Raising boys properly is incredibly important, I promise you. But managing their education is tricky. We need to be careful not to teach them to be angry all the time, but we also can't crush their spirit. This takes close attention. Both the good qualities we want to build and the bad ones we want to prevent are fed by the same things. Even careful parents can be fooled by how similar they look. Freedom builds a boy's spirit, but slavery crushes it. Praise lifts him up and makes him expect great things from himself. But this same treatment can make him arrogant and quick to anger. So we have to guide him between these two extremes. Sometimes we need to hold him back, sometimes we need to push him forward.
It is, I assure you, of the greatest service to boys that they should be soundly brought up, yet to regulate their education is difficult, because it is our duty to be careful neither to cherish a habit of anger in them, nor to blunt the edge of their spirit. This needs careful watching, for both qualities, both those which are to be encouraged, and those which are to be checked, are fed by the same things; and even a careful watcher may be deceived by their likeness. A boy's spirit is increased by freedom and depressed by slavery: it rises when praised, and is led to conceive great expectations of itself: yet this same treatment produces arrogance and quickness of temper: we must therefore guide him between these two extremes, using the curb at one time and the spur at another.