Littell's Living Age/Volume 126/Issue 1632/Boys at Home
BOYS AT HOME.
Education has always supplied reformers with a fruitful theme for discussion. It has been so since the days of Hophni and Phineas. It will be so until the millennium renders education obsolete. On no other subject, except perhaps that of religion, do sensible people disagree so widely. On few do rival doctors differ more completely both as to diagnosis and treatment. One physician asserts that hard intellectual labour is injurious to growing girls, whilst a lady M.D. of much experience writes an able paper to prove that mental work strengthens their constitutions. A gentleman proclaims the merits of the present system of pauper education, because he is acquainted with an estimable clergyman educated in a pauper school, and because the said clergyman has recently been presented to a living worth a thousand a year. On the other hand, a lady denounces the same system and favours boarding-out for young paupers, because the account she receives of the subsequent career of the girls is not edifying. Old-fashioned people often insist that servants have steadily deteriorated ever since they learnt to read and write fluently. Mrs. Crawshay, on the contrary, seeks to demonstrate that knowledge of music makes the housemaid dust the rooms better, and that an acquaintance with modern languages, particularly French, will assist her maid to make becoming bonnets out of apparently useless materials. One mother will begin the education of her baby by whipping it as soon as it has cut its teeth, whilst another mother will spare the rod, and allow her children to run wild until they have changed their milk teeth for a more permanent set. One father will teach his boy to fire off a gun before he can carry it, whilst another will not allow his boy a knife to cut a stick. Some people approve of competition as an incentive to learning, and others think such an element highly immoral. There is, however, one point upon which almost every one seems to be agreed. It is that a knowledge of the three Rs is necessary to those who are obliged to earn their own livelihood, but who wish to do so in other ways than by manual labour. Curious to say it is in a real knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic that our young men are often found most deficient. Ask an average boy of sixteen who has been at a good school to read aloud a leader in the Times, and the chances are you have to stop your ears. Ask him to write a simple note of inquiry, and he looks aghast, although perhaps he has carried off a prize for Latin composition. Give him a house account-book to add up, and request him to make an abstract of the weekly bills of the grocer for a month, and he is absolutely helpless, and yet he may have reached the sixth book of Euclid. Send him to do some shopping, and he can scarcely calculate what he has spent, and what change he ought to bring back. No wonder so many lads get into debt when they are obliged to cater for themselves, and have never learnt the price of anything beyond lollipops and lemonade.
It is from the time when a child need no longer remain in the nursery until he is ready to go to school that a wise mother will claim him as her pupil, and will teach him those lessons which are only to be learnt at home, and which are of considerable importance to him in after-life. It is very nice that a boy should know his Latin grammar well before he goes to school, and even some Greek; but, after all, the dead languages will be pounded into him somehow, and there are other things which he ought to learn while he has the opportunity. The child who can read aloud, modulate his voice, attend to the stops, and enunciate his words distinctly, may be a dunce in other things, but he will find the accomplishment so easily acquired of lifelong advantage to him. Much may be done to simplify the process of learning to write by encouraging children to send play-letters to each other, or to absent members of the family. Governesses have hitherto steadily set their faces against their pupils' learning to write in any but the orthodox way of copying a foolish sentence, with long words, in a ruled book. They persist in saying that allowing them to scribble in their own way on stray pieces of paper or on a slate "cramps" their hands, and prevents them from ever learning to spell correctly. This is a pernicious and widespread delusion. Even if the notion had any truth in it, all objections might be got over by encouraging the children to copy printed letters — an excellent plan by the way to form a legible hand. There is nothing that cultivates a boy so rapidly and in so satisfactory a direction as being able to put into writing anything he wants to say. The inscription so oddly composed, so phonetically spelled, which adorns the fly-leaf of the Tennyson presented last birthday to his mother, the first lisping numbers in which mine rhymes to Valentine, the magniloquent prose epitaph on a dog or canary bird loved and lost — all such things maybe utterly ridiculous, and may bring a blush in after years to the downy cheek, but the time devoted to their composition was not thrown away. It is very desirable that when a boy goes to school writing home should present no difficulties. A few lines in pencil to tell how he has gained a place in his class, or had a splendid paper-hunt, the power of easily replying to a little sister's letter, will keep up the close ties of home which ought not to be undervalued. We have known educated gentlemen who would rather walk a mile to answer a letter than write half-a-dozen lines. The strange compositions that may often be seen in the newspapers, with respectable names appended to them, show how very useful a little early education and practice in letter-writing would be to public men. A little practical knowledge of arithmetic also is very easily acquired. The first three rules can be taught by a few pieces of paper torn up and made into sums, so as to give the pupil something more than an abstract idea of what figures mean. Many young men get into debt because they have never been accustomed to manage an allowance; everything has been paid for them. The number of pence in a shilling, of shillings in a pound, is not to be acquired by learning tables, but by spending money and keeping an account of it. The boy who is accustomed to provide himself with certain articles out of a fixed sum will, by the time he is grown up, have an idea of what things cost. A regular allowance can scarcely be begun too soon. Parents might perhaps confide to their elder children the actual state of their finances more frequently than they do. They would often be rewarded for their confidence by a sense of chivalry amongst the boys preventing them from spending at college more than was necessary. The lads would be ashamed to encroach, as they so often do, on the slender portions laid by for their sisters. In families not engaged in business there is no possible reason why the children should not know a good deal about income and expenditure. A profound mystery is generally made of the subject. The consequence is that the young people think their father is a sponge full of gold-dust, out of whom as much money as possible is to be squeezed. They are often greatly surprised when upon his death they find how little remains to be divided amongst them.
