Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene Part 10

The reading pa.s.sion may rage with great intensity when the soul takes its first long flight in the world of books, and ninety per cent of all Conradi's cases showed it. Of these, thirty-two per cent read to have the feelings stirred and the desire of knowledge was a far less frequent motive. Some read to pa.s.s idle time, others to appear learned or to acquire a style or a vocabulary. Romance led. Some specialized, and with some the appet.i.te was omnivorous. Some preferred books about or addressed to children, some fairy tales, and some sought only those for adults. The night is often invaded and some become "perfectly wild" over exciting adventures or the dangers and hardships of true lovers, laughing and crying as the story turns from grave to gay, and a few read several books a week. Some were forbidden and read by stealth alone, or with books hidden in their desks or under school books. Some few live thus for years in an atmosphere highly charged with romance, and burn out their fires wickedly early with a sudden and extreme expansiveness that makes life about them uninteresting and unreal, and that reacts to commonplace later. Conradi prints some two or three hundred favorite books and authors of early and of later adolescence. The natural reading of early youth is not cla.s.sic nor blighted by compulsion or uniformity for all. This age seeks to express originality and personality in individual choices and tastes.

Suggestive and briefly descriptive lists of best books and authors by authorities in different fields on which some time is spent in making selection, talks about books, pooling knowledge of them, with no course of reading even advised and much less prescribed, is the best guidance for developing the habit of rapid cursory reading. Others before professor De Long, of Colorado, have held that the power of reading a page in moment, as a mathematician sums up a column of figures and as the artist Dore was able to read a book by turning the leaves, can be attained by training and practise. School pressure should not suppress this instinct of omnivorous reading, which at this age sometimes prompts the resolve to read encyclopedias, and even libraries, or to sample everything to be found in books at home. Along with, but never suppressing, it there should be some stated reading, but this should lay down only kinds of reading like the four emphasized in the last chapter or offer a goodly number of large alternative groups of books and authors, like the five of the Leland Stanford University, and permit wide liberty of choice to both teacher and pupil. Few triumphs of the uniformitarians, who sacrifice individual needs to mechanical convenience in dealing with youth in ma.s.ses, have been so sad as marking off and standardizing a definite quantum of requirements here. Instead of irrigating a wide field, the well-springs of literary interest are forced to cut a deep canyon and leave wide desert plains of ignorance on either side. Besides imitation, which reads what others do, is the desire to read something no one else does, and this is a palladium of individuality. Bad as is the principle, the selections are worse, including the saccharinity ineffable of Tennyson's Princess (a strange expression of the progressive feminization of the high school and yet satirizing the scholastic aspiration of girls) which the virile boy abhors, books about books which are two removes from life, and ponderous Latinity authors which for the Saxon boy suggest David fighting in Saul's armor, and which warp and pervert the nascent sentence-sense on a foreign model. Worst of all, the prime moral purpose of youthful reading is ignored in choices based on form and style; and a growing profusion of notes that distract from content to language, the study of which belongs in the college if not in the university, develops the tendencies of criticism before the higher powers of sympathetic appreciation have done their work.[18]

(B) Other new mental powers and apt.i.tudes are as yet too little studied. Very slight are the observations so far made, of children's historic, which is so clearly akin to literary, interest and capacity. With regard to this and several other subjects in the curriculum we are in the state of Watts when he gazed at the tea-kettle and began to dream of the steam-engine; we are just recognizing a new power and method destined to reconstruct and increase the efficiency of education, but only after a long and toilsome period of limited successes.

Mrs. Barnes[19], told a story without date, place, name, or moral and compared the questions which 1,250 children would like to have answered about it. She found that the interest of girls in persons, or the number who asked the question "who," culminated at twelve, when it coincided with that of boys, but that the latter continued to rise to fifteen. The interest to know "place where" events occurred culminated at eleven with girls, and at fifteen, and at a far higher point, with boys. The questions "how" and "why," calling for the method and reason, both culminated at twelve for girls and fifteen for boys, but were more infrequent and showed less age differences than the preceding question. Interest in the results of the action was most p.r.o.nounced of all, culminating at twelve in girls and fifteen in boys. Details and time excited far less interest, the former jointly culminating for both s.e.xes at eleven. Interest in the truth of the narrative was extremely slight, although it became manifest at fifteen, and was growing at sixteen. The number of inferences drawn steadily increased with age, although the increase was very slight after thirteen. Both legitimate and critical inferences increased after eleven, while imaginative inferences at that age had nearly reached their maximum. Interest in names was very strong throughout, as in primitive people. Boys were more curious concerning "who," "where," and "how"; girls as to "why." In general, the historic curiosity of boys was greater than that of girls, and culminated later. The inferences drawn from an imagined finding of a log-house, boat, and arrows on a lonely island indicate that the power of inference, both legitimate and imaginative, develops strongly at twelve and thirteen, after which doubt and the critical faculties are apparent; which coincides with Mr. M.A. Tucker's conclusion, that doubt develops at thirteen and that personal inference diminishes about that age.

