THE GROWTH OF SOCIAL IDEALS
Change from childish to adult friends—Influence of favorite teachers—What children wish or plan to do or be—Property and the money sense—Social judgments—The only child—First social organizations—Student life—Associations for youth, controlled by adults.
In a few aspects we are already able to trace the normal psychic outgrowing of the home of childhood as its interests irradiate into an ever enlarging environment. Almost the only duty of small children is habitual and prompt obedience. Our very presence enforces one general law—that of keeping our good-will and avoiding our displeasure. They respect all we smile at or even notice, and grow to it like the plant toward the light. Their early lies are often saying what they think will please. At bottom, the most restless child admires and loves those who save him from too great fluctuations by coercion, provided the means be rightly chosen and the ascendency extend over heart and mind. But the time comes when parents are often shocked at the lack of respect suddenly shown by the child. They have ceased to be the highest ideals. The period of habituating morality and making it habitual is ceasing; and the passion to realize freedom, to act on personal experience, and to keep a private conscience is in order. To act occasionally with independence from the highest possible ideal motives develops the impulse and the joy of pure obligation, and thus brings some new and original force into the world and makes habitual guidance by the highest and best, or by inner as opposed to outer constraint, the practical rule of life. To bring the richest streams of thought to bear in interpreting the ethical instincts, so that the youth shall cease to live in a moral interregnum, is the real goal of self-knowledge. This is true education of the will and prepares the way for love of overcoming obstacles of difficulty, perhaps even of conflict. This impulse is often the secret of obstinacy.[1] And yet, “at no time in life will a human being respond So heartily if treated by older and wiser people as if he were an equal or even a superior. The attempt to treat a child at adolescence as you would treat an inferior is instantly fatal to good discipline.”[2] Parents still think of their offspring as mere children, and tighten the rein when they should loosen it. Many young people feel that they have the best of homes and yet that they will go crazy if they must remain in them. If the training of earlier years has been good, guidance by command may now safely give way to that by ideals, which are sure to be heroic. The one unpardonable thing for the adolescent is dullness, stupidity, lack of life, interest, and enthusiasm in school or teachers, and, perhaps above all, too great stringency. Least of all, at this stage, can the curriculum school be an ossuary. The child must now be taken into the family councils and find the parents interested in all that interests him. Where this is not done, we have the conditions for the interesting cases of so many youth, who now begin to suspect that father, mother, or both, are not their true parents. Not only is there interest in rapidly widening associations with coevals, but a new lust to push on and up to maturity. One marked trait now is to seek friends and companions older than themselves, or next to this, to seek those younger. This is marked contrast with previous years, when they seek associates of their own age. Possibly the merciless teasing instinct, which culminates at about the same time, may have some influence, but certain it is that now interest is transpolarized up and down the age scale. One reason is the new hunger for information, not only concerning reproduction, but a vast variety of other matters, so that there is often an attitude of silent begging for knowledge. In answer to Lancaster’s[3] questions on this subject, some sought older associates because they could learn more from them, found them better or more steadfast friends, craved sympathy and found most of it from older and perhaps married people. Some were more interested in their parents’ conversation with other adults than with themselves, and were particularly entertained by the chance of hearing things they had no business to. There is often a feeling that adults do not realize this new need of friendship with them and show want of sympathy almost brutal.
Stableton,[4] who has made interesting notes on individual boys entering the adolescent period, emphasizes the importance of sympathy, appreciation, and respect in dealing with this age. They must now be talked to as equals, and in this way their habits of industry and even their dangerous love affairs run be controlled. He says, “There is no more important question before the teaching fraternity today than how to deal justly and successfully with boys at this time of life. This is the age when they drop out of school” in far too large numbers, and he thinks that the small percentage of male graduates from our high schools is due to “the inability of the average grammar grade or high-school teacher to deal rightly with boys in this critical period of their school life.” Most teachers “know all their bad points, but fail to discover their good ones.” The fine disciplinarian, the mechanical movement of whose school is so admirable and who does not realize the new need of liberty or how loose-jointed, mentally and physically, all are at this age, should be supplanted by one who can look into the heart and by a glance make the boy feel that he or she is his friend. “The weakest work in our schools is the handling of boys entering the adolescent period of life, and there is no greater blessing that can come to a boy at this age, when he does not understand himself, than a good strong teacher that understands him, has faith in him, and will day by day lead him till he can walk alone.”
Small[5] found the teacher a focus of imitation whence many influences, both physical and mental, irradiated to the pupils. Every accent, gesture, automatism, like and dislike is caught consciously and unconsciously. Every intellectual interest in the teacher permeates the class—liars, if trusted, became honest; those treated as ladies and gentlemen act so; those told by favorite teachers of the good things they are capable of feel a strong impulsion to do them; some older children are almost transformed by being made companions to teachers, by having their good traits recognized, and by frank apologies by the teacher when in error.
An interesting and unsuspected illustration of the growth of independence with adolescence was found in 2,411 papers from the second to eighth grades on the characteristics of the best teacher as seen by children.[6] In the second and third grades, all, and in the fourth, ninety-five per cent specified help in studies. This falls off rapidly in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades to thirty-nine per cent, while at the same time the quality of patience in the upper grades rises from a mention by two to twenty-two per cent.
