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On your reference card “sociability” is ranked as an important
factor in your character.
Since we are gregarious animals, sociability is very desirable,
provided it means tolerance of another’s opinion, religion, sex. colour,
nationality and status. It is acceptable if it means co-operating for
common aims — “goals to beleaguer.” It is acceptable if it means
purposeful conformity—adolescents desire known limitations within
which they can be themselves and enjoy the freedom given by those
very limitations.
School rules in their number and detail, seem to be allied with a
formidable array of dictators in curbing the deviation of youth. Each
time I have to check some harmless non-conformity I hope that my
students are not making conformity into a religion. The crowd, mob
and gang is a dangerous reducer to the common denominator or
even lower.
I like a little individualism even if it implies a little non
conformity, a little mal-adjustment, a little abnormality. There is so
much in this world not done, so much that could be done better, so
much that we don’t know and it is only the youth who is not too
well-adjusted who has the courage to branch out from the herd and
find a life that is intensely rewarding in pleasure if not in money.
You cannot pay too much for the privilege of being your own captain.
Within the ordered flow of society feel free to follow your own
bents; read what you wish; arrive at your own conclusions; express
them; follow your own impulses and interests: have faith in your
own tastes; your own goals and your own worth; be honest in your
admirations; blaze trails in the unknown forests of knowledge: do
not let fear of failure prompt inaction.
Our first ancestor that left the water was a non-conformist. We
owe much to the protestants and non-conformists of history The
names of Einstein. Churchill, Messel as well as still greater ones
emblazon the proud list of non-conformists.
Let teachers and parents put sociability as one of the things to
be taught to adolescents — teach them the need for some conformity
but encourage them to be themselves within the fairly wide bands
of that conformity.