What Is Wrong With Our Boys?

The Boy, like the Tariff, the Football Rules, and the Suffragette, is an eternal problem. He is a never-ending source of discussion at teachers’ conventions, family councils, and sociological conferences. He is blamed for many things which he has nothing to do with; and is sometimes, though rarely, given credit for things he does not do. Usually, however, the criticism of the Boy is adverse. Where there is one optimist to see his good points, there are ten pessimists to bewail his faults.

Perhaps the strongest and most unprejudiced adverse criticism at the present time comes from the field of business life. It is very common for a business man to complain about the boys that come into his employment. They can neither write neatly, spell correctly, nor cipher accurately; their personal habits are none too admirable, and they have little politeness or respect for superiors. So say many large employers of boy-labor. If these statements are all true, surely there is something wrong with our boys.

Now, with remarkable unanimity of opinion, the critics lay the blame for this assumed deterioration of the boy at the door of the school. Magazines and newspapers seeking information on this vital subject from business men find almost universal dissatisfaction with present-day boys, and an equally universal belief that the trouble is not so much with the boy himself as it is with the system under which he is educated. If these beliefs are correct diagnoses of conditions, then it behooves educators to do some pedagogical house-cleaning.

But there are several things to be said in explanation and extenuation. In the first place, it is a mistake to assume that the inefficiency of boys in the lower levels of business life means a general deterioration of the boy in general. Comparisons, especially of persons, are dangerous arguments. When we compare, for instance, the business efficiency of present-day boys with that of the boys of thirty years ago, we should take into account that the average store- or office-boy of to-day is decidedly lower in natural ability and mental calibre, regardless of his school training, than the boy in a similar position thirty years ago. The reason for this is that undoubtedly these boys come to-day from a lower level of boy life. Business has broadened and expanded tremendously, making necessary a vast army of boy-workers where before but few were required. This creates the demand; now for the supply. There are wide individual differences in boys. Those of a high order of natural ability usually wish to gain as much education as possible. Each year the opportunities for cheap and convenient higher education increase; each year more and more boys who are mentally and morally strong go into the higher schools (both secondary and collegiate), and are thereby withdrawn from the supply needed to fill the places created by the commercial demand. Hence these places must be filled by a lower type of boy. In other words, the boy who would formerly have been in the store and the office is now in the high school. Figures alone do not prove much, but it is interesting to note that as late as 1889 only fifty per cent of the grammar-school graduates entered high school in Boston, while in 1908 sixty-eight per cent entered. Obviously it is not logical to make a general deduction in regard to the character of the boy by comparing the lowest type of to-day with the high or middle type of the past.

Another reason why the boy of the business world to-day is of a lower type than his predecessor of the sixties is found in the glamour of commercial employment as contrasted with the undesirable features of industrial or trade work. In a store or office the boy can wear good clothes, keep in touch with the outside world, and usually manage to get along without working very hard. Therefore a great many who, on account of their peculiar traits and aptitudes, should be engaged in manual work, struggle up, above their level, into business life. An interesting proof of this statement is the present lack of skilled artisans in many trades. When business was less extensive, and the demand for boys was correspondingly slight, only the higher type as a rule secured these business places, while the lower types filled the industrial positions which are now considered undesirable, and in some of which there is an actual scarcity of supply.

The proper adjustment of talents and abilities to social and economic needs is one of the great problems of to-day. It is to be hoped that the present agitation in favor of vocational guidance will encourage boys and young men to look into conditions of supply and demand in prospective occupations before they decide on a life-work. Careful and scientific selection of vocations would bring about a better equalization of workers between professional and commercial fields; and a large percentage of the inefficient boys now in business would find their proper place in the ranks of industrial and skilled labor.

