586 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



his own curriculum as soon as possible. He can learn to choose wisely 

 only by choosing repeatedly, under guidance, as wisely as possible. 

 Hence, although a child twelve or thirteen years old should not freely 

 choose his own courses of study, he is, nevertheless, entitled to have his 

 preferences considered in the choices which his parents and teachers 

 permit him to make. As he grows older, his ability to choose wisely 

 should be deliberately cultivated, so that usually, by the time he 

 has completed his secondary-school education — rarely before that time 

 — he may be prepared to choose his further studies without restrictions. 

 A youth of eighteen or nineteen, who has been learning to choose, who 

 has had training in foresight for five or six years, is not likely to abuse 

 his privileges, nor is he likely to be ignorant of the importance of wise 

 counsel, nor to wish to dispense with it. 



But it may be said that if a youth is allowed to choose his own 

 studies, he is not trained to 'work against the grain.' I am not sure 

 that I understand the meaning attached to this phrase by those who 

 use it. But, in my opinion, the only sense in which any sane person, in 

 adult life, works 'against the grain,' is when he applies himself to a dis- 

 agreeable or even repulsive task for the sake of some ultimate end that 

 is intrinsically agreeable to him, or recognized as good by him. There 

 is no other working against the grain worth cultivating. No one, not 

 even an ascetic, habitually does disagreeable things for their own sake. 



When an adult works faithfully at a disagreeable task, he does 

 it primarily because it is clear to him that his personal interests are 

 at stake — that his daily bread, or honor, or social elevation, de- 

 pends on the performance of his work or his duty, however disagree- 

 able it may be. In other words, there are strong extraneous motives, 

 the force of which he can appreciate, that cause him to apply himself 

 to the uninviting or repelling task before him. True, many a man 

 does live his life under just such disadvantageous conditions. But it 

 is a life of mere drudgery, from which he might have been saved if 

 he had learned in youth to choose that calling which is in harmony 

 with his dominant interests and capacities. His work might then have 

 been hardly less a pleasure than his leisure, and he would, of course, 

 have been a more useful member of society, and would have earned 

 more leisure, because of the increased efficiency of his work. 



But can any one with any knowledge of boy nature assert that 

 faithful application to the positively and permanently uninteresting 

 can be cultivated by extraneous motives, even if it were desirable? 

 The motives which appeal to the adult are meaningless to the boy. 

 Moreover, he feels instinctively that consciousness was added to the 

 equipment of mankind, in the process of human evolution, for guidance, 

 and he insists as long as he can on using it for that purpose. The re- 

 mote reasons which apparently weigh heavily against the pupil's strong 



