Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/106

 lows and a physical reserve which will be to him a godsend when he needs to call upon it in the emergencies which come sooner or later to all men.

I have a neighbor, a man of education and of ordinary intelligence, who is constantly in mechanical difficulties. If a faucet leaks, he is quite at sea as to what ought to be done to adjust it; if his car gets out of order, he is as much at a loss to know how to fix it as is his ten-year-old son—more at a loss, perhaps, for the boy is learning to use his hands; he can not drive a nail or stoke a furnace, or make anything run that is out of order. If anything mechanical gets out of fix, he stands around as helpless as an infant. He did not when a boy learn to use his hands or to cultivate any mechanical skill.

Every boy of high school age should learn to make things and should develop curiosity enough to want to know how mechanical things are put together and how they run. Tools should not have an awkward feeling in his hands; he should be able to bore a straight hole, to put in a screw correctly, to saw a board evenly, and so to adjust a lawn mower that it will give the lawn a smooth, even hair cut. If he has access to a motor car he ought to figure out its mechanism intelligently enough to understand how to keep it in order and what to do for it when it refuses to work properly. I know boys who have had cars for years who are as confused and helpless when they look under the hood as they would be if they were asked to translate a language with