The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1883-11-07
MANAGING BAD BOYS.
A Reform School Superintendent on
the Subject.


reform school at Pontiac. who has had
experience in the manage
ment of unruly boys. lectured short
time ago in Chicago before the Teachers
Institute, taking for his subject, the man.
agement.of bad boys. Rock Island, We
are sorry to say, is the home of many bad
boys, and the interesting words of DR.
Scouller are applicable here as elsewhere.
Following is brief extract of the lee
tGre
Upon the tomb of William Frederick
Froebel in Germany, he said, were in
scribed the words, Let US live for our
children" If the world could feel the full
force of this thought there would be no
need today of talking about the manage
ment of boys. 1t was easier TO talk about
management than to manage. Twenty
years ago the speaker had felt that he
could write book upon the subject; now
he felt scarcely competent to write a
page.
There were three classes of boys. The
first needed no management. They ap-
peared in Sunday school books. Perhaps
il man lived long enough he might see
a few of this class who read the
LIVES OF OF SAINTS AND MARTYRS
never use tobacco, and are thrown into
spasms when they behold spider in their
path. 1t was sad, but "a per cent of this
class died young. The remainder lived to
an age of severe criticism, and made that
kind of men that need no repentance.
From the second class of boys came the
teachers, the preachers, the business men
in fact it supplied the backbone and the
moral stamina OF the world, the no such a
word as fail men; the heroes of doing and
the heroes of suffering Perhaps some
boys of this class fell into the next, and
so into prison, but it was because some
teacher had neglected his duty and mis-
managed his charge. The boys of the
third class loved the world, the flesh and
the devil, They stayed away from school
and out of nights; they spoke of their
parents as the "old man" and "old wo-
man, and pored over five cent pollutions
that prepared them for the jails, work
houses and penitentiaries. When some of
this order came to the scaffold, after their
preparatory conversion, they had more
piety on their lips than ever clustered
monk dreamed of in his cell.
In the prognosis of these three classes,
it might be said of the first that it was
out of danger; of the second, that it had
the fever, but would get well; of the third
that it was somewhat in the condition of
the Scotch boy who said to his father that
he was past redemption and had turned
the leaf, whereupon the parent remarked
that his son was in very bad state, in
deed.
In managing the second class the boys
should be given something more than mere
lessons; nor did they need sermons nor
long prayers. The moral lesson should
pervade all things. The teacher should
be honest living out his or her profes
sious.
Boys needed sympathy from him who
should be both companion and master
The trials and yexations of a teachers
work were often, when analysed, but his
own shadows. The teacher must be a
philosophic genius, for there was no pa
tent method for managing bad boys. In
many instances it was not the bad boys but
THE POOR TEACHERS
Some boys may be managed, others must
chanical industries the problem of the
management of boys would be more than
half solved There were times for the
rod, and stout rod.
The State had right to seek to control
and try to subdue, by the agency of its
special institution, all intiGences tending
to weaken its power. Though the third
class of boys were all CRIMINALS, they were
not all from criminal families, stock tells
Since 1880 the Juke family, in but one o.
the counties of New York State, out o.
1874 persons furnished 236 paupers, Il
people convicted of lis crimes with termi
aggregating 116 years, and 1913 prostitute:
This one family had cost the State over
81 900, 900.
. Prayer as a remedy and agency in thu
correction of bad boys? Yes, but not too
much of prayer and preaching. To
certain working house one preacher afte
another was invited to address the inmat
The first preached the Prodigal Son, 81
die the second and the third; so did full,
thirteen. When the thirteenth had finish
ed there was no discipline left in tina
Institution. Washington little hatche
and the Plodical Son have been worn THU
by the friction of bad boys Between
the Bible. and the whip there was bi!
opening which should be filed with com
mon sense.
The compulsory attendance bill passed
by the last Legislature would work
wonderful change in the criminals of tn,
state after the lapse of a generation
Seventy per cent of the boys of the STATE
Reform School were unable to read o
write