explanation of the functions of the generative organs in the process of reproducing the species, the injury of secret vice and the necessity for personal purity.

At this first sign of approaching puberty the father should assume the duty of further instruction, which should now advise the boy of the wonderful sexual changes about to take place in his body and the new and powerful desires about to be awakened. The normal development of adolescence should be pointed out and a warning sounded as to the error of mistaking certain natural phenomena for the abnormal.

At the age of fifteen to sixteen the necessity arises for admonition against sexual promiscuity and its relationship to the hygienic health of the individual and its eugenic influence on coming generations. During the entire period the note of personal purity should be sounded by a strong appeal to his moral and religious sense.

Untold numbers of boys go wrong sexually through ignorance, who would have kept to the paths of purity had they but known.

It is important that the boy, especially during adolescence, shall be kept from the contaminating influences of theatrical productions whose sex-appeal is conspicuous. The moving picture show, which fascinates children with its interest, is objectionable chiefly because of its connection with the cheap vaudeville so commonly associated with it. Few vaudeville “turns” have any ethical, moral, or intellectual value. They are, at best, ephemeral entertainment and frequently are so coarse as to be unmoral if not positively immoral in their persuasiveness. The sex excitation produced by the physical display of the partly clothed female, risqué dialogues and suggestive songs which are common, in some degree, to a certain class of musical comedies, burlesques, and vaudeville shows is a potent reason for keeping the adolescent away from their influence. And it must be obvious that the sex-problem play is equally unsuited to his needs.

As a guide to the subject matter and methods of sex-instruction the author appends a brief bibliography culled from the flood of literature on the subject. Much that has been published is good; some is bad and some is indifferent. The necessity for widespread sex-education has resulted in the formation of many societies whose primary object is the dissemination of knowledge on the subject through lectures and the publication of pamphlets designed for the education of the parent in how and when to impart sex-instruction to his child. Other pamphlets, graded according to the age of the reader, are to be placed in the hands of the boy himself. Such leaflets may be purchased from these societies for the few cents which they cost to publish, and samples are frequently issued gratuitously. Among the many pamphlets, leaflets, and circulars issued by the several societies for sex-hygiene, the following are suitable for the instruction of parents or may be placed in the hands of the boy himself if so indicated:

American Federation for Sex Hygiene.

105 West 40th St., New York City.

“Report of the Special Committee on the Matter and Methods of Sex Education.” Thomas M. Balliet, Dean of the School of Pedagogy, New York University; Maurice A. Bigelow, Professor of Biology, Teachers College, Columbia University; Prince A. Morrow, M.D. 34 pp., December, 1912. Copies upon request.

“The Teaching of Sex Hygiene.” Prince A. Morrow, M.D. Copies upon request.

California Social Hygiene Society.

U. S. Custom House, San Francisco, Cal.

Four circulars as follows:

“The Four Sex Lies.” 4 pp.

“When and How to Tell the Children.” For parents. 7 pp.

“The Secret of Strength.” For boys ten to thirteen years of age. 5 pp.

“Virility and Physical Development.” For boys thirteen to eighteen years of age. 7 pp.

Samples upon request with postage.

Colorado Society for Social Health.

1434 Glenarm St., Denver, Colo.

“Teaching Regarding Sex in the Public Schools.” Edward Jackson, M.D. Reprint from Denver Medical Times. 7 pp.

Samples upon request with postage.

Connecticut Society of Social Hygiene.

42 High Street, Hartford, Connecticut.

“Sex Hygiene for Young Men.” 8 pp.

Chicago Society of Social Hygiene.

305 Reliance Building, Chicago, Ill.

A circular:

“Self Protection.” Sexual Hygiene for Young Men. 4 pp.

Maryland Society of Social Hygiene.

15 East Pleasant Street. Baltimore, Md.

Two circulars on Social Hygiene:

“Sex Hygiene for Young Men.” 1912. 4 pp.

Reprint of seven Charts, on “Methods of Teaching Sex Hygiene,” from the exhibit of The American Federation for Sex Hygiene. 1913. 8 pp.

Samples and prices upon request.

Detroit Society for Sex Hygiene.

Wayne County Medical Society’s Building, Detroit, Mich.

Three leaflets:

“A Word to Parents on Sex Hygiene.” 6 pp.

“A Plain Talk with Boys.” For parents to tell boys from six to fourteen years old. 4 pp.

“Some Plain Facts for Young Men upon Sexual Matters.” 6 pp. Single copies upon request with postage; 25 cents per 100.

