Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/95

 they may go to-day. It is not difficult to see how they find their way to the Dean's office very early in their college course. They find the college life more strenuous than they had expected, and never before having done anything that was difficult or disagreeable, they do not see why they should do so now.

"Why did you not let me know that my son was not doing his work?" a mother wrote me not long ago, "and I should have come down and stayed with him until he got his work up. I have never let him get behind while he was in high school, and I can not understand why he is failing now." The trouble all lay in the fact that previously his mother had been his conscience; he had not learned self-direction in any sense; and having no director he loafed and slept late in the mornings.

It is the spoiled boy at home who in college develops into the loafer and the indifferent student. His parents often do not set for him especially high standards; they are pleased if he does not fail; they are satisfied to have him merely intellectually commonplace. And since they are contented, he has for himself no high intellectual ambitions; he prides himself that he is not a grind and pats himself metaphorically upon the back when he evades probation.

It is this same spoiled boy also who in college evades everything that is unpleasant or difficult. He is in few college activities because to get into activities requires initiative and sacrifice, and it demands usually more than ordinarily high scholarship. He has not learned to economize either his time or his money; he does not know how to make sacrifices, and he can not give up the petty gratification or pleasure