To be shut up in a small town house during wet weather with half-a-dozen youths home for the holidays is not always heaven upon earth. The principal use they make of their fingers is to produce disagreeable and unearthly noises. Their feet are employed in wearing out the carpets and shuffling on and off their slippers. They cannot even strum a popular tune on the piano to amuse themselves, nor join together in a simple glee. Writing letters they find such hard work that they would prefer to spend a day on the treadmill rather than compose one. Reading is a bore after the story books have been exhausted. To get up a charade would be too much trouble, and in order to kill time they are reduced to counting the raindrops on the window and beggar my neighbour, or to teasing their sisters and playing practical jokes upon the servants. It is not to schools that we ought to look for the practical and primary education which is imperatively necessary for boys who are to make their own way in the world in this country or in the colonies. It ought to be given at home, principally before they go to school, but partly during the long vacations which are now the rule. No doubt the boys will grumble at having to work in the holidays which are all too short for the amount of listless lounging, the busy idleness which must be crammed into them. Still the wise parent will not let them pass away unimproved. A few walks and talks will draw out and satisfy the "honest curiosity" always to be encouraged in young people. No boy will object to learn how to distinguish a faint from a fit, how to tie up a wound or recover a person from drowning, how to put out a fire or sew on a button, knock in a nail, or make a salad. In short, the exigencies of a picnic or a journey may provide him with resources to be developed afterwards beside a bush fire at the antipodes, in a shipwreck, under the guns of an enemy, or at a competitive examination. It can do him no harm to have a clear idea as to the relative position of the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, and to know the difference between a bluebell and a buttercup, a crocodile and an alligator, a barrister and a solicitor. It is also desirable that he should be able to come into a room without slouching, and to hand a lady a chair with politeness. He will find that the power to sing a simple tune at sight and join in a rational conversation will not take much from the pleasures of life, nor prevent his being able to catch a ball or a salmon. A few weeks will often suffice to teach a mere infant the notes of music and their places on the piano. It is amusing to watch the rays of delight which beam from the faces of the children at the Kindergartens when they are asked to sing something. Then too, the use of a needle and thread is as easily learnt by a boy as a girl; he does not instinctively feel that there is anything ridiculous in the employment of sewing, and the accomplishment is sure to come in usefully in many ways. Every sailor knows something about it, and does not think himself a Miss Molly in consequence.
One of the best things a young man can be indulged in is a taste. It will save him from the ennui which might drive him to gambling or undesirable company. Few boys with a real love for some science or art ever come to much harm. The intelligence developed in a child who collects specimens of stone or birds' nests, learns to cultivate a garden, or to carve a piece of wood, will make him a better man of business, or help him in a profession, as the case may be. A few hyacinth bulbs to nurse, a fern-case to water, some flowers to arrange, will give a feeling of home even to a dingy London lodging; but the love of flowers, like many other things, must be learnt in childhood. Tastes are not, as a rule, exorbitantly expensive; they are certainly very much cheaper than vices. A very moderate percentage of an income judiciously laid out will soon secure an excellent library. It is surprising how small a sum will suffice for the purchase of every standard work worth having. The most famous private libraries cost their owners nothing in comparison with the price of a few racehorses. Pictures judiciously selected are not an extravagance to those who can afford them. Any collection made with knowledge and love of the subject is almost sure to be worth at least what it cost. The time occupied in collecting is in many instances rescued from being employed in idleness or frivolity.