Sanford Bell[7] collated the answers of 543 males and 488 females as to who of all their past teachers did them most good, and wherein; whom they loved and disliked most, and why. His most striking result is presented in which shows that fourteen in girls and sixteen in boys is the age in which most good was felt to have been done, and that curves culminating at twelve for both sexes but not falling rapidly until fifteen or sixteen represent the period when the strongest and most indelible dislikes were felt. What seems to be most appreciated in teachers is the giving of purpose, arousing of ideals, kindling of ambition to be something or do something and so giving an object in life, encouragement to overcome circumstances, and, in general, inspiring self-confidence and giving direction. Next came personal sympathy and interest, kindness, confidence, a little praise, being understood; and next, special help in lessons, or timely and kindly advice, while stability and poise of character, purity, the absence of hypocrisy, independence, personal beauty, athleticism and vigor are prominent. It is singular that those of each sex have been most helped by their own sex and that this prominence is far greatest in men. Four-fifths of the men and nearly one-half of the women, however, got most help from men. Male teachers, especially near adolescence, seem most helpful for both sexes.
The qualities that inspire most dislike are malevolence, sarcasm, unjust punishment, suspicion, severity, sternness, absence of laughing and smiling, indifference, threats and broken vows, excessive scolding and “roasting,” and fondness for inflicting blows. The teacher who does not smile is far more liable to excite animosity. Most boys dislike men most, and girls’ dislikes are about divided. The stories of school cruelties and indignities are painful. Often inveterate grudges are established by little causes, and it is singular how permanent and indelible strong dislike, are for the majority of children. In many cases, aversions engendered before ten have lasted with little diminution till maturity, and there is a sad record of children who have lost a term, a year, or dropped school altogether because of ill treatment or partiality.
Nearly two thousand children were asked what they would do in a specific case of conflict between teacher and parents. It was found that, while for young children parental authority was preferred, a marked decline began about eleven and was most rapid after fourteen in girls and fifteen in boys, and that there was a nearly corresponding increase in the number of pubescents who preferred the teacher’s authority. The reasons for their choice were also analyzed, and it was found that whereas for the young, unconditioned authority was generally satisfactory, with pubesecents, abstract authority came into marked predominance, “until when the children have reached the age of sixteen almost seventy-five per cent of their reasons belong to this class, and the children show themselves able to extend the idea of authority without violence to their sense of justice.”
On a basis of 1,400 papers answering the question whom, of anyone ever heard or read of, they would like to resemble, Barnes[8] found that girls’ ideals were far more often found in the immediate circle of their acquaintance than boys, and that those within that circle were more often in their own family, but that the tendency to go outside their personal knowledge and choose historical and public characters was greatly augmented at puberty, when also the heroes of philanthropy showed marked gain in prominence. Boys rarely chose women as their ideals; but in America, half the girls at eight and two-thirds at eighteen chose male characters. The range of important women ideals among the girls was surprisingly small. Barnes fears that if from the choice of relative as ideals, the expansion to remote or world heroes is too fast, it may “lead to disintegration of character and reckless living.” “If, on the other hand, it is expanded too slowly we shall have that arrested development which makes good ground in which to grow stupidity, brutality, and drunkenness—the first fruits of a sluggish and self-contained mind.” “No one can consider the regularity with which local ideals die out and are replaced by world ideals without feeling that he is in the presence of law-abiding forces,” and this emphasizes the fact that the teacher or parent does not work in a world governed by caprice.
The compositions written by thousands of children in New York on what they wanted to do when they were grown up were collated by Dr. Thurber.[9] The replies were serious, and showed that poor children looked forward willingly to severe labor and the increased earnestness of adolescent years, and the better answers to the question why were noteworthy. All anticipated giving up the elastic joyousness of childhood and felt the need of patience. Up to ten, there was an increase in the number of those who had two or more desires. This number declined rapidly at eleven, rose as rapidly at twelve, and slowly fell later. Preferences for a teacher’s life exceeded in girls up to nine, fell rapidly at eleven, increased slightly the next year, and declined thereafter. The ideal of becoming a dressmaker and milliner increased till ten, fell at eleven, rose rapidly to a maximum at thirteen, when it eclipsed teaching, and then fell permanently again. The professions of clerk and stenographer showed a marked rise from eleven and a half. The number of boys who chose the father’s occupation attained its maximum at nine and its minimum at twelve, with a slight rise to fourteen, when the survey ended. The ideal of tradesman culminated at eight, with a second rise at thirteen. The reason “to earn money” reached its high maximum of fifty per cent at twelve, and fell very rapidly. The reason “because I like it” culminated at ten and fell steadily thereafter. The motive that influenced the choice of a profession and which was altruistic toward parents or for their benefit culminated at twelve and a half, and then declined. The desire for character increased somewhat throughout, but rapidly after twelve, and the impulse to do good to the world, which had risen slowly from nine, mounted sharply after thirteen. Thus, “at eleven all the ideas and tendencies are increasing toward a maximum. At twelve we find the altruistic desires for the welfare of parents, the reason ‘to earn money’; at thirteen the desire on the part of the girls to be dressmakers, also to be clerks and stenographers. At fourteen culminates the desire for a business career in bank or office among the boys, the consciousness of life’s uncertainties which appeared first at twelve, the desire for character, and the hope of doing the world good.”
“What would you like to be in an imaginary new city?” was a question answered by 1,234 written papers.[10] One hundred and fourteen different occupations were given; that of teacher led with the girls at every age except thirteen and fourteen, when dressmaker and milliner took precedence. The motive of making money led among the boys at every age except fourteen and sixteen, when occupations chosen because they were liked led. The greatest number of those who chose the parent’s occupation was found at thirteen, but from that age it steadily declined and independent choice came into prominence. The maximum of girls who chose parental vocations was at fourteen. Motives of philanthropy reached nearly their highest point in girls and boys at thirteen.
