The Home's Responsibility for the Inefficiency of the Boy in Business
By Mrs. Mary H. Moore
THIS is an age of research, of prying into the dusty records of the long-forgotten past, or the secret and mysterious causes of the natural phenomena about us. To every effect we must assign a cause, correctly or incorrectly; and when we have thus assigned the cause, fathomed the mystery, or solved the riddle, we carelessly toss the problem by, like a punctured toy balloon, and betake ourselves to fresh inquisitions. Children and youth have been idle and inefficient for generations, and parents and employers have bemoaned the fact, endeavored by persuasion, instruction, or coercion to secure different conditions, and failing, have endured the situation with what equanimity they could. But now parents and instructors look more deeply into the remote causes, the initial germs of the faults and failures as well as successes and virtues of the rising generation. Psychology is a favorite study, and child culture a fad. The medical examiner is abroad in the land, and tells us wonderful tales of cures of mental and moral obliquity by the proper sort of medicinal application or surgical operation. The latest experiment is to place deficient children in an atmosphere charged with the proper kind and amount of electricity, and immediately they become studious, wide-awake, and rapid in development. Meanwhile, the business world is complaining loudly of the inefficiency of the boys of to-day who enter business employments; and since such a large proportion of girls has become wage-earners, complaints are lodged against them, too. But our business to-day is with the boys. Hear the indictment as given by a writer in a recent magazine: "They can neither write neatly, spell correctly, nor cipher accurately; their personal habits are none too admirable, and they have little politeness or respect for their superiors. There is almost universal dissatisfaction with present-day boys." He also says that it is an almost universal belief that the trouble is not so much with the boy himself as with the system under which he is educated. If this is the truth, it is surely time for a pedagogical house cleaning; for there never was a time when there was more money, brains, and labor expended on education than at the present time. There are several elements that enter into the cause of this lack of efficiency. Business has broadened, and requires a vast army of boy workers now where before but few were called for. Opportunities for a higher education are greater now than formerly, and attract the boys of high natural ability to seek the learned professions, leaving the lower type of boys to enter commercial pursuits. Commercial positions pay better than trades, and hence many who should be in mechanical trades are in business, and only giving indifferent satisfaction when they could have been successful as mechanics. The trade-union is largely to blame for this, too; for it has limited the taking of apprentices in order to control the supply of workmen. When the demand for boys in business was less, only the best necessarily were employed, leaving the lower type for industrial positions, now considered undesirable, and in which there is an actual scarcity of workmen. The author of the magazine article referred to remarks that the home is equally responsible with the school. This is no doubt true; we may go a step further, and say that since the home has the child first and longest, it is more responsible than the school. Let us take a position yet further advanced, and make the assertion still more sweeping, and say that the home is wholly responsible. We may as well shoulder the burden first as last. Heredity and environment are both in the province of the home, and all the influence represented or included in these is exerted in and by the home, by its permission, or because of its deficiencies. Hear the statement again: Wherever or whatever the boy is, in school, in business, in society; whether he is a gentleman or a boor, whether he is capable, energetic, industrious, honest, and upright, or the reverse, the boy is what the home has made him or permitted him to become. Under the home, and secondary to it, the school has a large share in developing the traits of accuracy, application, initiative, and energy so necessary to the business man of to-day. Most of the value of the various studies our children pursue at school outside of mere reading and writing, lies not in the knowledge they give the pupil, but in the mental and moral discipline which they provide. Some of the modern methods of instruction are deadening to originality of thought. A public-school teacher of many years' experience once expressed her opinion thus: "The effect of our modern school system is to teach children not to think." A boy in the eighth grade in a Chicago school once said to his teacher, "Please, Miss Curtis, talk this lesson to me; I have read it, but can not understand it." He was a victim of the oral method, and had never learned to read and construe printed language for himself. The home, we say, is responsible for these things. What is meant by the home? Not the four walls nor the atmosphere merely of the place where the family abide; but we mean the personality of those who make the home,—the parents, and, according to most writers, the mother, since she is by common consent