Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/36

 that it is little wonder if he is not sometimes confused and at loss to know just what to choose. Unrestricted election is not possible in any high school, so far as I know, but the restrictions are so limited that the actual results amount almost to that. High school boys have so great a variety put before them that they often become over fastidious and finical in their tastes and so hard to please that they refuse to show interest in, or to cultivate an appetite for, anything. A dozen different subjects of which his grandfather would scarcely have known the names, from agronomy to pharmacy, are now found in many a high school boy's program.

Even if the boy is sensible enough to recognize the difficulty and the danger he is in, he will not always find it easy to get intelligent advice. There is a wide difference of opinion these days as to just what is best for a boy to study. There are those who think he ought to choose only what interests him, only what may be put to immediate and practical use. There is no greater educational fallacy than this insistence that we should always make a student's work interesting, and that if he can see no practical end in what he is studying, there is no logical reason why he should go on with it. He should study, the argument is, only such subjects as he finds he has special fitness and liking for. The lines of least resistance are the lines for him to follow. "Make it easy or cut it out."

A young fellow will not always get a great deal of help