Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene

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.

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

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YOUTH

ITS EDUCATION, REGIMEN, AND HYGIENE

PREFACE