Jegi[11] obtained letters addressed to real or imaginary friends from 3,000 German children in Milwaukee, asking what they desired to do when they grew up, and why, and tabulated returns from 200 boys and 200 girls for each age from eight to fourteen inclusive. He also found a steadily decreasing influence of relatives to thirteen; in early adolescence, the personal motive of choosing an occupation because it was liked increased, while from twelve in boys and thirteen in girls the consideration of finding easy vocations grew rapidly strong.
L. W. Cline[12] studied by the census method returns from 2,594 children, who were asked what they wished to be and do. He found that in naming both ideals and occupations girls were more conservative than boys, but more likely to give a reason for their choice. In this respect country children resembled boys more than city children. Country boys were prone to inattention, were more independent and able to care for themselves, suggesting that the home life of the country child is more effective in shaping ideals and character than that of the city child. Industrial occupations are preferred by the younger children, the professional and technical pursuits increasing with age. Judgments of rights and justice with the young are more prone to issue from emotional rather than from intellectual processes. Country children seem more altruistic than those in the city, and while girls are more sympathetic than boys, they are also more easily prejudiced. Many of these returns bear unmistakable marks that in some homes and schools moralization has been excessive and has produced a sentimental type of morality and often a feverish desire to express ethical views instead of trusting to suggestion. Children are very prone to have one code of ideals for themselves and another for others. Boys, too, are more original than girls, and country children more than city children.
Friedrich[13] asked German school children what person they chose as their pattern. The result showed differences of age, sex, and creed. First of all came characters in history, which seemed to show that this study for children of the sixth and seventh grades was essentially ethical or a training of mood and disposition (Gesinnungsunterricht), and this writer suggests reform in this respect. He seems to think that the chief purpose of history for this age should be ethical. Next came the influence of the Bible, although it was plain that this was rather in spite of the catechism and the method of memoriter work. Here, too, the immediate environment at this age furnished few ideals (four and one-fifth per cent), for children seem to have keener eyes for the faults than for the virtues of those near them. Religion, therefore, should chiefly be directed to the emotions and not to the understanding. This census also suggested more care that the reading of children should contain good examples in their environment, and also that the matter of instruction should be more fully adapted to the conditions of sex.
Friedrich found as his chief age result that children of the seventh or older class in the German schools laid distinctly greater stress upon characters distinguished by bravery and courage than did the children of the sixth grade, while the latter more frequently selected characters illustrating piety and holiness. The author divided his characters into thirty-five classes, illustrating qualities, and found that national activity led, with piety a close second; that then came in order those illustrating firmness of faith, bravery, modesty, and chastity; then pity and sympathy, industry, goodness, patience, etc.
Taylor, Young, Hamilton, Chambers, and others, have also collected interesting data on what children and young people hope to be, do, whom they would like to be, or resemble, etc. Only a few at adolescence feel themselves so good or happy that they are content to be themselves. Most show more or less discontent at their lot. From six to eleven or twelve, the number who find their ideals among their acquaintances falls off rapidly, and historical characters rise to a maximum at or before the earliest teens. From eleven or twelve on into the middle teens contemporary ideals increase steadily. London children are more backward in this expansion of ideals than Americans, while girls choose more acquaintance ideals at all ages than do boys. The expansion, these authors also trace largely to the study of history. The George Washington ideal, which leads all the rest by far and is greatly overworked, in contrast with the many heroes of equal rank found in England, pales soon, as imperfections are seen and those now making history loom up. This is the normal age to free from bondage to the immediate present, and this freedom is one measure of education. Bible heroes are chosen as ideals by only a very small percentage, mostly girls, far more characters being from fiction and mythology; where Jesus is chosen, His human is preferred to His divine side. Again, it would seem that teachers would be ideals, especially as many girls intend to teach, but they are generally unpopular as choices. In an ideal system they would be the first step in expansion from home ideals. Military heroes and inventors play leading rôles in the choices of pubescent boys.
Girls at all school ages and increasingly up the grades prefer foreign ideals, to be the wife of a man of title, as aristocracies offer special opportunities for woman to shine, and life near the source of fashion is very attractive, at least up to sixteen. The saddest fact in these studies is that nearly half our American pubescent girls, or nearly three times as many as in England, choose male ideals, or would be men. Girls, too, have from six to fifteen times as many ideals as boys. In this significant fact we realize how modern woman has cut loose from all old moorings and is drifting with no destination and no anchor aboard. While her sex has multiplied in all lower and high school grades, its ideals are still too masculine. Text-books teach little about women. When a woman’s Bible, history, course of study, etc., is proposed, her sex fears it may reduce her to the old servitude. While boys rarely, and then only when very young, choose female ideals, girls’ preference for the life of the other sex sometimes reaches sixty and seventy per cent. The divorce between the life preferred and that demanded by the interests of the race is often absolute. Saddest and most unnatural of all is the fact that this state of things increases most rapidly during just those years when ideals of womanhood should be developed and become most dominant, till it seems as if the female character was threatened with disintegration. While statistics are not yet sufficient to be reliable on the subject, there is some indication that woman later slowly reverts toward ideals not only from her own sex but also from the circle of her own acquaintances.
The reasons for the choice of ideals are various and not yet well determined. Civic virtues certainly rise; material and utilitarian considerations do not seem to much, if at all, at adolescence, and in some data decline. Position, fame, honor, and general greatness increase rapidly, but moral qualities rise highest and also fastest just before and near puberty and continue to increase later yet. By these choices both sexes, but girls far most, show increasing admiration of ethical and social qualities. Artistic and intellectual traits also rise quite steadily from ten or eleven onward, but with no such rapidity, and reach no such height as military ability and achievement for boys. Striking in these studies is the rapid increase, especially from eight to fourteen, of the sense of historic time for historic persons. These long since dead are no longer spoken of as now living. Most of these choices are direct expressions of real differences of taste and character.
