CHAPTER III
FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDREN
I Child Growth—A Primary Factor in Child Life
In the first place children have certain needs because in common with many other living creatures they develop through spontaneous, self-expressive activity. The growth of children is a growth in body, in mind and in soul.
During the first six years of life the bodies of children grow rapidly, and during these years we wisely make no attempt to train their minds. From six to twelve or thirteen body growth is slower, the mind is having its turn at development, and during these years the children start to school.
Then, at twelve or thirteen or fourteen, differing with different races and different individuals, all normal children enter the fairyland of adolescence. Life takes on new meanings, human relationships are closer, great currents of feeling run deep and strong through the child’s being, because there is coming into his life one of the most wonderful of human experiences—the dawning of sex consciousness.
This period of sex awakening produces a profound change in the lives of boys, but it works an even greater transformation in the lives of girls. For both sexes it is a time of rapid physical growth and of severe mental and spiritual strain. It is a time when the energies of the body are so entirely devoted to the development of sex functions that great mental stress should above all things be avoided, yet it is at this very time—think of it!—when we send our boys and girls to high school, and force them to spend a great part of their waking hours in severe intellectual efforts.