Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-03-14
GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS
By Dr.. Frank Crane

Boys will be boys and girls will be girls.
The fact that lies behind this common say
ing is that young people cannot be handed
the experience Of old age, but that they have
to accumulate their own supply OF experience.
Experience is the best teacher; but 1t is
our own experience and not that OF some
body else.
The proper training for children is not the
one that seeks to impose upon them the con-
illusions of that wisdom and prudence that
come with age, but the one that endeavors
rather to found in them such principles as
shall enable them to come to their own con-
illusions without shipWreck.
A good deal of the complaint of the older
generation against the new which has always
existed, probably since the stone age, is alb
surd.
AS The New York Globe said recently:
"One dean objects to Knockers, another
has a particular aversion to bobbed hair,
while all of them are set inexorably against
smoking. certain extreme form" OF modern
dancing, the use of slang, especially the say
ing of gosh' and any feminine encroach-
ment upon the field of so-called masculine
expletives.' Deans of women, that is, are
trying to make the present generation or
girls a trifle more ladylike in the strictly
old-fashioned sense than it is inclined to be.
That is the job for which they are paid and
which they must perform, whether sincerely
or merely as professional matter of course"
But that is not the job for which teachers
are paid; just as it is not the job of physi-
clan to doctor symptoms. 1t is his job to find
out the causes of disease and remove them.
In the same way it is the business OF the
teacher to develop ideals in her charges, ITO
direct their imaginations, and to set examples
so that tn inner life and desires of the young
people may go out toward the best things
and not toward things that are cheap and
noxious.
And perhaps after all the teachers great
est work is in the example that she sets by
her own character, by the electric power
of her own personality.
A teacher is not machine; she is human
being. And unless she has rich and force
full nature, such as shall inspire her pupils
she has no business teaching, no matter how
great may be her learning.
Bobbed hair, smoking, short skirts and
slang are not, in themselves, diseases of
youth. They are symptoms of disease. They
arise simply from a shallow notion Of what
is worth while.
There is no education that amounts to
anything that is not an education of the
desires.
There is no real progress in culture that
is not development of new and finer wants.
After all, the greatest thing in the world
in any school is atmosphere.
This is not attained by silly rules and vexa-
tious restrictions; but simply by the pres
ence of great souls; of natures that are cult
ured and virile and are able to impart their
spirit to those immature persons who are in
their charge
Teachers that busy themselves with the
repression of little vulgarities are not the
sort that should be teaching. The real teach
err bushes her self with planting the seeds of
right character and combats the love of what
is gaudy and ill-mannered by what DR.. Chal-
mers calls "the expulsive power of new af
fection.'
Copyright, 1922, by Frank Crane)
-A
POINTED PARAGRAPHS
man isn't beaten as long as he isn't dis
couraged
Love is eternal because it never worries
about dying.
They are most harmed by flattery who are
most hungry for it.
The mark of a free man is that he binds