Property, Kline and France[14] have defined as “anything that the individual may acquire which sustains and prolongs life, favors survival, and gives an advantage over opposing forces.” Many animals and even insects store up food both for themselves and for their young. Very early in life children evince signs of ownership. Letourneau[15] says that the notion of private property, which seems to us so natural, dawned late and slowly, and that common ownership was the rule among primitive people. Value is sometimes measured by use and sometimes by the work required to produce it. Before puberty, there is great eagerness to possess things that are of immediate service; but after its dawn, the desire of possession takes another form, and money for its own sake, which is at first rather an abstraction, comes to be respected or regarded as an object of extreme desire, because it is seen to be the embodiment of all values.
The money sense, as it is now often called, is very complex and has not yet been satisfactorily analyzed by psychology. Ribot and others trace its origin to provision which they think animals that hoard food feel. Monroe[16] has tabulated returns from 977 boys and 1,090 girls from six to sixteen in answer to the question as to what they would do with a small monthly allowance. The following table shows the marked increase at the dawn of adolescence of the number who would save it:
Age. Boys. Girls. | Age. Boys. Girls.
7….43 per cent 36 per cent | 12….82 per cent 64 per cent
8….45 ” 34 ” | 13….88 ” 78 ”
9….48 ” 35 ” | 14….85 ” 80 ”
10….58 ” 50 ” | 15….83 ” 78 ”
11….71 ” 58 ” | 16….85 ” 82 “
This tendency to thrift is strongest in boys, and both sexes often show the tendency to moralize, that is so strong in the early teens. Much of our school work in arithmetic is dominated by the money sense; and school savings-banks, at first for the poor, are now extending to children of all classes. This sense tends to prevent pauperism, prodigality, is an immense stimulus to the imagination and develops purpose to pursue a distant object for a long time. To see all things and values in terms of money has, of course, its pedagogic and ethical limitations; but there is a stage when it is a great educational advance, and it, too, is full of phylogenetic suggestions.
Social judgement, cronies, solitude—The two following observations afford a glimpse of the development of moral judgments. From 1,000 boys and 1,000 girls of each age from six to sixteen who answered the question as to what should be done to a girl with a new box of paints who beautified the parlor chairs with them with a wish to please her mother, the following conclusion was drawn.[17] Most of the younger children would whip the girl, but from fourteen on the number declines very rapidly. Few of the young children suggest explaining why it was wrong; while at twelve, 181, and at sixteen, 751 would explain. The motive of the younger children in punishment is revenge; with the older ones that of preventing a repetition of the act comes in; and higher and later comes the purpose of reform. With age comes also a marked distinction between the act and its motive and a sense of the girl’s ignorance. Only the older children would suggest extracting a promise not to offend again. Thus with puberty comes a change of view-point from judging actions by results to judging by motives, and only the older ones see that wrong can be done if there are no bad consequences. There is also with increased years a great development of the quality of mercy.
One hundred children of each sex and age between six and sixteen asked what they would do with a burglar, the question stating that the penalty was five years in prison.[18] Of the younger children nearly nine-tenths ignored the law and fixed upon some other penalty, but from twelve years there is a steady advance in those who would inflict the legal penalty, while at sixteen, seventy-four per cent would have the criminal punished according to law. Thus “with the dawn of adolescence at the age of twelve or shortly after comes the recognition of a larger life, a life to be lived in common with others, and with this recognition the desire to sustain the social code made for the common welfare,” and punishment is no longer regarded as an individual and arbitrary matter.
From another question answered by 1,914 children[19] it was found that with the development of the psychic faculties in youth, there was an increasing appreciation of punishment as preventive; an increasing sense of the value of individuality and of the tendency to demand protection of personal rights; a change from a sense of justice based on feeling and on faith in authority to that based on reason and understanding. Children’s attitude toward punishment for weak time sense, tested by 2,536 children from six to sixteen,[20] showed also a marked pubescent increase in the sense of the need of the remedial function of punishment as distinct from the view of it as vindictive, or getting even, common in earlier years. There is also a marked increase in discriminating the kinds and degrees of offenses; in taking account of mitigating circumstances, the inconvenience caused others, the involuntary nature of the offense and the purpose of the culprit. All this continues to increase up to sixteen, where these studies leave the child.
An interesting effect of the social instinct appears in August Mayer’s[21] elaborate study made up on fourteen boys in the fifth and sixth grade of a Würzburg school to determine whether they could work better together or alone. The tests were in dictation, mental and written arithmetic, memory, and Ebbinghaus’s combination exercises and all were given with every practicable precaution to make the other conditions uniform. The conclusions demonstrate the advantages of collective over individual instruction. Under the former condition, emulation is stronger and work more rapid and better in quality. From this it is inferred that pupils should not be grouped according to ability, for the dull are most stimulated by the presence of the bright, the bad by the good, etc. Thus work at home is prone to deteriorate, and experimental pedagogy shows that the social impulse is on the whole a stronger spur for boys of eleven or twelve than the absence of distraction which solitude brings.
