Here must come in the patience of the saints. The restlessness must be
soothed, the family hearth must be tolerant enough to keep there the
boy, whom Satan will receive and cherish, if his mother does not. The
male element sometimes pours into a boy, like the tides in the Bay of
Fundy, with tumult and tossing. He is noisy, vociferous, uproarious, and
seems bent only on disturbance; he despises conventionalities, he hates
parlors, he longs for the woods, the sea, the converse of rough men,
and kicks at constraint of all kinds. Have patience now, let love have
its perfect work, and in a year or two, if no deadly physical habits set
in, a quiet, well-mannered gentleman will be evolved. Meanwhile, if he
does not wipe his shoes, and if he will fling his hat upon the floor,
and tear his clothes, and bang and hammer and shout, and cause general
confusion in his belongings, do not despair; for if you only get your
son, the hat and clothes and shoes and noise and confusion do not
matter. Any amount of toleration that keeps a boy contented at home is
treasure well expended at this time of life.
One thing not enough reflected on is, that in this transition period
between childhood and maturity the heaviest draft and strain of school
education occurs. The boy is fitting for the university, the girl going
through the studies of the college senior year, and the brain-power,
which is working almost to the breaking-point to perfect the physical
change, has the additional labor of all the drill and discipline of
school.
The girl is growing into a tall and shapely woman, and the poor brain is
put to it to find enough phosphate of lime, carbon, and other what not,
to build her fair edifice. The bills flow in upon her thick and fast;
she pays out hand over hand: if she had only her woman to build, she
might get along, but now come in demands for algebra, geometry, music,
language, and the poor brain-bank stops payment; some part of the work
is shabbily done, and a crooked spine or weakened lungs are the result.
Boarding-schools, both for boys and girls, are for the most part
composed of young people in this most delicate, critical portion of
their physical, mental, and moral development, whose teachers are
expected to put them through one straight, severe course of drill,
without the slightest allowance for the great physical facts of their
being. No wonder they are difficult to manage, and that so many of them
drop, physically, mentally, and morally halt and maimed. It is not the
teacher’s fault; he but fulfils the parent’s requisition, which dooms
his child without appeal to a certain course simply because others have
gone through it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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