Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene 1

Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene 1

Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene

 

Author: G. Stanley Hall

 

PREFACE

 

 

I have often been asked to select and epitomize the practical and

especially the pedagogical conclusions of my large volumes on

Adolescence, published in 1904, in such form that they may be

available at a minimum cost to parents, teachers, reading circles,

normal schools, and college classes, by whom even the larger volumes

have been often used. This, with the coöperation of the publishers and

with the valuable aid of Superintendent C.N. Kendall of Indianapolis,

I have tried to do, following in the main the original text, with only

such minor changes and additions as were necessary to bring the topics

up to date, and adding a new chapter on moral and religions education.

For the scientific justification of my educational conclusions I must,

of course, refer to the larger volumes. The last chapter is not in

"Adolescence," but is revised from a paper printed elsewhere. I am

indebted to Dr. Theodore L. Smith of Clark University for verification

of all references, proof-reading, and many minor changes.

 

G. STANLEY HALL.

 

 

 

CONTENTS

 

 

I.--PRE-ADOLESCENCE

 

Introduction: Characterization of the age from eight to twelve--The

era of recapitulating the stages of primitive human development--Life

close to nature--The age also for drill, habituation, memory work, and

regermination--Adolescence superposed upon this stage of life, but

very distinct from it

 

 

II.--THE MUSCLES AND MOTOR POWERS IN GENERAL

 

Muscles as organs of the will, of character, and even of thought--The

muscular virtues--Fundamental and accessory muscles and functions--The

development of the mind and of the upright position--Small muscles as

organs of thought--School lays too much stress upon these--Chorea--Vast

numbers of automatic movements in children--Great variety of

spontaneous activities--Poise, control, and spurtiness--Pen and tongue

wagging--Sedentary school life vs. free out-of-door activities--Modern

decay of muscles, especially in girls--Plasticity of motor habits at

puberty

 

 

III.--INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

 

Trade classes and schools, their importance in the international

market--Our dangers and the superiority of German workmen--The effects

of a tariff--Description of schools between the kindergarten and the

industrial school--Equal salaries for teachers in France--Dangers from

machinery--The advantages of life on the old New England farm--Its

resemblance to the education we now give negroes and Indians--Its

advantage for all-sided muscular development

 

 

IV.--MANUAL TRAINING AND SLOYD.

 

History of the movement--Its philosophy--The value of hand training in

the development of the brain and its significance in the making of

man--A grammar of our many industries hard--The best we do can reach

but few--Very great defects in manual training methods which do not

base on science and make nothing salable--The Leipzig system--Sloyd is

hypermethodic--These crude peasant industries can never satisfy

educational needs--The gospel of work; William Morris and the arts and

crafts movement--Its spirit desirable--The magic effects of a brief

period of intense work--The natural development of the drawing

instinct in the child

 

 

V.--GYMNASTICS

 

The story of Jahn and the Turners--The enthusiasm which this movement

generated in Germany--The ideal of bringing out latent powers--The

concept of more perfect voluntary control--Swedish gymnastics--Doing

everything possible for the body as a machine--Liberal physical

culture--Ling's orthogenic scheme of economic postures and movements

and correcting defects--The ideal of symmetry and prescribing

exercises to bring the body to a standard--Lamentable lack of

correlation between these four systems--Illustrations of the great

good that a systematic training can effect--Athletic records--Greek

physical training

 

 

VI.--PLAY, SPORTS, AND GAMES

 

The view of Groos partial, and a better explanation of play proposed

as rehearsing ancestral activities--The glory of Greek physical

training, its ideals and results--The first spontaneous movements of

infancy as keys to the past--Necessity of developing basal powers

before those that are later and peculiar to the individual--Plays that

interest due to their antiquity--Play with dolls--Play distinguished

by age--Play preferences of children and their reasons--The profound

significance of rhythm--The value of dancing and also its

significance, history, and the desirability of reintroducing

it--Fighting--Boxing--Wrestling--Bushido--Foot-ball--Military

ideals--Showing off--Cold baths--Hill climbing--The playground

movement--The psychology of play--Its relation to work

 

 

VII.--FAULTS, LIES, AND CRIMES.

 

Classification of children's faults--Peculiar children--Real fault as

distinguished from interference with the teacher's ease--Truancy, its

nature and effects--The genesis of crime--The lie, its classes and

relations to imagination--Predatory activities--Gangs--Causes of

crime--The effects of stories of crime--Temibility--Juvenile crime and

its treatment

 

 

VIII.--BIOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH.

 

Knightly ideals and honor--Thirty adolescents from

Shakespeare--Goethe--C.D. Warner--Aldrich--The fugitive nature of

adolescent experience--Extravagance of autobiographies--Stories that

attach to great names--Some typical crazes--Illustrations from George

Eliot, Edison, Chatterton, Hawthorne, Whittier, Spencer, Huxley,

Lyell, Byron, Heine, Napoleon, Darwin, Martineau, Agassiz, Madame

Roland, Louisa Alcott, F.H. Burnett, Helen Keller, Marie Bashkirtseff,

Mary MacLane, Ada Negri, De Quincey, Stuart Mill, Jefferies, and

scores of others

 

 

IX.--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

 

 

X.--INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION AND SCHOOL WORK.

 

The general change and plasticity at puberty--English teaching--Causes

of its failure, (1) too much time to other languages, (2)

subordination of literary content to form, (3) too early stress on eye

and hand instead of ear and mouth, (4) excessive use of concrete

words--Children's interest in words--Their favorites--Slang--Story

telling--Age of reading crazes--What to read--The historic

sense--Growth of memory span

 

 

XI.--THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.

 

Equal opportunities of higher education now open--Brings new dangers

to women--Ineradicable sex differences begin at puberty, when the

sexes should and do diverge--Different interests--Sex tension--Girls

more mature than boys at the same age--Radical psychic and

physiological differences between the sexes--The bachelor women--Needed

reconstruction--Food--Sleep--Regimen--Manners--Religion--Regularity--

The topics for a girls' curriculum--The eternally womanly

 

 

XII.--MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING.

 

Dangers of muscular degeneration and overstimulus of

brain--Difficulties in teaching morals--Methods in Europe--Obedience

to commands--Good habits should be mechanized--Value of scolding--How

to flog aright--Its dangers--Moral precepts and

proverbs--Habituation--Training will through

intellect--Examinations--Concentration--Originality--Froebel and the

naive--First ideas of God--Conscience--Importance of Old and New

Testaments--Sex dangers--Love and religion--Conversion

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

 

PRE-ADOLESCENCE

 

 

Introduction: Characterization of the age from eight to twelve--The

era of recapitulating the stages of primitive human development--Life

close to nature--The age also for drill, habituation, memory, work and

regermination--Adolescence superposed upon this stage of life, but

very distinct from it.

 

The years from about eight to twelve constitute a unique period of

human life. The acute stage of teething is passing, the brain has

acquired nearly its adult size and weight, health is almost at its

best, activity is greater and more varied than it ever was before or

ever will be again, and there is peculiar endurance, vitality, and

resistance to fatigue. The child develops a life of its own outside

the home circle, and its natural interests are never so independent of

adult influence. Perception is very acute, and there is great immunity

to exposure, danger, accident, as well as to temptation. Reason, true

morality, religion, sympathy, love, and esthetic enjoyment are but very slightly developed.