From the answers of 1,068 boys and 1,268 girls from seven to sixteen on the kind of chum they liked best,[22] it appears that with the teens children are more anxious for chums that can keep secrets and dress neatly, and there is an increased number who are liked for qualities that supplement rather than duplicate those of the chooser. “There is an apparent struggle between the real actual self and the ideal self; a pretty strong desire to have a chum that embodies the traits youth most desire but which they are conscious of lacking.” The strong like the weak; those full of fun the serious; the timid the bold; the small the large, etc. Only children[23] illustrate differing effects of isolation, while “mashes” and “crushes” and ultra-crony-ism with “selfishness for two” show the results of abnormal restriction of the irradiation of the social instinct which should now occur.[24]
M. H. Small,[25] after pointing out that communal animals are more intelligent than those with solitary habits, and that even to name all the irradiations of the social instinct would be write a history of the human race, studied nearly five hundred cases of eminent men who developed proclivities to solitude. It is interesting to observe in how many of these cases this was developed in adolescence when, with the horror of mediocrity, comes introspection, apathy, irresolution, and subjectivism. The grounds of repulsion from society at this age may be disappointed hunger for praise, wounded vanity, the reaction from over-assertion, or the nursing of some high ideals, as it is slowly realized that in society the individual cannot be absolute. The motives to self-isolation may be because youth feels its lack of physical or moral force to compete with men, or they may be due to the failure of others to concede to the exactions of inordinate egotism and are directly proportional to the impulse to magnify self, or to the remoteness of common social interests from immediate personal desire or need, and inversely as the number and range of interests seen to be common and the clearness with which social relations are realized. While maturity of character needs some solitude, too much dwarfs it, and more or less of the same paralysis of association follows which is described in the nostalgia of arctic journeys, deserts, being lost in the jungle, solitary confinement, and in the interesting stories of feral men.[26] In some of these cases the mind is saved from entire stultification by pets, imaginary companions, tasks, etc. Normally “the tendency to solitude at adolescence indicates not fulness but want”; and a judicious balance between rest and work, pursuit of favorite lines, genuine sympathy, and wise companionship will generally normalize the social relation.
First forms of spontaneous social organizations.— Gulick has studied the propensity of boys from thirteen on to consort in gangs, do “dawsies” and stumps, get into scrapes together, and fight and suffer for one another. The manners and customs of the gang are to build shanties or “hunkies,” hunt with sling shots, build fires before huts in the woods, cook their squirrels and other game, play Indian, build tree-platforms, where they smoke or troop about some leader, who may have an old revolver. They find or excavate caves, or perhaps roof them over; the barn is a blockhouse or a battleship. In the early teens boys begin to use frozen snowballs or put pebbles in them, or perhaps have stone-fights between gangs than which no contiguous African tribes could be more hostile. They become toughs and tantalize policemen and peddlers; “lick” every enemy or even stranger found alone on their grounds; often smash windows; begin to use sticks and brass knuckles in their fights; pelt each other with green apples; carry shillalahs, or perhaps air-rifles. The more plucky arrange fights beforehand; rifle unoccupied houses; set ambushes for gangs with which they are at feud; perhaps have secrets and initiations where new boys are triced up by the legs and butted against trees and rocks. When painted for their Indian fights, they may grow so excited as to perhaps rush into the water or into the school-room yelling; mimic the violence of strikes; kindle dangerous bonfires; pelt policemen, and shout vile nicknames.
The spontaneous tendency to develop social and political organizations among boys in pubescent years was well seen in a school near Baltimore in the midst of an eight-hundred-acre farm richly diversified with swamp and forest and abounding with birds, squirrels, rabbits, etc. Soon after the opening of this school[27] the boys gathered nuts in parties. When a tree was reached which others had shaken, an unwritten law soon required those who wished to shake it further first to pile up all nuts under the tree, while those who failed to do so were universally regarded as dishonest and every boy’s hand was against them. To pile them involved much labor, so that the second party usually sought fresh trees, and partial shaking practically gave possession of all the fruits on a tree. They took birds’ eggs freely, and whenever a bird was found in building, or a squirrel’s hole was discovered, the finder tacked his name on the tree and thereby confirmed his ownership, as he did if he placed a box in which a nest was built. The ticket must not blow off, and the right at first lasted only one season. In the rabbit-land every trap that was set preëmpted ground for a fixed number of yards about it. Some grasping boys soon made many traps and set them all over a valuable district, so that the common land fell into a few hands. Traps were left out all winter and simply set the next spring. All these rights finally came into the ownership of two or three boys, who slowly acquired the right and bequeathed their claims to others for a consideration, when they left school. The monopolists often had a large surplus of rabbits which they bartered for “butters,” the unit being the ounce of daily allowance. These could be represented by tickets transferred, so that debts were paid with “butters” that had never been seen. An agrarian party arose and demanded a redistribution of land from the monopolists, as Sir Henry Maine shows often happened in the old village community. Legislation and judicial procedure were developed and quarrels settled by arbitration, ordeal, and wager, and punishment by bumping often followed the decision of the boy folk-mote. Scales of prices for commodities in “butters” or in pie-currency were evolved, so that we here have an almost entirely spontaneous but amazingly rapid recapitulation of the social development of the race by these boys.
