Youth culture

“ But we should remember that the didactic lessons of the school-room do very little toward forming the character of our youth, and that the culture that really forms it is given by the home circle, associations, the spirit and tone of the community in which they are brought up. ”

“ Keeping house or keeping accounts, tending babies, teaching primary school, weighing sugar and salt at a counter, those blue overalls in the machine shop—have these anything to do with 'culture'? Culture takes leisure, elegance, wide margins of time, a pocket-book; drudgery means limitations, coarseness, crowded hours, chronic worry, old clothes, black hands, headaches. Culture implies college: life allows a daily paper, a monthly magazine, the circulating library, and two gift-books at Christmas. Our real and our ideal are not twins—never were! ”

“ From the multiplication table to the highest cultural studies in college, the youth is to be adjusted to the material of our civilization without any concession to the emasculating desire to adjust civilization simply to the particular youth. ”

“ In their very plays, as we term them, children investigate the properties of matter, acquire ease and skill in managing the bones and muscles of their own frames, and learn the contents of the great world, which is all so new to them. Youth has its work, and all after excellence is connected with the industry and care with which that work is done. The mind is to be cultured, the reason exercised, the fancy curbed, the memory stored with treasure, the whole intellect disciplined and prepared for continuous, patient labor. ”

“ A new generation up there? Listen to what their young people answer for themselves: “We want a [222] good time!” And their books? The books and the youth together make the future. And what do the books say? Exactly the same as the youth: “Let us have a good time! Ours are the light and the lust of life, its colors and its joys!” That’s what the youth and their books say.—They are right! It is all theirs! There is no law to prevent their taking life’s sunlight and joy away from the poor people. ”

“ When we think of the docility of the young we first think of the stocks of information adults wish to impose and the ways of acting they want to reproduce. Then we think of the insolent coercions, the insinuating briberies, the pedagogic solemnities by which the freshness of youth can be faded and its vivid curiosities dulled. Education becomes the art of taking advantage of the helplessness of the young; the forming of habits becomes a guarantee for the maintenance of hedges of custom. ”

“ Further, as education does not consist merely in the training of the mind, but must include the emotions and the will, we shall take the utmost care in the training of the child that its intellectual impressions are converted into the sap of sentiment. When this attains a certain degree of intensity, it spreads through the whole being, colouring and refining the individual character. And as the conduct of the youth revolves entirely in the sphere of character, he must learn to adopt science as the sole mistress of his life. ”

“ THE HIGH SCHOOL SYSTEM. [An Address delivered at the Dedication of the Powers Institute, Bernardston.]
There cannot be a more gratifying spectacle than the universal homage offered to education and to the young. Childhood is attractive in itself; and it is peculiarly an object of solicitude for its promises concerning the future. Hence the labors of philanthropists, reformers, and Christians, as well as of teachers, are devoted to the culture and improvement of the rising generation, as the chief security possible for the prevalence of better ideas in the state and in the world. ”

“ The young, it is often said, are the nation's capital. If by this we merely mean that they are the force by which the material goods of the future will be produced, our view of life is inadequate and rather brutal, but if the words are given a higher and more spiritual sense they become full of significance. Youth is the future: from among the young of to-day the parents, citizens, leaders, prophets, artists of the next generation will arise. ”

“ Each story contains a moral, and teaches principles by which the youth should be governed in their private, social and public relations in life. In the perusal of these stories, we hope to accomplish our great object, of aiding young persons to pursue the peaceful and pleasant path of duty—to render them more useful in the world, and to grow wiser and happier in the path of life. ”

“ Let every boy that belongs to a public school write his motto in his cap, and let him read the Latin, and feel the English of it whenever he puts it on or takes it off. Palmam qui meruit ferat. “Let him wear the palm who wins it.”
EDUCATION PREPARES THE YOUTH FOR EMINENCE IN LIFE.
And the education and character thus to be obtained by the American youth are the means by which he may erect the monument of his renown in the years of his maturity. The pursuit of study in the acquirement of character, prepares him for the march to eminence in any of the professions. ”

“ New movements are born in young minds, and lack of experience enables youth eternally to recall civilization to sound bases. The passing generation smiles and cracks its weather-worn jokes about youthful effusions: but this new, ever-hopeful, ever-daring, ever-doing, youthful enthusiasm, ever returning to the logical bases of religion, ethics, politics, business, [Pg 17] art, and social life,—this is the salvation of the world. ”

“ If we seek the kingdom of heaven, educationally, all other things shall be added unto us—which, being interpreted, is that if we identify ourselves with the real instincts and needs of childhood, and ask only after its fullest assertion and growth, the discipline and information and culture of adult life shall all come in their due season.
Speaking of culture reminds me that in a way I have been speaking only of the outside of the child's activity—only of the outward expression of his impulses toward saying, making, finding out, and creating. ”

“ If we once believe in life and in the life of the child, then will all the occupations and uses spoken of, then will all history and science, become instruments of appeal and materials of culture to his imagination, and through that to the richness and the orderliness of his life. ”

“ They are fully aware of the deep interest excited at the present day on the subject of the mental and moral training of the young, and of the amount of talent and labour bestowed upon the production of works aiming both at the solid culture and the innocent entertainment of the inquisitive minds of children. ”

“ Only by strengthening the moral fiber of our youth and casting them into the heroic mold shall the soft metal of their minds harden into maturity, indelibly impressed with unswerving to the country that gave them birth. ”

