Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene

by G. Stanley Hall

Student life and organizations. Student life is perhaps the best of all fields, unworked though it is, for studying the natural history of adolescence. Its modern record is over eight hundred years old and it is marked with the signatures of every age, yet has essential features that do not vary. Cloister and garrison rules have never been enforced even in the hospice, bursa, inn, "house," "hall," or dormitory, and in loco parentis [In place of a parent] practises are impossible, especially with large numbers. The very word "school" means leisure, and in a world of toil and moil suggests paradise. Some have urged that élite youth, exempt from the struggle to live and left to the freedom of their own inclinations, might serve as a biological and ethnic compass to point out the goal of human destiny. But the spontaneous expressions of this best age and condition of life, with no other occupation than their own development, have shown reversions as often as progress. The rupture of home ties stimulates every wider vicarious expression of the social instinct. Each taste and trait can find congenial companionship in others and thus be stimulated to more intensity and self-consciousness. Very much that has been hitherto repressed in the adolescent soul is now reënforced by association and may become excessive and even aggressive. While many of the race-correlates of childhood are lost, those of this stage are more accessible in savage and sub-savage life. Freedom is the native air and vital breath of student life. The sense of personal liberty is absolutely indispensable for moral maturity; and just as truth can not be found without the possibility of error, so the posse non peccare [Ability not to sin] precedes the non posse peccare, [Inability to sin] and professors must make abroad application of the rule abusus non tollit usum [Abuse does not do away with use]. The student must have much freedom to be lazy, make his own minor morals, vent his disrespect for what he can see no use in, be among strangers to act himself out and form a personality of his own, be baptized with the revolutionary and skeptical spirit, and go to extremes at the age when excesses teach wisdom with amazing rapidity, if he is to become a true knight of the spirit and his own master. Ziegler[29] frankly told German students that about one-tenth of them would be morally lost in this process, but insisted that on the whole more good was done than by restraint; for, he said, "youth is now in the stage of Schiller's bell when it was molten metal."

Of all safeguards I believe a rightly cultivated sense of honor is the most effective at this age. Sadly as the written code of student honor in all lands needs revision, and partial, freaky, and utterly perverted, tainted and cowardly as it often is, it really means what Kant expressed in the sublime precept, "Thou canst because thou oughtest." Fichte said that Faulheit, Feigheit, and Falschheit [Laziness, cowardice, falsehood] were the three dishonorable things for students. If they would study the history and enter into the spirit of their own fraternities, they would often have keener and broader ideas of honor to which they are happily so sensitive. If professors made it always a point of honor to confess and never to conceal the limitation of their knowledge, would scorn all pretense of it, place credit for originality frankly where it belongs, teach no creeds they do not profoundly believe, or topics in which they are not interested, and withhold nothing from those who want the truth, they could from this vantage with more effect bring students to feel that the laziness that, while outwardly conforming, does no real inner work; that getting a diploma, as a professor lately said, an average student could do, on one hour's study a day; living beyond one's means, and thus imposing a hardship on parents greater than the talent of the son justifies; accepting stipends not needed, especially to the deprivation of those more needy; using dishonest ways of securing rank in studies or positions on teams, or social standing, are, one and all, not only ungentlemanly but cowardly and mean, and the axe would be laid at the root of the tree. Honor should impel students to go nowhere where they conceal their college, their fraternity, or even their name; to keep themselves immaculate from all contact with that class of women which, Ziegler states, brought twenty-five per cent of the students of the University of Berlin in a single year to physicians; to remember that other's sisters are as cherished as their own; to avoid those sins against confiding innocence which cry for vengeance, as did Valentine against Faust, and which strengthen the hate of social classes and make mothers and sisters seem tedious because low ideas of womanhood have been implanted, and which give a taste for mucky authors that reek with suggestiveness; and to avoid the waste of nerve substance and nerve weakness in ways which Ibsen and Tolstoi have described. These things are the darkest blot on the honor of youth.

Associations for youth, devised or guided by adults. Here we enter a very different realm. Forbush[30] undertakes an analysis of many such clubs which he divides according to their purpose into nine chief classes: physical training, handicraft, literary, social, civic and patriotic, science-study, hero-love, ethical, religious. These he classifies as to age of the boys, his purview generally ending at seventeen; discusses and tabulates the most favorable number, the instincts chiefly utilized, the kinds of education gained in each and its percentage of interest, and the qualities developed. He commends Riis's mode of pulling the safety-valve of a rather dangerous boy-gang by becoming an adult honorary member, and interpreting the impulsions of this age in the direction of adventure instead of in that of mischief. He reminds us that nearly one-third of the inhabitants of America are adolescents, that 3,000,000 are boys between twelve and sixteen, "that the do-called heathen people are, whatever their age, all in the adolescent stage of life."

