Your boy and his training

by Edwin Seward Puller

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.