St. Louis Society for Social Hygiene.

4069 Shenandoah Ave., St. Louis, Missouri.

Two circulars:

“A Plain Talk with Boys on Sex Hygiene.” 4 pp.

“The Effect of Venereal Diseases on Young Men.” 4 pp.

Samples upon request.

The Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis.

105 West Fortieth St., New York City.

Educational pamphlets:

“The Young Man’s Problem.” 32 pp.

“Instruction in the Physiology and Hygiene of Sex.” For teachers. 24 pp.

“The Boy Problem.” For parents and teachers. 32 pp.

“How My Uncle, the Doctor, Instructed Me in Matters of Sex.” 32 pp.

“Health and Hygiene of Sex.” 32 pp.

Each 10 cents.

The Oregon Social Hygiene Society.

719 Selling Building, Portland, Oregon.

Five circulars:

“The Four Sex Lies.” 4 pp.

“When and How to Tell the Children.” 8 pp.

“Books for Use in the Family on Sex Education.” 2 pp.

“The Secret of Strength.” For younger boys, ten to thirteen years of age. 6 pp.

“Virility and Physical Development.” For older boys, thirteen to eighteen years of age. 8 pp.

Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Social Disease.

1708 Locust St., Philadelphia, Penna.

“The Social Evil in University Life.” Robert N. Willson, M.D. 1912. Reprint from the New York Medical News. 19 pp.

Prices upon request.

The Texas State Society of Social Hygiene.

T. Y. Hull, M.D., Secretary, San Antonio, Texas.

“Instructions Our Children Need to Form Ideas of Personal Purity.” Malone Duggan, M.D. 10 pp.

“The Child.” Theo. Y. Hull, M.D. Reprint from Club Woman’s Argosy, December, 1910. 8 pp.

The Society of Social and Moral Hygiene of Seattle.

League Building, Seattle, Washington.

“Stamp Out the Black Plague.” An envelope containing three circulars:

“Four Sex Lies.”

“The Black Plague.”

“Why, What, When and How Parents should Instruct Children in Sex Matters.”

Samples and prices upon request.

The Spokane Society of Social And Moral Hygiene.

422 Old National Bank Building, Spokane, Washington.

Five circulars: “The Need for Education in Sexual Hygiene.” 4 pp.

“A Frank Talk with Boys and Girls About Their Birth.” Children six to ten. 4 pp.

“A Straight Talk with Boys About Their Birth and Early Boyhood.” Boys ten to thirteen. 4 pp.

“A Plain Talk with Boys About Their Physical Development.” For boys approaching puberty and during puberty. 6 pp.

“Sexual Hygiene for Young Men.” 8 pp.

Sample Set upon request for 10 cents in stamps.

The following books, among others, are recommended:

“Truths. Talks with a Boy.” Dr. E. B. Lowry, Forbes & Co., Chicago.

“From Youth to Manhood.” Dr. Winfield S. Hall. Association Press. New York.

“What a Father Should Tell His Little Boy.” Isabelle T. Smart. Bodmer & Co., New York.

“What a Father Should Tell His Son.” Isabelle T. Smart. Bodmer & Co., New York.

“The Renewal of Life. How and When to Tell the Story to the Young.” Margaret W. Morley, A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago.

CHAPTER XVII
CHILDREN’S COURTS

NO work on boy-training would be complete without a reference to an instrumentality of recent origin for reclaiming the wayward boy which marks a forward step in the solution of the child problem—the juvenile court. The most notable change in American jurisprudence in the last decade has been the establishment and development of such courts for child saving and the prevention of crime. Before the advent of these courts, all children charged with the commission of offenses were tried in criminal and police courts as criminals and with criminals. While awaiting trial, they were confined in jail with thieves, confidence men, beggars, drunkards, burglars, hold-up men, and murderers, because the state had made no provision for their separate detention pending trial.

Under such conditions the child acquired through association and conversation the viewpoint of the criminal as well as an education in crime which he would put into practice after his release. Amid such surroundings were laid the foundations for the careers of many of the criminals who now crowd our jails and penitentiaries to overflowing. Speaking of such conditions, Judge Richard S. Tuthill of the Children’s Court of Chicago said, “The State had educated innocent children in crime and the harvest was great.” A thoughtful police official once remarked of a boy in such surroundings, “He is on a toboggan, the lower end of which rests in hell.”

