The types which have been discussed will generally work out all right and find their places in the various social strata in the community in which they live. The unfortunate boys, however, are handicapped tremendously by their environment and surroundings, and it will often become a part of the Teacher's work to help secure a change in these environments. Boys of very wealthy parents and boys from homes of poverty are usually sinned against by their parents. The parents of both are either so busy making money and spending it in the social whirl, or so pushed by the pangs of hunger and the fight for life, that the children who are brought into the world are left either very much to themselves or to underlings who have very little interest in the boy's welfare. It is these neglected boys that oftenest produce our great criminals. All boys of this type somehow or other are tied together. The neglected boy generally becomes the delinquent and the delinquent boy the criminal, so that what might be said about one might also be said about all. This class constitutes our national deficit when we come to consider our assets in manhood, and the Teacher can do a tremendous thing here by helping to form the undeveloped wills of these unfortunate fellows.
THE DEFICIENT AND THE DEPENDENT
The deficient boy and the dependent are really out of the scope of the Teacher. The dependent class will have to be taken care of by the charitable institutions of the State, and the deficient boy because of his lack of mental development will always be a ward of the community.
THE WAGE-EARNER AND THE OVERAMBITIOUS BOYS
The wage-earning boys and the boys of overambitious parents or those who are overambitious themselves need all the help and sympathy that they can get from a Teacher. The father who is pushing his boy because of his own ambition will very often need to be talked to by the Teacher or his friends, and given an understanding of the crime he is committing against his own child. The overambitious fellow who is pushing everything aside for a definite thing in life will often have to be talked to in the plainest language by the Teacher to get him to see his other responsibilities and duties in life. The wage-earning boy who works from early in the morning until late at night to keep bread in his mouth and breath in his body will compel the Teacher, if he is really thoughtful, to give up some of the things which he has already held dearest and possibly lead his wage-earning boy into outdoor activities, even on the half holidays which he would naturally spend in the circle of his own family.
THE STREET, FOREIGN-BORN AND NEGRO BOYS
The street, foreign-born and negro boys will furnish very much the same kind of problem; because of a general rule, they may be all grouped under the wage-earning class. Some may be more shiftless than others and may need more attention, while others may be merely awaiting the touch of sympathy and the helping hand to make strong men out of them. A goodly percentage of our greatest Americans have been foreign-born boys, and, if there is any class that the Teacher should be more patient with than others, it is the immigrant and the son of the immigrant.
Grouping Standards
The Teacher will find it greatly to his advantage to group his boys according to some standard. Unfortunately, all standards, so far, are more or less artificial, but approximate success may be secured by using the experience of boy workers in various parts of the country. The standard which is most generally used is that of age. It is also the most unsatisfactory. Boys mature physically rather than chronologically. This makes the age standard a poor guess, because a boy may be physically fourteen when he is chronologically eleven, and vice versa. If the age standard be used, it would be preferable to group all the boys of twelve years together, then the thirteen-year-old boys in another group, and the same with the fourteen, the fifteen, the sixteen, and the seventeen-year-old boys. This would be rather hard to do in small places, although perfectly feasible in a larger town or city. Because of its impossibility, as far as the rural districts are concerned, it might be well to divide the years from twelve to eighteen into three standards—twelve to fourteen, fourteen to sixteen, and sixteen to eighteen. The age grouping, however, will never be reliable in achieving results, as the individual physical development varies so much.
The height and weight standard is more scientifically correct than the age standard, although it has not been tested out enough to warrant any authoritative declaration in its favor. If this method is used for grouping, the standards for athletic competition among the boys might be used; that is, all the boys of ninety pounds and under might be put together, the same being true for those under one hundred and ten, one hundred and twenty-five, and one hundred and forty pounds. If height is used, boys of fifty-six and a half inches in height and classifying under ninety pounds in weight might be grouped together. Also boys of sixty-three inches in height and coming within the one hundred and ten pound weight. This standard will doubtless become the real basis of all groupings in the future, but as yet it needs more demonstration in order that the various classifications may be made accurately.