Farm Boys and Girls Part 26

But as a guarantee of peace and happiness throughout life she had better be taught many specific lessons in self-mastery. And it seems certain that the farm home offers many more advantages for developing a poised character in the young woman than does the city home. So let it be seen to by country parents that their girls be trained from childhood to meet life's stress and storm with calm composure and sweet serenity. Only such training will suffice to tide the latter over the great crushing ordeals that tend at some time to fall to the lot of every good woman.

Conditions in the well-ordered country home may be made to contribute to another form of self-mastery in the growing girl. That is, she may be made supreme over the conventionalities of dress and the social customs that touch her life. By this it is not intended to prescribe in respect to such things as the style or appearance of the young woman's clothing.

She may be first or last or medium in the list of the well-dressed. But it is here contended that she can be trained to subordinate these matters to a personal charm that is her very own, and that emanates from a beautiful and well-poised life within. It is quite as destructive to good character for one to be meanly clothed through necessity and at the same time envy and despise those who are better dressed as it is to be among the richly adorned and try to make mere adornment a mark of better and superior rank in society, or a means of lacerating the feelings of one's a.s.sociates.

The country mother will let pa.s.s one of the rarest forms of opportunity for refining and beautifying the character of her daughter if she does not educate the latter rightly in respect to these conventionalities.

Train her to be neat and attractive in appearance, but at the same time teach her that no manner of outer adornment can cover up or subst.i.tute for sweetness and purity of the inner life. The splendid effects of such an education will reveal themselves to best advantage in the young woman when she has finally entered a home of her own. If she cannot then and there shine in a light that emanates from her own soul, the sacrificial work of ministering to the needs of her own household will never be well performed.

AN OUTLOOK FOR SOCIAL LIFE

Provision will by all means be made that the growing country girl be introduced to the best social life within reach. She must mingle with those of her own age and learn how others think and act. She must attend parties and the other social gatherings, especially the literary societies if there be any available. For the sake of her training, if for no better reason, she may be brought into close relation to the Sunday school and the church. It will be good, indeed, if she find some congenial work in one or both of these organizations. Let it be remembered that the healthy-minded, well-matured woman is very probably at her best and is most highly satisfied and contented with life only when she has opportunities to perform some kind of worthy social service. Farm parents may well bring it about, therefore, that their young daughter have some specific deeds of altruism to perform. Let her carry a small gift or a word of cheer to the door of the sick or the infirm. Let her make with her own hands some simple, inexpensive present to be carried to the one who needs it most and whose heart will be made glad by it.

Above all things else, it must be provided that something more than the mere grasping nature of the young country girl be indulged and developed. Some there are who still contend that life for men is, at its best, a game of chance and contention. But such an ideal, if held up to the growing girl, will tend to check or destroy all that is best and most beautiful in the feminine nature. Young women especially must learn through practice that the best and most beautiful character is altogether consistent with the performance of deeds of service and altruism.

Finally, educate into the daughter as much habitual cheerfulness as possible, let her heart be made glad again and again, not merely because of what she has, and because of what she receives day by day, but also and especially on account of what she gives out of the best and sweetest of her own nature in behalf of those whom she may find occasion to help and cheer on their way over the journey of life. All this will help to make her a creature of whom not only the other members of her family, but also the entire community will be most proud.

REFERENCES

My Escape from Household Drudgery. Mary Patterson. _Success Magazine_, August, 1911.

Proceedings of Child Conference of Research and Welfare.

Beulah Kennard. Page 47, "The Play Life of Girls." G. E.

Stechert & Co., New York.

Women's School of Agriculture. I. H. Harper. _Independent_, June 29, 1911.

The Girl of To-morrow--Her Education. E. H. Baylor. _World's Work_, July, 1911. Prize essay.

Education of Women for Home Making. Mrs. W. N. Hutt. Annual Volume N.E.A., 1910, p. 122.

