Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/64

 do, and he must be wide-awake enough to realize what it is that he is trying to accomplish.

But the "other things" are important; only slightly less important in fact than the studies themselves. However much a boy may be devoted to his work he can not study all the time, and he should not be allowed to do so even if it were possible. As I remember my own secondary school course and try to estimate, as it is impossible justly to do, its present worth to me, I am inclined to value most highly some of the things that were connected only remotely with the studies I was pursuing. These external things naturally would have been of little value to me unless I had carried the work I was taking, for matters were so conducted in our home circle that a place would readily have been found for me on the farm had I shown any chronic inaptitude in securing grades. But granting that ability, these "other things" seem to me of the greatest value. As an instructor I can seldom find much excuse for the boy who does not carry his work in high school; but the one who does not do more than this, no matter how high his scholastic standing may be, has missed a very large part of what every one should get from high school training. School life is very much a community life. No one can justly live to himself alone, and profit greatly from the life. He has his own private individual work to do, it is true, and he should do it; but he has also his obligations to his fellow students and to the community at large, and these he may not shirk.