Training the Boy
- Author:
William A. McKeever. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913. Pp. xviii + 368.
The boy whose training Professor McKeever has in mind is evidently the son of people of very moderate means living in a small town. The child who grows up in the open country has been discussed by him in a separate book, “Farm Boys and Girls.” On the other hand the city boy, whether he be born in a slum tenement, in a small house on a quiet street, or in a mansion on the avenue, seems to be just outside Professor McKeever’s province. True, he writes of city conditions with accuracy and insight, but it is not as a native. His tone here is rather like that of the intelligent European writing of American politics.
For the boy of the small town, his occupations, pets, and playmates, Professor McKeever has an understanding sympathy. He plans for the development of “the whole boy, and not merely a part of him.” He follows his career through infancy and the public school to college and to business beyond the college. Part one of his book deals with industrial training, part two with social training, part three, habit training, part four, vocational training, and part five, service training.
It is needless to say that the book stands upon a lofty moral plane, as morality is popularly and?shall we confess??vaguely understood. It is touched with the spirit of Benjamin Franklin, whose “Honesty is the best policy” has kept so many of us in the straight road. Professor McKeever proves his intellectual descent from Poor Richard by discussing, among other topics, “Matrimony as a Business Venture.” But Franklin was a clear and logical thinker and never used such a concept as that which Professor McKeever permits himself in speaking of the boy’s choice of a religious affiliation,?”the divine promptings resident within his own good heart.” This superimposing of mysticism upon utilitarianism, like a Gothic spire on a Georgian dwelling, goes far to weaken the impressiveness of an otherwise excellent manual of character building. It only remains to add that the illustrations are entertaining as well as appropriate, and that each chapter is accompanied by a useful bibliography. A. T.
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