Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-02-18
If you could become young again.

If you could become young again,
what age would you choose?
Fifteen" said one gentleman.
Twenty -one," said another
Sixteen" said woman.
1t was a poet who first propounded
the question, in the famous lines:
Backward, turn backward, o Time,
in thy flight,
Make me a child again, lust for
tonight"
He selected no definite age. one may
see, but undoubtedly he had one in
mind.
Perhaps every one who at some time
or other signs for the return of youth
has some particular age in his thoughts.
Just what definite age will depend
mostly on the life history of the pros
poct, for no man can get away from his
past, although his dreams may d.li-
ciously include an unfathomabIe future.
x x x
The man who found his childhood
beSet with certain adolescent fears NAV
well think that he by no means would
go through all that again, not evsn for
the questionable joys of renewed youth.
School often is a nightmare for
youngsters. Not, perhaps, in an active
but III a passive sort of way. If YOU
look at their report cards, you will sc
That they stand very well in their
classes.
If you could follow them during the
routine of scholastic day. yOu might
regard them class leaders, popular with
their fellows.
Yet if you could look into their
heads-WhiCh by no means you could
ever do. even if you called yourself a
rzyl hologist-you would discern a large,
smcthering dislike for the entire
proceedings.
Something dinly within them re-
bsLad at the close confinement Of the
scholarly hours. They resented the
f3ct that some crc--in this case the
teacher-was placed over them, with
d pseudo-authorlty before which they
must bow.
They disliked the basic idea of ex-
aminationS, felt that they were unfair
to them They felt bit chagrined
that fact which they knew they knew
would not come to the surface quickly
enough to be Of use to them in q critical
moment
But it went deeper than that.
The entire educational system, with
its supervising principals and its jani-
tors, its principals and its teachers, its
dim shadowy figures vaguely known as
the Board of Education - all these
struck such pupil as unnecessary.
After he grew up he saw that he had
been. to put it mildly unfair in his
structures. All those persons and per-
sonages did the best they could. but
it was not enough, a. the time, to con-
vert him.
If he had life to begin over again,
understanding all that, he would begin
with his college days. whsre he at last
got the vision that what he was doing
he was doing for himself. Even to this
day he will feel reSantful that the entire
educational personnel Of a great city
was unable to give him that attitude.
And he often wonders if Education with
a large e does not fail more often in
this regard than is suspected.
X X X X
George Eliot, the novelist, was also
a poet, and wrote several things popu-
lar IN her day. The Choir Invisible"
is the best known. But there is one
about a brother and a sister in which
she states that if she had to begin life
over again she would ask nothing better
than to be "a little sister there" It
is a tender and beautiful tribute to an
affection which all brothers and sisters