Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/25

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

all the courage and force of will that I could summon to recommend discipline of any sort, and especially the dismissal of a student from college. It is no small matter to send a young fellow from college in disgrace. As time has gone on I have realized more clearly the effect of discipline upon the indivdual, and I have seen, too, that the parent quite as often as the child is at fault, and needs the shock which discipline brings. When one sees the fathers he often feels like being more lenient with the sons.

A young fellow who has been detected in a violation of college regulations, whether it be a case of cribbing, or gambling, or stealing, or whatever it may be, almost invariably thinks first of his parents, usually of his mother. I have remarked often, not as a jest, but as a matter of fact, that one parent at least, and often both, of most of the students with whose discipline I have been connected for a good many years has been in the most critical physical, mental, or financial condition,—a condition which the boy thinks will end in a complete breakdown if the parents hear of the son's disgrace. I have often wondered why such critical situations do not more often keep sons within the narrow path.

"It will break my mother's heart," I am told over and over again by boys who think they are uttering the truth, and though this fact is no logical argument if the punishment is deserved, and the good of the University community is to be furthered, I have come to know that it is not true. "If I am sent home," boys say to me, "it will mean that my education is at an end, and that my father will have nothing to do with me further." I have had fathers and