The children were given two accounts of the fall of Fort Sumter, one in the terms of a school history and the other a despatch of equal length from Major Anderson, and asked which was best, should be kept, and why. Choice of the narrative steadily declined after eleven and that of the despatch increased, the former reaching its lowest, the latter its highest, point at fifteen, indicating a preference for the first-hand record. The number of those whose choice was affected by style showed no great change, from twelve to fifteen, but rose very rapidly for the nest two years. Those who chose the despatch because it was true, signed, etc., increased rapidly in girls and boys throughout the teens, and the preference for the telegram as a more direct source increased very rapidly from thirteen to seventeen.

Other studies of this kind led Mrs. Barnes to conclude that children remembered items by groups; that whole groups were often omitted; that those containing most action were best remembered; that what is remembered is remembered with great accuracy; that generalities are often made more specific; that the number of details a child carries away from a connected narrative is not much above fifty, so that their numbers should be limited; and from it all was inferred the necessity of accuracy, of ma.s.sing details about central characters or incidents, letting action dominate, omitting all that is aside from the main line of the story, of bringing out cause and effect and dramatizing where possible.

Miss Patterson[20] collated the answers of 2,237 children to the question "What does 1895 mean?" The blanks "Don't know" decreased very rapidly from six to eight, and thereafter maintained a slight but constant percentage. Those who expanded the phase a little without intelligence were most numerous from eight to ten, while the proportion who gave a correct explanation rose quite steadily for both s.e.xes and culminated at fourteen for girls and fifteen for boys. The latter only indicates the pupils of real historic knowledge. The writer concludes that "the sense of historical time is altogether lacking with children of seven, and may be described as slight up to the age of twelve." History, it is thought, should be introduced early with no difference between boys and girls, but "up to the age of twelve or thirteen it should be presented in a series of striking biographies and events, appearing if possible in contemporary ballads and chronicles, and ill.u.s.trated by maps, chronological charts, and as richly as possible by pictures of contemporary objects, buildings, and people." At the age of fourteen or fifteen, another sort of work should appear. Original sources should still be used, but they should ill.u.s.trate not "the picture of human society moving before us in a long panorama, but should give us the opportunity to study the organization, thought, feeling, of a time as seen in its concrete embodiments, its doc.u.ments, monuments, men, and books." The statesmen, thinkers, poets, should now exceed explorers and fighters; reflection and interpretation, discrimination of the true from the false, comparison, etc., are now first in order; while later yet, perhaps in college, should come severer methods and special monographic study.

Studies of mentality, so well advanced for infants and so well begun for lower grades, are still very meager for adolescent stages so far as they bear on growth in the power to deal with arithmetic, drawing and pictures, puzzles, superst.i.tions, collections, attention, reason, etc. Enough has been done to show that with authority to collect data on plans and by methods that can now be operated and with aid which should now be appropriated by school boards and teachers' a.s.sociations, incalculable pedagogic economy could be secured and the scientific and professional character of teaching every topic in upper grammar and high school and even in the early college grades be greatly enhanced. To enter upon this laborious task in every branch of study is perhaps our chief present need and duty to our youth in school, although individual studies like that of Binet[21] belong elsewhere.

(C) The studies of memory up the grades show characteristic adolescent changes, and some of these results are directly usable in school.

Bolton[22] tested the power of 1,500 children to remember and write dictated digits, and found, of course, increasing accuracy with the older pupils. He also found that the memory span increased with age rather than with the growth of intelligence as determined by grade. The pupils depended largely upon visualisation, and this and concentrated attention suggested that growth of memory did not necessarily accompany intellectual advancement. Girls generally surpa.s.sed boys, and as with clicks too rapid to be counted, it was found that when the pupils reached the limits of their span, the number of digits was overestimated. The power of concentrated and prolonged attention was tested. The probability of error for the larger number of digits, 7 and 8, decreased in a marked way with the development of p.u.b.escence, at least up to fourteen years, with the suggestion of a slight rise again at fifteen.

