WHERE AND HOW TO APPLY THE REMEDY
The evil is patent enough. The canker is there, yet little seems to be done officially beyond dressing the sore with sums of money. No steps are being taken to prevent its spreading deeper into our national life.
The natural field for any remedy lies in the rising generation and its upbringing.
Theodore Roosevelt, the ex-President of the United States of America, truly says:—
"If you are going to do anything permanent for the average man you have got to begin before he is a man. The chance of success lies in working with the boy, not with the man."
John Wanamaker says:— "Save a man, you save one person; save a boy and you save a whole multiplication table."
The boys of the nation are full of enthusiasm and spirit, and only want their heads to be turned the right way to become good, useful citizens. This splendid material is being allowed to run to waste — nay, worse than that, it is allowed to become harmful to the nation simply for want of education, for want of a hand to guide them at the crisis of their lives when they are at the crossroads where their futures branch off for good or for evil.
They in their turn are to become the fathers of more boys, whom they are supposed to train up on right lines for good citizenship, when in reality they do not themselves know the haziest meaning of the word. This is not entirely their fault.
The present authorized scheme of education in our schools includes plenty of bookwork, but no development of the quality that counts, namely, character, which, after all, is of the first importance. Not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of boys in our great cities, after an education in reading sufficient to enable them to devour the horrors of the Police News, and in arithmetic to help them to make their football wagers, are being left to drift into the ranks of the "hooligans" and "wasters" without any attempt to stay them. But they receive no teaching in resourcefulness, chivalry, thrift, citizenship, or patriotism.
(a) How is it possible to apply a remedy for this?
