Chapter 17: The Watched Boy

Did you ever know a boy who was constantly watched and whose every act was scrutinized with severity to amount to anything? Did you ever know a watched boy who did not develop very undesirable qualities? Did you ever know anyone who was habitually held under a microscope by a suspicious, exacting parent or teacher to develop a large, broad-minded, magnanimous character? There may be exceptions to the rule in this matter, as in all others, but you will find it true in general that children who are not trusted, and are not put on their honor, will grow into mean, narrow-minded, suspicious men and women.

Like begets like. By a natural law all things seek their affinities. A critical, fault-finding, suspicious nature will awaken and call into action the worst qualities of those with whom it has dealings. Servants of employers of this kind sometimes become dishonest because suspicious thoughts are entertained concerning them so long that they begin to doubt their own integrity, and finally think they may as well have the game as the name. Boys who are conscious of being suspected all the time of doing wrong, of shirking their work, or of slighting their tasks, will come to think, after a while, that they are not worthy of trust and that they must have some bad qualities or parents and teachers would not regard them thus.

If there is one thing more necessary than another to the development of a strong, noble character it is a sense of freedom. A boy must feel that he is trusted, that he is not held under constant suspicion, and that parents and teachers rely upon his honor and believe in his manliness and honesty of purpose, or he will become twisted and distorted from the manner of man that God meant him to be.

You will never get the most or the best your boy is capable of while you watch and distrust him. The very thought that you are watching him makes him self-conscious, destroys his naturalness and spontaneity, and dampens his enthusiasm.

Advise your boy, love him, sympathize with him in his hopes and plans, and show him that you depend upon him to do what is right, and that you trust him absolutely, and you will draw out all that is best and noblest in him. But as long as you repress him, doubt his honesty and honor, and criticise him for every little defection from your idea of what boy should do and be, you will not see him grow into a noble man.

A repressed, enslaved race cannot progress and cannot develop strong character. Neither can a repressed, enslaved individual — man, woman, or child — grow in mental height or breadth.

When the president and professors at Harvard University decided to give each student his liberty, — not to watch him, and not to have him feel that he was under a critical eye all the time, — they were very severely criticised. When they announced that attendance at recitations and chapel exercises would no longer be compulsory, fathers and mothers of Harvard students all over the country threw up their hands in horror, and declared that their boys would go to the dogs. But President Charles W. Eliot thought differently. Observation and experience in his profession had convinced him that the watched student would never develop any desirable character or stamina. He assured the alarmed parents that, in rescinding compulsory rules, he and the other members of the faculty of Harvard were working for the best interests of the students. He pointed out to them that the manhood of their sons must be called out, that they must be trusted to govern and discipline themselves, and that they must be put upon their honor or they would go out from their alma mater, armed with diplomas, it is true, but weaklings in every other respect, — lacking in self-confidence and the power of initiative, and wholly unfitted to cope with the world.

At the time students in all our colleges were watched and hemmed in by cast-iron rules as if they were little children perfectly incapable of self-government. The same was true in our academies and seminaries. Spies were put on the track of the boys and they were run down almost like thieves. They were compelled to attend prayers and chapel exercises and were marked for every absence from recitations or lectures. Rolls were called and they were often induced to lie and give all sorts of excuses for their absences. In short, they were treated as irresponsibles who could not be trusted to regulate their own acts. The result was that, whenever they escaped from under the eyes of the professors, they threw off all restraint and indulged in the wildest excesses. Long repression made them degrade liberty into license whenever they got an opportunity.