Give the Girls a Chance. Canfield. _Collier's_, March 12, 1910.

The Durable Satisfactions of Life. Charles W. Eliot. Pages 11-57, "The Happy Life." Crowell.

The Kind of Education Best Suited for Girls. Anna J.

Hamilton. Annual Volume N.E.A., 1907. p. 65.

Parasitic Culture. Dr. George E. Dawson. _Popular Science Monthly_, September, 1910.

Training the Girl to help in the Home. William A. McKeever.

Pamphlet. 2 cents. Published by the author. Manhattan, Kan.

CHAPTER XVIII

_THE FARM BOY'S CHOICE OF A VOCATION_

Turn which way you will upon the great broad highway of life and there you will always be able to find the wrecks and broken forms of humankind--men and women who have failed in their life purposes. Strange to say, that particular aspect of the science of character-building which has to do with the substantial preparation for vocational life has been very much neglected. By what rule do men succeed in their callings and by what different rule do other men fail? Are some foreordained to success and others to failure? Is there an inherent strength in some and a native weakness in others? Is there a type of education and training which specifically fits and prepares for each of the native callings?

None of these questions has been thoroughly gone into with a view to finding out what were best to be done and what best to leave undone. So, we blunder away, hit or miss, in the vocational training of our boys and girls.

SHOULD THE FARMER'S SON FARM?

In attempting to give helpful suggestions to farm parents relative to their boy's vocation, perhaps this question will first demand an answer. The tentative reply to it is this: The farmer's son, or any other man's son, should follow that calling for which he is best suited by nature and in which he will thereby have the greatest amount of native interest; provided it be practicable to prepare him for such calling. Some farm boys are destined by nature for mechanical pursuits, others for social or clerical work, others for captains of industry, and so on. Likewise, the city boys may reveal in their natures a great variety of instinctive tendencies and interests which will be found of great worth in guiding them into a successful life occupation.

Yes, the farmer's son should by all means take up his father's business; provided that at maturity he may have both native and acquired interest in the same and that to a degree predominating any other native or acquired interest.

IMPATIENCE OF PARENTS

It can be proved that the country boy matures more slowly than the city boy. For example, at the age of sixteen, he is behind the latter in height, weight, school training, and sociability. But while the city boy matures more rapidly, the country boy makes up for the loss by a longer period of development. It is the author's firm belief that this fact of slow growth proves a tremendous advantage to the country youth in that it allows for greater stability of character, and especially for a greater amount of courage and aggressiveness in form of permanent life habits.

But one might well wish that all rural parents could realize the evil consequences of being impatient with the son in respect to his choice of a life work. Many a good boy yet in his teens is hounded and driven about by the continuous nagging of his parents, who ignorantly believe that he should have his future destiny all planned and ready for its realization. As a result, this same good boy is often driven to desperation and to the point of leaving the home place--of breaking away from the affectionate ties that bind him to parents, and of seeking the position wherein he might earn a living. As a matter of fact, few young men have any very clear or reliable vision of their future life at the age of eighteen, or even twenty. Many of the best men in the world are faltering and uncertain even as late as twenty-five. However, if the relatives and friends would only exercise all due patience, offering only such helps and suggestions as can be given, and trusting the future finally to throw upon the problem a light from within the youth himself--then, we may be a.s.sured, practically every man will finally come to some line of effort that will bring him a comfortable living.

WHAT OF PREDESTINATION?

The old-fashioned idea of a boy's being marked by the hand of destiny, "cut out for" some particular calling in life, still has a place in the minds of the ma.s.ses. The kindred belief that some men are "natural-born failures" has also wide currency. A third superst.i.tion is the very common opinion that others are "just naturally lucky." All these traditional opinions are the outgrowth of ignorance of human nature such as may be dispelled by means of a course of instruction, or a carefully arranged course of home reading, in modern psychology.

