Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/101



was a letter in my mail this morning from a young boy just out of high school. He was desirous of going to college, and like many another man with high ambition, he was without money.

"Could you find for me?" he asked, "some position which would not interfere with my studies, and which would bring me in an income of not less than fifteen dollars a week?"

I was forced to write him that I could not; that almost any job which he might obtain would interfere with his studies, and that if he were to earn fifteen dollars a week, unless he were possessed of some specific trade or skill worth a high rate of remuneration, it would be only by working six hours a day or more, and such an amount of time given to outside labor would interfere very seriously with any one's studies.

There are a great many people who labor under the mistaken notion that it actually is helpful to a college student's scholarship for him to work. I have known parents who were quite able to meet their son's college expenses, but who refused to do so under the false impression that they were doing the boy a service by forcing him to earn his living. "It will make a man of him," they affirm. "It will teach him the value of a dollar." It may, but it will seldom if ever conduce to making him a good student, and that should be his object in going to college.