There is no reason why the playing of school games should
be anything but a help to the intellectual development of a boy.
But the constant talking about games is by no means harmless, though
it is true boys might be talking of worse things. It is related that a
French educational critic was once descanting to an English head
master on the monotony of the conversation of English public school
boys: "they talk of nothing but football." But when he was asked, "And
of what do French school boys generally talk?" he was silent. But if
"cricket shop" saves us from worse topics, it certainly is destructive
of rational conversation on subjects of more general interest. In
great boarding schools we collect a population of boys under quite
abnormal conditions, cut off for the greater part of their social life
from intercourse with older people. It is, I think, a general
experience that boys who have been at day schools and are the sons of
intelligent parents, have their minds more awakened to the questions
of the day in politics, or art, or literature than boys of equal
ability who have been at a boarding school. They have had the
advantage of hearing their father and his friends discussing topics
which are outside the range of school life. Boarding schools are often
built in some country place away from the surging life of towns, where
the noise of political strife and the roar of the traffic of the world
are but dimly heard.
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