What Do Boys Know?

‘ALL men are liars,’ said the Psalmist, in his haste. It was a rash statement, which, doubtless, he had cause later to regret. Were he living now, and a teacher of youth, he might well be tempted to say in his wrath, ‘All young people are fools’; and again he would be wrong, at least so far as boys are concerned. Girls I must leave to those who know them better than I. They look intelligent; but appearances are deceitful, and their conversation, while picturesque, is not always reassuring.

Once there was a girl who, through all the courses of a long dinner, entertained her neighbor with sprightly talk. At the time he thought that he had never enjoyed a conversation more; but when he meditated upon it, in the cold night watches, he realized that he had done all the talking, her share being confined to two words, ‘rippin” and ‘rath-er.' The rest was ‘charm.’ That is, however, another story.

I have a theory that girls know better than boys how to make a little information, as well as a limited vocabulary, go a long way. It is a theory the truth of which it is difficult for me to establish, and I shall not attempt to do so. Boys, on the other hand, seem at times to glory in their ignorance. They wear it as a garment; they flaunt it in one’s face. ‘The world is still deceived with ornament,’ but not by them. Knowledge is theirs, but ‘ knowledge never learned of schools,’ hidden below the surface. This makes them a fascinating, if baffling, subject of study, and gives point to the query, ‘What do boys know?’

For some years it has been part of my job as master in a large preparatory school for boys, to make out each year two ‘information tests,’ and to superintend the correction of the papers. Each test contains one hundred questions, and presupposes on the part of the pupil a bowing acquaintance with the masterpieces of English literature, including the Bible, some knowledge of the political doings of the day at home and abroad, and a smattering of what is politely, but vaguely, styled ‘general information,’ which comes from the habit of keeping open the eyes and ears.

The boys who take the tests range from twelve to nineteen years of age and are, for the most part, sons of wealthy parents. They have enjoyed all the advantages that money can buy. Many have traveled widely. Not a few have been exposed to the society of refined and cultured persons.

The tests are anticipated with an interest that amounts almost to enthusiasm. There are book prizes for the winners, and the successful ones receive from their fellows plaudits not usually given in this day and generation to those whose wits are nimbler than their heels.

After reading some hundreds of these ‘general information’ papers, I am forced to conclude that the average boy’s ignorance of literature, especially of the Bible, is profound, not to say abysmal. The unplumbed depth of the abyss may, perhaps, be assigned to the youth who gave as his version of the third commandment, ‘Thou shalt not commit Deuteronomy!' but he will not lack company. The question, ‘Who led the children of Israel into the Promised Land ? ’ brought out an amazing array of candidates for that high honor, beginning with Noah, embracing all the prophets, major and minor, and ending with ‘Moses, the Baptist.’ Answers to the question, ‘What book of the Old Testament has no mention of God?’ ranged impartially from Genesis to Malachi, with a strong bias toward the former, in spite of ils opening words, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’

It is only too evident that in many modern households family worship is unknown. No longer does ‘the priestlike father read the sacred page,’while ‘the children round the ingle form a circle wide.’ As a matter of fact, one would have to look far to find an ingle in a modern apartment; the father, quite unpriestlike in garb and conversation, is on the links, or snuggling with pipe and paper in his easy chair; the children are swinging wide in quite another sort of circle, and the family Bible, if there be one, is lying, neglected, on the table, hidden from sight by The New Republic, Vanity Fair (not Thackeray’s), and the Golfer’s Companion.

How, then, is the boy to become acquainted with ‘the only book,’ as Walter Scott would have it? In Church and Sunday School? Many a boy never has attended either of them. In the public school? The Bible was banished from it long ago.

There remains the private school, in whose curriculum may be found a brief course in ‘ Bible,’ which, in the boy’s mind, takes its place with his other lessons, to be learned, recited, and joyfully forgotten as soon as possible. Why should he know who pulled down the temple of Dagon, or who slew a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass? These tragic happenings mean no more to him than the death of Baldur, the exploits of Asurbanipal, or many other ‘old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago.’

Clearly, then, the fault lies not with the boy. Teacher and parent must share the blame, and it would ill become one who views the matter from the standpoint of the teacher only, to say which is the more culpable.

