The amative impulses of youth are not vicious, but need direction and
control. Self-control, above all else, is to be taught, and the teaching
must often be reinforced by wise, friendly restraint. Frank friendships
are to be encouraged; sickly, silly sentimentality laughed out of court.
If a teacher, instead of standing ready to give this help and guidance
when it is needed, encourages a sentimental devotion, as Miss Kingsley
did, the most fundamental safeguard of youth is sacrificed—the ideal of
controlled emotion, of a conscious saving of a sacred experience for the
future. A large range of interests, a healthy balance of activities, and
a wholesome unconsciousness of self, tend to keep young people simple
and child-like in their emotional lives. Above all, no teacher has any
business to give the impression that he alone appreciates youth and its
promise, or to make his relations with impressionable boys and girls
unduly personal.