Dear boys in school:
Do you sometimes feel that school is like a bad dream? I don’t mean all the classes. But if one of your teachers ever seems to suggest that your sex is responsible for all the bad things in the world, or that the only reason why there never has been a woman Shakespeare or a woman Newton or a woman Michelangelo is that they weren’t allowed to be, and that somehow you too are responsible for this state of affairs, I want you to shrug it away. It’s either a chip on the teacher’s shoulder or some silly notion that she’s picked up from her own schooling, as a dog in the woods picks up burrs. Have you ever said to yourself, while you were having a bad dream, that it was only a dream? Say that. Then look out the window, and remember that there’s a fine world of reality out there, with fresh air and a lot of good fun for boys and girls to have.
I want you instead to take delight in being boys, as you should. It’s true that men have been responsible for the wars among nations. But then it is also true that men have been responsible for there being nations in the first place. If a bridge is blown up, expect a man to have done it, but the only reason why there is a bridge to blow up is that men have built it. The same goes for every building you see, and every road, automobile, train, airplane, and whatever else is made of metal or stone or wood or glass, and as for plastic, if it weren’t for men drilling for oil on land or in the sea, or growing corn on the plains, there wouldn’t be that, either.
Have fun. Get your heads out of the smartphones and the computers and go out into that real world and do things. God gave you your bodies for action and for changing the world around you. If you are 10 years old, your big sister and your mother may be stronger than you are. But if you are 15, they aren’t. Enjoy that surge of strength. Make it useful for them. Make it useful for yourself, too. But most of all, put it into action. Climb a tree, build a cabin, explore the woods, get under the chassis of an old car, dam up a brook to make a swimming hole, help your father put a new roof on the barn or garage, chop wood for the furnace, learn how to use power tools to make things with — and learn how to use the old tools also, which we still can’t do without, like the hammer and the ax and the shovel. Do things — have fun!
Use your mind, too. If you don’t like reading what the teacher assigns in English class, read something else. She’s probably not teaching the world’s great epics. If not, read them yourself. It’s not that hard to do if you have a decent translation. Read stories of adventure, stories that used to form the boyish imagination, some of them autobiographical or historical: Treasure Island, Captains Courageous, Scaramouche, The Call of the Wild, Huckleberry Finn, The Last of the Mohicans, Two Years Before the Mast, Plutarch’s Lives, The Right Stuff. If you’re interested in a thing, find real books to read about it. It doesn’t matter what it is. Read histories of the Second World War. Read about Louis Agassiz and his explorations of the north. Read about the invention of the telescope. While you’re at it, read about the stars and learn to scan the skies. Read about wild animals and birds and fish. While you’re at it, learn to hunt or trap or fish, yourself. Indoors? That’s for talking with your family, taking meals, reading quietly, playing board games or shooting pool, tinkering in your father’s workshop or your own, and enjoying, with Mom and Dad and your siblings, a little entertainment. Otherwise, go outdoors, which is alive with wonders.
Keep in mind that boys your age once did amazing things. Even with school in your way, you can emulate them. If you’re good at music, go for it and keep at it. George Gershwin took up the piano when he was 10, and by age 14, he was studying under one of the greatest teachers in the nation. James Clerk Maxwell developed his own method of constructing curves with more than two focal points, but somebody else had to read his paper on it at the meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, because he was only 14. My point isn’t that these boys were prodigies, though they were, but that you are probably like them in some way, and that before the times when school sat like a fat dark cloud on the boy’s soul, and before the times when looking at things on a screen all the time ate away the boy’s mind and left his body soft and undeveloped, most boys were dabbling in important or highly interesting things long before college. Read about what the boy Tom Edison did, not that you are likely to be another Edison — who is? But you are likely to have some grand fun in running with your interests, as he did. Have that fun. Will you set fire to your basement while doing so? Probably not, but there’s something a lot worse than a fire in the basement: no fire in the mind and heart.
Your body is that of a boy. Develop it. If you like sports, play them. If you don’t, don’t — what would be the point? But then, go swimming, or hoe a garden in the backyard, or build a tree house, or whatever else invigorates you. Those paws at the ends of your wrists are made for gripping tools — you are going to have longer and thicker fingers than your sisters do, a thicker wrist, longer arms, and broader shoulders, and even without the considerable extra muscle you will put on, those will give you quite a lot of useful mechanical advantage. Build them up. Take delight in your strength, and learn to use it for fun, for profit, to help your family, and to show off a little in front of the girls, who enjoy that sort of thing.
Sometimes you’ll want to be off with the other boys, without girls around. So what? That’s natural, and it’s an important part of your development. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and their buddies did not have girls join them in their secret cave on the banks of the Mississippi. You can’t play football by yourself, and you can’t really play tackle football at all if you have to include the girls, nor should you try. There will be plenty of time for you to want to be with girls, or with one girl, especially. Meanwhile, you can learn to dance — you may not enjoy it so much now, or you may already think it’s a grand thing, but do learn to dance with a girl or a lady, as young gentlemen used to do. You’ll be glad of it later on.
When your body goes through the Great Change, it will be glorious, but sometimes it will be crazy too. You will have feelings you never expected to have. Don’t worry about them. But by all means, stay away from the porn. It’s wrong, and it will hollow out your soul, like a caustic drug. Do you want to be a loser? No? Then don’t go to the Land of the Internet Losers. Talk to your father if you need to. He’ll understand.
You’ll be influenced a lot more than you can possibly suspect by the company you keep. If your friends are losers, you’ll become one too. Hang around boys who do things. And tag along after the men. If your father and your uncle are going to check out a used vehicle, go with them. Listen to their conversations. If a couple of men in your church are going to set things up for the summer bazaar, ask if you can help. Overhear what they say. Learn. You can learn more things from simply being around men as they talk about God and man, the church and the state, money and things that no money can buy, than you will ever learn at our schools, such as they are. God never meant for boys to be separated from their older brothers, their fathers, their boy cousins, their uncles, and the men of the neighborhood. Again, I’m talking about nature here, your God-given, boyish, human nature.
And learn to pray. Shakespeare did, Bach did, Michelangelo did, Maxwell did, and though Edison didn’t, he’d have been a much better man and father if he had. Go to a good church or synagogue that treats men as men. Look up to Moses, admire Saint Paul, and if you are a Christian, look with gratitude upon the Crucified. Sublimity — this, too, is something the boy can understand.
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