The boy at this age is seeking for a king. He is very likely to be like old St. Christopher, he will serve the strongest if he can find him. Tides of religious feeling are sweeping in on him now; but if you want to convert him you must hold up before him no mediaeval example, but the great, magnificent, athletic life of that Divine Master who has been so often misrepresented to us.
He is a very lovable being, that boy is, at times. Oh, you are reverencing him to-day; well, then bear in mind that probably about the same time tomorrow morning you will be gripping for the scruff of his neck, and when you grip him, grip him hard, it is no time for half-way measures. Never hit a boy at that age with a switch. If you do you are lost. Either don't hit at all or hit hard.
A great deal of the child still remains in him, his instability, for instance. He might well say of himself, "my name is legion." In the remainder of his young life everything that is trifling and worthless all comes to the surface, just as it does in the fermenting liquor, the strong and sweet are all hidden below the froth. You cannot see it. You can very easily do him injustice. You must sympathize with him. Remember your own foolish youth when you were his age; remember your own blunders and then you will have a great patience with him and great admiration for him, because these blunders are not a great deal worse than they are. If you can't do this, then leave him to Nature, for you cannot help him.
We found, during the years of puberty, a physical metamorphosis, when the body was all made over, and now, during those years of adolescence we have a mental metamorphosis that is just as complete as the physical metamorphosis. All things are becoming new. They have not become new yet, but they are becoming new; hence it must be a time of instability, of self-education, of the strange mixture of the very new and the very old, the bad and the good, of that which is passing away and which has passed away long ago, and that which has not yet come. Look a little deeper into him; you will find he has a pretty good primitive system of morality; it is a very primitive one, consisting mainly of loyalty to his friends. Treat him "square," as he says, and fairly, and then you may purr and curb him just as you will.
Remember that tides of religious power and influence have been sweeping through him. The first one came probably at twelve, if we may trust our statistics; the second stronger, at fourteen, and then the third—perhaps a good many don't feel the first one or second—the third perhaps at sixteen. The one which comes over him at sixteen will affect heart and intellect and will, and everything, and he will stay converted probably. If you convert him at twelve, he probably will fall from grace before he is fifteen. It is rather interesting to notice that those periods when his experiences are likely to be very deep and very strong, are the years when his chest girth is expanding the most rapidly. A very good bit of physiology or psychology or of anything else you choose to call it, to learn is this:
If you want to convert a man to religion, get plenty of good, fresh air into his body; you never can do it in an ill-ventilated room.
It is a period of seeing visions and of dreaming dreams; you know that, if you remember your boyhood and girlhood. Those dreams and visions are the most substantial things there are in his life or in yours or mine; for "where there is no vision the people perish." Wendell Phillips used to say that "the power which overthrew slavery and hurled it to the ground was young men and young women dreaming dreams by patriots' graves." There is a good deal more than rhetoric in that statement. Endless possibilities are in these dreams and visions. It is a period of promise, of magnificent promise, which you and I as teachers are privileged to see afar off before they are even glimpsed by his parents and many of his friends.
The great question now is, Will the promise and the vision ever be realized, or will they fade out and disappear and leave him a Philistine? And lucky if he is not a brute, for the only brute in this world, my friends, is a degenerate man. When you hear a man say that he has cut his eye-teeth, and he has got rid of his dreams and his visions, then may the Lord have mercy on the soul of that man, because he is dead. The all-important question now is, Can you get that dream and that vision so burned into his memory, so blazing before his eyes, that he will never forget it and never lose sight of it, and win it if it costs him his life? Then you have educated him.
These visions are far more important than all of the science, even the biology, that a man can learn in college. It is the business of the parent and teacher at this time to bring to birth and to sturdy growth high aims, purposes, ideals, the whole spiritual life. Your business in early childhood is with the physical, because that is the important thing at that time, if you can build a very healthy little animal, you have done well; but during the high school age you must build the spiritual. If you don't feel this, I cannot explain it to you; and if you don't feel this within you, if it is all meaningless and mere noise, don't you dare teach a high school, for you are not big enough nor deep enough to do that.
The great question, after all, is not how much learning have you been able to put into him, but how much of the finer ambitions, how much power, how deeply and strongly they hunger for the very best. An ounce of inspiration at this time is worth more than a pound or a ton of learning; I am no foe of learning, either. The high school is and will remain the people's college. It is the only college that a great part of the people ever will know. Do not neglect that great fraction who are never going to get anything higher and beyond in order to put your time on those who are going on to colleges and universities. You must be the people's support, and you may well thank fortune that it doesn't seem to be nine-tenths of your business out here in the West to fit boys and girls for a college examination. If that ever threatens to become your business, then you withstand it and face it to the death, for there is nothing will ruin education faster than that; I know sorrowfully whereof I speak.