The gradual recognition, by an aroused public conscience, of the evil results of such a system put into operation the forces which in many states have abolished the old plan of regarding and punishing the child as a criminal and substituted the principle that the wayward child is a dependent whom the state, like a wise parent, will restrain from evil and educate in the paths leading to good citizenship, through the agency of the juvenile court and its efficient aid, the probation officer.

We now recognize the inability of the child to commit a crime, judged by the standards applicable to the adult criminal, for the reason that his mental and moral concepts have not yet reached the stage of development which can distinguish between right and wrong with the clearness of the adult. What in the adult with full consciousness of the import and effects of his acts would be trespass, assault and battery, larceny, and burglary, are in the child varied forms of moral disease which it is the state’s business to cure—not punish. It is conceded that it would be monstrous and brutal to punish a child for contracting measles, scarlet fever, or whooping cough, and it is equally monstrous for the state to punish the same child before he attains moral maturity, for contracting a moral disease which manifests itself in acts which are crimes only when committed by adults with full comprehension of their moral significance.

Again we revert for our guidance to the child’s viewpoint which in many instances is closely akin to that of the untutored savage. During a summer which I spent in the wilderness of the great woods of the North I encountered an Indian who habitually killed deer out of season and in violation of the laws of the state in which he lived. When I asked him why he did not obey the law, he replied, “God made deer for Indian before white man made book [the law].” From his viewpoint, he was not guilty of wrongdoing in killing deer to supply food for his family; from the viewpoint of the law he was a lawbreaker.

The underlying principle of the operation of children’s courts is the recognition of the fact that the offender under sixteen years of age should not be judged or punished by adult standards; that he should not be arrested, indicted, convicted, imprisoned, or punished as a criminal. Evidence of the offense is not regarded as proof of criminality but rather as light on the question as to how the state, standing in loco parentis, can best exercise its parental function in the formation of the embryo character needed to make the boy a good citizen.

The child is not punished to make an example of him, nor to reform him—but to form him. Reformation implies the change of a character already formed. The child’s character is in an evolutionary period, susceptible to formation but not to reformation. The criminal power of the state metes out punishment for reformation and as a deterrent to other persons who may be tempted to violate the law. The parental authority of the state is exercised to train the boy to be good and to remove him from the vicious environments which chain him to delinquency.

Boys are naturally good—not bad. A study of the records of juvenile offenders will show that there are four dominant causes of delinquency, stated here in the order of their importance, for none of which is the boy himself directly responsible, namely: environment, poor training or lack of training, the bad example of parents, and heredity. I do not subscribe to the theory of the “innate cussedness” of boys. The “innate cussedness” of parents, in the last analysis, is usually the propelling factor in juvenile delinquency.

The establishment of children’s courts has been significant in the awakening of the public mind to the state’s duty toward those of its children who from parental neglect or otherwise are delinquent or dependent. This moral awakening to the consciousness of governmental responsibility for the child has manifested itself in many states in the enactment of laws for the establishment of juvenile courts, and in others in the revivification and enforcement of sleeping statutes designed to meet the juvenile problem.

But the state’s duty does not end with the placing of laws on the statute books; it still remains for them to be made effective by a judge who not only knows the law but who is inspired by a sympathetic understanding of child problems and child-nature; one who is able to ingratiate himself into the confidence of the boy and thereby become his friend, helper, and co-worker in his salvation. A knowledge of adolescent psychology will be of great help in getting the juvenile viewpoint which is so essential for a solution of the problems of wayward children. In a report by the Honorable Samuel J. Barrows, Commissioner for the United States on the International Prison Commission, he has this to say concerning the fitness of a judge of such court: “The personality of the judge, as well as that of the probation officer, is an element of vast importance in the success of any juvenile court. Such a court cannot be run on automatic or mechanical methods. Let it be reduced to a mere technical mechanism of rules and procedure and it will fail altogether. A firm yet sympathetic, tactful man of magnetic personality, as well as of legal knowledge, who understands boys and can secure their confidence is the man needed for this work; and some such men have already been called to this position.”

To the same effect is the testimony of Judge Stubbs of the Juvenile Court of Indianapolis as to the necessity of securing the offender’s confidence: “It is the personal touch that does it. I have often observed that if I sat on a high platform behind a high desk, such as we had in our city court, with the boy on the prisoner’s bench some distance away, that my words had little effect on him; but if I could get close enough to him to put my hand on his head or shoulder, or my arm around him, in nearly every such case I could get his confidence.”

