THE BOY’S VIEWPOINT
A correct understanding of boy-nature is conditioned on one’s ability
to obtain his point of view, which differs widely from that of the
adult. It has been stated in a previous chapter that the viewpoints of
a boy at six, ten, fourteen, and eighteen years of age differ as widely
from each other as those of four adults of remotely differing natures
and temperaments. We frequently make the mistake of assuming that
the boy is a small edition of a man, possessing faculties, emotions,
desires, and understanding the same as in the adult but developed in a
lesser degree. On the contrary, his mental and psychological processes
differ fundamentally from those of maturity. Boys are not little men
and should not be judged by men’s standards.
The ignorant peasant who views the masterpieces of the Louvre sees
them through dull, uncomprehending eyes. He sees but does not
_perceive_, because his appreciation of artistic beauty is limited
by a circumscribed capacity. Just so, the boy, circumscribed by
the limitations of his mind and soul, views life and its complex
manifestations with such capacities as he possesses. If your mental
and psychological limits were those of a boy in the hero-worship
period, your tastes, desires, judgments, opinions, and actions would
conform exactly to that boy-standard. Your standards of ambition and
achievement would be purely physical and therefore you would prefer the
prize fighter to the scientist.
The physical and mental requirements for youth and age are as wide
apart as the two poles. As reminiscence characterizes old age, so
enjoyment of the present typifies young age. The Bard of Avon has thus
compared their physical and mental characteristics:
Crabbed age and youth,
Cannot live together;
Youth is full of pleasure,
Age is full of care:
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare;
Youth is full of sport,
Age’s breath is short;
Youth is nimble, age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold,
Age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild and age is tame.
Age I do abhor thee;
O, my love, my love is young:
Age I do defy thee;
O sweet shepherd hie thee,
For methinks thou stay’st too long.
An elderly maiden sat one sunny afternoon in May engrossed with her
knitting, while a crowd of boys were engaged in the great American game
of baseball on the lot beneath her window. It would be superfluous to
say they were noisy. From her viewpoint both noise and violent physical
activity were unnecessary, disagreeable, and trying to one’s nerves.
The nuisance must be suppressed. Accordingly she poked her head out of
the window and directed a shrill scream at the disturbers of her peace,
“Go away from here, you bad boys, and stop making that noise!” In a
flash came back the retort, “G’wan away yourself!” while a boy grumbled
to his companion, “She don’t know nothin’ ’bout having fun.” Both were
right, judging from their respective points of view, and both were
wrong when considered from the other’s viewpoint. Neither understood
the other. Old age requires peace, silence, and cessation from
physical activity. Youth requires noise, bustle, and violent exercise
for its growth. Activity symbolizes success. Passivity spells failure.
The boy in athletics, like the adult laborer in his daily toil, uses
the primary muscles of his arms, legs, and torso. With the development
of his mentality, he develops and employs his secondary muscles.
Psychology is intimately related to athletics. For this reason, the
gymnastic apparatus which is suited to adults is wholly unsuited to
boys, and this is quite apart from differences due to the unequal size
and strength of the users. Witness the aversion of the boy to the use
of Indian clubs whose intricate manipulations require the employment
of the secondary muscles of the wrist and arm, while he willingly uses
dumb bells which call into play his primary muscles.
His inability for sustained mental effort is coördinated with his
disability for sustained physical effort. Hence he passes by, with a
curiosity-satisfying trial, the chest weights and rowing machines of
the adult which require the continuous expenditure of energy. So also
the competitive spirit of boyhood must be gratified by the use of such
gymnastic apparatus and games as develop competition. The boy will not
exercise for exercise’s sake. He will not even do it to achieve the
altruistic result of a strong physique. But he will exercise and play
games to excel the other fellow. The boy who is alone in a gymnasium
has as stupid a time as the boy who is compelled by necessity to play
baseball with himself.
It would be interesting to learn the boy’s opinion of certain adults
if he were able to accurately analyze and express his conclusions.
