"I do beseech you to direct your efforts more to preparing youth for the path and less to preparing the path for the youth"
About this Quote
Ben Lindsey urges adults to shift their energy from engineering a smooth world to cultivating young people who can walk a rough one. The metaphor is pointed: the path will always present bends, stones, and storms beyond anyone’s control. The wiser investment is in the walker’s balance, judgment, and endurance. Lindsey, the Progressive Era judge who pioneered the juvenile court in Denver, learned this firsthand. He saw children pulled into delinquency by poverty and neglect, yet he refused to treat them as miniature criminals. He designed a court that emphasized guidance, probation, and civic education, trusting that character and competence could redirect a life more powerfully than punishment or patronage.
The appeal is not a rejection of social reform. Lindsey spent his career fighting for playgrounds, better schools, and protections against exploitation. He knew some hazards should be cleared from the path. But he also recognized a chronic temptation among reformers and parents alike: to mistake removing obstacles for educating souls. When adults pave every step, children never practice choosing, failing, recovering, and trying again. The result is fragile achievement that shatters at the first uncurated setback.
Preparing youth means teaching habits rather than merely dispensing help: responsibility, self-command, empathy, practical problem-solving, and a sense of belonging to a larger civic whole. It means giving real tasks with real consequences, and the encouragement to meet them. It means mentoring rather than micromanaging, and modeling integrity rather than managing appearances. Even today, amid debates about safety, standards, and helicopter parenting, Lindsey’s warning holds. A culture that pours infinite effort into smoothing the terrain but little into strengthening the traveler breeds anxiety and dependence.
The path will keep changing. Laws, economies, technologies, and norms shift underfoot. We honor the next generation not by promising a frictionless journey, but by helping them become steady adventurers who can read the trail, help one another, and keep moving forward when the ground gets steep.
The appeal is not a rejection of social reform. Lindsey spent his career fighting for playgrounds, better schools, and protections against exploitation. He knew some hazards should be cleared from the path. But he also recognized a chronic temptation among reformers and parents alike: to mistake removing obstacles for educating souls. When adults pave every step, children never practice choosing, failing, recovering, and trying again. The result is fragile achievement that shatters at the first uncurated setback.
Preparing youth means teaching habits rather than merely dispensing help: responsibility, self-command, empathy, practical problem-solving, and a sense of belonging to a larger civic whole. It means giving real tasks with real consequences, and the encouragement to meet them. It means mentoring rather than micromanaging, and modeling integrity rather than managing appearances. Even today, amid debates about safety, standards, and helicopter parenting, Lindsey’s warning holds. A culture that pours infinite effort into smoothing the terrain but little into strengthening the traveler breeds anxiety and dependence.
The path will keep changing. Laws, economies, technologies, and norms shift underfoot. We honor the next generation not by promising a frictionless journey, but by helping them become steady adventurers who can read the trail, help one another, and keep moving forward when the ground gets steep.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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