The probation system and probation officers are necessary and effective elements in the operation of juvenile courts. The function of the probation officer is to investigate the facts before trial, and after probation to visit the child in his home; keep in close touch with his conduct and school attendance; admonish or cite for punishment parents who in any way have contributed to the child’s delinquency; advise and encourage the child and report conditions to the court. Most courts have one or more paid probation officers, the others being volunteers. One Indiana court was fortunate in having the assistance of two hundred volunteer probation officers who responded in turn whenever needed to assist in the work of probation and parole. The effectiveness of a juvenile court is measured by the ability, efficiency, and character of its judge and probation officers.

Judge Ben B. Lindsey of the Juvenile Court of Denver, a leading authority on this subject, said:

“Of course a juvenile-court system, while under any average circumstance, is bound to be a step in advance of the old methods of the criminal law in dealing with children, yet its permanent and more complete success depends upon the individuals to whom its execution is intrusted. We have heard a great deal about probation officers. Upon the character, tact, skill and intelligence of the judge and his assistants—the probation officers—largely depends the success of the court. Without personal touch, influence, patience, encouragement of the child, and attempt to arouse all the nobler and better impulses, and to subdue and suppress the discords of the soul, complete success is not likely to be attained. The law itself is of small importance compared to these elements. There is no higher or more important position of a public character in the community than that of a probation officer, unless it be the judge of the juvenile court. Perhaps this might illy come from one occupying that position, yet I have no apology to make for the statement. I am sure the statement can be appreciated by few more than by one who occupied so important a position. As this work progresses and its wonderful results are constantly observed, the force of the statement impresses itself more and more upon the mind of the judge of the juvenile court.”

The same authority gives the following résumé of his method of dealing with the boys brought within the jurisdiction of his court: “In my opinion the best way to reform a boy waywardly disposed is first to understand him. You have got to get inside of him and see through his eyes, understand his motives, have sympathy and patience with his faults, just as far as you can, remembering that more can be accomplished through love than by any other method. But I would not have you misunderstand me. It has been well said that love without justice is sentiment and weakness! We must be just. There is no justice without love and yet we can judge in the light of both, forgetting not firmness and the right of others. We cannot be just without the exercise of patience and a plentiful supply of those higher qualities of the soul which must be brought to bear if we are able to call out the noblest impulses and the highest and most energetic forces of a child. The juvenile court and the probation system simply supply the machinery for doing this where heretofore such machinery was not permitted by the law. We pursued the blind, brutal, incongruous methods of recognizing a child as an irresponsible being in dealing with its dollars and cents, and denied it the right of contracting even while it was a minor, whereas when it came to offending against the law, when its moral welfare, its very soul, was involved, we denied its irresponsibility and placed it upon the same plane and in the same category with an adult.”

Supplemental to the juvenile law is the adult delinquency law, now on the statute books of certain states, which makes it a misdemeanor for any parent or other person to encourage, cause, or by any act contribute to the delinquency of a child, punishable by a fine not to exceed $1,000 or by imprisonment not to exceed one year or by both such fine and imprisonment; and the juvenile court is given exclusive jurisdiction over such offenders. Such statutes are a complete recognition of parental responsibility for many cases of juvenile wrongdoing, such as visiting saloons to obtain beer for parents; stealing coal from railroad yards; stealing brasses or appliances from cars; breaking open cars and stealing goods, usually edibles, which are taken home and used either with the tacit or express consent of the parents; and many other thefts the fruits of which are shared directly or indirectly by the parents.

From this class of depredations the boy graduates into burglary and highway robbery. The adult delinquency law punishes such parents and drives home the consciousness of their responsibility to their children. Practically all delinquent boys who appear in our juvenile courts have one or both parents delinquent—delinquent either in the active, direct sense stated above, or in the passive, indirect sense of indifference or ignorance whereby their sons do not receive the moral training which is their birthright.

The result of the new method of boy-control now used by children’s courts is to reduce the number of commitments to industrial schools, reform schools, and other similar agencies of detention and correction from seventy-five to approximately ten in each hundred. Where the environment of home life is bad, the court does not hesitate to remove the child from his home to a place in which he will not be handicapped by such influence.

Our juvenile courts are at once a standing reproach to thoughtless, indifferent, ignorant, and wayward parents and a beacon light for the guidance of the unhappy children of such parents to useful citizenship. They inspire the admiration, sympathy, and coöperation of every lover of children who sees in them the future of our great republic.