In comprehensive tests of the ability of Chicago children to remember figures seen, heard, or repeated by them, it was found that, from seven to nine, auditory were slightly better remembered than visual impressions. From that age the latter steadily increased over the former. After thirteen, auditory memory increased but little, and was already about ten per cent behind visual, which continued to increase at least till seventeen. Audiovisual memory was better than either alone, and the span of even this was improved when articulatory memory was added. When the tests were made upon pupils of the same age in different grades it was found in Chicago that memory power, whether tested by sight, hearing, or articulation, was best in those pupils whose school standing was highest, and least where standing was lowest.

When a series of digits was immediately repeated orally and a record made, it was found[23] that while from the age of eight to twelve the memory span increased only eight points, from fourteen to eighteen it increased thirteen points. The number of correct reproductions of numbers of seven places increased during the teens, although this cla.s.s of children remain about one digit behind normal children of corresponding age. In general, though not without exceptions, it was found that intelligence grew with memory span, although the former is far more inferior to that of the normal child than the latter, and also that weakness of this kind of memory is not an especially prominent factor of weak-mindedness.

Shaw[24] tested memory in 700 school children by dividing a story of 324 words into 152 phrases, having it read and immediately reproduced by them, and selecting alternate grades from the third grammar to the end of the high school, with a few college students. The maximum power of this kind of memory was attained by boys in the high school period. Girls remembered forty-three per cent in the seventh grade, and in the high school forty-seven per cent. The increase by two-year periods was most rapid between the third and fifth grades. Four terms were remembered on the average by at least ninety per cent of the pupils, 41 by fifty per cent, and 130 by ten per cent. The story written out in the terms remembered by each percentage from ten to ninety affords a most interesting picture of the growth of memory, and even its errors of omission, insertion, subst.i.tution and displacement. "The growth of memory is more rapid in the case of girls than boys, and the figures suggest a coincidence with the general law, that the rapid development incident to p.u.b.erty occurs earlier in girls than in boys."

In a careful study of children's memory, Kemsies[25] concludes that the quality of memory improves with age more rapidly than the quant.i.ty.

W.G. Monroe tested 275 boys and 293 girls, well distributed, from seven to seventeen years of age, and found a marked rise for both visual and auditory memory at fifteen for both s.e.xes. For both s.e.xes, also, auditory memory was best at sixteen and visual at fifteen.

When accuracy in remembering the length of tone was used as a test, it was found there was loss from six to seven and gain from seven to eight for both s.e.xes. From eight to nine girls lost rapidly for one and gained rapidly for the following year, while boys were nearly stationary till ten, after which both s.e.xes gained to their maximum at fourteen years of age and declined for the two subsequent years, both gaining power from sixteen to seventeen, but neither attaining the accuracy they had at fourteen.[26]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Girls and Boys at Memory Reproductions compared.]

Netschajeff[27] subjected 637 school children, well distributed between the ages of nine and eighteen, to the following tests. Twelve very distinct objects were shown them, each for two seconds, which must them be immediately written down. Twelve very distinct noises were made out of sight; numbers of two figures each were read; three-syllable words, which were names of familiar objects, objects that suggested noises, words designating touch, temperature, and muscle sensations, words describing states of feeling, and names of abstract ideas also were given them. The above eight series of twelve each were all reproduced in writing, and showed that each kind of memory here tested increased with age, with some slight tendency to decline at or just before p.u.b.erty, then to rise and to slightly decline after the sixteenth or seventeenth year. Memory for objects showed the greatest amount of increase during the year studied, and works for feeling next, although at all ages the latter was considerably below the former. Boys showed stronger memory for real impressions, and girls excelled for numbers and words. The difference of these two kinds of memory was less with girls than with boys. The greatest difference between the s.e.xes lay between eleven and fourteen years. This seems, at eighteen or nineteen, to be slightly increased. "This is especially great at the age of p.u.b.erty." Children from nine to eleven have but slight power of reproducing emotions, but this increases in the next few years very rapidly, as does that of the abstract words. Girls from nine to eleven deal better with words than with objects; boys slightly excel with objects. Illusions in reproducing words which mistake sense, sound, and rhythm, which is not infrequent with younger children, decline with age especially at p.u.b.erty. Up to this period girls are most subject to these illusions, and afterward boys. The preceding tables, in which the ordinates represent the number of correct reproductions and the abscissas the age, are interesting.

Lobsien made tests similar to those of Netschajeff,[28] with modifications for greater accuracy, upon 238 boys and 224 girls from nine to fourteen and a half years of age. The preceding tables show the development of the various kinds of memory for boys and girls:

BOYS.

