The Minister and the Boy: A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' WorkHoben, Allan
Religion
The Minister and the Boy: A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' Work
Hoben, Allan
Boys; Church work with children
But most homes will do little of this, and both home and school fall
short in pledging the new life to the common good and in guaranteeing to
the state her just due. Frequently the home provides lavishly and at
sacrifice for the comfort and even luxury of the children and exacts
nothing in return. Mothers slave for sons and neglect, until it is too
late, those just returns of service which make for honor and
self-respect. Graft begins in the home, and it is amazing what pains we
take to produce an ingrate and perforce a poor citizen.
Similarly, the boy attends the "free" schools. Here is further advantage
without the thought of service in return, something for nothing--the
open end of the public crib. But the public schools are not exactly free
schools. Everything, whether at home or school, costs, and someone pays
the bills. The prospective citizen should be made to realize this, and
it would do him no harm actually to compute the cost. Through home and
school, society is making an investment in him. Let him estimate in
dollars and cents his indebtedness for food and clothing and shelter,
travel, medical care, education and recreation, and all the other items
of expense which have entered into his care and training for the
fourteen or seventeen years of his dependency.
Such an exercise, which cannot include those invaluable offices of
parental love and personal interest, may have a sobering effect, as will
also a conscious appreciation of the social institutions and utilities
which are the gift of former and contemporary generations of toilers.
But how can the schoolboy come into the self-respect of partnership?
Probably by building up the consciousness of "our school" and by being
sent from home with the idea of helping teacher and school in every way
to accomplish the most and best for all concerned. Ordinarily the home
supplies the child with no such suggestion and in some cases works even
counter to the school and against good citizenship. The teacher is added
to the ranks of the child's natural enemies, where unfortunately the
policeman has long since been consigned; and the school?--that is
something for which he carries no responsibility. Actual experiment of
the opposite kind has proved most gratifying, and this immediate
attitude toward his first public institution sets the child's will
toward the practice of good citizenship in the years that lie ahead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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