Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/16

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make him give up school and to drive him upon the rocks. It is perhaps to be deplored that high school and adolescence should come at the same time.

It is for this reason that many thoughtful teachers have tried to change the situation by making it possible for children to complete the work of the grades by the time they are twelve, so that they may be well entered upon the work of the high school before the time of physical transition comes. Whether or not such reorganization of school work is feasible and whether or not it will ever be generally made, depends upon a good many things which it is hardly desirable to discuss here.

It is about the boy himself that I want most to speak and of the various problems which at the high school age he is called upon to solve. A lot of things are happening to him about the time he enters high school, very important things, too, and yet he is seldom prepared for these. He does not understand the situation at all himself, and those who know anything about it seldom help him out. His teachers are generally afraid to tell him what he ought to know about himself, or they are perhaps so taken up with presenting to him facts about history and economics and grammar and mathematics and the lives and accomplishments of other men, that they have no time to give to the boy himself. Even his Sunday school teacher who ought to get down to practical every day matters, generalizes on the facts and the phrases of the Bible and seldom if ever makes any personal or practical