Wat moet een jongeman kunnen?

Al in 1933 schreef Robert Littell het artikel What the Young Man Should Know. Littell heeft een lijst samengesteld met vaardigheden die een jongeman zich eigen moet maken met vallen en opstaan. Hij komt tot de volgende lijst:

• Zwemmen
• Omgaan met vuurwapens
• Spreken in het openbaar
• Koken
• Typen
• Paardrijden
• Autorijden
• Dansen
• Drinken
• En op zijn minst één vreemde taal spreken

Littell vervolgt: The list does not end there. There are several dozen mental and physical skills that I should like him to acquire. He will acquire some of them in the mere course of growing up; he will acquire some of them more painfully, as the result of adult pressure; there are others that he will avoid; and he will eventually be punished for their omissions with not a little discomfort and social misery. Ordinary education, even high-priced education, will not guarantee him the essential skills, and some of them are better learned after “education” is over. It is up to me to set about making a list of those skills, it is up to me to see to it that he gets them, because they are skills of hand, eye, ear, or brain which will enlarge, deepen, and ripen him as a human being.

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