THE BOGY MAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 239, 8 October 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE BOGY MAN.

PROBLEMS OF SCHOOL.

FEAR AND ITS TREATMENT. : (By L.A.) "And 60 you have added to that complex, piece by piece, as the years went by, until you have reached your present condition. You are not incurable, but your recovery will be a slow one, and largely dependent on your own attitude. Medicine can do nothing for you, and surgery is powerless, for no drug and no scalpel can produce any effect upon a sick sub-conscious mind!" Thus spoke a great specialist in one of the largest of our cities, and the words were addressed to Jevons, a teacher friend of mine, who for many months was numbered in the ranks of those declared unfit for duty. There were many rather alarming •'physical symptoms, but it was not until he visited this expert in psychic therapeutics that he gained any real solution as to the cause of his disease. He was questioned intimately concerning his boyhood,: his early' home life, arid a thousand circumstances that , may have had any bearing upon his mental condition., Wheii it was all told he received the following rather amazing diagnosis: —• "»!■■■■'.:' , Deep-laid Trouble. "You see," said the physician: of. the new school, " your hoine life, with the indulgent little mother and . the Stern father —stern often probably from a strict sense of duty—produced a state that was not altogether good, although one finds it commonly in many homes'to-day.. But your picture of that boy. of twelve stumbling uncertainly along the stormy path of adolescence, trudging unwillingly to school through a foot of snow to spend his day under a misguided martinet is very vivid. Your schoolmaster, you say, had a passion for injecting learning through the skin with the aid of the cane rather than into the brain by a more logical method. You went in constant fear of him, and your statement that you left school at four in the afternoon, overjoyed that you would not see him till nine the next morning is pathetic. Those experiences bred a little bogy man in the instinctive areas of your brain, and laid the foundation of your' malady. In those boyhood days the nucleus of the present trouble was laid down in your subconscious mind by abnormal fears and repressions. As you got older you. added a little year by year. Each worry swelled the mass, for worry is only another name for fear. Then came your big strain of a year ago, and under it those ductless glands, probably assisted by some hereditary predisposition, lost their balance, the heart became affected, and there you are. It is pathological to-day, but the origin is in the instinctive mind. If we can kill the bogy man we can cure you!" •

Jevons was cured, and he is back at work again .to-day —back sometimes to my fireside, where we often discuss the teaching methods of our: boyhood, our own methods of twenty years ago, and those which we both use to-day. It is needless to say that on many points we are much at variance, for he, as a result of his illness, has let his theories as regards discipline swing like .a pendulum to the other extreme.

I am unconvinced, however, because I still think that a certain element of fear is necessary to keep humanity obedient to law. At the same time, that a child should do anything wrong through fear of me always distresses me, for I have a distinct dislike to being considered the ogre of the school.

For that reason Peter Weedon's latest scrape worries me, because his past history has so much to do with his presentday actions and misdeeds. On a round of supervision one afternoon I visited a class room which is about fifty yards from the main building. On my arrival Peter's teacher asked me if I had dealt with that young man', and as" I had not seen .Weedon at all I was rather mystified. "Well," she said, "I sent him to you for punishment over an hour ago. He has been inattentive and restless all day, and lie lias irritated the other children and me beyond endurance. He is more like ijlock spring than a school boy." Pre-Natal Influence. As I left' the class room I recalled a story that his mother had told me a long time; ago.' His father, it appearsj was on active service when he was born, and they saw one another for the first time after the great conflict was over. About a month before Peter arrived, his father was reported missing, and I was given a very , vivid picture of the anguish in that home. As she is a very wise little mother, I attached a good deal of importance to her words when she said:—

"We do not spoil that Peter boy of ours, but lie is certainly a handful. Perhaps he reflects some of my mental condition before his birth, for he is extremely nervy and given to strange fits of passion. Whippings do him no good, so I. play .on. the sympathy note, and I think that there is evidence of improvement."

I reflected upon this story as I walked up through the school yard, but my reverie was interrupted by the sight of two white objects, underneath a classroom, which is raised about two feet above the ground. Although it is strictly against the law, many of the people of my brood save themselves trouble by depositing luncheon papers there. - Naturally, I thought that the white objects were evidence of someone's sin. My surprise was great, therefore, when I found that they were simply the legs of Weedon, who with his head pillowed on his arm was sound asleep. I went quietly to the room where my 13-year-old Curtis was trying to convince himself and his teacher that he was acquiring education with great avidity.

"Curtis!" I said, "I think that some of our little people have been throwing luncheon papers beneath the pavilion room. I wish you would get the Turk's head broom and rake them out. Bring all that you find to me and I shall try to trace the offenders."

' Ten'minutes later a weird' procession arrived at my door—Curtis with a merry twinkle '.in his eye, one hand gripping about three years of broom handle, while the other hand held a very woe-begone and dirty Peter, with black rings round his eyes,,where,the tide of his tears had mingled with the dirt on his face.

"Look, sir, I raked nnder that room as you told me and all that I found was Weedon!"

"Yes!" said the smaller lad, "and you raked far harder" than'there was any need' to!" ' ' " •

I left him there until school had been dismissed, and : we talked the whole matter out. Only after much persuasion did I learn that he did not come to me, when sent, because he was afraid of the punishment that I might give him. Fear .accounted for his action,' fear pliis a nervous highly strung temperament, and 1 1-had to admit that I was Peter's bogyman. • V . Boy and Mans About a fortnight ago I. was. reminded of Peter in a very strange way, for I was sitting in one of our parks, when an unfamiliar voice hailed me. "Do you know who I am!" said a tall loose-limbed man, in his early thirties. "No?" I said. "But I taught you once—where was it?" , For one never forgets their faces. "In the old school. Don't you remember? lam Harding!" Harding! That nervy irritating boy, but clever withal; on whom Jevons tried every artifice known to pedagogy, until at last his phrase, •"That infernal nuisance Harding!" became almost a slogan in the school. Yes, I remembered him, and-1 looked from him to my mental picture of, that, boy of 18 years ago —so like my Peter Weedon of to-day the man who stood beside me, and I realised that .they were, one and tha same person. Be had a hundred questions for,me, and I asked him to my fireside on a, night when I knew Jevons would be there. ■ ■

He came.'! I-liad.said nothing to my friend, rn;l the meeting was most interesting. . A puzzled frown from Jevons; then that wry smile as he blazed out: "Harding! You infernal nuisance! . Where have you been all these years?" . .

It was a .wonderful night for two stay-at-home Dominies,. who. listened to all that life had given' to Harding in the last 15 years. His two. trips round the world, one before the mast in a windjammer, one .with his master's ticket, his shipwreck on the .South American coast, those riots in Bombay, the years in steam, his present position as first mate in the Pacific trade; all told with the modest confidence of a strong man, with weather scarred cheeks and eyes that had looked on far horizons. No trace of the nervy school boy here; no trace of the many fears and repressions that were sometimes evident in his demeanour years ago:

After he had gone Jevons and I sat there with our memories, and talked of the machine we orice drove so relentlessly, turning out boys, boys, always more boys; Nerve racking never ending work, but there is some reward when the old boys come home again.

As my friend took his leave I could not resist one small tilt at him over our old battleground. "Jevons," I said, "I wonder who killed Harding's bogyman!" : .1 :