The High School Boy and His Problems/Manners and Morals
I was looking through the book shelves the other day in search of a misplaced book which I was wanting, when I came upon a pretentious volume that took me back almost to the beginning of time for me. Gaskell's Compendium of Forms it was called, and a perusal of it was guaranteed to prepare one thoroughly for every line of endeavor, and for every emergency of life. The author was equally at home in science and in literature, in religion and in art, and in all the finesse of social etiquette and poetic expression.
I was fifteen when I bought it, filled with the first impulses to attain a distinct social success in the rural community in which I lived, and yet modest enough to admit that there were many of the graces of society which I had not yet acquired, and many of the exactions of good manners with which I was not familiar. A smooth-tongued college student, trying to earn enough money during the summer to keep him going through the winter, sold it to me, and guaranteed it to give satisfaction or the money would be refunded. The price was $5.5O in exquisite silk cloth and $7.00 in full morocco.
The book contained everything from how to grow beets to the ten commandments; it gave explicit information on the widest variety of topics from how to open a set of accounts to the proper method of approaching a young woman with an offer of marriage. I can not say that it ever got me very far, however, in any of the arts which it professed to teach except, perhaps, to impress me more strongly with my ignorance, to convince me of how little of manners and morals may be learned from books, and yet to cause me to see how necessary it is that we have some knowledge of these things and practice them early in life. The ill-mannered, crude boy in high school seldom, in my experience, develops into the gracious, easy mannered man. The high school age is the habit-forming age; it is the age when principles of action are developed, and when moral and social ideals are set up. For these things the school and the home have pretty heavy responsibilities resting upon them, and these things are not likely to be learned from books.
We are tremendously practical these days. Our idea of education is that it consists mostly of facts and general information concerning mathematics and literature and science and language. We must know the immediate and practical purpose of these facts, too, if we consent to assimilate them. The average boy who follows a curriculum in high school or who studies any particular subject wants to be shown where he will profit by it. Unless he can see that he can cash in on his work before he has gone far, his enthusiasm wanes. The doing of a thing for its own sake makes no appeal to him; there must be a definite and specific financial consideration assured him.
There are few things, excepting good morals, which are of more real value to a boy than good taste and good manmers; they are among the things that pay. Both the principles and the practice should be learned in school, for principles here are of little value unless they can be carried into practice every day on the street, in the home, and in the classroom. I asked a well-known engineer in New Haven once what advice he would give to a young technical man who was hunting a job.
"Tell him," was the answer, "to choose his neckties thoughtfully and to be careful of his manners."
I asked another prominent man of affairs not long ago what special criticism he made of the young fellows who came to him for employment.
"Their English is poor, and their laundry bills too small," was his reply.
Good manners will accomplish a great deal for a boy when other things fail. As an executive officer, I am charged with the responsibility of giving or denying special privileges to students in the institution to which I belong. I try to be as consistent and unprejudiced as any one with human instincts and emotions can be, and yet I am sure I am often uneven in my decisions; I am often "worked," as boys say.
Carter came in at Thanksgiving time to ask for an extension of leave. He is a freshman and had not been home since September. His case was fair, but he presented it badly. When I hesitated, he grew irritated and assumed a rather arrogant and impudent manner. If I did not let him go it was a "rotten shame," and not in any sense giving him a "square deal," he asserted. There was nothing to do but to refuse his request if I were to keep my self-respect, and he flushed hot and banged the door furiously as he went out.
Then Hughes came in, smiling and gracious and frank.
"We boys are a terrible bother to you, aren't we?" he began.
"Not always," I said. "What would you like?"
"It's nervy in me to ask, I know," he went on, "but I don't want to come back until Tuesday morning after Thanksgiving. I haven't much of an excuse you'll think, but there's a party Monday night, and there's a girl at home I know, and—and I'd like to take her to the party." He looked up blushing.
Well, there was a girl once I knew—there is yet in fact—whom I liked tremendously well to take to a party.
"That'll be all right, Hughes," I said; "give her my love."
Now, when I thought it over at night, I wasn't quite sure that I'd been fair to Carter. He had as good a case as Hughes; he had simply put it unfortunately. He didn't have good manners, and I had refused him only because he was not quite polite. I have an idea that many people do the same sort of thing for a similar reason.
