A boy at school
may be a skilful carver or carpenter; he may have a real gift for
engineering or mechanics; he may even be a good rider, a first-rate
fisherman, an excellent shot. He may have good intellectual
abilities, a strong memory, a power of expression; he may be a
sound mathematician, a competent scientist; he may have all sorts
of excellent moral qualities, be reliable, accurate, truthful,
punctual, duty-loving; he may in fact be equipped for life and
citizenship, able to play his part sturdily and manfully, and to do
the world good service; but yet he may never win the smallest
recognition or admiration in his school-days, while all the glory
and honour and credit is still reserved for the graceful,
attractive, high-spirited athlete, who may have nothing else in the
background.
That is certainly the ideal of the boy, and the disconcerting thing
is that it is also the ideal, practically if not theoretically, of
the parent and the schoolmaster. The school still reserves all its
best gifts, its sunshine and smiles, for the knightly and the
skilful; it rewards all the qualities that are their own reward.
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