Age. Objects Noises Number Visual Acoustic Touch Feeling Sounds Concepts Concepts Concepts Concepts 13-14-1/2 92.56 71.89 80.67 73.00 74.78 75.33 75.44 40.56 12-13 76.45 57.38 72.33 69.67 64.89 73.67 58.67 37.87 11-12 89.78 57.19 70.22 59.67 63.00 73.33 55.33 19.99 10-11 87.12 55.33 49.33 55.11 48.44 57.11 38.33 12.44 9-10 64.00 53.33 49.09 46.58 43.78 43.67 27.22 7.22

Normal 82.2 59.02 64.8 60.6 59.4 64.2 31.2 24.0 value.

GIRLS.

13-14-1/2 99.56 82.67 87.22 96.67 71.44 82.00 70.22 41.33 12-13 92.89 75.56 74.89 77.22 63.11 74.67 67.33 34.89 11-12 94.00 56.00 73.56 72.78 72.11 70.89 73.33 28.22 10-11 75.78 46.22 62.44 56.22 54.78 58.78 43.22 10.44 9-10 89.33 46.22 50.44 54.22 38.22 51.11 32.89 6.89

Normal 91.4 62.2 71.8 71.0 60.2 67.2 59.4 23.8 value.

The table for boys shows in the fourteenth year a marked increase of memory for objects, noises, and feelings, especially as compared with the marked relative decline the preceding year, when there was a decided increase in visual concepts and senseless sounds. The twelfth year shows the greatest increase in number memory, acoustic impressions, touch, and feeling. The tenth and eleventh years show marked increase of memory for objects and their names. Thus the increase in the strength of memory is by no means the same year by year, but progress focuses on some forms and others are neglected. Hence each type of memory shows an almost regular increase and decrease in relative strength.

The table for girls shown marked increase of all memory forms about the twelfth year. This relative increase is exceeded only in the fourteenth year for visual concepts. The thirteenth year shows the greatest increase for sounds and a remarkable regression for objects in pa.s.sing from the lowest to the next grade above.

In the accuracy of reproducing the order of impressions, girls much exceeded boys at all ages. For seen object, their accuracy was twice that of boys, the boys excelling in order only in number. In general, ability to reproduce a series of impressions increases and decreases with the power to reproduce in any order, but by no means in direct proportion to it. The effect of the last member in a series by a purely mechanical reproduction is best in boys. The range and energy of reproduction is far higher than ordered sequence. In general girls slightly exceed boys in recalling numbers, touch concepts, and sounds, and largely exceed in recalling feeling concepts, real things and visual concept.

Colegrove[29] tabulated returns from the early memories of 1,658 correspondents with 6,069 memories, from which he reached the conclusions, represented in the following curves, for the earliest three memories of white males and females.

In the cuts on the following page, the heavy line represents the first memory, the broken the second, and the dotted the third. Age at the time of reporting is represented in distance to the right, and the age of the person at the time of the occurrence remembered is represented by the distance upward. "There is a rise in all the curves at adolescence. This shows that, from the age of twelve to fifteen, boys do not recall so early memories as they do both before and after this period." This Colegrove ascribes to the fact that the present seems so large and rich. At any rate, "the earliest memories of boys at the age of fourteen average almost four years." His curves for girls show that the age of all the first three memories which they are able to recall is higher at fourteen than at any period before or after; that at seven and eight the average age of the first things recalled is nearly a year earlier than it is at fourteen. This means that at p.u.b.erty there is a marked and characteristic obliteration of infantile memories which lapse to oblivion with augmented absorption in the present.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Unt.i.tled Graph.]

It was found that males have the greatest number of memories for protracted or repeated occurrences, for people, and clothing, topographical and logical matters; that females have better memories for novel occurrences or single impressions. Already at ten and eleven motor memories begin to decrease for females and increase for males. At fourteen and fifteen, motor memories nearly culminate for males, but still further decline for females. The former show a marked decrease in memory for relatives and playmates and an increase for other persons. Sickness and accidents to self are remembered less by males and better by females, as are memories of fears. At eighteen and nineteen there is a marked and continued increase in the visual memories of each s.e.x and the auditory memory of females. Memory for the activity of others increases for both, but far more strongly for males. Colegrove concludes from his data that "the period of adolescence is one of great psychical awaking. A wide range of memories is found at this time. From the fourteenth year with girls and the fifteenth with boys the auditory memories are strongly developed. At the dawn of adolescence the motor memory of voice nearly culminates, and they have fewer memories of sickness and accidents to self. During this time the memory of other persons and the activity of others is emphasized in case of both boys and girls. In general, at this period the special sensory memories are numerous, and it is the golden age for motor memories. Now, too, the memories of high ideals, self-sacrifice, and self-forgetfulness are cherished. Wider interests than self and immediate friends become the objects of reflection and recollection."