From a study of 1,166 children’s organizations described as a language lesson in school composition, Mr. Sheldon[28] arrives at some interesting results. American children tend strongly to institutional activities, only about thirty per cent of all not having belonged to some such organization. Imitation plays a very important rôle, and girls take far more kindly than boys to societies organized by adults for their benefit. They are also more governed by adult and altruistic motives in forming their organizations, while boys are nearer to primitive man. Before ten comes the period of free spontaneous imitation of every form of adult institution. The child reproduces sympathetically miniature copies of the life around him. On a farm, his play is raking, threshing, building barns, or on the seashore he makes ships and harbors. In general, he plays family, store, church, and chooses officers simply because adults do. The feeling of caste, almost absent in the young, culminates about ten and declines thereafter. From ten to fourteen, however, associations assume a new character; boys especially cease to imitate adult organizations and tend to form social units characteristic of lower stages of human evolution—pirates, robbers, soldiers, lodges, and other savage reversionary combinations, where the strongest and boldest is the leader. They build huts, wear feathers and tomahawks as badges, carry knives and toy-pistols, make raids and sell the loot. Cowards alone, together they fear nothing. Their imagination is perhaps inflamed by flash literature and “penny-dreadfuls.” Such associations often break out in decadent country communities where, with fewer and feebler offspring, lax notions of family discipline prevail and hoodlumism is the direct result of the passing of the rod. These barbaric societies have their place and give vigor; but if unreduced later, as in many unsettled portions of this country, a semisavage state of society results. At twelve the predatory function is normally subordinated, and if it is not it becomes dangerous, because the members are no longer satisfied with mere play, but are stronger and abler to do harm, and the spice of danger and its fascination may issue in crime. Athleticism is now the form into which these wilder instincts can be best transmuted, and where they find harmless and even wholesome vent. Another change early in adolescence is the increased number of social, literary, and even philanthropic organizations and institutions for mutual help—perhaps against vice, for having a good time, or for holding picnics and parties. Altruism now begins to make itself felt as a motive.
Student life and organizations. Student life is perhaps the best of all fields, unworked though it is, for studying the natural history of adolescence. Its modern record is over eight hundred years old and it is marked with the signatures of every age, yet has essential features that do not vary. Cloister and garrison rules have never been enforced even in the hospice, bursa, inn, “house,” “hall,” or dormitory, and in loco parentis [In place of a parent] practises are impossible, especially with large numbers. The very word “school” means leisure, and in a world of toil and moil suggests paradise. Some have urged that éliteyouth, exempt from the struggle to live and left to the freedom of their own inclinations, might serve as a biological and ethnic compass to point out the goal of human destiny. But the spontaneous expressions of this best age and condition of life, with no other occupation than their own development, have shown reversions as often as progress. The rupture of home ties stimulates every wider vicarious expression of the social instinct. Each taste and trait can find congenial companionship in others and thus be stimulated to more intensity and self-consciousness. Very much that has been hitherto repressed in the adolescent soul is now reënforced by association and may become excessive and even aggressive. While many of the race-correlates of childhood are lost, those of this stage are more accessible in savage and sub-savage life. Freedom is the native air and vital breath of student life. The sense of personal liberty is absolutely indispensable for moral maturity; and just as truth can not be found without the possibility of error, so the posse non peccare [Ability not to sin] precedes the non posse peccare, [Inability to sin] and professors must make abroad application of the rule abusus non tollit usum [Abuse does not do away with use]. The student must have much freedom to be lazy, make his own minor morals, vent his disrespect for what he can see no use in, be among strangers to act himself out and form a personality of his own, be baptized with the revolutionary and skeptical spirit, and go to extremes at the age when excesses teach wisdom with amazing rapidity, if he is to become a true knight of the spirit and his own master. Ziegler[29] frankly told German students that about one-tenth of them would be morally lost in this process, but insisted that on the whole more good was done than by restraint; for, he said, “youth is now in the stage of Schiller’s bell when it was molten metal.”
Of all safeguards I believe a rightly cultivated sense of honor is the most effective at this age. Sadly as the written code of student honor in all lands needs revision, and partial, freaky, and utterly perverted, tainted and cowardly as it often is, it really means what Kant expressed in the sublime precept, “Thou canst because thou oughtest.” Fichte said that Faulheit, Feigheit, and Falschheit [Laziness, cowardice, falsehood] were the three dishonorable things for students. If they would study the history and enter into the spirit of their own fraternities, they would often have keener and broader ideas of honor to which they are happily so sensitive. If professors made it always a point of honor to confess and never to conceal the limitation of their knowledge, would scorn all pretense of it, place credit for originality frankly where it belongs, teach no creeds they do not profoundly believe, or topics in which they are not interested, and withhold nothing from those who want the truth, they could from this vantage with more effect bring students to feel that the laziness that, while outwardly conforming, does no real inner work; that getting a diploma, as a professor lately said, an average student could do, on one hour’s study a day; living beyond one’s means, and thus imposing a hardship on parents greater than the talent of the son justifies; accepting stipends not needed, especially to the deprivation of those more needy; using dishonest ways of securing rank in studies or positions on teams, or social standing, are, one and all, not only ungentlemanly but cowardly and mean, and the axe would be laid at the root of the tree. Honor should impel students to go nowhere where they conceal their college, their fraternity, or even their name; to keep themselves immaculate from all contact with that class of women which, Ziegler states, brought twenty-five per cent of the students of the University of Berlin in a single year to physicians; to remember that other’s sisters are as cherished as their own; to avoid those sins against confiding innocence which cry for vengeance, as did Valentine against Faust, and which strengthen the hate of social classes and make mothers and sisters seem tedious because low ideas of womanhood have been implanted, and which give a taste for mucky authors that reek with suggestiveness; and to avoid the waste of nerve substance and nerve weakness in ways which Ibsen and Tolstoi have described. These things are the darkest blot on the honor of youth.
