Fourth: Laws and regulations of constituted authorities.
Fifth: Sunday school and church--the religious influence with its
standards of wickedness and goodness.
If we consider these in order, we are not impressed by any striking
change in the school influence. In many respects, no doubt, schools are
better planned and more intelligently managed than they ever were
before. More attention is paid to ventilation, hygiene, recreation, on
the one hand; and on the other the methods employed in imparting book
knowledge are probably more enlightened.
As regards the question we are discussing--obedience, discipline,
respect for authority--on the whole, there has probably been no great
change. In the class-room and throughout the school regime, strict
obedience is still maintained as an essential requisite, just as it has
always been. The punishments and penalties for disobedience are perhaps
a little less severe and drastic, but without any real difference in
effect.
The only question worth raising in this connection is how far
school-teachers and school-rules are taken to heart by the average boy
or girl--how far they are made to apply to their notions and motives,
when school is left behind. School-books, school-teachers and
school-discipline are so apt to be bunched together and relegated to a
special corner of the mind.
Our second group--the influence of example and imitation--has probably
always been a more important factor in shaping conduct and character.
What the older boys, just above you, do and believe, makes a lot of
difference to you, if you are a boy.
It is no question here of old-fashioned precepts or theories, handed
down by parents, grandmothers or school-teachers, to be taken with a
grain of salt. It is something living and vital, which concerns you
directly. You look up to the older boys: you want to be like them; and
approved of by them. What they think and do may be at variance with the
ideas of nurse, mother and school-master, but if it is good enough for
them, it is good enough for you. It is a practical standard which you
can't help being judged by. If you fail to live up to it, or refuse to
accept it and try to act differently, there is a sure penalty. You will
be sneered at, disliked, looked down upon, or laughed at.
If you are a girl, the same principle applies. There is nothing new
about the principle. It is as old as the hills and universal.
Is the effect of it to-day on the forming character any different from
what it has been, in the past? Undoubtedly. A moment's reflection will
show why and how this must be so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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