Maturation

“ It would be interesting, if practicable, to trace the gradual development of such a character from infancy to old age, to discover, if possible, the circumstances which favoured its growth, and to draw philosophical deductions for the improvement of the present or succeeding generations. Such hopes are vain, or nearly so; man is born with his peculiarities, with specific and yet complex sensibilities, and however similar the circumstances of life and education of two or more individuals, entirely different characters result. ”

“ This is why many people on the Heights of Maturity are anxious to light a beacon for those who are still in their “teens.” They would gladly help others to shun the by-paths where they have met disaster, for they have learned the very solemn truth that in youth one is determining what maturity shall be. The seeds sown in the sunny meadow of Childhood and in the broader fields of the Land of the Teens are harvested in the uplands of Maturity, and the harvest is always greater than the seed sown. ”

“ All created things have their degree or stage of maturity. The period of maturity in the life of a tree is the time of its fruit-bearing... The animal attains a stage of full growth and completeness, and in the human kingdom man reaches his maturity when the light of his intelligence attains its greatest power and development... ”

“ And just as we advance from infancy to childhood, from childhood to youth, from youth to puberty, from puberty to manhood, from manhood to maturity, from maturity to reasoning, from reasoning to judgment, from judgment to wisdom, so humanity has gone step by step, through many thousands of centuries perhaps, slowly improving in intelligence, accumulating experience. ”

“ They are in detail as imperceptible, as secret, as elusive as the physical changes which pass upon the face of the body. From day to day there is no difference; but days make years, and years change youth to maturity, maturity to decay. ”

“ As this story has shown, Youth, if adults will only admit that it has any brains at all, will stand out, today, in a most promising light. Philosophically, Youth is Wisdom in formation, and with many thoughts startling to adult minds; and, industrially, this vast World’s coming stability is now, today, in its hands; growing slowly, as a blossom grows from its bud. ”

“ This classification, here roughly indicated and capable of further expansion, will be found in harmony with the 324 results of detailed analysis aided by development. Whether we trace mental progression through the grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind, or through the stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the advance, alike in cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the presentative to the more and more remotely representative. ”

“ Supposing that my method is indeed that of nature itself, and that I have made no mistakes in applying it, I have now conducted my pupil through the region of sensations to the boundaries of childish reason. The first step beyond should be that of a man. But before beginning this new career, let us for a moment cast our eyes over what we have just traversed. Every age and station in life has a perfection, a maturity, all its own. We often hear of a full-grown man; in contemplating a full-grown child we shall find more novelty, and perhaps no less pleasure. ”

“ It indicates that the stages of mental growth anticipating adolescence form a separate and formative type of psychological study; that a knowledge of the changes which then take place is as vital a matter of human concern as can well be imagined; and that the shaping of interest, which then first buds, remains the supreme question of educational practice. Thus both for education and for psychology, adolescence has a directive importance. ”

“ The first five years of growth, the infantile period, is of enormous importance for later development. In this phase the whole personality takes the shape and develops the characteristics that will distinguish it from that time on. ”

“ Youth fleets away, if not happily, at least tranquilly, while thus employed; and maturity glides into age, and age drops into the grave, scarcely conscious of the gradations of each, owing to the mind having been filled with a continuous train of thought, engendered by study. ”

“ The normal growth of the body, the special development of different portions thereof concerned with adolescence, the variations from such normal development and their aberrations in disease and crime, the great rôle that periodicity plays in human growth—these constitute the physical basis which conditions through and through the nature of mental growth, as well as determines the spirit of educational progressions. ”

“ It takes in not so much the reality of Progress as its accompaniments—not so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen during the growth of the child into the man, or the savage into the philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number of facts known and laws understood: whereas the actual progress consists in those internal modifications of which this increased knowledge is the expression. ”

“ According to the theory of the culture epochs, the child, in its growth from infancy to maturity, is an epitome of the world's history and growth in a profoundly significant sense for the purpose of education. ”

“ At the conclusion of the elementary school, at the age of 14, the boys and girls are still children; they are developing, not developed, in either body or mind. They have not yet reached, in the main, the period of rapid acceleration of physical growth, intellectual expansion, or moral development ”

“ The crowning application of these several precepts and practices is to those special phases of growth which find their joint issue in adolescence. Here more than anywhere else must the natural sequence of evolution determine the variety of occupation that shall prepare for the adult life ”

“ Part 24 Generation is the initial participation, mediated by warm substance, in the nutritive soul, and life is the maintenance of this participation. Youth is the period of the growth of the primary organ of refrigeration, old age of its decay, while the intervening time is the prime of life. ”

“ We know now that they are stages in a growth, and in a growth not determined by an accidental environment only, but by an original purpose, a purpose to be realized in the history of the human race as a whole. ”

“ Again, no biography, and especially no autobiography, should henceforth be complete if it does not describe this period of transformation so all-determining for future life to which it alone can often give the key. Rightly to draw the lessons of this age not only saves us from waste ineffable of this rich but crude area of experience, but makes maturity saner and more complete. ”

“ The swift change from the vacuity of the infant mind to the intellectual power of the adult in the "fraction of a century" is not the creation of something but its manifestation—the coming through into visible expression of that which already exists. ”