Associations for youth, devised or guided by adults. Here we enter a very different realm. Forbush[30] undertakes an analysis of many such clubs which he divides according to their purpose into nine chief classes: physical training, handicraft, literary, social, civic and patriotic, science-study, hero-love, ethical, religious. These he classifies as to age of the boys, his purview generally ending at seventeen; discusses and tabulates the most favorable number, the instincts chiefly utilized, the kinds of education gained in each and its percentage of interest, and the qualities developed. He commends Riis’s mode of pulling the safety-valve of a rather dangerous boy-gang by becoming an adult honorary member, and interpreting the impulsions of this age in the direction of adventure instead of in that of mischief. He reminds us that nearly one-third of the inhabitants of America are adolescents, that 3,000,000 are boys between twelve and sixteen, “that the do-called heathen people are, whatever their age, all in the adolescent stage of life.”
A few American societies of this class we may briefly characterize as follows:
(a) Typical of a large class of local juvenile clubs is the “Captains of Ten,” originally for boys of from eight to fourteen, and with a later graduate squad of those over fifteen. The “Ten” are the fingers; and whittling, scrap-book making, mat-weaving, etc., are taught. The motto is, “The hand of the diligent shall bear rule”; its watchword is “Loyalty”; and the prime objects are “to promote a spirit of loyalty to Christ among the boys of the club,” and to learn about and work for Christ’s kingdom. The members wear a silver badge; have an annual photograph; elect their leaders; vote their money to missions (on which topic they hold meetings); act Bible stories in costume; hear stories and see scientific experiments; enact a Chinese school; write articles for the children’s department of religious journals; develop comradeship, and “have a good time.”
(b) The Agassiz Association, founded in 1875 “to encourage personal work in natural science,” now numbers some 25,000 members, with chapters distributed all over the country, and was said by the late Professor Hyatt to include “the largest number of persons ever bound together for the purpose of mutual help in the study of nature.” It furnishes practical courses of study in the sciences; has local chapters in thousands of towns and cities in this and other countries; publishes a monthly organ, The Swiss Cross, to facilitate correspondence and exchange of specimens; has a small endowment, a badge, is incorporated, and is animated by a spirit akin to that of University Extension; and, although not exclusively for young people, is chiefly sustained by them.
(c) The Catholic Total Abstinence Union is a strong, well-organized, and widely extended society, mostly composed of young men. The pledge required of all members explains its object: “I promise with the Divine assistance and in honor of the Sacred Thirst and the Agony of our Saviour, to abstain from all intoxicating drinks and to prevent as much as possible by advice and example the sin of intemperance in others and to discountenance the drinking customs of society.” A general convention of the Union has been held annually since 1877.
(d) The Princely Knights of Character Castle is an organization founded in 1895 for boys from twelve to eighteen to “inculcate, disseminate, and practise the principles of heroism—endurance—love, purity, and patriotism.” The central incorporated castle grants charters to local castles, directs the ritual and secret work. Its officers are supreme prince, patriarch, scribes, treasurer, director, with captain of the guard, watchman, porter, keeper of the dungeon, musician, herald, and favorite son. The degrees of the secret work are shepherd lad, captive, viceroy, brother, son, prince, knight, and royal knight. There are jewels, regalia, paraphernalia, and initiations. The pledge for the first degree is, “I hereby promise and pledge that I will abstain from the use of intoxicating liquor in any form as a beverage; that I will not use profane or improper language; that I will discourage the use of tobacco in any form; that I will strive to live pure in body and mind; that I will obey all rules and regulations of the order and not reveal any of the secrets in any way.” There are benefits, reliefs, passwords, a list of offenses and penalties.
(e) Some 35,000 Bands of Mercy are now organized under the direction of the American Humane Education Society. The object of the organization is to cultivate kindness to animals and sympathy with the poor and oppressed. The prevention of cruelty in driving, cattle transportation, humane methods of killing, care for the sick and abandoned or overworked animals, are the themes of most of its voluminous literature. It has badges, hymnbooks, cards, and certificates of membership, and a motto, “Kindness, Justice, and Mercy to All.” Its pledge is, “I will try to be kind to all harmless living creatures, and try to protect them from cruel usage,” and is intended to include human as well as dumb creatures. The founder and secretary, with great and commendable energy, has instituted prize contests for speaking on humane subjects in schools, and has printed and circulated prize stories; since the incorporation of the society in 1868, he has been indefatigable in collecting funds, speaking before schools and colleges, and prints fifty to sixty thousand copies of the monthly organ. In addition to its mission of sentiment, and to make it more effective, this organization clearly needs to make more provision for the intellectual element by well-selected or constructed courses, or at least references on the life, history, habits, and instincts of animals, and it also needs more recognition that modern charity is a science as well as a virtue.
(f) The Coming Men of America, although organized only in 1894, now claims to be the greatest chartered secret society for boys and young men in the country. It began two years earlier in a lodge started by a nineteen-year-old boy in Chicago in imitation of such ideas of Masons, Odd-Fellows, etc., as its founder could get from his older brother, and its meetings were first held in a basement. On this basis older heads aided in its development, so that it is a good example of the boy-imitative helped out by parents. The organization is now represented in every State and Territory, and boys travel on its badge. There is an official organ, The Star, a badge, sign, and a secret sign language called “bestography.” Its secret ritual work is highly praised. Its membership is limited to white boys under twenty-one.
(g) The first Harry Wadsworth Club was established in 1871 as a result of E.E. Hale’s Ten Times One, published the year before. Its motto is, “Look up, and not down; look forward, and not back; look out, and not in; lend a hand,” or “Faith, Hope, and Charity.” Its organ is the Ten Times One Record; its badge is a silver Maltese cross. Each club may organize as it will, and choose its own name, provided it accepts the above motto. Its watchword is, “In His Name.” It distributes charities, conducts a Noonday Rest, outings in the country, and devotes itself to doing good.[31]
[Footnote 1: Tarde: L’Opposition Universelle. Alcan, Paris, 1897, p. 461.]
