July 20. 1917 
LAND & WATER 
The New Boy 
By J. J) SymoD 
17 
THE new boy, in a wider sense than that 
in which he makes his debut at school 
is the main factor in the problem of educa- 
tional reform. Reconstruction of our teaching 
system, however ingeniously devised from the point of view 
of those who belong to the older generation, runs the risk of 
going astray, if the reformers fail to take particular account 
of their material, and, basing their scheme on retrospect alone, 
unconsciously give too much weight to the memory of their 
own boyhood. Even the wisest may fall into this insidious 
snare, for it is hard for men in middle and later life to get into 
complete touch with the mind of the growing boy. 
This tragedy of age found perhaps its most poignant ex- 
pression when Ibsen struck out the compelling image of the 
younger generation knocking at the door. Its tragedy lies 
m the implicit hostility of the new race to that which is passing 
away. It is the knock of those come to eject. Pushed thus 
to its logical conclusion, the figure is perhaps too cruel, too 
relentless. There are mitigations, merciful and rewarding, 
as every sympathetic schoolmaster knows. To him, if he is of 
the right sort, it i^ given to keep touch with the genus boy in 
a way that is in part denied even to parents. It is essential 
therefore that that educational reform of which so much is 
hoped, upon whkh so much is staked, of which so much is 
spoken, shall take full and just account of the person it aims 
at benefiting, the new boy. 
For the new boy is very new. The rapid changes and 
extraordinary upheavals of recent years have produced a 
creature who differs more sharply from his predeces^or of 
thirty years ago than that predecessor differed from his fore- 
runners equally removed in time. It may be questioned 
whether any young generation, since the Renaissance at any 
rate, has sprung forward with so fresh and even revolutionary 
a vision as that which is now before us. This boy is the heir of an 
e.xtraordinary time : his clear young eyes see old institutions 
crumbling and new institutions springing to birth. He notes a 
sharp cleavage with the past ; the course of his own future has 
been suddenly altered. Two and a half years ago 4ie was 
looking forward to college or business at the end of his school 
life : boys already at college were either engrossed in sport or 
begifining to awaken to the higher fascination of intellectual 
things. Across this quietly ordered path came the tumult of 
war, and hundreds rushed into the field. In an hour they had 
become men, and for many life itself was now a thing but of 
weeks or months. Before long what had been voluntary 
choice became the lot of all, and the boy who was fast 
approaching military age saw his school days numbered. 
The Hazard of Life 
The hazard of life assumed a definite meaning. Perhaps he 
had a future, perhaps not. One day he might gather up the 
broken threads of civihan training and pursue the path marked 
,out for him in time of peace, but the whole outlook of youth 
was clianged. A huge and not unwelcome adventure had 
intervened : the issue did not perhaps trouble him with any 
very clear realisation, but the mfluence has been in- 
evitably formative. It extends to those younger boys, who 
will not be called upon to take up arms, except as a precau- 
tioncU"y measure, and differentiates them sharply from their 
fathers. The old studies,- the old pursuits wiU not suffice 
them. They " drive at practice" ; even those who would 
have inclined in other days to the quiet walks of scholarship, in 
the humanist's sense, are looking a little distrustfully at 
merely bookish accomplishment. The boy must be caught 
with deft and wise management, if he is to be won back to the 
imperishable gifts of antiquity. Modifications ' there must 
be ; but a scheme of education wholly utihtarian would make 
our last state worse than our first. 
There is good reason to hope much from the present great 
hour of the educated theorist, spurred by war to new views and 
new activity. Among the many revelations of the time, none 
has come home to the nation with greater force than this — 
that our teaching system calls for vigorous revision and re- 
construction. At last there is a real public interest in the 
question, which remained in the region of academic discussion, 
only dimly appreciated by the man in the street, until the shock 
of a national upheaval Ufted the debate out of the merely 
professional and fixed upon it the attention of the average 
parent, always shy of the scholastic mystery and usuall> 
a little puzzled by the controversies of schoolmasters. Bui 
now, to the other wonders of the time has been added that of a 
public conscience fully awake to educational concerns.^ Eor 
the first time, paterfamOias, the man of affairs, who had 
come to look on education as an incident, necessary but 
expensive, a duty which he discharges vicariously with some 
distrust of his paid agents, realised that this thing touched 
him nearly. It was a work of national importance from which 
he could no longer stand aloof. He must get new light on the 
question. The newspapers, always sensitive to the public 
' feeling, began to offer views and counsel of various quality. 
Some held a torch, others only a rushUght. But the movement, 
despite^ inevitable confusions, was healthy. The parent 
became convinced that amid the manifold reforms of the 
hour, it behoved us imperatively to set the school-house ia 
order. And he must make the question his own. 
Cry of the Pessimist 
The movenient, perhaps, did not arise entirely from the 
purest enthusiasm for intellectual things. Many who cried 
Mene, mene, lekel, upharsin were influenced only by 
pessimistic convention of the moment, which, under the stress 
of initial deficiencies in the field of battle, condemned and 
criticised all national institutions. It was a perversion of the 
maxim — fas est nib hoste doceri. The enemy, men cried, had 
in all respects done better ; he was reaping the reward of his 
wisdom and foresight ; we on the other hand were suffering 
punishment for faulty method. At first the attitude was too 
penitential : too often, as the discussion grew, the white sheet 
and candle were dropped only to be exchanged for the hammer 
of the iconocfest. This was very agreeable to those who 
considered the schoolmaster but a feckless body, out of touch 
with practical life, a dealer in mysteries useful perhaps 
to bookworms, but beneath the business man's concern. 
Gradually, however, equilibrum is being restored. In Mr. 
Fisher's hands the cause of reform is finding a direction whicli^ 
promises equal justice to the claims of the new and the old 
in education- The problem is not yet solT>ed by a long way, 
but the omens are favourable, increasingly favourable. 
Apart from the influence of actual war and all that it im- 
mediately involves, our new boy has been moulded in particular 
by the scientific and mechanical progress of the Twentieth 
Century. He has seen the conquest of the air and it has ap- 
pealed to his imagination with a power far greater than that of 
the steam-engine, once his amiable desire. For the young 
aspiration to be an engine-driver fades with growing years. 
It hardly outUves the nursery. But the aeroplane has befen 
not only a delightful pastime in the making and flying of 
models, but it has offered him an adventurous and splendid 
service, bom in the very nick of time to help the country at her 
need. It calls for youth at its very best, the boy need not '" 
wait, he may begin the day he is of military age. 
It is therefore the more urgent that the claims of scientific 
and of literary training shall be rightly harmonised. There is 
radical error in the popular conception that the two are 
eternally opposed, and the popular misunderstanding has been 
countenanced in quarters where the average man believes 
that wisdom is to be found. He Ustens gladly to the 
invocation of the blessed word science misused by the partially 
informed, and believes that it is the word of salvation for his 
sons. It is true that^there never was a generation so apt to 
receive scientific training, and science must yet come by its 
own, if we are to prosper as a race, but its effect will not be 
dynamic, if it is summed up in mere text-books on dynamics 
or that which is familiarly termed " stinks." The concept 
must be something far wider, the proper application of 
scientific method fo the whole of education, in which no part 
will be held contemptible because it is modern or ancient, or 
merely ornamental because it is literary. For what, 
after all, is scientia but " knowledge " and thence "skill? " 
And in skill and knowledge is comprehended the sum of the 
whole matter ; this perilous but, if rightly guided, glorious 
remodelhng of education for the welfare of the new boy. 
COCCLES 
WtHO- SCREENS 
.AWINOOW5 
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SAfVTY GLASS 
