Your boy and his training

by Edwin Seward Puller

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.