When Fathers and Sons Are Comrades

Improvement Era Vol. XXXI AUGUST, 1928 No. 10 When Fathers and Sons are Comrades By a Grandfather of Today FATHERS, can you work, play, study, camp out, with your boys? When father and son work together, play together, study the same subjects, fish, hunt, hike, and camp out to- gether, then it follows, as experience has shown, that: I. The Father's Ideas of Punishment Change. There is at least one feature in scout work and in what is taught in Bee-Hive work, boyology, and similar courses, that must appeal to all believers in the essential soundness of human nature. This work tends to prove that boys who go wrong are simply the unadjusted boys. Our failure to hold or to reclaim these errant wanderers means only, in the light of scientific investigations of the tendencies of the teens, not that the boy is sinful, but that we do not know what to do with him. Studies of adolescents show that punishment, if it is to serve any purpose at all, must be directed against the cause of undesirable acts, not against the boy who com- mits them, scarcely knowing what he does. It is now an accepted maxim among students of boy life that perhaps the best, if not the only way that is sure to correct faults, is by processes of training and practice, to replace bad habits with good habits. Retributive justice, as the due penalty for wrong- doing, is found in the large majority of cases to be a mere mistake that should not enter at all into the matter of dealing with youth. Experimental studies have given to investigators a new esti- mate of the harm that is done by any sort of punishment that the child considers unjust; and that, it has been ascertained, includes the great bulk of any sort of penalties and practically all punish- ment of children below eight or nine years of age. II. Fathers Get Refreshing Views of the Gospel of Work. Companionship with his sons in their enterprises as distin-

812 IMPROVEMENT ERA guished from his own work and interests, soon convinces the father that, contrary to a wide-spread belief, boys really like to work. They delight in the solutions of problems that are difficult to master, espe- cially when the problems are of paramount importance in some work that the boy is interested in doing. In order to induce him to attack it with zeal and energy, the work must, in some sense, be the boy's own work, or it must be of immediate concern to him; the problem must be his problem. Let the boy see that it is his work we are doing, his interest that we are seeking, and there will be no difficulty in securing his cooperation. III. The Father Becomes a Convert to the Gospel of Play. Scout work, Bee-Hive girl programs, boyology, and other studies of the teens, — all make known that play is as important in the life of the boy and the girl, and not improbably in adult lives also, as is work itself — as important, perhaps, as prayer and divine worship. Religious people have always believed implicitly enough in the gospel of work; and this fact is greatly to their credit, since it shows their discernment of the chief factor in the development of character. But they have rarely, perhaps, believed in the gospel of play. Programs of companionship between fathers and sons have opened to view the desirability, if not the necessity, of play, of recreation, of change, and of diversion, in the lives of men and women as well as in the life of the child. Play is, to speak reverently, heaven's method of developing the young limbs and the immature powers of the child. Play is also the best means of relaxation from the strenuous and un- ending toil that successful modern living entails. For the bow cannot always be bent, the spring not always stretched, the human system not always under extreme strain or tension. IV. Fathers Cease to Complain of Recent and Contemplated Changes in School Work. The bearing of these comrade-activities upon school work is most significant. Schools, the writer is convinced, must soon under- take, in some form, these open-air programs in summer. When parents understand what it is that schools are trying to do, we shall hear fewer complaints about school taxes. Summer work for school pupils, summer camps in cool places, outings and nature study in the open; athletics, art, shopwork, industry, and farm work — all best given in summer — may be the changes we next shall see in school programs. It is quite generally admitted that the public schools are not meeting the issue; also that modern homes are not, that the churches are not. No present agency is meeting the real needs of the youth of

WHEN FATHERS AND SONS ARE COMRADES 813 our time. In all their programs something is needed that is not there. That something is precisely what Scout work, Bee-Hive work, boy- ology, big-brother leagues, and similar modern agencies seek to sup- ply. But these combined reach less than ten per cent, thus far, of the boys and girls in summer. Only the schools can reach the vast majority. What is chiefly lacking in boyhood and youth is the filling in of the leisure time. The schools provide well for the pupils during the hours that they have them. It is during the other half of their time that pupils today need most looking after. "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." In former days, this was not the problem; for the industries of the old-fashioned home kept all its inmates busy in their spare time. Most readers can probably yet remember when our towns and cities were places of orchards and gardens. In my youth Salt Lake valley, from the blossoms of fruit trees, which then filled almost every town lot, was a sea of pink and white in the month of May. Many of the homes had one or more cows, sometimes horses and pigs, and almost always chickens. Each had a garden of flowers, vegetables, and small fruit, most of the lots being surrounded by the prolific and delicious Missouri black or yellow currants. Today all that beauty, that wealth of orchard and garden about every home as its chief pride and ornament, is gone, perhaps forever. The changes wrought by the vast industrial revolu- tion which we have so recently witnessed have deprived children of the natural, interesting, productive work, which once was a matter of course in the economy of things. V. Fathers Get New Faith in the Good Time Coming. Schools have responded to the changed order; but, ably man- aged as they are, it has been impossible for them to provide for these profound changes. The result is that pupils are now without employment after school hours and during vacations. This means that they have nothing regular to do for more than half of the time. Being awake and full of energy, they must be doing something. Many wise men have sought to find for them summer employment in modern industry, but the attempt has not been successful. More- over, even if it could be carried into effect, it might lead to con- ditions that the world deplored half a century ago, when the poet Mackay declared: There's a good time coming, boys. A good time coming; Little children shall not toil, Under or above the soil, In the good time coming;

814 IMPROVEMENT ERA But shall play in healthful fields Till mind and limb grow stronger; And every one shall read and write — Wait a little longer! The thought of returning to anything like the child labor and the industrial slavery of the Middle Ages, is abhorrent to our sense of values and of justice to children. The industrial employ- ment of children is probably not the solution. There is a different and finer way — a way that improves the real life of both parent and child, that makes for the safety of the state, the church, the home, and the nation. It is the way pointed out by Scout work for summer and other spare time. It is, without ir- reverence or exaggeration, the way of truth and life, of honor and safety — heaven's way for the salvation of the man and the boy. (To be Continued) Courage If you could cross mysterious seas, Columbus, Could breast the angry, threatening unknown; If you could face adversity and turmoil, And reap reality from vast dreams sown; If you could prove a truth by men forgotten, And do a deed that some now call divine; If you could find a continent, Columbus, Then surely I can find this soul of mine. If you could guide a nation, noble Lincoln, And make of several parts a whole again; If you could stand sagacious and unflinching. In spite of calumny and scorn of men; If you, with prescient and humble wisdom, Could bring our country out of darkest night; If you could mold a destiny, O Lincoln, Then I at least can shape my life aright. If you can love me still, my heavenly Father, In spite of obstinate and blind self-will; Of selfish thoughts and base renunciation, Of frenzied doubts I've often tried to kill; (You've loved me, and You've punished me severely. Yet still I do not trust — I cannot see.) Still, if you'll understand and watch and guide me, I'll grope my way at last, dear Lord, to thee. Ogden, Utah MARY M. PORTER