Milford News | 1928-09-07 | Page 3 | Men with Special Training Needed to Deal Successfully with the Wayward Boy

Men With Special Training Needed to Deal Successfully With the Wayward Boy By BROTHER BARNABAS, F. S. C. It takes years to properly train a man so that he can be allowed to practice law, and years more of study before we permit him to minister to our physical ailments, but yet we allow any Tom, Dick and ITarry to deal with our boys when they most need wise guidance and companionship. companion-ship. The wayward boy is a "hospital case," and the practice of consigning consign-ing such youngsters to reformatories over which the wrong kind of men preside cannot be too strongly condemned. Men in the positions of heads of reformatories and corrective institutions should be especially trained men who have an M. A. degree. Send a "kid" to one of the reformatories we have today under the type of men we maintain there, and he is released a candidate for the penitentiaries. There is hardly any blame for this condition. It is merely a situation that has grown up without our taking a great deal of notice of it, but now that we are aware of the dangers of that condition we owe it to ourselves and to the youngsters who will be the men of tomorrow to-morrow to see that they are properly guided over the rough spots of their lives. The boy doesn't want to hear any of the "thou shalt," "thou wilt" and "thou must" stuff after school hours. What he wants is a good, clean man, not a woman director he probably has too many of them as school teachers now to say "Come on, buddy, let's go," and have that man be a real, trusting pal. A man for that kind of work is not an easy one to find, and that is why I believe an entirely new profession is needed one in which men can train themselves or be trained for boy leadership.