Your boy and his training

by Edwin Seward Puller

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.