Juvenilia

“ We shall see hundreds of small children, not more than five or six years of age, carrying, fast asleep on their shoulders, the baby of the household, its tiny smooth brown head swinging hither and thither with every movement of its small nurse, who walks, runs, sits, or jumps, flies kites, plays hop-scotch, and fishes for frogs in the gutter, totally oblivious of that infantile charge, whether sleeping or waking. If no young sister or brother be available, the husband, the uncle, the father, or grandfather hitches on his back the baby, preternaturally good and contented. ”

“ Education by the Parents.—Throughout nature, wherever the young of any animal have to live through a prolonged period of imperfectly protected immaturity, it is the duty of the parent-animals to bring up their offspring. Above a certain level in the animal scale, this duty is universal. The lower in the scale any species of animal, the more rapidly do the young of that species attain maturity; conversely, the higher the stage of development of any species, the longer is the period of immaturity, and the longer are the children dependent upon their parents. ”

“ We often talk about spoilt children at three or four, but any kind of making or marring of character at such ages can be undone in a few weeks or less—that is, in so far as it is an effect of training and not of nature that we are dealing with. The real spoiling or making is at that birth of the adult which we call puberty. During adolescence the adult is being made, and everything matters for ever. ”

“ A good-sized child, strong enough to hold up his head, sees the world right cheerfully looking over his mother's shoulders, but it is a constant distress to me to see small children of six and seven years old lugging on their backs gristly babies, whose shorn heads are frizzling in the sun and "wobbling" about as though they must drop off, their eyes, as nurses say, "looking over their heads." A number of silk-worms are kept in this region, and in the open barns groups of men in nature's costume, and women unclothed to their waists, were busy stripping mulberry branches. ”

“ All this indicates undoubtedly that during the period of weak growth which precedes the coming on of puberty, and during which our pupils are passing through the preparatory or lowest classes of the middle schools, the power of resistance of the youthful organism against external influences is diminished. During the period of development of puberty, on the other hand, when the youthful life is approaching maturity with all its swelling force, the capacity for resistance rises from year to year, and the liability to illness falls, reaching its minimum in the last year of that period. ”

“ To understand the boy’s viewpoint we must be able to put ourselves in his place. We must renew our youth. The trouble with so many of us is that we never acquire juvenescence until second-childhood. We should be able to assign the boy to the psychological period to which he belongs by reason of his development, and thus knowing the mental and moral status of an inhabitant of that period, we are able to see things through his glasses. The mental myopia and moral astigmatism of youth will then be recognized as a defect of immaturity which training and years will cure. ”

“ At the beginning of the period of childhood for which the Junior Course is intended, approximately nine years of age, there appears to be in the life of the normal boy or girl a real transition as the traits and interests of earlier years give way to those of full fledged boyhood and girlhood. Strange premonitions of impending physical and mental changes now appear, with suggestions of riper years that are rapidly approaching. The physical and mental changes of this period are accompanied by an awakening of social consciousness. ”

“ Psychology suggested that much might be gained by a knowledge of the way in which children developed, of the stages through which they passed, of what the adult world might reasonably expect of the baby of two months or the child of two years. And the fulminations of the pulpit, the loudly voiced laments of the conservative social philosopher, the records of juvenile courts and social agencies all suggested that something must be done with the period which science had named adolescence. ”

“ Every baby is carefully examined on entrance by a committee of learned anatomists and physiologists, and if they find it affected with any malformation, or deformity, or disease, which renders it likely that the child will not be 'viable'—i.e., capable of making its way in life—it is not reared, and thus society is spared a useless member, and a human being spared a wretched life. ”

“ You say ‘We marry our girls when they reach puberty,’ and you take as indication of that stage one only, and that the least certain, of the many changes which go to make up maturity. It is the least certain because the most variable, and dependent more upon climate and conditions of life than upon any true physical development. No one would deny that a strong country girl of thirteen was more mature physically than a girl of eleven brought up in the close, unwholesome atmosphere of a crowded city, yet you say the latter has attained to puberty, and that the former has not. ”

“ In this work I shall mean by puberty the period of life between the completion of sexual development and the extinction of the sexual life. The period during which the state of puberty is being attained will be spoken of as the period of puberal development, and I shall therefore speak of the beginning and the end of the puberal development. The terms nubility, sexual maturity, nubile, and sexually mature, will be used with a similar signification. As regards the puberal development, let me at the outset draw attention to the fact that it takes place very gradually ”

“ The restrictions of the hours of work and the conditions of employment of young persons of both sexes differ but slightly from those applying to adult women. This failure to appreciate the special problems of adolescence is the more remarkable in that medical evidence has shown [Pg 2] that young children grow and develop despite great hardships, while adolescence is more dependent upon favouring conditions in the environment, disturbances of which more easily retard development and effectively injure the still growing body. ”

“ Sowing the Seeds for Future Ruin.—Nor is it merely the conversation of adults that does all this mischief; their manners also increase it. Young men take the hands of girls from six to thirteen years old, kiss them, press them, and play with them so as, in a great variety of ways, to excite their innocent passions, combined, I grant, with friendship and refinement—for all this is genteely done. They intend no harm, and parents dream of none: and yet their embryo love is awakened, to be again still more easily excited. ”

