Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1918 — MAKING A MAN OF THE BOY [ARTICLE]

MAKING A MAN OF THE BOY

Schoolmaster Has the Great Task In Hand, and on Him Depends the Final Important Outcome. The sum of all admonitions is that the schoolboy-must pay attention. That is precisely what he is do'ng, writes S. M. Crothers, in the Atlantic. He is paying attention to a variety of things that escape the adult mind. As be wriggles on the bench in the schoolroom lie pays attention to all that is going on. He attends to what is going on out-of-doors; he sees the weak points of his fellow pupils against whom he Is planning punitive expeditions; and he is delightfully conscious of the idiosyncrasies of the teacher. Moreover, he is a youthful artist and his sketches from life give acute joy to his contemporaries when they are furtively passed around. But the schoolmaster says sternly: “My boy, you must learn to pay attention ; that is to say, you must not pay attention to so many things, but you must pay attention to one thing, namely the second declension.” Now the second declension is the least interesting thing in the room, but unless he confines his attention to It he will nevter learn it. Education demands narrowing of attention in the Interest of efficiency. A man may, by dint of application to a particular subject, become a successful merchant or real estate man or chemist or overseer of the poor. But he cannot be all these things at the same time. He must make his choice. Having In the presence of witnesses taken himself for better or for worse, he must, forsaking all others, cleave to that alone. The consequence is that by the time he Is forty he has become one kind of a man and Is able to do one kind of work.