take pleasure in obliging and imitating those they like and perhaps in disobliging
those they dislike. They have much selfishness and little sentiment. As this
period draws to a close and the teens begin, the average normal child will not be
bookish but should read and write well, know a few dozen well-chosen books,
play several dozen games, be well started in one or more ancient and modern
languages—if these must be studied at all, should know something of several
industries and how to make many things he is interested in, belong to a few
teams and societies, know much about nature in his environment, be able to sing
and draw, should have memorized much more than he now does, and be
acquainted, at least in story form, with the outlines of many of the best works in
literature and the epochs and persons in history.[1] Morally he should have been
through many if not most forms of what parents and teachers commonly call
"badness," and Professor Yoder even calls "meanness". He should have fought,
whipped and been whipped, used language offensive to the prude and to the prim
precisian, been in some scrapes, had something to do with bad, if more with
good, associates, and been exposed to and already recovering from as many
forms of ethical mumps and measles as, by having in mild form now he can be
rendered immune to later when they become far more dangerous, because his
moral and religious as well as his rational nature is normally rudimentary. He is
not depraved, but only in a savage or half-animal stage, although to a large-
brained, large-hearted and truly parental soul that does not call what causes it
inconvenience by opprobrious names, an altogether lovable and even fascinating
stage. The more we know of boyhood the more narrow and often selfish do adult
ideals of it appear. Something is amiss with the lad of ten who is very good,
studious, industrious, thoughtful, altruistic, quiet, polite, respectful, obedient,
gentlemanly, orderly, always in good toilet, docile to reason, who turns away
from stories that reek with gore, prefers adult companionship to that of his
mates, refuses all low associates, speaks standard English, or is as pious and
deeply in love with religious services as the typical maiden teacher or the à la
mode parent wishes. Such a boy is either under-vitalized and anemic and
precocious by nature, a repressed, overtrained, conventionalized manikin, a
hypocrite, as some can become under pressure thus early in life, or else a genius
of some kind with a little of all these.
But with the teens all this begins to be changed and many of these precepts must
be gradually reversed. There is an outburst of growth that needs a large part of
the total kinetic energy of the body. There is a new interest in adults, a passion to
be treated like one's elders, to make plans for the future, a new sensitiveness to
adult praise or blame. The large muscles have their innings and there is a new