Good manners must be genuine to make a permanent impression, must be based upon a real desire to give pleasure and comfort to others. When people first met McKee they thought him the most charming boy imaginable. He was always on his feet when a lady came into the room; he never talked to a girl without taking off his hat, as any polite boy would do; he showed all the externals of respect for his teachers and for his elders. He was as punctilious in standing at attention and saying "sir" as a boy just out of military school. He was quiet, attentive, and thoughtful. But when one came to know him better one realized that he was tricky, deceitful, given to profane and vulgar talk. His apparent politeness was only a subterfuge for the accomplishment of his selfish purposes. When those who had to associate with him found out his real character, his false politeness became an insult and a lie.
A boy is, of course, supposed to learn good manners at home, but as often as not he fails. He is not judged at home with an impartial eye; his little slips are overlooked or condoned. If he is the youngest or the only child or the child of well-to-do parents, he is usually spoiled and made selfish, and as I have just said, the selfish boy is seldom polite. Sometimes he comes from a home where the courtesies of life are little known or still less practiced, and where there is little for him to learn. In more cases than otherwise it falls back upon the schools and especially upon the high school and the academy to inculcate in him the principles of good manners. It is upon his teacher that he must rely both for principles and for illustration of their practice.
There was a letter in my morning mail a few days ago from Porter that brought me pleasure and surprise. Most of my letters from undergraduates begin: "You will no doubt be surprised to hear from me, but the fact is I want something," but Porter wanted nothing. He is only seventeen. His father is a working man; his mother is without education and is busy from dawn to dark with the household cares incident to a large family. The boy has had no social experience; and one could not reasonably expect much social finesse in him. The note which he had written me was carefully written, in unquestionably good form. It was frank and boyish but phrased in as throughly good taste as might have been shown by a trained social secretary.
I had done the boy a trifling kindness when he was ill in the hospital—an attention which a thousand boys had received from my hands—or yours perhaps—before and had passed by unnoticed and unacknowledged. His note was to express his appreciation of my courtesy and to thank me for it. It had pleased both him and his parents, he said, to have me come and see him, and the book I had loaned him he had thoroughly enjoyed. His thoughtfulness touched me; it made me happy all day long, and it left a pleasant memory which will not soon fade. I knew where he received his inspiration. It was from some teacher in the high school—sensible, sympathetic—who had given him the idea and left the impression in his mind.
In contrast to this was another experience I had only a little while ago. A young fellow came to see me who had been dismissed from one institution and who wished to enter another. He was the son of a well-to-do man; he had been brought up under good social conditions; he might very reasonably have been expected to have an acquaintance with good social form. I listened to his story, and I saw that his situation was a most difficult one and one that very much required that he have a friend at court to make a strong plea for him. I had never seen him before, but I undertook to help him. I wrote a letter to a college officer in another institution, a man with whom I had an intimate acquaintance, and I gave it to the boy. I learned afterwards that it accomplished the purpose for which it was written and secured for the young fellow admission to the other institution. I have no recollection that he thanked me when I gave him the letter, and I know that he has not done so since. I have never had a word from him, and some way I can't help but wonder who taught him English composition in high school, who is responsible for his manners.
A friend of mine not long ago invited to dinner a half dozen boys just out of high school and away from home for the first time. The invitation was given in all kindness. She hoped to give pleasure to young fellows whom she imagined to be homesick, and it was at no little trouble and self-sacrifice that she prepared the meal. Two of the boys did not reply at all to her note, the other four accepted her invitation, but only two showed up at the dinner. Not one has called on her or in any way acknowledged her courtesy since, and yet they had all come from excellent high schools and some of them had been brought up in families who admitted they were above the middle classes. It was annoying to the hostess, but, of course, the person who really suffered the most was the boy himself whose training had been so inadequate.
Every autumn I watch the long line of freshmen just out of the academy or the high school as they go through the preliminary steps to enter college. The registrar's office is just across the hall from my own. Half the boys do business with their hats on, though most of the registrar's clerks are young women, and other attractive young women are standing about them—standing sometimes even when the young men are sitting. Taking the hat off is, of course, only a convention meaningless in itself, but it has come to suggest respect for women, respect for authority, respect for the house that shelters us, and no gentleman can afford to ignore it. I see these same boys later smoking at parties or as they walk down the street with young women, unconscious of the fact that by so doing they are proclaiming their lack of good breeding.
