In modern America parents spend much time and effort at trying not to harm the self-esteem of their children. They are certain that if they, or anyone else whom their children look up to, says the wrong thing at the wrong time, their child’s psyche will be damaged forever. If their fears are well founded, which I doubt, there is at least one occasion when harsh words were overlooked and greatness was reached in the end.
First, the harsh words from a father to The Future Social Wastrel…Make this position indelibly impressed on your mind, that if your conduct and actions is what it has been at schools you have attended where it has been sought vainly to impart to you some education, then my responsibility for you is over. I shall leave you to depend on yourself, giving you merely such assistance as may be necessary to permit of a respectable life. Because I am certain that if you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle useless unprofitable life you have had during your schooldays and later months, you will become a mere social wastrel, one of hundreds of the public school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby unhappy and futile existence. If that is so you will have to bear all the blame for such misfortunes yourself. Your own conscience will enable you to recall and enumerate all the efforts that have been made to give you the best of chances to which you were entitled to by your position, and how you have practically neglected them all.
I have slightly modified the father’s word above to not give you a hint as to the identity of the awful child. The tone, harshness and vigorousness of the attack were left intact.
The Future Social Wastrel was ...
Sir Winston Churchill.