“ But that is but one side; we must also have men of vision, men of great breadth of view, men of broad human sympathies, men who can take this knowledge, old and new, and with it, as educative material, help to shape opinions, and mold characters, and fashion destinies, thus transforming crude, unstable, and immature youth into men and women of virtue, and knowledge, and courage, and sanity, and poise, into whose trust, therefore, can be placed the guiding of a great, free, developing people—men of the classroom, teachers and inspirers of youth. ”

“ Public school life, as we understand it, was developed. As a natural consequence, the flower of the English youth were no longer content with the knowledge that had satisfied their fathers and grandfathers. ”

“ But the knowledge and the drill should be given in their relation to the human activities in which they are used. As the school helps young people to take on the nature of adulthood, it will still do so by helping them to enter adequately into the activities of adulthood. Youth will learn to think, to judge, and to do, by thinking, judging, and doing. ”

“ It has come up through trials, tribulations and struggles innumerable. A night school in every community! If it is an educated community, a night school for more education, for culture and specialization; if an illiterate community, for the emancipation of the illiterates and their new birth into the realms of knowledge and power! ”

“ As this story has shown, Youth, if adults will only admit that it has any brains at all, will stand out, today, in a most promising light. Philosophically, Youth is Wisdom in formation, and with many thoughts startling to adult minds; and, industrially, this vast World’s coming stability is now, today, in its hands; growing slowly, as a blossom grows from its bud. ”

“ Sure I am that you regard the rising youth as the growing hopes of the country. You ardently wish that they may become eminent, in every qualification which can render them an ornament, or a blessing to their fellow creatures. You are, no doubt, anxious to encourage a spirit of literature amongst them, and are attentive to procure them every advantage that may enable them to fill the higher offices of life, and especially the learned professions, with ability and dignity. ”

“ Yet they may be permitted briefly to suggest a comparison between this charming specimen of the good old school, and most of the illustrated works that have recently been brought out in such profusion, professedly for the entertainment and instruction of youth; works, in the majority of which there is exhibited so little of that peculiar talent required for imparting instruction with entertainment, and so little judgment in the choice of subjects, as well as in the manner of dealing with them. ”

“ The school also should see that this living, breathing boy, who, by God's law of life, thinks and moves by his thought, should receive the best opportunity to develop his mind by supporting the state institutions in the community for that purpose, and also in providing culture, recreation-education within the confines of its own particular sphere. ”

“ The greatest influence of the old upon the young has, from time immemorial, been near the dawn of puberty, when almost every race initiates youth into manhood. This, too, is still the age of most conversions and church confirmations. Here education culminates and here, too, in a sense, it began and extended slowly upward toward the university and downward toward the kindergarten as civilization advanced. ”

“ With such food, thus seasoned by nurses, parents, teachers, companions and all, from the first dawnings of intellect to its maturity, when the youth of our country issue forth from their schools, academies, and colleges, “with all their blushing honors thick upon them,” where will the young brain be found that will not be turned with pride, vanity, and ambition? ”

“ It furnishes the leit-motiv which is so sadly lacking in many lives. And youth must find a leit-motiv of some kind, or its spirit perishes. This social idealism acts like a tonic upon the whole life; it keeps youth alive even after one has grown older in years. ”

“ At school, I had known a score of boys of my own age, and naturally found few amongst them who could be anything to me. Among the advantages that the freedom of student life afforded was that of coming in contact all at once with hundreds of similarly educated young men of one's own age. ”

“ You must now commence a different course of life, a different course of studies. No more levity. Childish toys and playthings must be thrown aside, and your mind directed to serious objects. What was not unbecoming to a child would be disgraceful to a youth" etc. ”

“ There is a great deal of information as to what Youth can do, if given a chance; and, though it starts out in somewhat of an impersonal vein, there is plenty of thrill, rollicking comedy, love, courtship, marriage, patriotism, sudden tragedy, a determined stand against liquor, and some amusing political aspirations in a small growing town. ”

“ Let us give to youth all its due for its keen curiosity, its vivid expectation, its unreflecting daring, its joy of pure existence, its all-the-world-is-mine spirit, and let us give it opportunity and ever growing privilege; but, as we value reverence, as we honor knowledge, as we cherish a well-tried faith, as we trust a noble courage born of proof, let our [Pg 233] customs teach that “Youth ended—what survives is gold.” ”

“ But whatever else they were or did, they certainly were in harmony with the world, and they certainly did not disqualify the country’s youth for after-life and the country’s service.’
‘But, my dear sir, this bringing the schools of the country into harmony with public opinion is exactly——’
‘Don’t interrupt me with public opinion, my dear nephew; you’ll quote me a leading article next. “Young men must be young men,” as the worthy head of your college said to me touching a case of rustication. ”

“ Work among our boys and youth, not expressly educational, has, therefore, to be directed towards evoking this verve—this instinctive fairness and natural fineness-in them. Not that efforts bearing directly on our question of social purity are quite superfluous. ”

“ Upon the many intermediate degrees of advance and decline, however, between these two extremes of civilisation, specific institutions for the instruction of youth arise, each in some way an artificial substitute, or at least a would-be accelerant, for the apprenticeship of imitation in the school of experience and the community's tradition, which we term a school in the restricted and pedagogic sense. ”

“ Speaking more explicitly, it should be said that instead of one such hopeful youth there are several, or rather groups of them, differing widely from each other. The forefathers of certain of these groups were civilized and educated men, at home in the antique and patristic curriculum with which our youths are supposed to have been busy. ”