A few American societies of this class we may briefly characterize as follows:

(a) Typical of a large class of local juvenile clubs is the "Captains of Ten," originally for boys of from eight to fourteen, and with a later graduate squad of those over fifteen. The "Ten" are the fingers; and whittling, scrap-book making, mat-weaving, etc., are taught. The motto is, "The hand of the diligent shall bear rule"; its watchword is "Loyalty"; and the prime objects are "to promote a spirit of loyalty to Christ among the boys of the club," and to learn about and work for Christ's kingdom. The members wear a silver badge; have an annual photograph; elect their leaders; vote their money to missions (on which topic they hold meetings); act Bible stories in costume; hear stories and see scientific experiments; enact a Chinese school; write articles for the children's department of religious journals; develop comradeship, and "have a good time."

(b) The Agassiz Association, founded in 1875 "to encourage personal work in natural science," now numbers some 25,000 members, with chapters distributed all over the country, and was said by the late Professor Hyatt to include "the largest number of persons ever bound together for the purpose of mutual help in the study of nature." It furnishes practical courses of study in the sciences; has local chapters in thousands of towns and cities in this and other countries; publishes a monthly organ, The Swiss Cross, to facilitate correspondence and exchange of specimens; has a small endowment, a badge, is incorporated, and is animated by a spirit akin to that of University Extension; and, although not exclusively for young people, is chiefly sustained by them.

(c) The Catholic Total Abstinence Union is a strong, well-organized, and widely extended society, mostly composed of young men. The pledge required of all members explains its object: "I promise with the Divine assistance and in honor of the Sacred Thirst and the Agony of our Saviour, to abstain from all intoxicating drinks and to prevent as much as possible by advice and example the sin of intemperance in others and to discountenance the drinking customs of society." A general convention of the Union has been held annually since 1877.

(d) The Princely Knights of Character Castle is an organization founded in 1895 for boys from twelve to eighteen to "inculcate, disseminate, and practise the principles of heroism—endurance—love, purity, and patriotism." The central incorporated castle grants charters to local castles, directs the ritual and secret work. Its officers are supreme prince, patriarch, scribes, treasurer, director, with captain of the guard, watchman, porter, keeper of the dungeon, musician, herald, and favorite son. The degrees of the secret work are shepherd lad, captive, viceroy, brother, son, prince, knight, and royal knight. There are jewels, regalia, paraphernalia, and initiations. The pledge for the first degree is, "I hereby promise and pledge that I will abstain from the use of intoxicating liquor in any form as a beverage; that I will not use profane or improper language; that I will discourage the use of tobacco in any form; that I will strive to live pure in body and mind; that I will obey all rules and regulations of the order and not reveal any of the secrets in any way." There are benefits, reliefs, passwords, a list of offenses and penalties.

(e) Some 35,000 Bands of Mercy are now organized under the direction of the American Humane Education Society. The object of the organization is to cultivate kindness to animals and sympathy with the poor and oppressed. The prevention of cruelty in driving, cattle transportation, humane methods of killing, care for the sick and abandoned or overworked animals, are the themes of most of its voluminous literature. It has badges, hymnbooks, cards, and certificates of membership, and a motto, "Kindness, Justice, and Mercy to All." Its pledge is, "I will try to be kind to all harmless living creatures, and try to protect them from cruel usage," and is intended to include human as well as dumb creatures. The founder and secretary, with great and commendable energy, has instituted prize contests for speaking on humane subjects in schools, and has printed and circulated prize stories; since the incorporation of the society in 1868, he has been indefatigable in collecting funds, speaking before schools and colleges, and prints fifty to sixty thousand copies of the monthly organ. In addition to its mission of sentiment, and to make it more effective, this organization clearly needs to make more provision for the intellectual element by well-selected or constructed courses, or at least references on the life, history, habits, and instincts of animals, and it also needs more recognition that modern charity is a science as well as a virtue.

(f) The Coming Men of America, although organized only in 1894, now claims to be the greatest chartered secret society for boys and young men in the country. It began two years earlier in a lodge started by a nineteen-year-old boy in Chicago in imitation of such ideas of Masons, Odd-Fellows, etc., as its founder could get from his older brother, and its meetings were first held in a basement. On this basis older heads aided in its development, so that it is a good example of the boy-imitative helped out by parents. The organization is now represented in every State and Territory, and boys travel on its badge. There is an official organ, The Star, a badge, sign, and a secret sign language called "bestography." Its secret ritual work is highly praised. Its membership is limited to white boys under twenty-one.