The crabbed demeanor of the pessimist out of touch with boy-life is
as offensive to the boy as the latter’s noise and giddiness are
objectionable to the former. Observe the mental rheumatics of the
misanthrope in these grouchy grumblings from Beaumont and Fletcher’s
“Wit Without Money”:
What benefit can children be but charges and disobedience? What’s the
love they render at one and twenty years? I pray die, father: when
they are young, they are like bells rung backwards, nothing but noise
and giddiness.
And from what a different vision-vantage were penned these lines,
overflowing with love and understanding of childhood, which are a model
of sympathetic comprehension of the child’s needs:
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,
To pour fresh instruction o’er the mind,
To breathe the enlivening spirit and to fix
The generous purpose in the glowing breast!
--Thomson’s SEASONS.
To understand the boy’s viewpoint we must be able to put ourselves
in his place. We must renew our youth. The trouble with so many of
us is that we never acquire juvenescence until second-childhood. We
should be able to assign the boy to the psychological period to which
he belongs by reason of his development, and thus knowing the mental
and moral status of an inhabitant of that period, we are able to see
things through his glasses. The mental myopia and moral astigmatism of
youth will then be recognized as a defect of immaturity which training
and years will cure. Juvenility may be reacquired in maturity if we
string-halted adults would only seek rejuvenation at the fountain
of youthful understanding where we may obtain a flood of knowledge
concerning boy-life. The journey is apparently too long and too
difficult for the lazy or indifferent grown-up. The heart of a boy is
not worn on his sleeve. He reveals it only to those who command his
perfect confidence and such confidence is given to those, and to those
only, who understand him. The aloofness of children toward certain
adults is because they have nothing in common. Each misunderstands the
other. As it is obviously impossible for the child to understand and
attune himself to adult mental processes, it becomes necessary for the
adult to comprehend child-nature and to put himself in harmony with it.
Happy the man who can make himself a boy again! He retains a thousand
joys which other adults have irretrievably lost. Such a one is a
natural leader and teacher of boys. They delight to make him their
hero. His influence with boys is commensurate with his understanding
of life in Boyville. You must go to this juvenile city and live there,
learn its laws, customs, and manners, and if possible place yourself
in a sympathetic attitude of understanding without which you can never
hope to be initiated into the mysteries of adolescence. The honor
of being admitted to the confidence and fellowship of boys is not
permitted to all men--only to those who have retained or who are able
to acquire the boy’s viewpoint. “There is a wall around the town of
Boyville,” says William Allen White, “which is impenetrable when its
gates have once shut upon youth. An adult may peer over the wall and
try to ape the games inside, but finds it all a mockery and himself
banished among purblind grown-ups. The town of Boyville was old when
Nineveh was a hamlet; it is ruled by ancient laws; has its own rules
and idols; and only the dim, unreal noises of the adult world about it
have changed.”
The boy lives in the present, with little thought of the future; he
is concerned with today, not the next decade. His mental processes
do not prompt him to speculate as to the effect of present acts on
future character. He has neither the mental nor moral equipment for
such foresight or deduction; it is a task beyond his capabilities. This
burden must be shouldered by the parent who should not only do the
child’s thinking for him until the latter is able to do it for himself,
but should also drill, train, and educate the boy until he is able to
make nice distinctions between right and wrong, and should cultivate
his will-power until he can school himself into an acceptance of the
good as against the bad. Until the child’s mind, will, and moral sense
have reached this stage of growth, the parent must substitute his own
mind, will, and moral sense. In determining the degree of capability of
a child’s offense, we should ask ourselves the question: “What is the
developmental stage of his faculties which made the offense possible?”
Harsh and stern estimates of childish frailties usually result from the
application of the adult viewpoint and the adult standard. The failure
to consider the viewpoint and standards of the adolescent causes much
injustice to the boy and results in many mistakes in his training.
The brightness, joyousness, and optimism of youth suffuses life with
an iridescent glow. All the world is bathed in roseate hues when seen
through the rose-colored glasses of youth. When we get so old that we
delight in sitting by the fire, toasting our slippered feet, and prefer
to listen to our arteries harden rather than to hear the noise and
laughter of boyhood, we are out of tune with the harmonies of boy-life.