So it is in this matter of responsibility. It need
hardly be said that responsibility is the heaviest burden that men and
women are called upon to lift or carry. We need only think of the
responsibilities pertaining to the office of the chief ruler of a country
in time of war, or of the commanding general of armies, or of the
president of large industrial concerns, and so on through the list. Such
men bear burdens of responsibility that cannot be estimated in terms of
weights or measures. We can easily think of the time when the manager of a
great industrial concern was a child in school, but it is not so easy to
think of the six-year-old boy performing the functions of this same
manager. However, we do know that the future rulers, generals, managers,
and superintendents are now sitting at desks in the schools and it
behooves all teachers to inquire by what process these pupils may be so
trained that in time they will be able to execute these functions.
In some such way we gain a right concept of responsibility. We cannot
think of the six-year-old boy as a bank president but, in our thinking, we
can watch his progress, in one-day intervals, from his initial experience
in school to his assumption of the duties pertaining to the presidency of
the bank. In thus tracing his progress there is no strain or stress in our
thinking nor does the element of improbability obtrude itself. We think
along a straight and level road where no hills arise to obstruct the view.
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