[Footnote 2: The Adolescent at Home and in School. By E. G. Lancaster.
Proceedings of the National Educational Association, 1899, p. 1039.]
[Footnote 3: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence. Pedagogical
Seminary, July, 1897, vol. 5, p. 87.]
[Footnote 4: Study of Boys Entering the Adolescent Period of Life. North Western Monthly, November, 1897, vol. 8, pp. 248-250, and a series thereafter.]
[Footnote 5: The Suggestibility of Children. Pedagogical Seminary,
December, 1896, vol. 4, p. 211]
[Footnote 6: Characteristics of the Best Teacher as Recognized by Children. By H.E. Kratz. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1896, vol. 3, pp. 413-418. See also The High School Teacher from the Pupil’s Point of View, by W.F. Book. Pedagogical Seminary, September, 1905, vol. 12, pp. 239-288.]
[Footnote 7: A Study of the Teacher’s Influence. Pedagogical Seminary,
December, 1900, vol. 7, pp. 492-525.]
[Footnote 8: Children’s Ideals. Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1900, vol. 7, pp. 3-12]
[Footnote 9: Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child Study, vol. 2, No. 2, 1896, pp. 41-46.]
[Footnote 10: Children’s Ambitions. By H.M. Willard. Barnes’s Studies in Education, vol. 2, pp. 243-258. (Privately printed by Earl Barnes, 4401 Sansom Street, Philadelphia.)]
[Footnote 11: Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child Study,
October, 1898, vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 131-144.]
[Footnote 12: A Study in Juvenile Ethics. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1903, vol. 10, pp. 239-266]
[Footnote 13: Die Ideale der Kinder. Zeitschrift für pädagogische
Psychologie, Pathologie und Hygiene, Jahrgang 3, Heft 1, pp. 38-64.]
[Footnote 14: The Psychology of Ownership, Pedagogical Seminary,
December, 1899, vol. 6, pp. 421-470.]
[Footnote 15: Property: Its Origin and Development. Chas. Scribner’s
Sons, 1892.]
[Footnote 16: Money-Sense of Children. Will S. Monroe. Pedagogical
Seminary, March, 1899, vol. 6, pp. 152-156]
[Footnote 17: A Study of Children’s Rights, as Seen by Themselves. By M.E. Schallenberger. Pedagogical Seminary, October, 1894, vol. 3, pp. 87-96.]
[Footnote 18: Children’s Attitude toward Law. By E. M Darrah. Barnes’s Studies in Education, vol. 1, pp. 213-216. (Stanford University, 1897.) G. E. Stechert and Co., New York.]
[Footnote 19: Class Punishment. By Caroline Frear. Barnes’s Studies in
Education, vol. 1, pp. 332-337.]
[Footnote 20: Children’s Attitude toward Punishment for Weak Time Sense. By D.S. Snedden. Barnes’s Studies in Education, vol. 1, pp. 344-351]
[Footnote 21: Ueber Einzel- und Gesamtleistung des Schulkindes. Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 1 Band, 2 and 3 Heft, 1903, pp. 276-416]
[Footnote 22: Development of the Social Consciousness of Children. By Will S. Monroe. North-Western Monthly, September, 1898, vol. 9, pp. 31-36.]
[Footnote 23: Bohannon: The Only Child in a Family. Pedagogical
Seminary, April, 1898, vol. 5, pp. 475-496.]
[Footnote 24: J. Delitsch: Über Schülerfreundschaften in einer Volksschulklasse, Die Kinderfehler. Fünfter Jahrgang, Mai, 1900, pp. 150-163.]
[Footnote 25: On Some Psychical Relations of Society and Solitude.
Pedagogical Seminary, April 1900, vol. 7, pp. 13-69]
[Footnote 26: A. Rauber: Homo Sapiens Ferus. J. Brehse, Leipzig,
1888. See also my Social Aspects of Education; Pedagogical Seminary,
March, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 81-91. Also Kropotkin: Mutual Aid a Factor of
Evolution. W. Heinemann, London, 1902.]
[Footnote 27: Rudimentary Society among Boys, by John H. Johnson,
McDonogh, Md. McDonogh School, 1983, reprinted from Johns Hopkins
University Studies Series 2 (Historical and Political Studies, vol. 2,
No. 11).]
[Footnote 28: The Institutional Activities of American Children.
American Journal of Psychology, July, 1898, vol. 9, pp. 425-448.]
[Footnote 29: Der deutsche Student am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts. 6th
Ed. Göschen, Leipzig, 1896.]
[Footnote 30: The Social Pedagogy of Boyhood. Pedagogical Seminary, October, 1900, vol. 7, pp. 307-346. See also his The Boy Problem, with an introduction by G. Stanley Hall, The Pilgrim Press, Boston, 1901, p. 194. Also Winifred Buck (Boys’ Self-governing Clubs, Macmillan, New York, 1903), who thinks ten million dollars could be used in training club advisers who should have the use of schools and grounds after hours and evenings, conduct excursions, organize games, etc., but avoid all direct teaching and book work generally. This writer thinks such an institution would soon result in a marked increase of public morality and an augmented demand for technical instruction, and that for the advisers themselves the work would be the best training for high positions in politics and reform. Clubs of boys from eight to sixteen or eighteen must not admit age disparities of more than two years.]
[Footnote 31: See Young People’s Societies, by L.W. Bacon. D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1900, p. 265. Also, F.G. Cressey: The Church and Young Men. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York, 1903, p. 233.]
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Extract from Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene, by G. Stanley Hall
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