Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

The Preparatory School and the Boy

I

J. H. ATKINSON, BLAIR ACADEMY, BLAIRSTOWN, N. J.

N a recent communication to the New York Times, President Thwing says: "The primary function of the preparatory school is twofold,—it is to fit boys for college; it is also to fit boys, to use the phrase which is used in one of the earliest documents of the Phillips Academy at Andover, for the great business of living."" The prepara

tory schools are to turn out not only the most but the best freshmen, if they are not sorely tempted to slight "the great business of living" until their walls picture forth but feebly the splendid and hopeful idea. The temptation is strong, owing to the intense energy that is applied to the training for examinations. There is a There is a premium on that for which marks and credits are given and an inclination to slur what, worthy as it may be, in the immediate test makes no "points." This is reflected in the bearing of many students, college and preparatory, a bearing which depreciates their heritage of the rich and sacred things of life. They seem in a manner to have naturalized themselves in a realm apart from that in which human nature unfolds itself in a natural and characteristic way. Immunity from ties and responsibilities through a series of years, and exclusive attention to the processes that refine and sharpen the intellect, tend somewhat to desiccate the emotional nature, and to this extent to unfit them for life's higher contentments. It has been said that women sometimes seem to have let pale the rose-hue of their domestic affections through a prolonged season of ambitious intellectual gymnastics. The inference is that some of the nurture of youth seems of a kind to attenuate the affections for the remedial and wholesome influences of home life.

The preparatory school separates the boy from home at a time when the home influence ought to be in effect. From fourteen onwards a few years the boy acquires an attitude likely to be afterwards a distinguishing characteristic. Away

from parental restraints he is inclined to exult in his personal liberty, to become forward and self-confident, blasé, in imitation of conduct that goes with riper years. All imitation is usually of the worse and not the better. He is of an age to profit ill by independent association with large numbers. The prospect of a long career of independence in school and college looms large, offers privileges that tend to make him an autocrat, sets him forward, in his own imagination, with a bound, to that maturity which entitles him to keep his own counsel and tempts him to assume license to a season of impudence and tyranny. This is manifest in the endeavor of boys in preparatory schools to copy the ways of college men, and especially to organize secret societies and through them arrogate to themselves a power in the school to influence the administration. They bound over the dew and the bud of life, which if possible ought to be prolonged fresh and innocent and susceptible, miss the inspiration and the fervor of adolescence, which ought to approach gradually the larger expectations. This practice is to be sentenced as not in good form. The lengthened period of youth still is brief and rightly extends through the preparatory school, an institution that supplants the home life of its pupils. The restraints and exactions of the home which refine away conceit, suppress irregularities, check wrong tendencies, are in force in the preparatory school by implication of President Thwing and the Andover document.

As the boy is transplanted into the preparatory school he loses much of the personal attention that is due him. In the repair of this loss the school looks towards "the great business of living." One of the obvious reasons the boy needs special attention is that he is likely to be gifted with a certain amount of ambiguity. Allowance is to be made for it as the astronomer makes allowance for the "personal equation." If the boy lacks it, as he commonly does, he has in him the making of a Togo. He needs no brace or strait-jacket to keep him upright, but ought to be appointed monitor, or given some other responsible position in the school, for the good he can do. If he registers the equation he is the last to acknowledge it. If induced to acknowledge it, he does not yet see the harm of it. To him it is like the

image on the retina, which, though top side down, he naturally regards as right side up. For instance, he does not see the essential unmanliness of magnifying into an illness a disinclination to attend class, or of construing a permission to see his tailor into a privilege to lounge about the railway station. He has not yet learned to distinguish between his own will and necessity, between the ostensible and the real. The school endeavors to point out this distinction, to eliminate the equation.

The school is supposed to impress him with a definite notion of what is becoming, of honesty, fair play, manly conduct. A moral pressure equal to a tonic atmosphere is supposed to emanate from the authorities, sufficient to blight any tendency to double dealing or underhand methods-the methods of the mask and the stiletto. Shams and cant and snobbery are supposed to be exotic, unreality and veneer to find no salubriety, personal purity and openness of character to be indigenous.

As the school looks towards "the great business of living," it endeavors to encourage a chivalrous spirit, which manifests itself in kindly service and in generosity of word and action; it helps the student to realize the higher benefits of school life and the substantial pleasures of later life which he ought to enjoy. This spirit identifies itself with a wholesome outlook, represents the preservative quality which takes its tincture from goodness of heart-represents the spirituality of a regenerate

nature.

Right feeling is desired, as the ivy-growth that is native and becoming, that adorns and gives grace to the thing it touches. But it cannot be imparted as a matter of policy, is not taught in a formal or even in a conscious way. Its rise partakes in no wise of the nature of hothouse growth, but rather of the nature of a mood, which communicates itself unwittingly as a contagion. It is not induced, as it seems, by studied words of instruction, but as if by the unconscious reflection of personality. Its impartation is the method of educating the heart, is resident and dominant in the source of influence, a life-giving motive traceable in every feature of the school's activity.

In the interest of "the great business of living," the openhearted manifesto exemplifying the principle of the "square

deal" takes precedence of the ambiguous "ukase." Pomp and array are fast losing their glamour. The attributes of majesty, in which reside the dread and fear of kings, surrender their awe to an informality that knows no applause. The magic wand which bewilders and overpowers the multitude yields its might to a trained indifference to a sign. To be large of heart is to be chief in authority; inward quality becomes the insignia of power. The power of self-control, of self-effacement, the power to eliminate bias and to see things as they are, is the princely scepter beside which the imperial authority of Cæsar is but a shadowy symbol.

The principle holds in the administration of the school as well as of the state. Ulterior and patriotic motives aside, it is a leveling and equalizing force and makes for democracy in a school. It is a leven to sweeten the environment, to make wholesome the atmosphere where adolescence is nurtured. It induces simplicity, openness, purity in the youthful mind, disinfects it of equivocation, of sinister thoughts, of hidden designs. It gives tone to the moral nature, keeps alive the discriminating sense of good and evil forces, imparts the ease of manner exigent to personal innocence, to the bearing of one who thinks clearly and sees straight.

The College Entrance Examination Board's

Questions in English

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MARTHA HALE SHACKFORD, WELLESLEY COLLEGE

THE task of preparing examination questions in
English and in English literature is one which

T makes the stoutest heart quail. No other subject

demands so much skill in devising an adequate test of a student's knowledge or so much earnest reflection and caution in marking answers. The examiner in French, or history, or chemistry is

expected to investigate the nature of definite information gained during two or three years of recent study; in English he must investigate and judge knowledge of facts acquired and the habits of speech formed, in most cases, during a dozen years' acquaintance with the English language. To satisfy more than five hundred preparatory schools and over fifty colleges by providing questions that are fair, yet searching, is the aim of the examining board. No one would be irrational enough to expect that every set of papers drawn up for such an object would be flawless. "Men descend to meet" and examinations when conducted on a large scale must, of necessity, be a little less rigorous than they would be if a single institution were concerned. Certain concessions are unavoidable and a slight lowering of the standard is atoned for by the establishment of uniformity where before was chaos. The problem to be faced now, after five years of experiment, relates to nicer adjustment of details..

Before approaching the topic of the weak points in the examination papers we must note that the questions have been simple and never unfair. No attempt has been made to awe students by collecting abstruse problems for them to solve, if possible. However, this which is excellence is also defect,the papers are in many instances not stringent enough. A restatement of the requirements and a study of the examinations will bring the matter into clearer light. The books set for reading were: Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

« AnteriorContinuar »