Unfortunately, the boy’s ignorance of the great English masterpieces is not limited to the Bible. Profane literature receives but little better treatment at his hands. Every boy has a few favorite authors, whom he holds responsible for all that has been written in prose or verse since Shakespeare’s day. Longfellow heads the list, with Tennyson and Kipling following closely; and many are the crimes that are committed in their names. There is some reason for attributing The Vision of Sir Launfal to Lord Tennyson, for he sang of knights and their visions; but why should he be made to fat her Two Years before the Mast, Westward Ho! and The Ancient Mariner? Evidently, in the minds of many boys, ‘the sea is his, and he made it.’ There are, however, two poems which every boy hails with joy as his very own. These are Hiawatha and The Raven. FCAV boys have read them, and fewer could quote a line of them, but the majority identify without difficulty quotations from either. How the boy knows them, I cannot tell, nor can he. It is one of the curiosities of literature.

‘The proper study of mankind is man,’ but it is evident that boykind has not greatly concerned itself with the study of boy: for we learn that the centre of the nervous system is the spine, spleen, lungs, pancreas, and ‘diafram’; the bones of the forearm are the elbow, biceps, forceps, and habeas corpus; the normal temperature of the human body varies from fifty to two hundred and twelve degrees, Fahrenheit; and one element in the atmosphere essential to the support of human life is gasoline, the other being, presumably, ‘ Mobiloil.’

The female of the species, if not more deadly than the male, is, in the boy’s mind, more pervasive, for the feminine of ram is doe, dam, yew, roe, nannygoat, and she-ram; while the feminine of farmer — hardly a fair question, that — is milkmaid, old maid, farmeuse, husband-woman, and Mrs. Farmer.

It has long been maintained that no English word rhymes with window, but one test brought to light several such rhymes, among them widow, Hindu, akimbo, shadow, billow, and potato!

When the history and geography of the United States are in question, the answers are equally astounding. The largest city of Ohio is Detroit, St. Louis, ‘Sinsinnatah,’ and ‘Omerhaw.’ (The average boy refuses to be a slave to orthography.) Washington, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Roosevelt were all impeached, Farragut was admiral in the Spanish war, and Mr. Taft was the third President of the United States. In the youthful mind ‘a hundred years are as a day,’ and it matters little whether Lee surrendered at Appomattox or at Yorktown.

There is, however, a brighter side of the picture. Mother-wit often comes to the aid of ignorance, and the task of the examiner is lightened by many a gleam of humor. What, for instance, could be better than the answer which one boy gave to the question, ‘Who discovered the Pacific Ocean?’ His natural answer would have been, ‘You can search me ’; but flippancy is not encouraged; so he replied, ‘The natives who lived along the shore.’ Another defined conjunctivitis as ‘the knack of getting along with people’; and a third would have a barracuda ‘a feast where oxen are roasted whole.’

‘How many legs has a Kaffir?’ was a staggerer. Conjecture ranged from two to twelve, the majority favoring three, without making it clear what the unfortunate creature could do with the odd leg.

What is the conclusion of the whole matter? May we say in our haste that all boys are fools? Prithee, not too fast. These are out-of-doors boys, living in a world of motor-cars, air-planes, and wireless. Many a boy who could not for his life name a member of Mr. Harding’s Cabinet, can, by the sound of the engine, ‘spot’ every motor-car made in this country, improvise an aerial from the springs of his bed, or draw a model of a gasoline engine that would do credit to a mechanical engineer. Children of Martha, ‘they are concerned with matters hidden — under the earthline their altars lie.’

Perhaps they have chosen the better part . Who can say? At any rate, they are content to leave letters to those who love them; to let their secretaries do their spelling, and politicians manage the government, ‘while they finger death at their gloves’ end.’

I, who can distinguish but two makes of automobiles without giving a furtive glance at the hub-caps, am thankful that it is mine to ask the questions, not to answer them. I know full well that many boys who cannot say whether Keats is a poet or a breakfast food could make out a test that would put their masters to shame.

Times have changed, and those who aspire to ride the whirlwind have neither time nor inclination to trudge along the dusty paths of learning that their fathers trod.

and he who judges a quarrel between the mountain and the squirrel has no easy task.