The High School Boy and His Problems/Studies and Other Things
Kenneth, my next door neighbor, who is a senior in high school, has a habit of dropping in on me every few days to talk things over. He is a healthy normal young fellow of seventeen who generally gets on well with his teachers; whose work is being creditably done if his final grades are any indication of success, and who has as little fault to find with the world as the average boy of his age who has no responsibilities and who has never made sacrifices.
We discuss all sorts of topics, from the probable future of the Bolsheviki to the latest bill at the Orpheum, but I am rather interested to notice that unless I drag in the topic myself he seldom has anything to say of his studies. Physics, Vergil, Shakspere, and history engage his thoughts, or are supposed to do so, five days in the week, but he seldom of his own volition makes these the topic of conversation, unless it be to rail against one or the other of them. He talks freely of the football team, of his own accomplishments and possibilities as a member of it, and of the determination of the eleven to clean up Springfield and win a championship. He is interested slightly in the fortunes of the high school debating team, although debate to him is about as manly a sport as knit ting for the soldiers. He dilates at length on the success of the last high school dance, and when I ask him sympathetically about Clara, I know that I have opened up a topic that can not be anything like adequately discussed at one sitting. The incidental things connected with his high school life seem to him the most interesting and the most vital. He gives considerable time and thought to the "other things" but, outside of class at least, none to his studies.
I am convinced that he is not unique in this respect. Although I have no boys of my own, I have frequently had them in my household. I have for some time, also, acted as guardian to two young fellows who are in a western academy of standing, and from them I receive weekly letters, usually written with the ostensible purpose of giving me information with regard to the intellectual, and physical progress of the writers, but actually to offer an opportunity to ask that their regular allowances be increased or at least not delayed in transit. In these letters I get no discussion of studies, and seldom any reference to them. Were it not for the friendly communications of the principal, and the regular bills for school supplies which I receive, I should have no knowledge, even, of what subjects, the boys are pursuing. Their letters are made up chiefly of optimistic predictions as to their athletic successes, of accounts of escapades (harmless of course, and quite within the regulations of the school), of dramatics, and of anticipated pleasures at social functions with the Ferry Hall girls. Even the attaining of a high grade, which is a rare enough occurrence, may not be mentioned at all. At Christmas or Easter time when they visit me, I find that the dullest topic of conversation which I can introduce is studies.
I am not suggesting that this is out of the normal; it is, perhaps, quite in accord with the principle that the thing which touches us most deeply and which is closest to our hearts we are sometimes least likely to speak about. Possibly the high school boy considers it "shop" and thinks that he gets enough of it in the regular daily routine, and had best forget it when away from it. Possibly there is a certain feeling that one who talks about his studies is likely to be thought a grind, and however creditable it may be to work like a Trojan at football or track or baseball or in getting ready for a class dance, it has not yet become so generally popular through regular persistent effort to excel at one's studies. Why, I have never known. If one excels in his studies, it is in the minds of most boys creditable only if one does so without hard work, and it is not a thing to boast about like breaking the school record in the quarter mile.
Notwithstanding all this, however, a boy's studies constitute his business during the four years he is in high school. They are the main thing. They ought to have his best effort and his best thought. Father thinks so; most of the neighbors feel that way; his teachers have no doubt of it. No matter how good an appearance you make at the Junior dance, no matter how widely advertised you are as a pole vaulter or how enchantingly you warble on the Glee Club, if you do not carry your work creditably at the end of the semester, you are a failure so far as high school is concerned. It isn't enough that you make the debating team or are elected class president or are known as the most popular boy in school; it's the studies that count.
Too many boys go to high school without much definite purpose. They expect to go to college, and high school is part of the necessary routine for the accomplishment of that result. All the other fellows are going, and it is easier to go than not to do so. They would rather continue going to school, as one boy told me, than go to work; and soit goes. If they were asked what their reasons are—if any boy who is reading this essay were to ask himself—the answer would in all probability be that they "wanted an education," whatever that may mean. I am not sure that with all the experience I have had and with all the definitions I have read, I could myself give an adequate explanation of what education really means, but I am sure that it means in some degree training of the mind, and that such training comes through application and regular rigid exercise of the brain, through the accomplishing of mental tasks that are not easy and not always pleasant. Every young boy knows that if he expects to amount to anything as an athlete he must train regularly and persistently, that he must deny himself many things which he would otherwise enjoy, and that he must not only constantly do his best, but that he must be striving all the time to make his best better. It is with some such spirit as this that a boy should go at his studies. He will never do very well unless he learns concentrated hard work. He will never increase his ability to think as he should unless he tries to do well a good many things he doesn't like to do.
