Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-09-05
SCHOOL CUTTERS
BY H. Addington Bruce

About this time of year many boys are
earnestly pleading with their fathers not to
send them back to school or college.
They are eager, they say, to go to work.
They stress their desire to make a beginning
at earning their own living.
They turn an impatient ear to their
fathers counsel that they can earn better
living if they continue their schooling a
while longer. In some cases they insist they
can learn more in place of business than
in any schoolroom.
And there is reason to believe that those
who thus insist are occasionally right.
Generally speaking, of course school is the
place where education may be most effective
ly acquired. Generally speaking those who
quit school too soon are handicapped some
times hopelessly handicapped, in the compe-
titfons of business life.
But there are exceptions Some boys are,
so constituted as to be incapable of meeting
the ordinary demands of school. This albeit
they cannot justly be called feeble-minded.
Rather, they should be called muscle
minded. They think, as it were with their
hands and their fingers. Given tasks calling
for mechanical skill, they acquit themselves
well enough. Where they fall short is in in
tellectual ability.
Unfortunately for them our schools as usu-
ally organized put premium on intellectual
dUI1lIy. Ills means CnaC the undetermined
boys, in common with the defective, lag be-
hind their fellows.
AS result a CALLING sense of inferiority is
forced upon them. They react to this in vari-
Gus ways.
Some lapse to a sullen acceptance of the
situation. Some become nervously irritable.
Some, if the self-assertive instinct is excep-
tionally strong in them, and if in addition
they possess physical strength, gain a bad
name as school DULLES
Such boys may well be taken out of school
and set to work, provided no technical school
is available for them, and provided also that
the right kind of work be found If pitch
forked into occupation calling primarily
for intellectual power they will do no better
than they did in school.
Likewise with boys Of the truly feeble
minded type
It is cruel kindness to keep them in
school. Whenever possible, however, the eff
fort should be made to obtain for them spe-
cial training that will develop to the maxi
mum the scant mentality they possess.
IT this is impossible, if the alternative to
ordinary schooling is gainful work, let them
be set to simple activities in keeping with
the limited capacity Of their minds To as
certain that capacity the mental tests of the
modern psychologist will be found helpful
= Then again-and it is important to appre-
ctate thfs-there are boys who long to quit
school, not because they are muscle-minded
or ieeble-minded, but simply because they
have never been made sufficiently interested
in schoolroom activities or sufficiently appre-
ciative of the practical bearing of these actiy-
tiles.
Naturally they account school work dull
and drab. Naturally they are anxious to have
no more, to do with it. But the proper course,
in their case; is not to grant their desire to
quit school, but to help them gain better
attitude toward school and it's tasks
When this is done it, will be found that
their craving to escape from school abates.
1t may also be found that whereas they
formerly were school incompetents, they
now take rank among the brightest pupils
of their age.
All of which suggests that fathers beset
by sons who wish to quit school have a prob
lem which should not be given tie solution of
a snap judgment. 1t is one deserving of the
most serious thought-and of thought il
lumined by the advice of all who, as teachers,
have had opportunity of closely observing
the would-be school cutters.