A Letter to Boys

 Try not to choose movies that girls dominate boys or put them in "their place".

The American Spectator | USA News and Politics   

. . . "If a couple of men in your church are going to set things up for the summer bazaar, ask if you can help. Overhear what they say. Learn. You can learn more things from simply being around men as they talk about God and man, the church and the state, money and things that no money can buy, than you will ever learn at our schools, such as they are." . . . 

Dear Boys in school: Do you sometimes feel that school is like a bad dream? I don’t mean all the classes. But if one of your teachers ever seems to suggest that your sex is responsible for all the bad things in the world, or that the only reason why there never has been a woman Shakespeare or a woman Newton or a woman Michelangelo is that they weren’t allowed to be, and that somehow you too are responsible for this state of affairs, I want you to shrug it away. It’s either a chip on the teacher’s shoulder or some silly notion that she’s picked up from her own schooling, as a dog in the woods picks up burrs. Have you ever said to yourself, while you were having a bad dream, that it was only a dream? Say that. Then look out the window, and remember that there’s a fine world of reality out there, with fresh air and a lot of good fun for boys and girls to have.

"I want you instead to take delight in being boys, as you should. It’s true that men have been responsible for the wars among nations. But then it is also true that men have been responsible for there being nations in the first place. If a bridge is blown up, expect a man to have done it, but the only reason why there is a bridge to blow up is that men have built it. The same goes for every building you see, and every road, automobile, train, airplane, and whatever else is made of metal or stone or wood or glass, and as for plastic, if it weren’t for men drilling for oil on land or in the sea, or growing corn on the plains, there wouldn’t be that, either.

"Have fun. Get your heads out of the smartphones and the computers and go out into that real world and do things. God gave you your bodies for action and for changing the world around you. If you are 10 years old, your big sister and your mother may be stronger than you are. But if you are 15, they aren’t. Enjoy that surge of strength. Make it useful for them. Make it useful for yourself, too. But most of all, put it into action. Climb a tree, build a cabin, explore the woods, get under the chassis of an old car, dam up a brook to make a swimming hole, help your father put a new roof on the barn or garage, chop wood for the furnace, learn how to use power tools to make things with — and learn how to use the old tools also, which we still can’t do without, like the hammer and the ax and the shovel. Do things — have fun!" . . .  

. . . "But by all means, stay away from the porn. It’s wrong, and it will hollow out your soul, like a caustic drug. Do you want to be a loser? No?  Then don’t go to the Land of the Internet Losers. Talk to your father if you need to. He’ll understand."...

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