Bad Company—See [Companions, Evil].
Bad to Worse—See [Down Grade, The].
BADNESS IN BOYS
“He is a bad boy” may mean so many things. In the eyes of some teachers a boy is “bad” if he talks repeatedly to his neighbor. The boy who has a fight with another boy is “bad.” The boy who does not study his lessons is “bad.” The boy who goes to a moving-picture show is “bad.” The boy who throws ink across the room is “bad.” The boy who “answers back” is “bad.” The boy who rifles the teacher’s desk is “bad.” The boy who disobeys school rules is “bad.” “Give a dog a bad name and hang him” should now read, “Give a boy a bad name and ruin him.”
All school types of “badness” need classification. Many of them under careful classification would no longer be considered “bad.” A boy’s wrong acts are often due not so much to deliberate choosing of wrong after he knows right, but to the lack of any sense of right or wrong. Children’s so-called “badness” is due to unmorality oftener than to immorality. Until a boy’s moral nature has been roused and developed, it is absurd to think that one can find the basis of appeal in theoretic ethics or right for right’s sake. Who is to blame when blind, unquestioning obedience to short-sighted, arbitrary school rules is made the basis of a child’s conduct and reputation?
When children go through school learning nothing except what can be given to hundreds simultaneously, in classes so large that undue emphasis is laid upon order and quiet, who is to blame if the majority leave school with morals that alarm those interested? Go through the list of “bad boys” in your school or your town. Classify their offenses. Is immorality or unmorality responsible? If the latter, what share of the blame for this condition belongs to the school? Why consider a boy hopeless or degenerate because he commits a moral offense? Do we consider him intellectually hopeless or defective because of his errors in spelling or arithmetic?—Julia Richman, “Proceedings of the National Education Association,” 1909.
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BALANCE, A LOOSE
Many men think they can rely in a general way upon fate or fortune to square their moral accounts, but in the long run a man must face his record.
Mr. Moody tells of a young couple who on commencing to keep house started to keep an account of their family expenses. After a few months the young husband said to his wife: “Darling, I’ll spend the evening at home to-night, and we will look over the account together.” The young husband found frequent entries like this: “G.K.W., one dollar and a half”; and a little later on, “G.K.W., two dollars”; and after a little, “G.K.W., three dollars.” Becoming a little suspicious, he demanded, “Who is this ‘G.K.W.’ you have spent so much on?” “Oh,” said she, “I never could make the accounts come out right, so I lumped all together that wouldn’t balance, and called it G.K.W.—Goodness Knows What!” (Text.)—Louis Albert Banks.