There are a thousand courtesies and conventions to be learned in high school—courtesies to women, respect for authority, the acknowledgment of kindnesses received, attention to the wishes and comforts of others, regard for one's elders, attention to the conventionalities of the society in which we live, the expression of sympathy in sorrow, of joy in success, of congratulation in the accomplishment of what our friends and acquaintances have attempted. Much of this finds expression in the thoughtful words which we may utter when face to face with friends, but more of it will be seen in the note of thanks or congratulation or condolence which requires only a few moments to write and which brings the greater pleasure often because it is unexpected. A brief, frank, well-worded note will often bring more pleasure to the recipient than a costly gift.
But after all you must have something more than mere good manners. Every day, almost, I am called upon to write letters recommending young fellows whom I have known while they were in college. Those who make inquiry always want information in very specific things. Is the man honest, can his word be relied upon, is he a fellow of clean and temperate habits, does he gamble? The men themselves who ask these questions may not be wholly exemplary in their own conduct, but they do not care to employ men who can not furnish a clean record. It is during the years of physical and mental development in the high school that moral principles are formulated and strengthened quite as much as at home.
Sometimes the boy with good manners and rather uncertain morals seems to manage as well as if his principles of conduct were quite above reproach. One of the best-mannered boys I have ever known was of this sort. He was good-tempered, polite, thoughtful of others, clever, a veritable Steerforth, in fact. He never seemed either to say or do the tactless thing, and he was loved by many people and thought charming by more. But one did not know him long until it became evident that he was selfish. He never did a kindness that involved a personal sacrifice. He never gave up or resisted anything that furnished him personal or physical pleasure. The result was inevitable. He made friends only to use them for his own ends; he was honest only when honesty subserved his purpose. He wasted his money, he learned to gamble, to drink, to engage in the most unclean practices simply because he had no real moral principles. He is charming still at forty, but no one trusts him; he picks up a precarious livelihook by the most irregular business methods. He might have been anything he chose if he had been honest and clean.
Sometimes the boy with good morals and without the finesse of good manners grows a trifle discouraged.
"It doesn't pay," he affirms. "It is the smooth guy who gets by."
He finds himself unpopular, ignored, made fun of, and he attributes the result to his rigid principles rather than to his lack of tact, or to his crude manners. A boy with good principles and good manners is invincible. He has friends, he commands respect, he has two strong and trusty weapons with which to combat temptation and to meet difficulty.
First of all you will have to be honest. The line between what is honest and what is not is not so widely drawn even among men of experience that it is not strange that young boys should often become confused in the matter, and yet the distinction between what is mine and what is thine, between borrowing and theft, between crime and a practical joke ought to be distinguishable.
Few boys would give a burglar a leg into the window of a house which he was about to rob, yet it takes more principle than most boys possess to refuse to give help to a needy friend or even to a passing acquaintance who asks for it in a school examination. If he demurs at all, it is quite as often from the fear of being detected as from any moral principle which actuates him, though one act is as undeniably dishonest as the other. I have put the question to scores of boys, yet I have seen few who did not feel that it was rather a virtue than otherwise to help a man who is in trouble even though the help was simply an aid to dishonesty. I have even known fathers who, while they would have been sorry to have their sons crib, were yet rather proud that these same sons had aided some one else to be dishonest.
There is often a feeling among boys, also, that an examination in school is not a test of their knowledge but a contest between teacher and pupil—something similar, in fact, to love or war where anything is fair if it is not found out. They do not realize that when they write their names on an examination, they are virtually saying "The contents of this paper are absolutely mine."
"I must run along," a high school boy calling at my house said to me not many evenings ago. "I have to write a theme for Blanche; she loaned me her algebra probblems, and I must pay her back."
His is a common practice, but it is the beginning of a sort of dishonesty which helps to weaken principle and to undermine good scholarship.
A young friend of mine came home from school one evening in spring with a big bunch of roses in his hands.
"Where did you get the flowers, John?" his father inquired.
"Out of Mrs. Perkins' yard," was the reply.
"Did she give them to you?"
"No, Fred and I just took them."
Fred was standing by holding an even larger bunch.