After twenty there is marked change in the memory content. The male acquires more and the female less visual and auditory memories. The memories of the female are more logical, and topographical features increase. Memories of sickness and accidents to self decrease with the males and increase with the females, while in the case of both there is relative decline in the memories of sickness and accident to others. From all this it would appear that different memories culminate at different periods, and bear immediate relation to the whole mental life of the period. While perhaps some of the finer a.n.a.lyses of Colegrove may invite further confirmation, his main results given above are not only suggestive, but rendered very plausible by his evidence.

Statistics based upon replies to the question as to whether pleasant or unpleasant experiences were best remembered, show that the former increase at eleven, rise rapidly at fourteen, and culminate at eighteen for males, and that the curve of painful memories follows the same course, although for both there is a drop at fifteen. For females, the pleasant memories increase rapidly from eleven to thirteen, decline a little at fourteen, rise again at sixteen, and culminate at seventeen, and the painful memories follow nearly the same course, only with a slight drop at fifteen. Thus, up to twenty-two for males, there is a marked preponderance of pleasant over painful memories, although the two rise and fall together. After thirty, unpleasant memories are but little recalled. For the Indians and negroes in this census, unpleasant memories play a far more and often preponderating role suggesting persecution and sad experiences. Different elements of the total content of memory come to prominence at different ages. He also found that the best remembered years of life are sixteen to seventeen for males and fifteen for females, and that in general the adolescent period has more to do than any other in forming and furnishing the memory plexus, while the seventh and eighth year are most poorly remembered.

It is also known that many false memories insert themselves into the texture of remembered experiences. One dreams a friend is dead and thinks she is till she is met one day in the street; or dreams of a fire and inquires about it in the morning; dreams of a present and searches the house for it next day; delays breakfast for a friend, who arrived the night before in a dream, to come down to breakfast; a child hunts for a bushel of pennies dreamed of, etc. These phantoms falsify our memory most often, according to Dr. Colegrove, between sixteen and nineteen.

Mnemonic devices prompt children to change rings to keep appointments, tie knots in the handkerchief, put shoes on the dressing-table, hide garments, a.s.sociate faces with hoods, names with acts, things, or qualities they suggest; visualize, connect figures, letters with colors, etc. From a scrutiny of the original material, which I was kindly allowed to make, this appears to rise rapidly at p.u.b.erty.

[Footnote 1: See my Ideal School as Based on Child Study. Proceedings of the National Educational a.s.sociation, 1901, pp. 470-490.]

[Footnote 2: Charles P.G. Scott: The Number of Words in the English and Other Languages. Princeton University Bulletin, May, 1902, vol. 13, pp. 106-111.]

[Footnote 3: The Teaching of English. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 161-168.]

[Footnote 4: See my Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self. American Journal of Psychology, April, 1898, vol. 9, pp. 351-395.]

[Footnote 5: Sprachgeschichte und Sprachpsychologie, mit Rucksicht auf B. Delbruck's "Grundfragen der Sprachforschung." Leipzig, W.

Engelmann, 1901]

[Footnote 6: Latin in the High School. By Edward Conradi. Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1905, vol. 12, pp. 1-26.]

[Footnote 7: The Psychological and Pedagogical Aspect of Language.

Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1903, vol. 10, pp. 438-458.]

[Footnote 8: Children's Interest in Words. Pedagogical Seminary, September, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 274-295.]

[Footnote 9: Children's Interests in Words, Slang, Stories, etc.

Pedagogical Seminary, October, 1903, vol. 10, pp. 359-404.]

[Footnote 10: American Journal of Psychology, April, 1900, vol. 11, p. 345 et seq.]

[Footnote 11: American Journal of Psychology, January, 1895, vol. 6, pp. 585-592. See also vol. 10, p. 517 et seq.]

[Footnote 12: North American Review, November, 1885, vol. 141, pp. 431-435.]

[Footnote 13: Introduction to the Biglow Papers, series ii.]

[Footnote 14: Some Observations on Children's Reading. Proceedings of the National Educational a.s.sociation, 1897, pp. 1015-102l.]

[Footnote 15: Report on Child Reading. New York Report of State Superintendent, 1897, vol. 2, p. 979.]

[Footnote 16: Children's reading. North-Western Monthly, December, 1898, vol. 9, pp. 188-191, and January, 1899, vol. 9, pp. 229-233.]