The school, which is compelled by popular opinion to shoulder the entire blame for many of the deficiencies of youth, for which the home is equally responsible, is already at work on this vocational problem. In Germany, indeed, the solution has been almost worked out, but in America we are only just beginning to see that the efficiency of our social machine depends upon the proper balancing of the various forces entering into its complex action. This means that if we see to it that boys get into that class of work for which they are best fitted, both by inclination and personal aptitude, they will do better work, and the whole community will benefit. There is, it is true, much room for argument regarding many details and phases of the vocational movement. Especially should its advocates guard against any action which would hamper the individual initiative of the boy. One prominent schoolman has gone so far as to state that, in his opinion, ‘vocational guidance is another nail in the coffin of initiative.’ This rather strong language, and probably the opinion grew out of a misconception of the real meaning and scope of vocational guidance. In its true and only defensible sense, this means the investigation by boys and girls, under suitable direction and wise guidance, of the various kinds of employment open to them, with the requirements, possible rewards, and relative chances for steady work, so that they may be able themselves to choose that line of work in which they will be most likely to succeed.

The great development of city life has helped to accentuate the need for this vocational direction. Usually, when the city boy has the choice of several positions, he takes the one which pays the best, entirely regardless of his own fitness or even his liking for that particular line of work. This haphazard procedure results in constant dissatisfaction on the part of both the employer and the employee. The former is not getting the kind of work he wants, and the latter is not doing the kind he likes. The large city, by the great development of its agencies for distribution, such as retail department stores and wholesale jobbing-houses, narrows rather than broadens the vocational horizon of a boy. In many large cities there are, it is true, great factories producing a multitude of article; but boys, as a rule, know next to nothing of the manufacturing industries of their own city. The story is a familiar one of Benjamin Franklin’s being taken by his father to visit all the different shops in Boston, so that the future philosopher might see all the trades then practiced there, with a view to selecting a suitable one for his own attention. It illustrates a real need of our boys at the present day. They lack experience; they do not know the opportunities and requirements of the various occupations carried on in their own cities. Their horizon is very narrow, and must remain so until intelligent and sustained effort is made to acquaint them with vocational facts. This effort the school must make.

It is the verdict of many close observers that our boys do not work hard enough. This does not mean necessarily that they are lazy, but rather that they have not acquired what may be called the habit of work. In this respect the city boy is at a disadvantage, for there is nothing to equal the farm chores as a means of developing habits of hard work. Of course there are city boys who do chores and are encouraged by their parents to form habits of industry; but for the most part, especially in the so-called well-to-do classes, the boy’s chief aim in life is the pursuit of pleasure, with useful work and study tolerated by him as unimportant side issues.

It is a great pity that so many things which used to be looked upon as the proper work of the boy are now thought to be beneath his dignity, and are performed by servants or left undone. Again, the development of flat-life, the janitor system, and kindred metropolitan ‘improvements,’ have all helped in the emancipation of the boy from useful labor. The result is that most of our boys lack that habit of industry which makes it easy to work, whether it be at manual labor or in the culture of the mind.

Practical teachers often deplore the lack of care and effort bestowed upon lessons assigned in school to be studied at home. The trouble usually arises from the fact that the careless pupils do not know what hard, sustained, and careful work means. This is as much the fault of the home as it is of the school. It is often forgotten that the school has the boy only about five hours out of every twenty-four, and that habits developed in so short a period will be lost unless the home coöperate with the school. We are very familiar with the adage about all work and no play, and its dire effect on Jack’s character; but nowadays there is more danger that ‘all play and no work make Jack a lazy boy,’ as well as a dull one. The habit of work makes a boy more thorough in his lessons, and the result is better spelling, writing, ciphering, etc., when he goes into the world. The accuracy and care which the business man so longingly seeks can only come from a solid foundation of continuous hard work. The boy who has been trained to work at home and at school will naturally be an active and ambitious clerk or artisan; for industry becomes a habit.

The power to think independently, and to make decisions unaided by a superior, is a very valuable possession, and it must be begun and developed in school, otherwise the boy will be under a heavy handicap. The boy who cannot think or decide crumples up under responsibility of any kind. It is largely responsibility and experience which develop this power of judgment. Here again, the country boy, with his animals to care for and his tasks to manage, has an advantage, for he simply must learn to plan and to think. IN the city practically everything is taken for granted, and unless he learn to think in the school, the city boy is helpless. Whether he learns in school or not, depends chiefly on the individual teachers. The best course of studies in the world can be so stupidly administered that the mental activity and free thought of the child are effectually and utterly throttled. On the other hand, a very dead, uninteresting course may, in the hands of a good teacher, result in lively, spontaneous, thoughtful work.