"Go to Mrs. Perkins and give her back the roses," the father said, "and tell her that you didn't realize when you took them that you were actually stealing."
"But, father, I don't know Mrs. Perkins," John protested.
"You'll know her when you have had this talk with her," was the reassuring reply, "and I'm sure you will find it easier next time not to take other people's property."
"I should not have humiliated my son in that way," Fred's father said to John's later when they were talking the matter over.
"Such a trifling humiliation is not to be considered," the other man replied, "if I help to make my son honest."
I was going down town not long ago, and I invited Bill to go with me. We were to take the street car, and it was naturally to be supposed that, since I had extended the invitation to him, I would be responsible for the fare. I ran my hand into my pocket as we started and found a quarter there, so I knew that I could finance the trip easily. We did our errand, and were on the car coming back when I discovered that I still had the twenty-five cents unbroken in my pocket. The conductor on the down trip had evidently passed me up when collecting fares, and it had escaped my notice. As he came up to me now, I handed him the coin, saying "Two fares." He rang up two but gave me twenty cents in change.
"What shall I do?" I asked Bill. "We did not pay our fares going down, and the conductor has just short changed himself a nickel."
"Your're a fool if you give the man the fare for the down town trip, but you should pay him the nickel on which he just now made a mistake."
"Why?" I inquired.
"The dime is the company's loss, and it was their fault they didn't collect it. The conductor will have to make good on the nickel when he cashes in, if you don't give it to him."
I have put the case up to a hundred boys since that time, and they have all given me the same answer. It is all right, they think, to steal from a corporation, but not quite honest to steal from an individual or profit by his mistake. They fail to see that real honesty will not permit us to steal from anyone.
I have done business for many years with all kinds of boys—the lazy and the shiftless, the selfish and the careless, those who have been thoughtless and those who have been dissipated and immoral. I can get on better with any one else than the liar. Truth is at the foundation of confidence; no business can be done satisfactorily without it; it is one of the cardinal principles of character. There is, of course, too, the half truth that is the worst sort of lie—the words which are themselves not false in their meaning, but which are so uttered as to convey false impression.
Robey, whose allowance was quite adequate, had been very neglectful in the payment of some of his hills. I spoke to him about the matter, and he assured me he would take care of the bills at once. A month later I found that he was still owing on one of the old accounts.
"I have written the check today," he said when I called him the second time. I said nothing more, because to my mind his statement meant that the bill was paid. I was very much surprised to find six weeks later that nothing had been done about the matter.
"I'm afraid you did not tell me the truth," I said to Robey when he came in response to my call.
"I didn't tell you I'd paid the bill," he said in explanation, "I said I'd written the check. I just didn't send it."
"But you meant me to think you had sent it, didn't you?"
"I suppose so."
And now Robey thinks it a trifle unfair when I hesitate to take his statements of fact without pretty careful analysis.
Sometimes it is hard to tell the truth—especially when it involves some one else or reflects upon your own character or conduct. There is, in my estimation at least, a generally prevalent false sense of honor which makes it wrong to tell the truth when the facts if known would not be creditable to some one else. I have never understood why. It is certainly not so in legal proceeding or in adult life. It demands unusual courage often to tell the truth especially when the consequences might be avoided.
McDonald was waiting for me when I came into the office one morning a short time ago.
"I want to tell you something," he said. "It isn't creditable to me, and possibly you'll think when I'm through that I'm a pretty poor chap; but I want to get it off my mind. I've got to have my own self-respect if I'm to be happy."
Then he told me that when he had presented his credits from high school in the fall, the record had not been correct—he had been given credit for subjects which he had never taken, and, though he recognized the mistake, he had said nothing about it. Now he wanted the matter straightened out, even if he were dismissed from college.
"What are you going to do to me?" he asked when he was through with his story—a story which he had told with much embarrassment.
"We'll first have your high school record corrected," I said, "and then we'll forget all about the rest of the story. Only I want to say that you are a thousand times better and stronger boy for having told the truth."
I said that many boys find it embarrassing and difficult to tell the truth when the facts to be revealed are discreditable to some one else. I have no reference to trifling derelictions which are often a matter of personal opinion and which do not concern the well-being of the community, but to matters of real moral significance which vitally affect the interests of others. In the former case every sensible person would respect the boy who refused to say anything at all. What I have in mind concerns real immorality.