CHAPTER XVIII
CONCLUSIONS

EVERY boy is endowed “with certain inalienable rights,” not the least of which is the right to be so trained that he will approach the stature of perfect manhood. It is a birthright in the same sense as his right from birth to food, clothing, and shelter. And this right of the child fixes upon the parent the corresponding duty of supplying intelligent training and character-building environment. The basis of all boy-training is parent-training, which I wish to emphasize even at the risk of continued reiteration. And parent-training should be based on a knowledge of boy-psychology and its application to the evolution of the boy, which will throw a flood of light on many of the problems which we formerly attempted to solve in the dark. His physical and moral growth are so dependent upon or intimately related to his mental growth that the solution of his psychological problems will, in most cases, tend to solve the others.

The subject presents no serious difficulties to the parent who possesses a consciousness of its importance to the welfare of his son. All of us have certain preconceived ideas on boy-training which emanate from the adult viewpoint and the adult standard of morals. We realize how, if we were in our son’s place, we would act or ought to act, but too often we forget that this is an application of the adult standard which is psychologically impossible to the boy. Get the boy’s viewpoint.

Patience, tact, and insight; insight, tact, and patience will work wonders with your boy. Insight is but another name for the boy’s viewpoint; it implies acquaintance with his psychology. The adult viewpoint of boy-problems is out of focus. We must re-adjust our psychologic lenses to see and perceive the motives which actuate his conduct, if we are to judge justly and sentence righteously. While the parent is passing judgment on his son’s acts, he should not forget to pass judgment on his own judgment. In training your boy, “you are handling soul-stuff and destiny waits just around the corner.”

Again I would stress the need of a companionship between father and son which should attain the intimacy of chumship. Such relationship is indispensable to a knowledge of all his difficulties, trials and troubles, for he will attempt to solve them in his own crude way if there is no one to whom he can lay bare his soul in the belief that he will find sympathetic understanding and advice. Fewer sons would go astray if more fathers would be big brothers to them. The foundation of such companionship is laid in infancy and early boyhood, but it is neglected and frequently lost at puberty, at which time it is most needed. We are quite willing to accept the pleasures of association with the light-hearted frankness and joyousness of infancy, but too often we evade the responsibility of sharing the burdens of the adolescent.

Few fathers know their adolescent sons. It is true that they recognize the exterior boy and are familiar with his patent activities, but they seldom know his inner self and it is his inner self which needs help. Unfortunately, we men are endowed with a superfluous amount of egotism which causes us to assume that our sons will, through heredity or force of our example, absorb or inhale much of our surplus moral virtue. Few boys can work out their own salvation. The let-alone policy is no policy at all. A passive system of training cannot be commended for results. Instead, a plan of active, suggestive, sympathetic, intelligent, and informative coöperation will produce the same beneficial results when applied to the boy-problem as to a business problem.

Certain apparent deficiencies of intellect as well as of character are often the result of influences far removed from those which are commonly assigned as their compelling causes. It is usual for us to look for the immediate and proximate causes of ailments while remote causes are often unsuspected. Among such causes are the physical abnormalities known as adenoids and hypertrophied tonsils, both of which exercise sinister influence in repressing the growth of intellect and character. It is now generally conceded by the medical profession that these conditions exercise such a profound influence on the physical and nervous system that the free and normal development of intellect as well as of character is retarded. Frequently the boy who is backward in school and who often displays tendencies toward truancy, evasion, and falsehood because of his mental retardation has reached this state on account of his physical condition.

The correction of astigmatism, myopia, and other defects of eyesight (alarmingly prevalent among children) by supplying him with proper eyeglasses uniformly results in better school grades as well as marked improvement in cheerfulness. The evil effects of impaired hearing, decayed teeth, and malnutrition on intellectual progress are also noticeable. The backward, indolent boy should always have the advice and assistance of the physician, the oculist, and the dentist before he receives blame for either mental deficiency or laziness.

The effects of heredity and prenatal influence in determining the character of the child have been, in the opinion of many investigators, greatly overestimated by the popular mind. The causative influence of training (and environment which is a part of training) is immeasurably more potent in the upbuilding of strong moral qualities than heredity. The records of the Children’s Aid Society of New York, covering more than 38,000 children, many of whom are the offspring of drunken and criminal fathers and dissolute mothers, show beyond cavil that a good home with love and moral training will usually submerge hereditary tendencies be they ever so vicious. A very large proportion of these children of delinquent parents, stamped (according to the theory of heredity) with rotten physiques and rottener characters, have, through good training and good environment, developed into law-abiding and useful citizens. Among them may be mentioned two governors of states, two congressmen, four judges, one justice of the Supreme Court, nine members of state legislatures, thirty-five lawyers, eighty-six teachers, nineteen physicians, twenty-four ministers, sixteen journalists, twenty-nine bankers, and countless farmers, mechanics, clerks and business men. The theory of the “inherent depravity” of the boy, whether attributed to heredity or to an act of God, is a rapidly fading myth. The boy is inherently good—not bad.

