Your boy and his training : $b A practical treatise on boy-trainingPuller, Edwin Seward
Science
Your boy and his training : $b A practical treatise on boy-training
Puller, Edwin Seward
Boys; Child rearing
30. I helped a little girl pick up a bag of potatoes when the bag
busted and made another kid quit laffing at her.
31. I went for a can of beer for Mrs. Schwartzberger.
It is evident that the last good turn was performed by a slum boy who
had recently joined the troop.
It requires no student of psychology to recognize the different
developments of moral concepts shown in these replies. Some betray the
first signs of the dawning of moral consciousness, while others show a
keen appreciation of altruistic ideals, the result of ennobling home
influence and proper training.
The performance of the daily good turn develops the faculty for the
formulation of ideals. A new relationship to duty is thus fixed and
the boy’s moral nature is builded, slowly but surely, until one can
visualize the completed character of the future. Of all this, the boy
himself is wholly unconscious.
The boy knows little, if anything, of the principles or purposes of the
Boy Scouts before he becomes a member. For that matter, the average
parent has made no great effort to inform himself on the objects, scope
and workings of the organization, as too frequently he assumes it to be
a method devised for his son’s amusement, which will relieve the parent
of the duty of personal supervision while the boy is so occupied. He
regards it as a species of boy entertainment, wholly disassociated from
its educational and ethical import.
The youth knows only two things about Boy Scouts, which he has learned
from observation--that they wear uniforms and go on hikes. Both of
these make a powerful appeal to his imagination and interest. The
uniform and the parade satisfy the spectacular and dramatic needs of
his nature and the hikes gratify his savage and atavistic tendencies
which prompt him to seek the wilds and live temporarily as did his
remote ancestor--the primeval man. He joins the organization to satisfy
these primitive desires and thus effects a return to the simple life,
which furnishes, to the city youth especially, an antidote for the
injury wrought by our increasingly complex civilization and hurried
methods of living.
He does not dream nor care that the fundamental purpose of the
organization is character-building; indeed, if he were informed of this
fact, his interest would probably wane. He dislikes character-building
in the abstract, but is intensely interested in concrete scout
activities which silently and inevitably produce character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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