THE NEW TERM
By T. F. COADE (Headmaster of Bryanston)
WHAT, if anything, should parents say to their sons on the eve of the new term, especially on the eve of the first term at a public school ? That is the question set me by the editor ; and it is one which has exercised my mind as schoolmaster at least as much as it occupies any parental mind at this moment.
The occasion is one primarily for an honest and thorough stocktaking. First a scrupulous survey of the parents' own faith, ideals and ambitions. In what do they put their faith ? If the real centre of their lives is the financial columns in the daily newspaper they can scarcely hope to quicken a working faith in the boy with whom they are about to have a talk.
If the result of this survey is of a more positive and less materialistic nature, they can with greater confidence review their successes and failures up to date with their son. The honest parent, if he is also wise, will have no hesitation in sharing with the boy's future headmaster or housemaster or tutor the results of this stocktaking, just as one hopes the schoolmaster will in his turn share with the honest parent the results of his own dealings with the boy. The value of this most vital form of co-operation between parent and school- master, together with a sharing or discussion of their educa- tional aims, cannot be exaggerated. The one will often be enabled thereby to correct the mistakes of the other ; though it must not be inferred from this statement that the province of the parent and the schoolmaster can ever coincide.
The next part of the stocktaking will be an unbiassed appreciation of the boy's innate potentialities which it is the school's business now to enable him to develop with the parents' loyal support. The parents must, if necessary, once and forever at this point abandon all thought of what they want the boy to be, or what they think he ought to be. Their business is to see and accept him as he is, i.e., as they have helped to make him. Reiteration to the boy of what their "ambitions " for him are, backed by references to their sacrifices for him (if any) will only obscure the issue and create new difficulties. Their assurance to the boy that they are ready to help him to become what he has it in him to be will be an untold relief to him at a time when he may be feeling unduly wrought-up.
For thirteen or fourteen years the boy has spent most of his time in that most formative of all atmospheres, the family. That which has influenced and guided him during this period is not what has been said or even what has been done by his parents, but what they fundamentally and essentially are, and the atmosphere and environment which together they have created in the home.
No new line of thought or conduct can now be suddenly introduced. There can only be a recapitulation to the boy of what for fourteen years, have been the aims and ideals of his parents, of what it is they have been endeavouring to elicit from him and train him towards, so that with the know/edge of the nature of this training he may now consciously work with them towards the attainment of his full stature.
I do not feel that this occasion, on which every normal boy is for the moment in a receptive frame of mind, should be missed, if there is any chance of its being handled effectively and constructively by the parent. But what is above all things to be deprecated is an attempt at intellectualising, sermonising. or sob-stuff. If things of real and deep import are to be discussed, let them be said in as friendly and matter-of-fact a manner as is possible. The sincerity of the adult will intro- duce quite as much emotion as the situation can healthily stand.
What is to be said then ? Having clarified the situation in their private stocktaking, let the parents make clear also to the boy the lines they believe he is cut out to follow : this in the broadest sense, not particularising on the subject of careers. For example, if he is a boy of a physical and practical kind, let them discuss that situation with him, and not talk and act as though he were potentially an intel- lectual. This does not mean saying to him " Your line is games : play hard and aim at getting into the XI." It means explaining how some men are born to live more actively and physically than others and do not need to worry too much about "thinking everything out." They should, if possible, get the boy to do some of the talking too and feel that his parents are not only parents but sympathetic and understanding friends.
What knowledge should be imparted ? The normal boy of fourteen should know by then all about his own body, and indeed most of the facts about sex. In ideal families children ask questions quite frankly when they want to know facts, and the children of such families present comparatively few difficulties to the schoolmaster, where the parents' answers have been naturally and constructively framed. Unhappily the vast majority of boys who come up to public schools are in a lamentably ignorant or muddled state of mind on this enthralling subject. Either the parents have left it to the preparatory school, or have doled out hopelessly inadequate gobbets of information with little consideration whether the child has been in a receptive stage or state of mind. Such information, unless it comes in response to inquiry, seldom sinks in and should be, but seldom is, repeated when the real need for it arises. Most preparatory schools are not much better in this matter of instruction than parents. I consider myself fortunate if one out of every five or six new boys arrives with any definite, constructive knowledge on this subject. In most preparatory schools sex instruction seems to be given in ready-made parcels on the last night of the last term, and usually to a group of boys, who are thereby pre- vented from asking questions ; usually only a fraction of the information retailed has been absorbed, and that is often• remembered wrong. The commonest source of sex .informa- tion is from other boys who themselves are in varying stages of furtive ignorance. It is well either for parents to have a thorough and scientific two-sided conversation with their sons, in which, by tactful but determined question and answer, they find out beyond doubt exactly what the boy knows and what he does not know, and where he is guessing. This conversation, to be effective, should not be reserved until the last night of the holidays ; indeed, it should probably have taken place a year or two earlier, in the absence of spontaneous questioning from the boy. If parents do not feel competent or willing to undertake this lengthy and, to many of them, irksome task, then let them make absolutely certain that some qualified person at the school undertakes their neglected duty as soon as possible. No boy can be expected to find a sound adjustment to sex or to life on a basis of ignorance or half-knowledge.
It is likely, I think, that the parent would wish his son to have some clear picture in his mind of the community which he is about to enter, and to know that he goes to some degree prepared to adjust himself to its demands, in the same way as we hope that he will afterwards adjust himself to the larger community of State and world-State. We shall, I suppose, want to make clear to him that his attitude to all those he meets at school, from the youngest to the oldest, is to be based on understanding which leads to respect. This is possible only if he has been given in childhood and adolescence such an understanding of and respect for the world of nature and creation round about him, beginning with his own body. We shall also want to make clear to him that the two qualities we ourselves connect inseparably with what is most worth-while in life—i.e., with growing-up, with virility and adventure—are, first the determination to seek and stand for the truth in speech and action, and, second, to be generous in all things, giving his best in work and play, sharing his best with his friends and holding on to nothing for himself alone. What we want him to realise is that he goes to school not only to get all he can from school, and from life while he is at school, but that he goes also to discover what is the unique contribution he himself can make to the school, and that he is willing to make it. For no lesson can be of greater value for him to learn than that herein lies the secret of success, of peace of mind and of joyous life, which secret is to have discovered what one can give, and what, therefore, is one's place in the universal scheme of things.
Out of such a conversation should spring a quickening of faith. The boy who goes to his new school without faith is ill-equipped indeed. The first step to the establishment of faith in a boy's heart is the certain knowledge that his parents have faith in him, not merely faith that he will fulfil their ambitions or be a credit to the family, but faith that he will use every opportunity to develop every capacity and talent he possesses. Few boys, in my experience, arrive at school with this faith. There is no mistaking it when you see it. I attribute most failures at school to the absence of this gift which any parent who takes life at all seriously should be able to give to his son. If this parental faith is surely based on the honest stock-taking to which I referred earlier, it is a vitalising and permanent influence which makes all things possible at school and afterwards.
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