But, regardless of where the fault lies, many observers agree that this lack of ability to think is one of the great deficiencies of our boys of to-day. It is to be feared that certain subjects which have been pressed recently into the curriculum of our elementary schools have served to deaden thought somewhat. We do not say this in disparagement of the subjects themselves, but rather of the methods by which they are commonly taught. Let us take, for example, Painting (not drawing, but water-color work), Weaving, Clay-Modeling, and Nature-Study, variously known (according to the point of view) as ‘fads,’ ‘frills,’ ‘fillers,’ or ‘culture’ studies. We do not wish to take the utilitarian point of view that no study is of any value unless it can be coined into wages—or ‘salary’; we believe that the end of education is not merely to earn, ‘a living,’ but to gain more abundant life, which implies some ability to grasp the meaning of beauty in art and nature. Besides, even these so-called ‘culture’ studies have a disciplinary value if properly taught.

If Painting is a mere imitation, it becomes valueless daubing, but the true teacher will make the blending and harmony of colors an exercise of the judgment, developing powers of perception, comparison, and expression. In Weaving, if designs are simply wrought out blindly, the task is a waste of time educationally, however useful the finished product may be. But if the design is carefully planned by the individual child, and if difficulties are met and decisions made by him on his own responsibility, such work is undeniably stimulating to mental alertness. Nature-study has been the butt of much ridicule, and it does seem a waste of time to look at pictures of birds, tear flowers apart, or play with chips of stone. The net result of much of this work in our schools is the learning of the names of a few specimens, promptly forgotten. And yet, properly taught, elementary science (for that is what true Nature-Study really is) offers an ideal opportunity for the cultivation of careful observation, accurate description, and systematic arrangement, — all demanding strictly original thought. The fallacy of jumping at conclusions, or arguing from defective induction, is not indulged in by the boy who has enjoyed some real objective teaching in elementary science.

It is unfortunate, however, that this same subject is at present taught, for the most part, in a very humdrum, lifeless, second-hand manner. When specimens are inadequate or entirely absent; when facts are pointed out by the teacher, instead of being discovered by the pupil through independent investigation; when conclusions are derived from the teacher or text-book, instead of being arrived at by the pupil’s reasoning power, the study of elementary science is a waste of golden minutes.

But it is not only in these culture studies that poor teaching retards mental development; even in such accurate and exact studies as arithmetic and grammar, slipshod or dictatorial methods often result in blind, halting work, with no real independent power underlying the operations.

Beyond a doubt, education is far more widely diffused now than it was thirty years ago; and for that reason our boys ought to be better educated now than ever before. Probably they are; but that should not blind us to the deficiencies of our school-training which lessen the ability of the boy to do the work of the world. Education is not to be appraised by quantity; its value depends on the power it develops. If our boys lack the habit of work, the schools should see to it that, in school at least, they shall do more work, and do it more carefully and continuously. The home must help, of course; but the school and above all the individual teacher, must see to it that the boy does not sit back and absorb an education, but that he makes a vigorous personal effort to secure it. Teachers must work hard themselves, for the spirit of work is contagious; but they must not do the pupil’s work for him.

By expert vocational guidance the school must broaden the experience of the boy, in order to remedy the present random method of doing the world’s work. By revision of courses, and by careful training and supervision of teachers, the schools must do more for the development of the power of initiative. There is nothing very seriously wrong with our boys, nor with our schools either; but the three defects noted above must be met at once by corrective policies, both in the school and the home; or we shall soon find our boys at a standstill. When our boys are at a standstill, our outlook will be a dark one; for the only safe foundation for a strong and prosperous national future is the progressive education of the youth of the present.