Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/65

 I heard a boy once boast that during his high school course he had never cut a class nor seen an athletic contest. I am not sure that either fact was a virtue, and notwithstanding that he now wears a badge won by high scholastic attainments, I think that his training and his sympathies might have been broader if his school interests had, perhaps, been varied enough to make it desirable for him sometimes to cut a class, or interesting to attend a ball game. I think his influence now would be wider. A boy's studies should give him familiarity with ideas, and training in principles; and "other things" in which he interests himself should make him acquainted with people, and furnish him some opportunity to get experience in the management of erratic human beings. Whether the business which a young man finally takes up happens to be designing gas engines or preaching the gospel, he will find daily opportunities for the exercise of both sorts of training.

It is a somewhat overworked and jaded joke that class valedictorians generally bring up as street car conductors or as hack drivers, not that I should like to underestimate the value of any one of these positions or the amount of intelligence required successfully to perform the work of either one of these worthy offices—and though, perhaps, it is a joke, one can occasionally find instances of students of the highest scholastic standing filling the most commonplace positions simply from lack of initiative or ability to assume leadership. One such dropped in on me only a few