First know your son and love him; then you will be able to help him. When you come to know the boy—even the adolescent—he is an exceedingly lovable creature; and his inherent potentialities for future excellence should be our inspiration for such assistance as will build them into perfect manhood.

Do not deceive yourself with the belief that your Johnny is different from other boys and that therefore the principles of boy-psychology have no application to him and to his problems. Diversities of temperament and character differentiate individuals, but all boys possess a common nature whose evolution progresses according to fixed laws. Idiosyncrasies and abnormalities of character are of slow growth. They do not erupt suddenly like the measles. It must be obvious, on consideration, that no simple panacea can be found for the speedy cure of such complex and diverse diseases of character. Good training and wholesome environment supplied throughout boyhood will make good, wholesome character in manhood.

We may summarize, in so far as it is possible to do so (of necessity, crudely and imperfectly) the principles of boy-training in the following statements:

“Better boys!” should be our slogan.

Intelligent training is the birthright of every child.

The boy is the mirror of his home.

The wayward boy is usually the son of a wayward parent.

When we reclaim wayward parents we will reclaim wayward boys.

The average parent is either unskilled or underskilled in boy-training.

The first step in boy-training is the education of the parent.

The intelligent parent is the natural and best teacher of his own child.

The busy boy is the best boy.

Constant activity is the key to his evolution.

Encourage athletics and out-of-door activities for the growing boy.

Work with boys, not for them, produces the best results.

Get the juvenile viewpoint.

Insight and patience are the corner stones of boy-training.

Every father can become a hero to his son through chumship.

Through play the boy attains a large part of his growth—physical, mental, and moral.

Fix the habit of obedience early.

Every boy is a gangster at heart. Encourage him to join a good gang instead of a bad one.

Never punish him in anger. He has a keen sense of justice. Let the punishment fit the “crime.”

The mother’s influence on the child is most potent before puberty—the father’s after puberty.

Adolescence is the period of storm and stress in which incongruities of conduct and character are certain to appear. With your patient helpfulness he will outgrow them.

Train by positive, helpful suggestion, rather than negative repression. Never prohibit an act without suggesting a substitute to fill the void. Give him your reasons for the change.

Environment molds a score, where heredity molds one.

Do your part in building up symmetrically all four sides of his nature—physical, mental, moral, and spiritual—and the result will be God’s noblest work—a Man!

What profound emotions are stirred in the father’s breast when he realizes that his long years of intelligent training have borne fruit in the son he has sired; and what supreme joy comes to the mother when she beholds her son standing at the threshold of superb manhood and she can truly say, “I mothered a man!”

If I have seemed too severe in my strictures of delinquent parents, it is because of a desire, grounded in the necessities of the case, to impress upon them duties and responsibilities which are so frequently neglected. If I have seemed too ardent a champion of the adolescent, I offer no apology but the fact that he is often misunderstood and needs an advocate to present his side of the case at the bar of parental judgment.

Happy the man who has a son and thrice happy he who has three!

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

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Table of Contents

- YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING
- PREFACE
- CONTENTS
- CHAPTER I THE ETERNAL BOY-PROBLEM
- CHAPTER II PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY
- CHAPTER III CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
- CHAPTER IV ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY
- CHAPTER V THE BOY’S VIEWPOINT
- CHAPTER VI OBEDIENCE

- CHAPTER VII THE REPRESSIVE METHOD OF TRAINING

- CHAPTER VIII THE SUGGESTIVE METHOD OF TRAINING

- CHAPTER IX THE HABIT OF FALSEHOOD
- CHAPTER X CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
- CHAPTER XI THE CIGARETTE HABIT
- CHAPTER XII BOY GANGS
- CHAPTER XIII THE BOY SCOUT INFLUENCE
- CHAPTER XIV JUVENILE READING
- CHAPTER XV AGENCIES FOR SEX-INSTRUCTION
- CHAPTER XVI AN OUTLINE OF SEX-INSTRUCTION
- CHAPTER XVII CHILDREN’S COURTS
- CHAPTER XVIII CONCLUSIONS
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE