Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-10-26
BOARDING SCHOOLS
BY H. Addington Bruce.
HAVE been asked to give my opinion regard
ing the desirability or undesirabllity OF

HAVE been asked to give my opinion regard.
ing the desrabity undesirabilty or
sending boys to boarding school. 1t is
request with which willingly comply.
And, first, | must frankly state my deep-rooted
belief that the environment of boarding school,
no matter how we'll conducted it may be, can never
fully take the place of the environment of good
home in the upbringing of young boy.
Yet | forced to recognize that there are
many homes which, psychologcally speaking, do
not provide a good environment for growing boys
| have in mind, of course the homes of some
people who very poor Also, however, | have
in mind the homes of some people who are very
rich.
No home. whether it be the home of poor peo-
pie or of wealthy ones, provides boy with good
environment when it is a home in which the
parents are over-devoted to the boy.
If their devotion takes the form of excessive
anxiety about his health this will tend to develop
in him unhealthy modes of thinking. 1t may even
make him a nervous wreck.
Ask any neurologist of wide experience and he
will confirm the statement that perpetual tusslns
about a boy may make him so abnormally sell
conferred as to produce in him hysterical symptoms
myself know of one boy who suffered both
from might terrors' and from day terrors His
condition was clearly of hysteria.
But 1t bafled treatment until an attending
physician day traced its cause to the anxiety
habitually felt and openly expressed by the boy
mother whenever he had to be out of her sight.
Abnormal self-centeredness, again, may be de-
velOped in q boy if his parents too1shly gratliy
his whims, give him whatever he desires, and In
other ways him to feel that he is to them
the principal object in the universe.
If this silly attitude does not develop outright
nervous symptoms in the boy, 1t is pretty sure 10
make him conceited, selfish, arrogant, and uncom-
panionable for other children,
The tendency in such home, in fact. is for the
parents to forbid the unfortunate boy to associate
with other boys They fear that the others will
misunderstood his sensitive" nature, and deal
roughly with him.
Also, any home is poor home for growing
boy when the parents are persons lacking in emo
tional control, quick tempered, fretful, petulant
If only through imitation these undesirable traits
are likely to be acquired by their son and mani
tested by their and manifested in his be-
havior.
Under circumstances such these l have n
hesitation in affirming that boy is sure to be far
better off in a good boarding school than he would
be at home.
In the boarding school his egoistic and anti
social leanngs will be nipped in tn ebud. He will
be trained to associate freely and smoothly with
boys of his own age.
He may get some hard knocks, but they will
only have the beneficial effect of helping to develop
in him courage and hardihood
While, then, l ordinarily prefer home environ
ment to boarding school environment, l warmly
recommend a change from home to boarding
school in any where young boy shows signs
of growing up deficient in initiative, self-reliance
pluck and proper respect for the rights of Others
These are virtues which the home training
should have developed. II the home has failed
to develop them, by all means give the boarding
school it's chance
Copyright, 1917, by the Associated NewspapersO
In short time the only Germans left
French soil will be behind the allied lines in the
prison camps.