If possible, have an object in view. Set some intellectual goal for yourself, and do not be satisfied until you have reached that point or gone beyond it. You will find, usually, that you can attain success more easily in some directions than in others. Do not be satisfied to be commonplace or merely to pass, but make up your mind that in some line or other you are going to be as good as the best at least, for your success in any one line of endeavor will always give you more likelihood of success in anything else which you may undertake. The boy who gets away creditably with a difficult course in mathematics or with an examination in Vergil which he finds distasteful, will be so much the better able through self-confidence and persistence to win the girl of his choice or to make a creditable record at track. As you do well the intellectual tasks which are set for you today, you will accomplish more easily and more accurately the duties which are laid upon you twenty years from now, no matter what these duties may be.
By far the largest percentage of poor work or of failures in high school comes not from the fact that boys are stupid or badly prepared in the elementary schools, or because the amount of work they are asked to do is unreasonable or beyond their grasp, but because they do not do their work seriously or thoroughly at first; they have no well-organized plan of study; they are procrastinating, and wake up to the fact too late, that their studies are a real business to which they should have been giving regular attention from the beginning. Jones told me only yesterday that if he had learned his conjugations and his declensions carefully and thoroughly when he began his high school study of Latin, he would have been saved years of uncertain floundering through the classics. If you would give more careful attention to elementary algebra, you would not have heart failure later when you take the required courses in college mathematics. If boys took their work as seriously in September as they do in January or immediately before the final examinations there would be a great many more honor students than failures.
As a rule the task set for the average high school student is a very moderate one, and the amount and the character of the work required quite within the range of his ability. I have known a great many high school boys, but I have known few whose mental equipment was not adequate to the accomplishment of the work they had elected to do if they had gone at it in the right way when it was assigned. The number of "boneheads" is pretty limited.
Have a regular time for study. Of course I appreciate the fact that most high schools have "study periods" between recitations and that a good many boys depend upon these to furnish adequate time for preparation, or if this should prove inadequate there is always the chance of studying ahead in class and being ready to recite when the teacher calls upon you, but this method is either inadequate or a subterfuge and will not get you anywhere.
"John is so quick at his books," his fond mother tells me, "he never has to study." But I know John is coming up against a great surprise one of these days, for the boy who expects to get what he should out of his studies, ought to have at least a little regular time for hard study at home every day. The boy who never needs to open a book at home may be a bright boy, but he will seldom develop into a well-trained man; he is pretty sure to prove commonplace.
Learn to do things within the time assigned to you. If there are problems to be handed in on Monday, do not put off solving them until the last minute and then have to give an excuse because you did not have time enough to finish them. If your theme is due on Thursday go at it early enough to get it done by that time. The boy who waits for an inspiration or who thinks it will be easier for him to write tomorrow than it is tonight, is more than likely to be fooled. No one but a poet ever waits for an inspiration, and the fellow who gets into the habit of delaying the doing of his work until he feels like it, soon finds that his eagerness for work constantly decreases, while the boy who goes at his work and gets it done in time no matter how he feels about it, discovers before long that he can work whenever he wants to do so. No man who has regular routine work to do can allow it to be a matter of inspiration or feeling. One of the main things for which brains are trained is that they may be made to work easily whenever the necessity arises.
Perhaps the reason why boys court delay in the accomplishment of assigned work is because there is so much time in which it may be done, and the task set for tomorrow seems so much easier of accomplishment than that which confronts us today; but work always grows more difficult as we allow it to pile up, and one is not, in general, likely to have more time tomorrow than he has today.
