THE DANGERS OF IDLE'TEENS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 58, 12 March 1929, Page 10

THE DANGERS OF IDLE'TEENS

When Mr. Justice Blair remarked that at the age of fourteen he was earning his own living, counsel replied that some boys were in college at twenty-one. "His,, Honour's implication is that to many boys a condition of dependence in the later 'teens is dangerous; and probably many psfrents, or at any rate many fathers, will agree. But so long'as it it a fact that a certain number of boys aro so equipped, in mentality and in character, as to be worth a special education up to the age of twenty, ho long will there be hundreds of aspirants to such distinction who in everybody's opinion— except their parents'—would be far better at work. A higher education is worth while to the really educable, but who shall divide'the sheep from the. goat's! The case of the parent who, as a youth, graduated very successfully in the university of hard knocks, and who is paying out good money to deprive his son of a similar education, is a fairly common one. Such parent

is sometimes right, and often wrong; he may, by paying university fees, open a professional, career to :i son who' is worth it, or he may turn a potentially good tradesman into a fifth-rate clerk. That the lack of work in the later 'teens saps the sense of responsibility of many boys cannot be denied. But it is a responsibility resting primarily on parents, and it ,is too much to hope that a fond father will be profoundly influenced by the factthat Mr. Justice Blair was working at fourteen. The chances are that the fond father would say the 'same thing himself. Perhaps that is why ho lives to go one better for his son. The knowledge that he has gone ono worse is generally gripped too late.