None of the foregoing superst.i.tions would be worthy of our attention were it not for the gross injustice which they entail upon children.

Parents everywhere--in both city and country--are dealing with their children upon the a.s.sumption that one and all of these fallacies are true. "My oldest boy just naturally has no luck," said the father of three sons and two daughters. "He changes around from one thing to another and fails every time." But what of this particular boy's early training? Was it the same as that of the others? Did he enjoy equal advantages? Did his parents when married really know anything about rearing children? or, did they really mistreat their first-born through ignorance and use him as a sort of practice material from which they learned how to do better by the succeeding ones?

Until the foregoing inquiries about the "unlucky" son's boyhood life be fully answered, we cannot reasonably permit ourselves to condemn him.

There is nothing more in predestination than this; namely, it can be shown that the child is born with not a few latent abilities--apt.i.tudes for doing and learning this and that--and that one of these apt.i.tudes is likely to have correlated with it more than the average amount of nerve development in the corresponding brain center. As a result, that particular apt.i.tude will require less training than the others and will tend to predominate over them as maturity is approached.

The reply of the psychologist to the statement that some men are "natural-born failures," is this: Few if any of those possessed of ordinary physical and mental qualities at birth are necessarily so.

Excepting the feeble-minded and the like,--whose marks of degeneracy are usually apparent to all,--it may be a.s.serted on the highest authority that none are "natural-born failures" to any greater extent than they are "natural-born successes"; but that they have within the inherited nerve mechanisms many possibilities of both success and failure.

THREE METHODS OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING

We should be willing to overlook almost any other interest in this discussion for the sake of inducing in the farm father the belief that his young boy is a potential success--the belief that this boy is furnished by nature with the latent ability to shine somewhere in the broad field of human endeavor--provided he be rightly trained and disciplined during his growing years. Here, then, is probably the greatest of all the human-training problems; namely, the vocational one.

Roughly speaking, there have been three methods of vocational training.

1. _The apprentice method._--First, historically there has been the apprentice method, the youth being "bound out to learn a trade." The chief faults of this traditional way of teaching the boy to be self-supporting were these: it made no allowance for intellectual development, and it gave the father too much authority to choose the calling for the boy.

A modern offshoot of the old-time apprentice course is the trade school which flourishes in many of the big cities to-day. This new inst.i.tution has one great advantage over its prototype. It offers such a great variety of forms of training that the youth may exercise much free choice. But it preserves one of the serious defects of apprenticeship in its neglect of the intellect of the learner. The modern trade school can never hope to do more than prepare young men and women to make a good living. It is a get-ready-quick inst.i.tution, and can never be expected to give the student breadth of view and depth of insight into the great problems of human life.

2. _The cultural method._--The second-oldest method of preparing men for a vocation is what has been called the cultural method. It has aimed at high advancement in book learning with the thought of finally enabling the student to enter a professional cla.s.s comparatively few in numbers and supposed to possess a superior advantage over the great ma.s.s of human kind. One fault of this method has been to emphasize learning for its own sake and to defer too long the training of the individual in the material and practical side of his calling.

But the chief fault of this cultural method has been its contempt for common labor and ordinary industry, its theory being that true education prepares one to avoid such practices. If the young man wished to prepare for law or medicine or teaching or the ministry,--one of the "learned professions,"--then the old cla.s.sical school was at his service. But if he would become a mere artisan or industrial worker, there was no advanced course of schooling available.

3. _The developmental method._--The third and newest method of preparing the young person for his vocational life is in reality a compromise between the first and second. It provides that the learner shall have book instruction and industrial training at the same time, and that both of these are to be regarded as cultural, since taken together they prepare for independence of thought and action, and for the vocation, as well. This new method of preparing young people for their life work would call nothing mean or low. It aims to serve all impartially in their struggle for self-improvement and vocational success. But its motto is the development of head and hand together. It seeks to produce cultured handicraftsmen as well as cultured artists and professional men.