Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/594

586 his own curriculum as soon as possible. He can learn to choose wisely only by choosing repeatedly, under guidance, as wisely as possible. Hence, although a child twelve or thirteen years old should not freely choose his own courses of study, he is, nevertheless, entitled to have his preferences considered in the choices which his parents and teachers permit him to make. As he grows older, his ability to choose wisely should be deliberately cultivated, so that usually, by the time he has completed his secondary-school education—rarely before that time—he may be prepared to choose his further studies without restrictions. A youth of eighteen or nineteen, who has been learning to choose, who has had training in foresight for five or six years, is not likely to abuse his privileges, nor is he likely to be ignorant of the importance of wise counsel, nor to wish to dispense with it.

But it may be said that if a youth is allowed to choose his own studies, he is not trained to 'work against the grain.' I am not sure that I understand the meaning attached to this phrase by those who use it. But, in my opinion, the only sense in which any sane person, in adult life, works 'against the grain,' is when he applies himself to a disagreeable or even repulsive task for the sake of some ultimate end that is intrinsically agreeable to him, or recognized as good by him. There is no other working against the grain worth cultivating. No one, not even an ascetic, habitually does disagreeable things for their own sake.

When an adult works faithfully at a disagreeable task, he does it primarily because it is clear to him that his personal interests are at stake—that his daily bread, or honor, or social elevation, depends on the performance of his work or his duty, however disagreeable it may be. In other words, there are strong extraneous motives, the force of which he can appreciate, that cause him to apply himself to the uninviting or repelling task before him. True, many a man does live his life under just such disadvantageous conditions. But it is a life of mere drudgery, from which he might have been saved if he had learned in youth to choose that calling which is in harmony with his dominant interests and capacities. His work might then have been hardly less a pleasure than his leisure, and he would, of course, have been a more useful member of society, and would have earned more leisure, because of the increased efficiency of his work.

But can any one with any knowledge of boy nature assert that faithful application to the positively and permanently uninteresting can be cultivated by extraneous motives, even if it were desirable? The motives which appeal to the adult are meaningless to the boy. Moreover, he feels instinctively that consciousness was added to the equipment of mankind, in the process of human evolution, for guidance, and he insists as long as he can on using it for that purpose. The remote reasons which apparently weigh heavily against the pupil's strong