There had been in our gymnasium considerable stealing of watches and money and clothing of all sorts. I was pretty well convinced who had done it and was trying to confirm my convictions. I was sure that Moore would be able to help me out if he would tell what he knew, and I called him.
"I couldn't tell you about that," he said, "I've been brought up to believe that it is not honorable to give another fellow away."
"I respect the general principle," I admitted, "but this man is a thief who is living on the community and is robbing boys who will be forced to leave college if the thing continues."
"That doesn't make any difference," Moore replied.
Ultimately the real thief when he was caught (and he did prove to be the acquaintance of Moore whom I had suspected,) accused Moore of the theft, for any thief will lie in order to cover up his own dishonesties, and he is seldom discriminating in choosing the men whom he accuses.
I have known many boys with the false standard of responsibility who held that it was wrong under any circumstances to involve others than themselves in any dereliction and who considered that they were doing a virtuous act when they lied to keep a guilty companion out of trouble. We are forced to change such standards as these when we become adult members of society, for the courts do not allow such a view point, but on the other hand hold that the good citizen is not only responsible for his own conduct but must exercise restraining influence upon his neighbor and inform on him if he is a law breaker.
Every boy is under a moral obligation to work hard, to carry through what he begins whether or not it is agreeable or interesting, to keep his promises even though the keeping be difficult or disagreeable. At home and in school we have become so accustomed to following the line of least resistance, to choosing for study only such subjects as we find easy or entertaining, to doing only those things which we like, that we balk when it comes to any hard or disagreeable work.
Frank's teacher in astronomy reported that he was not going to class. Since he had signed up for the course and was under obligations to attend it unless released by the Dean, I called him to inquire the cause of his absence.
"I don't care for it," he said. "It's hard, it doesn't interest me and I just quit it. I don't see what good astronomy is going to do me."
He had no sense of obligation to carry through what he had begun, no pride whatsoever in his class record. He was looking for the snap, for something that in itself awakened his interest; he had no conception of the moral and intellectual benefits of hard work.
There is no moral principle which is more fundamental for the high school boy to learn than that which has to do with the clean personal life. If the army taught anything, it taught us that. Every year I give to the freshmen who are just entering my own institution from high school a series of talks on personal hygiene including the dangers and physical effects of drinking and of bad sexual practices. The thing that surprises me always is how little they know and how little of what they know is true. They have the most distorted ideas of a normal healthy sexual life and of the effects of sexual disease. If they follow immoral or intemperate practices in college, in nine cases out of ten they have begun these practices long before they were ready for college, and have pitifully little conception of the ultimate dangers to character and health involved. A beginning in self-discipline should be made when impulses and imagination first lead a boy into untoward things, and this is at the beginning of high school rather than at the beginning of college. A boy's moral status is pretty well settled when he enters college. Someone should have laid down for him definite principles of personal thinking and personal conduct. Some one should have had the courage and the tact to tell him frankly and straightforwardly of his physical being, of the sacredness of his body and the necessity of his keeping it morally clean. If this is not done in the high school, there is very little likelihood of its being done at home.
A father sat in my office a few days ago talking about his freshman son. He had come in response to a letter from me. The boy was doing no good in college, his habits were bad, he was the victim of disease. I told the father the wretched unpleasant truth as gently as I could, and, he seemed surprised, stunned.
"But my boy has always been a good boy," he said. "How has it been possible for college to ruin him so quickly?"
"You are mistaken," I answered. "Every experience he has had in college he had tried before he came. If you think I am wrong ask him."
I knew I was right, for the boy had told me so, and he had told me also that neither at home nor in the high school had he been given any specific or friendly instruction as to the danger to his mind or to his body of the habits which he began early to form.
"If you want us to live a clean life, to stand for the highest moral principles," one of my freshmen said to me not long ago, "don't wait until we get to college before you set before us the ideals we should follow; begin in high school before we have begun the practices which are sometimes almost impossible to give up."
Every boy comes to the time when his moral principles are tested, when temptation stares him suddenly in the face, when he must prove to himself and to his friends whether these principles are a pretense or a reality. As their foundations were laid early, as they have been held to firmly and honestly they will stand, for the ultimate test of any boy's manners or morals is how successfully he will meet the unexpected social or moral crisis.