“ Juvenile psychology may be divided into child psychology, covering the period from birth to puberty, and adolescent psychology, covering the period from puberty to maturity. Boyhood is the interval between birth and physical maturity, the latter being reached at the age of twenty-four or twenty-five, when the bones, muscles, and organs of the body have attained their complete development. ”

“ Is adolescence a period of mental and emotional distress for the growing girl as inevitably as teething is a period of misery for the small baby? Can we think of adolescence as a time in the life history of every girl child which carries with it symptoms of conflict and stress as surely as it implies a change in the girl’s body? ”

“ A physiologist remarks, ‘In youth the affinity of the tissues for vital stimuli seems to be greater when the development is less complete.’ That which the strong adult may endure with comparative impunity destroys the growing youth, whose nature, from the very necessities of development, possesses a keener sensitiveness to all vital stimuli. ”

“ Owing to rapid growth and to the want of stability of the young girl's tissues, the years immediately succeeding puberty are not only those of rapid physiological change, but they are those during which irreparable damage may be done unless those who have the care of young girls understand what these dangers are, how they are produced, and how they may be averted. ”

“ The system is very elastic, realizing the infinite variety of childish natures. The purely paternal régime would be wasted upon the really vicious; a severe discipline would press too heavily on the well-disposed. Accordingly, all juveniles, male and female, are divided into six principal classes with a corresponding treatment, it being strictly ruled that there is no intermingling of the classes; the very youngest, rescued early, are never to be associated with the older, who may be already vicious and degraded and who could not fail to exercise a pernicious influence. ”

“ PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY THE wayward boy is often the son of a wayward parent.
Waywardness results not so much from the effects of heredity as from lack of training. Wrong training, lack of training, and bad environment are the great, compelling influences toward delinquency, which overshadow all other causes of juvenile waywardness ”

“ The child becomes a youth, and the youth becomes man, by virtue of a process not so very different from that which transforms the caterpillar into a butterfly or the tadpole into a frog. As truly as the caterpillar takes on wings, and the tadpole lungs and limbs, of which neither had any trace before, the child and the boy take on not only habits and instincts and ways of getting on in the world, but actual new structure as well. ”

“ I inquired if there were not many cases of children received at the establishments who were incapable of a subaqueous life, or who, from some inborn defect of constitution or congenital deformity, are incapable of turning out useful members of society. I was informed that such cases did undoubtedly occur, but as infants so afflicted were not worth the trouble of rearing, they were not reared. ”

“ The girls and boys endure great physical neglect in their youth, so that only the strongest are able to survive their childhood. It was surprising to see children of tender age of both sexes clothed only in a single cotton shirt, reaching to their knees, bare-legged, bare-footed, and bare-headed, yet apparently quite comfortable, while our woolen clothes and waterproofs were to us indispensable. 252We were told that in infancy these children are dipped every morning into the sea, without regard to the temperature, or season of the year, commencing the operation when they are four weeks old. ”

“ When the young get a little strength they attack each other with great fury, and can only be made to desist by the parent bird separating them, and taking one under its fostering care, and holding them at a respectable distance until they reach crane-hood, when they seem to make up in joyous hilarity for the quarrelsome proclivities of youth. ”

“ In the kindergarten season various sensibilities are manifest that have not shown themselves in the nursery, and which are premonitions of the destined dominion over material nature, which at first so much dominates the child, and would destroy his body if you did not intervene with your loving care. These are to be mothered in the kindergartner's heart till they become conscious desires, informing and directing his will, which is encouraged and strengthened—if it is never superseded by your will—until he shall begin to realize his personal responsibility. ”

“ All of the changes which Nature introduced into the physical and psychical development of the adolescent male were of a character to equip the individual for the maintenance and protection of a wife and children. This development has been reached by the time the young man is twenty-one to twenty-three years of age, when, in the average case, he would be able, so far as concerns his physique and temperament, to establish and maintain a home. ”

“ All children show it to some extent, though in many it is mingled with a good, deal of fear. One is tempted to connect both the fear and the interest with race history—the intimate association of primitive man with animals; but a six-month baby is traversing a period of development far earlier than that of the primitive hunter. Professor Sully has some good suggestions about the sympathy between children and animals, but these, too, fail of application to a baby so young. ”

“ Schoolboys administer law among themselves much as a tribal court does; babies sit like monkeys, with the soles of their little feet facing each other. Such resemblances led, [7] long before the age of Darwin, to the speculation that children in developing passed through stages similar to those the race had passed through; and the speculation has become an accepted doctrine since embryology has shown how each individual before birth passes in successive stages through the lower forms of life. ”

“ Look at the infant, the very embodying of vivacity and activity, and its confinement to a particular posture, or the requirement of a peculiar expression of countenance, is manifestly unnatural. An inactive and healthy child under six years of age is never seen. Whatever compels it to be otherwise consequently produces what is artificial in character. A parent or a teacher may keep his children quiet, and in what he terms order ”

“ With fresh sensations and new strength, with care, labour, and pain largely kept away, youth naturally enjoys more heartily than age, and has less to suffer; but these are only incidental conditions. Every period has its advantage and accompanying responsibilities. This blessed time of youth is not ours to riot through in cheerful disregard of human duty. The biological advantage of a longer period of immaturity is [19] in its cumulative value to the race, the older parent having more development to transmit. ”