The Boy and His Gang

by Joseph Adams Puffer

The treatment of the first of these qualities of boyhood is perhaps a problem for superintendents and school boards rather than for individual teachers. One rejoices to see that, more and more every year, attention is being given to this aspect of boy nature. Manual training, industrial education, practical work of all sorts are relieving boys from the unnatural burden of acquisition and offering them instead their proper chance to do. Why is it, when we can all see so clearly the general superiority of the color sense in girls, we are so blind to the boy’s preëminence in the muscular sense!

Much of this, I say, is not the problem of the individual teacher, who must, for the most part, conform to the school programme. Even here, however, an insight into boy character will help her in smaller matters, here and there, to handle the boy with the grain instead of across it. Outside school hours, there is sometimes opportunity for the teacher to enter into many of the activities dear to boyhood which I have already discussed. The excursions to interesting and historic spots, the nature walks, the visits to industrial plants, and the like, the value of which I have already emphasized, are for the most part quite within the range of most teachers. A few women of my acquaintance have even gone camping with their boys, and done it successfully.

The most important thing, however, is that the teacher, while she appeals at every turn to the natural activities of boys, shall always, so far as she possibly can, organize these activities on the basis of the boy’s own spontaneous groups. When she cannot manage this, as in many cases she inevitably cannot, let her imitate in her artificial groupings the size, the quality, and the internal structure of the native gang.

For example, let us suppose that a teacher, fully alive to the motor-mindedness of boys, sets out to take special pains with the gymnastic work of her room. Suppose, too, she decides to follow a common practice and divide her pupils into squads or files, each with its separate leader. It will not do, in such a case, for her merely to pick out a half-dozen docile youths, and put each in charge of a random group. She ought, in the first place, to make her squads of about the same size as the gangs which the boys are forming of their own accord; and she should, in addition, select for her leaders, not the boys whom she happens to like or even the best performers, but the boys who are actually leaders in their own gangs. Then she should, so far as possible, let the leaders choose their squads, keep the groups together, and not make alterations without good reason.

By this device the squad becomes a gang, artificial and temporary, to be sure, but still enough of a gang to have some touch of the gang organization and the gang spirit. The amount of these will probably be small, but whatever there is is so much clear gain.

Or suppose a teacher goes in especially for nature study, and has her pupils make collections for the school, butterflies, beetles, minerals, it does not make much difference what,—stamps, if nothing else offers. By this means she appeals strongly to the acquisitive instinct, which, as we have seen, is especially strong in boys, and often the sole reason for their thievery. By this means also, since the collection is for the school, she appeals to the instinct of loyalty, and turns this powerful impulse of boyhood in the direction of the institution and of herself as a part of it. She may, however, without added labor, go still further. Let her organize the collecting on the basis of the boys’ natural groups; let her work, in short, less with individuals and more with gangs. She can set one group to collecting one set of objects, and another group another set. But her groups should be like the natural gangs in size, and each should have one member, though not commonly more than one, who is already the natural leader in some permanent group. Thus, as before, the instinctive, spontaneous gang loyalty will unconsciously attach itself to the school and the school work.

The teacher, then, in dealing with boys, must learn to think in terms of gangs, as well as in terms of individuals. She must, in certain cases, go even further than this and think of gangs entirely, and not of individuals at all. Suppose, for her arithmetic class, she plans to take up as a practical problem, in mensuration and denominate numbers, the material which is, let us say, going into a dwelling-house in process of construction near by. Her thought should not be: I will send ten individuals to measure foundation or cellar or frame, and see which boy comes out best. She should think rather: I will send two gangs of five each, and see which gang comes out best. And these gangs should be as far as possible real gangs. The best device is to select the leaders, who, in turn, one need not say, must be boys whom the rough-and-ready election of their fellows has already elevated to a like post outside. These, then, should select their companions; and at once there results something of the gang structure and spirit. Then the rivalry of the gangs will make each boy expend far more effort than he would ever put forth for his own glory.

So it should be with any attempt to accomplish anything for the school. Is the room to be decorated for some occasion? The pupils as a whole should not attend to the room as a whole; nor should the pupils as individuals work as assistants to the teacher. Instead, the work should be divided into parts, and each part should be given to an independent group; to a natural group, as far as possible, but at any rate to a group under a natural leader.

Or is it a question of self-government, either in the schoolroom or on the playground? The head monitor, or whatever he is to be called, should pick his own assistants, and be responsible for their results. When the time comes for a change of authority,—it is well to have such change come periodically and somewhat often,—the whole group, prime minister and cabinet together, should go out of office at once, and another group take their place. That is the way men organize their industries and manage their governing. It may often be advisable to have the entire body of pupils elect the successive leaders; but the leader’s assistants who are to work with him should be his own selection. Only thus can one make sure that they “will be in sympathy with the administration”—or, in other words, belong to the same temporary gang.

The main point, then, in dealing with school-boys at the gang age is to utilize to the full their natural groups. The little boy is an individualist, and we train him as an individual. But when later at the age of ten or twelve, the gregarious instincts begin to appear, the significant thing, the interesting thing, the unit with which, oftentimes, we have to work, is not the individual but the gang. For certain purposes, at this stage, we may ignore the boy and attend to the boy group. After sixteen the group dissolves, and once more we may take up the education of the individual.