The Minister and the Boy: A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' Work

by Allan Hoben

Let a number of the common traits of boyhood testify. There is the gang instinct which is noticeably dominant during the years from twelve to fifteen. Probably 80 per cent of all boys of this age belong to some group answering dimly to ancient tribal association and forming the first social circle outside the home. A canvass of the conditions of boy life in the Hyde Park district of Chicago revealed the existence of such gangs on an average of one to every two blocks, and the situation is not materially different in other parts of the city or in the smaller towns. The gang is thus the initial civic experiment for better or for worse, the outreach after government, co-operative power, and the larger self which can be found only in association. During this age and within his group the boy does not act as one possessing clear and independent moral responsibility. He acts as part of the gang, subject to its ideals, and practically helpless against its codes of conduct and its standards of loyalty.

One hot afternoon I ran across a group "in swimming" at a forbidden spot on the shore of Lake Michigan. As we talked and tended the fire, which their sun-blistered bodies did not need, one of the lads suddenly fired at me point-blank the all-important question, "What do you belong to?" Being unable to give an answer immediately favorable to our growing friendship, I countered with "What do you belong to?" "Oh," said he, "I belong to de gang." "What gang?" "De gang on de corner of Fitty Fit and Cottage Grove." "And what do you do?" "Ah, in de ev'nin' we go out and ketch guys and tie 'em up." Allowing for nickel-show and Wild-West suggestions, there remains a touch of a somewhat primitive exploit.

Another interesting gang was found occupying a cave in the saloon district of Lake Avenue. The cave takes precedence over the shack as a rendezvous because it demands no building material and affords more secrecy. Beneath the cave was a carefully concealed seven-foot sub-cellar which they had also excavated. This served as a guardhouse for unruly members and as a hiding-place for loot. When in conclave, each boy occupied his space on a bench built against the sides of the cave, his place being indicated by his particular number on the mud wall. This gang had forty-eight members and was led by a dissolute fellow somewhat older than the others, one of those dangerous boys beyond the age of compulsory education and unfitted for regular work. They played cards, "rushed the can," and all hands smoked cigarettes. Facilis descensus Averno. The love of adventure and hunting was illustrated in the case of two other boys of this neighborhood who were but ten and eleven years of age. Having stolen eleven dollars and a useless revolver, they ran away to Milwaukee. When taken in hand by the police of that city they solemnly declared that they had "come to Wisconsin to shoot Injuns."

Much could be said of the love of fire which has not yet surrendered all of its charm for even the most unromantic adult. The mystic thrill that went through the unspoiled nerves of pre-historic man and filled his mind with awe is with us still. The boy above all others yields to its spell. Further, by means of a fire he becomes, almost without effort, a wonderworking cause, a manipulator of nature, a miracle worker. Hence the vacant lots are often lighted up; barrels, boxes, and fences disappear; and one almost believes that part of the charm of smoking is in the very making of the smoke and seeing it unwind into greater mystery as did incense from thousands of altars in the long-ago.

This elemental desire to be a cause and to advertise by visible, audible, and often painful proofs the fact of one's presence in the world is also basal. It is the compliment which noisy childhood and industrious boyhood insistently demand from the world about. Even the infant revels in this testimony, preferring crude and noisy playthings of proportion to the innocent nerve-sparing devices which the adult tries to foist upon him. The coal scuttle is made to proclaim causal relation between the self in effort and the not-self in response more satisfactorily than the rag doll; and the manifest glee over the contortions of the playful father whose hand is slapped is not innate cruelty but the delight of successful experiment in causation.

So of the noise and bluster, the building and destruction, the teasing and torture so often perpetrated by the boy. He is saying that he is here and must be reckoned with, and he wishes to make his presence as significant as possible. If home, school, and community conditions are such as to give healthful direction to both his constructive and destructive experimentation, all is well, but if society cannot so provide he will still exploit his causal relation although it must be in violation of law and order. The result is delinquency, but even in this he glories. It often gives a more pungent and romantic testimony than could otherwise be secured. It is the flaring yellow advertisement of misdirected effectiveness. Probably there mingles with this impulse the love of adventure as developed in the chase. "Flipping cars," tantalizing policemen, pilfering from fruit stands are frequently the degenerate, urban forms of the old quest of, and encounter with, the game of forest and jungle.

Then there is the lure of the water, which explains more than half his school truancy during the open season. It is a fine spring or summer day. The Wanderlust of his ancestry is upon the boy. The periodic migration for game or with the herds, the free range of wood and stream, or the excitement of the chase pulsates in his blood. Voices of the far past call to something native in him. The shimmer of the water just as they of old saw it, the joyous chance of taking game from its unseen depths, or of getting the full flush of bodily sensation by plunging into it, the unbridled pursuit of one's own sweet will under the free air of heaven--these are the attractions over against which we place the school with its books, its restraint, and its feminine control; and the church with its hush and its Sunday-school lesson: and, too often, we offer nothing else. It is like giving a hungry woodchopper a doily, a Nabisco wafer, and a finger-bowl.

If we could but appreciate the great crude past whose conflicts still persist in the boy's gruesome and tragic dreams, filling him with a fear of the dark, which fear in time past was the wholesome and necessary monitor of self-preservation; if we could only realize how strenuous must be those experiences which guarantee a strong body, a firm will, and an appetite for objective facts, we would not make our education so insipidly nice, so intellectual, so bookish, and so much under the roof. A school and a school building are not synonymous, a church and a church building are not synonymous; schooling is not identical with education, nor church attendance with religion. It is unfortunate if the boy beholds in these two essential institutions merely an emasculated police.

If either the church or the school is to reach the boy it will have to recognize and perform its task very largely beyond the traditional limits of the institution as such, and with a heartiness and masculinity which are now often absent. In this field the indirect and extra-ecclesiastical work of the minister will be his best work, and the time that the teacher spends with his pupils outside the schoolhouse may have more educational value than that spent within. In due time society will be ready to appreciate and support the educator who is bigger than any building; and outdoor schools are bound to grow in favor.