Heart and Soul | Page 6

has probably been no great
change. In the class-room and throughout the school régime, strict
obedience is still maintained as an essential requisite, just as it has
always been. The punishments and penalties for disobedience are
perhaps a little less severe and drastic, but without any real difference
in effect.
The only question worth raising in this connection is how far
school-teachers and school-rules are taken to heart by the average boy
or girl--how far they are made to apply to their notions and motives,
when school is left behind. School-books, school-teachers and
school-discipline are so apt to be bunched together and relegated to a
special corner of the mind.
Our second group--the influence of example and imitation--has
probably always been a more important factor in shaping conduct and
character. What the older boys, just above you, do and believe, makes a
lot of difference to you, if you are a boy.
It is no question here of old-fashioned precepts or theories, handed
down by parents, grandmothers or school-teachers, to be taken with a
grain of salt. It is something living and vital, which concerns you
directly. You look up to the older boys: you want to be like them; and
approved of by them. What they think and do may be at variance with
the ideas of nurse, mother and school-master, but if it is good enough
for them, it is good enough for you. It is a practical standard which you
can't help being judged by. If you fail to live up to it, or refuse to accept
it and try to act differently, there is a sure penalty. You will be sneered

at, disliked, looked down upon, or laughed at.
If you are a girl, the same principle applies. There is nothing new about
the principle. It is as old as the hills and universal.
Is the effect of it to-day on the forming character any different from
what it has been, in the past? Undoubtedly. A moment's reflection will
show why and how this must be so.
Whatever the nature and influence of the family bringing-up may have
been, in any particular case, the general tendency toward lack of
discipline and disregard for authority can hardly fail to be reflected in
the prevailing standards of the boys and girls to be found at any school.
They have no connection with school regulations or school penalties. It
is the fundamental question of instincts, desires, and notions--the
attitude toward themselves and toward life outside the school-room
which they are going to take with them where-ever they go.
The tendency begun at home finds reinforcement and further
development in the boy or girl by example and contact with others,
who are headed the same way.
Next comes the third group: The influence of public opinion--of
tradition and customs.
There is no mistaking the fact that in the present generation there have
been many striking changes in the prevailing customs, as they apply to
the behavior and conduct of individuals. The growing boys and girls
see these changes taking place on every hand.
When mother and father were young, Sunday was a day set aside for
church-going and dull and decorous behavior. Games and fun of all
kinds were laid away, everybody put on their best clothes and sat
around and talked, or took quiet walks with an overhanging air of
seemly propriety. To-day there are tennis and golf and baseball games
and dinner-parties and gambling at the bridge-table, in which mother
and father participate along with the rest.

It used to be considered improper for a girl of good family to go out at
night to any kind of party without being accompanied by a chaperon.
Nowadays, the girl who is obliged to take a chaperon with her wherever
she goes, is liable to be laughed at by her up-to-date friends.
It was not so long ago that in any respectable community, a woman
who painted her face, smoked cigarettes, drank cocktails and gambled
with the men, would have been considered a shocking spectacle of
depravity that no self-respecting wife, or mother, could accept or
tolerate.
Nowadays, the growing boy and girl have only to open their eyes to see
women doing such things everywhere--as likely as not their aunts and
cousins, or their own mothers.
Examples of this nature could be given in great variety, but enough has
been suggested to show the trend. In another connection it will be
interesting to discuss these manifestations in greater detail and reflect
on their cause and meaning.
For the present, it is sufficient to indicate that the social customs have
changed and are changing very materially. Under such conditions, it
would not be natural for young people to be unduly impressed by them.
Such standards are so unstable and they differ so