hemselves need all the help and sympathy that they
can get from a Teacher. The father who is pushing his boy because of his
own ambition will very often need to be talked to by the Teacher or his
friends, and given an understanding of the crime he is committing
against his own child. The overambitious fellow who is pushing
everything aside for a definite thing in life will often have to be
talked to in the plainest language by the Teacher to get him to see his
other responsibilities and duties in life. The wage-earning boy who
works from early in the morning until late at night to keep bread in his
mouth and breath in his body will compel the Teacher, if he is really
thoughtful, to give up some of the things which he has already held
dearest and possibly lead his wage-earning boy into outdoor activities,
even on the half holidays which he would naturally spend in the circle
of his own family.

THE STREET, FOREIGN-BORN AND NEGRO BOYS

The street, foreign-born and negro boys will furnish very much the same
kind of problem; because of a general rule, they may be all grouped
under the wage-earning class. Some may be more shiftless than others and
may need more attention, while others may be merely awaiting the touch
of sympathy and the helping hand to make strong men out of them. A
goodly percentage of our greatest Americans have been foreign-born boys,
and, if there is any class that the Teacher should be more patient with
than others, it is the immigrant and the son of the immigrant.

=Grouping Standards=

The Teacher will find it greatly to his advantage to group his boys
according to some standard. Unfortunately, all standards, so far, are
more or less artificial, but approximate success may be secured by using
the experience of boy workers in various parts of the country. The
standard which is most generally used is that of age. It is also the
most unsatisfactory. Boys mature physically rather than chronologically.
This makes the age standard a poor guess, because a boy may be
physically fourteen when he is chronologically eleven, and vice versa.
If the age standard be used, it would be preferable to group all the
boys of twelve years together, then the thirteen-year-old boys in
another group, and the same with the fourteen, the fifteen, the sixteen,
and the seventeen-year-old boys. This would be rather hard to do in
small places, although perfectly feasible in a larger town or city.
Because of its impossibilit