considered the home maker.14 How, then, shall this responsibility be met, and how shall these boys of ours be trained to take their places in the world's work with credit to themselves and satisfaction to their employers? Careful selection of vocation is offered by one writer as an answer to this question. Any one employed in work congenial and suited to his natural gifts can and will do better work than in an unsuitable position. You have all heard the old illustration of square pegs in round holes, and vice versa. Just as such pegs can not fill the holes in which they are placed, so the boy or man in the wrong place can not give satisfaction. Another suggestion is that the habit of work, faithful, industrious work, must be formed from early childhood. Small duties suited to age and strength should be required of every child, and he should be taught to perform such duties promptly, accurately, and faithfully, without being constantly reminded of them. A certain small boy, whose duty it was to bring in kindling, had a careless way of leaving a few sticks, and saying it was all done. His mother would say, "Johnny, have you brought in all the wood?" "Yes, mother," Johnny would say; the mother would investigate and require Johnny to go back again and again, if necessary, until he could truthfully say, "It is all in now." Who can tell how much that seemingly small matter had to do with the habits of thinking and working that afterward made him a successful business man? To create a spirit of initiative, allow the boy to meet difficulties unaided, and find a way out by the exercise of his own wits. If he fails, point out to him the cause of failure, and let him try again. Power to think independently, and to make decisions unaided, is a valuable trait of character, and it should be trained and developed in the home first, and afterward in the school. Responsibility and experience will develop this power. "Teaching imparts knowledge," some one has said; "but training creates character;" and it is a character of the right sort that we want in our boys and girls. Character is built up of habits; and habits, good or bad, are the resultants of acts repeated until they become involuntary. The habits of accuracy and care so much desired in boys who are in business, and valuable in any situation in life, can come only from a solid foundation of continuous hard work. This does not mean that children should have no play. That would be as wrong as that they should have all play. But it does mean that in the training of every boy in school or at home, there should be certain tasks assigned that must be performed as carefully, promptly, and accurately as he will have to perform his duties when he becomes an employee in a business house. Done well enough should not be accepted. Done right is the only standard. The end of education is not merely to gain a living, but to give a more abundant life. Parents are not training mere wage-earners, but men to do the world's work. Home and school must work together to develop power of independent thought and self-reliant initiative. On a certain calendar appears this motto, "Initiative is doing the right thing without being told;" also this one, "Modern business has little use for the man who has to be told the same thing twice." How many times do you mothers allow yourselves to repeat a command to your boys before it is obeyed? "Johnny, pick up your playthings, so I can sweep," a mother says, and goes about her work. Johnny hears, but does not heed, as he is too busy with his play. She repeats the command, and again it is disregarded. Finally when the mother comes to sweep the room, the playthings are still there, Johnny is off at play somewhere else, and she picks them up herself. Will Johnny's employer do this way when Johnny is chore boy or office boy? Indeed he will not, and soon Master Johnny has to hunt another job, and mother wonders why Johnny's boss is so hard to please. The evils set forth in the indictment at the beginning of this article must be corrected both in the home and in the school, or boys will be at a standstill, and the outlook will be dark; for as the writer before quoted aptly says: "The only safe foundation for a strong and prosperous national future is the progressive education of the youth of the present." The habits of respect for superiors, courtesy to inferiors, and politeness to all, are to be secured in the same way by constant vigilance and unceasing labor. Well may we pause and say, Who is sufficient for these things? There is not an act of a child's life, not a play hour, but has its effect on the man or woman to be. There is not a single command obeyed or disobeyed, not one duty shirked or done perfectly, but is a seed sown for the harvest of the future. In this field of work as in all others, keeping everlastingly at it brings success; and in no other field is the reward of successful effort so rich and lasting. As surely as the waters of Niagara, pouring for generations over the rocks, have worn them away, and cut for themselves a passage through that wonderful gorge, so surely the days and weeks and years of faithful, patient, painstaking discipline and training administered by loving parents in a Christian home will, with God's promised blessing, give to the world men and women of power, who will be able to take their places in the foremost ranks of the world's workers.