Learn to depend upon your own efforts for the accomplishment of your work. I know that there is a certain comradeship developed between two boys who get their work together, and it is sometimes a tremendous timesaver, but it is very seldom best. If the result of study were accomplished when we got the answer to the problem, all that would sometimes be necessary would be to turn to the back of the book. The boy who works out his own problems, as he will usually have to do later in life, develops self-reliance, learns to trust his own judgment, gets the habit of standing on his own feet, and is the more likely to be honest and self-reliant at examination time. If you and Tom are working out the problems in algebra together there is always the temptation to utilize his work as your own, to trade answers, and in reality to slight half the work. If it is translation instead of mathematics that is being worked out, the poorer student soon learns to rely upon the better and misses the training which comes from working out a hard task alone.
Regularity of work counts for a tremendous lot in any line of business. Once get behind, and the damage is almost irreparable. I was talking to a discouraged high school sophomore today.
"I was a good student last year," he said, "and I'm sure I have brains enough to get on. I had rather light work this half year, and I should have carried it easily. I simply loafed and let the work pile up expecting to do it all in the end. When I awoke to my situation the pile was more than I could crawl over."
Unless any boy at the very beginning learns to work regularly, he will have a hard time to learn later. It is almost impossible to play the ant after one has long been cast in the rôle of the grasshopper.
It is not enough that a boy work regularly, he must apply himself to his work with concentration of mind. The fellow who puts in the most hours is not necessarily the best student. It is the one who works regularly and works hard as well—who has his whole mind on what he is doing—who will accomplish the most and who will get the best development out of his work. As I write this paper, I have been watching a young fellow sitting on the porch across the street from my office window, a book in his hand and his chair tilted back against the house wall. He is whistling to a passing dog now; he was engaged in conversation with a mate a few moments ago; he hailed the ice cream cone man and did business with him at the beginning of the hour; and yet he will tell his friends at dinner time how hard he was grinding at his lessons all the afternoon.
One of the poorest students with whom I have had to do was as regular in his work as the phases of the moon and as sure to be at his book as taxes, but he worked too much, and he had no concentration. He would go to sleep while writing his theme as readily as I did while reading it. He worked without method and without application, and so he failed to carry anything. The best student I have ever known—and by that I mean not only the man who was best in his studies, but in the "other things"—put in a very few hours at his work, but he studied every night, and when he worked his whole mind was directed toward what he wished to accomplish; he did not let anything come between him and what he was doing, and when he was through, he stopped and put his work away. He had more leisure time at his disposal than any of the rest of us. He won through regularity and concentration, and these qualities are usually to be discovered when a man, high school student or otherwise, succeeds. It is possible to learn concentration. One must have interest, he must have the will to do, and he must be wide-awake enough to realize what it is that he is trying to accomplish.
But the "other things" are important; only slightly less important in fact than the studies themselves. However much a boy may be devoted to his work he can not study all the time, and he should not be allowed to do so even if it were possible. As I remember my own secondary school course and try to estimate, as it is impossible justly to do, its present worth to me, I am inclined to value most highly some of the things that were connected only remotely with the studies I was pursuing. These external things naturally would have been of little value to me unless I had carried the work I was taking, for matters were so conducted in our home circle that a place would readily have been found for me on the farm had I shown any chronic inaptitude in securing grades. But granting that ability, these "other things" seem to me of the greatest value. As an instructor I can seldom find much excuse for the boy who does not carry his work in high school; but the one who does not do more than this, no matter how high his scholastic standing may be, has missed a very large part of what every one should get from high school training. School life is very much a community life. No one can justly live to himself alone, and profit greatly from the life. He has his own private individual work to do, it is true, and he should do it; but he has also his obligations to his fellow students and to the community at large, and these he may not shirk.
I heard a boy once boast that during his high school course he had never cut a class nor seen an athletic contest. I am not sure that either fact was a virtue, and notwithstanding that he now wears a badge won by high scholastic attainments, I think that his training and his sympathies might have been broader if his school interests had, perhaps, been varied enough to make it desirable for him sometimes to cut a class, or interesting to attend a ball game. I think his influence now would be wider. A boy's studies should give him familiarity with ideas, and training in principles; and "other things" in which he interests himself should make him acquainted with people, and furnish him some opportunity to get experience in the management of erratic human beings. Whether the business which a young man finally takes up happens to be designing gas engines or preaching the gospel, he will find daily opportunities for the exercise of both sorts of training.