“ The growth resulting was involuntary. With the growth came new impulses, new activities, and new growth. It is the plan, in God’s kindergarten. Brother, if we would grow, let us not be afraid of play! ”

“ Immaturity, maturity—the difference is only of degree; the child is father to the man; the psychology we trace in child life is fundamentally the same that obtains when the individual achieves that self-control and balance, that steadiness of aim, that harmonious union of bodily and mental powers which characterize maturity. Until we understand this merging and blending of experiences that make up a life history, we may regard as trivial the fleeting events and memories of childhood which the psychologist knows are significant and far-reaching. ”

“ The reason they thought to be that the interests of age have contracted to about the same scope as those of childhood before it has expanded into maturity. The skein of life is drawn together to a point at the two ends and spread out in the middle. ”

“ In late adolescence contrasted with earlier life there is more variation in growth, much greater liability to retrogression, and increased susceptibility to outside influences, unfavourable surroundings, and conditions more readily causing arrest of growth and preventing perfect maturity. ”

“ The old education through mental impression is giving way before the new education through physical, mental and spiritual expression. Expression is the essence of growth; and since the school is to foster child growth it must place child expression in a place of paramount importance. ”

“ My working hours are longer and as I review my work I find it good: that is a sign of maturity: maturity is the seal I strive for and yet as I work I fear a loss of spirit: maturity is seldom daring and to be daring is to open doors: maturity, then, is balance: is it also the decorum people accuse me of? ”

“ The pupil’s progress is often conceived as a uniform steady advance undifferentiated by change of type or alteration in pace; for example, a boy may be conceived as starting Latin at ten years of age and by a uniform progression steadily developing into a classical scholar at the age of eighteen or twenty. I hold that this conception of education is based upon a false psychology of the process of mental development which has gravely hindered the effectiveness of our methods. Life is essentially periodic. ”

“ If the first embody the leading generalisations of the science of mental growth, the last are the chief canons of the art of fostering mental growth. For manifestly, if the steps in our curriculum are so arranged that they can be successively ascended by the pupil himself with little or no help, they must correspond with the stages of evolution in his faculties ”

“ I thought you conceived of education as growing-up.”
Growing up, yes—out of the helplessness, the fear, the misery of childhood, which come only from weakness and ignorance: growing up into knowledge and power. ”

“ Humanity is now experiencing the commotions invariably associated with the most turbulent stage of its evolution, the stage of adolescence, when the impetuosity of youth and its vehemence reach their climax, and must gradually be superseded by the calmness, the wisdom, and the maturity that characterize the stage of manhood. ”

“ It must be the general conviction that the new instincts, the new feelings, the new thoughts, the new ideas, which mothers and fathers pass on into the flesh and blood of their children, will transform existence. ”

“ The generation which was from fifteen to twenty years of age, at the brilliant but fleeting epoch of which I am speaking, is now between fifty-five and sixty. It will be asked whether this generation has realised the unbounded hopes which the ardent spirit of our great preceptor had conceived. ”

“ My own life work, such as it is, as a genetic psychologist was devoted for years to the study of infancy and childhood, then to the phenomena of youth, later to adulthood and the stage of sex maturity. To complete a long-cherished program I have now finally tried, aided by the first-hand knowledge that advancing years have brought, to understand better the two last and closing stages of human life. ”

“ These facts relating to growth are of fundamental importance for a correct interpretation of the oft-discussed phenomena of early arrest of growth. We have seen that among members of the same race a prolonged period of growth goes hand in hand with unfavorable development, while an abbreviated period of growth results in larger dimensions of all physical measurements, and in a superiority of mental activity. ”

“ As physical maturity is marked by the ability to produce offspring, so mental maturity is marked by the ability to train those offspring. The subject which involves all other subjects, and therefore the subject in which education should culminate, is the Theory and Practice of Education. ”

“ The period of adolescence here assumes the prominence that childhood has in the psychological study preparatory to teaching in lower schools. This is the period of beginnings, the beginning of a more ambitious and generous life, a life having the future wrapped up in it; a transition period, of mental storm and stress, in which egoism gives way to altruism, romance has charm, and the social, moral, and religious feelings bud and bloom. ”

“ Great importance attaches, therefore, from the point of view of mental efficiency and stability in adult life, to the influences which control the development of the conative trends during childhood and adolescence. ”

“ BURGE-LUBIN. You call it a compliment to class us as grown-up children.
CONFUCIUS. Not grown-up children, children at fifty, sixty, seventy. Your maturity is so late that you never attain to it. You have to be governed by races which are mature at forty. That means that you are potentially the most highly developed race on earth, and would be actually the greatest if you could live long enough to attain to maturity. ”

“ In a little while there are eyes full of interest and clutching hands full of purpose, smiles and frowns, the babbling beginning of expression and affections and aversions. Before the first year is out there is obedience and rebellion, choice and self-control, speech has commenced, and the struggle of the newcomer to stand on his feet in this world of men. ”

“ It is to the effect that the rising generation, in its reaction upon life and the splendid world which has been handed down to it, shows a distinct softening of human fibre, spiritual, intellectual, and physical, in comparison with the generations which have preceded it. ”