It is a somewhat overworked and jaded joke that class valedictorians generally bring up as street car conductors or as hack drivers, not that I should like to underestimate the value of any one of these positions or the amount of intelligence required successfully to perform the work of either one of these worthy offices—and though, perhaps, it is a joke, one can occasionally find instances of students of the highest scholastic standing filling the most commonplace positions simply from lack of initiative or ability to assume leadership. One such dropped in on me only a few days ago. I did not remember him at first; he seemed commonplace, unaggressive, without diplomacy. When he mentioned his name I recalled that he had been valedictorian of his class a dozen years ago. He had got nowhere; he had lost every position he had held because he had no ability at leadership; he could not adjust himself to the peculiarities of other people. He was always at loggerheads with his boss. The lack of ability to get on with men often keeps a young fellow as it had kept him, from an opportunity to utilize his educational stock in trade. Social training then, association with man, is a very desirable thing.
There are many ways in which such an association may be cultivated. The ordinary method which simply for the sake of enjoyment takes a boy out among his fellows—and sometimes his fellows' sisters—is neither to be ignored nor worked too strenuously. Parties and picnics, social calls, and long quiet strolls when the moon is full are, in moderation, helpful, perhaps, but they should not be developed into a regular practice. Even a good thing may be overdone. It is exceedingly desirable that one should learn how to manage his hands and feet and tongue, but it is quite possible to devote too much time to acquiring skill of this sort. The boy who omits all social life makes a mistake; the fellow who devotes a large part of his time to it is mushy.
I have a strong belief in the value of athletics. It is true that some of the poorest students I have ever known have called themselves athletes because their main interest was physical rather than intellectual, but I have known more good students than poor ones who have been prominent in athletic events. The boy who goes into athletics sanely has a good chance of developing a strong body; both tradition and necessity demand that he live a temperate, healthy life, and his thinking powers and his ability to do mental work are likely to be stimulated by the regular exercise he must take. It is true that few students ever do themselves damage from working too hard, but a great many develop chronic indigestion and physical worthlessness from sitting in stuffy rooms and taking no exercise. I should not go so far as to say that the athlete is usually a better student than the fellow who does not go in for such things, but he is usually a better allaround man than the other fellow. He has more stamina and endurance, and because of his symmetrical development he is more likely to make a success later in life than boys who have had no such training. For this reason as well as for the pleasure and relaxation in it, every student who can should go in for some athletic game.
There are a good many societies in high school which will bid for the boy's time and attendance. Many very worthy people think most of these are wholly bad, and advise the boy to steer clear of them all as he would dodge smallpox and the tax collector. Most of these organizations have their uses, however, and in the majority of cases they are good. Most boys would be helped by joining a debating society both on account of the personal associations which they would cultivate, and for the training it would give them in speaking and writing. It is a great asset to be able to say easily what one has in his mind. Dramatics, declamation contests, musical organizations, stunt shows in general give one a training which will later in life repay many times the effort entailed in the practice for these activities.
There are political opportunities in high school which should not be overlooked. Class officers and managerships must be filled. Such work offers an excellent chance for the development of business sense and business experience, and for widening one's influence and control of men. The necessary relationships which political activity requires develop resourcefulness, shrewdness, and a general understanding of human nature. It gives training in organizing men, in planning operations, in meeting unexpected situations. It is one of the best experiences a boy can have. It is often, too, a strong test of a boy's character, for, even in high school politics, there is constant opportunity for graft, for trickery, and for dishonesty. The boy who goes through such a contest and comes out clean has had a test and a training which will prove invaluable to him.
The four years you are in high school should mean something more than the mere acquaintance with facts, or the acquiring of information or the passing of examinations; it should give you a knowledge of other boys. But in getting this second sort of training you will usually have to choose between several of many interests. If you elect to do one thing, you must usually omit the rest. A fellow may occasionally be president of his class and at the same time captain of the football team, but ordinarily one of these positions is quite sufficient to occupy his leisure moments. If you try too much, you will fail in all. If you get into the real life of the school and do something to direct its current, you will usually be better fitted to meet the unexpected in the more strenuous world into which you must go when you enter college or take up the practical work of life, than you would be if you simply did your school work and stayed in you own little shell.