G. Stanley Hall and Some of His Pupils

LIBRARY OF TEXAS TECHNOLOGICAL COLLEGE GIFT OF ASPECTS OF CHILD LIFE AND EDUCATION • BY G. STANLEY HALL AND SOME OF HIS PUPILS EDITED BY THEODATE L. SMITH, PH.D BOSTON, U.S.A. GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 1907 COPYRIGHT, 1907 BY G. STANLEY HALL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 57.5 Wht gtftcngum jgrcgg GINN & COMPANY . PRO PRIETORS . BOSTON • U.S.A. PREFACE The papers which constitute this volume have all been printed in my journals, most of them in the Pedagogical Seminary, but are here revised, condensed, or amplified, and provided with up-to-date bibliographies on each topic by Dr. rheodate L. Smith, for whose efficiency and careful work I jlesire to express my heartiest acknowledgments. Material jor several other volumes has been gathered and grouped, all of hem in the same general field, but each in a different part of t, and with a unity of its own. These may be published later, f the success of this volume warrants the undertaking. For nany years the special studies that have emanated from this lepartment of Clark University have been planned with refer- ;nce to bringing them into ultimate unity in such a way that fc'hen published in book form the relations between the differ- int parts of the wide and rapidly extending domain of child iJtudy might be exhibited in a systematic way, and their mani- iold applications, not hitherto apparent to the public, and often lot to the individual investigator, might be set forth. Such :i series as the above might have borne the collective title of * Chips from a Psycho-Genetic Laboratory." The papers of this volume have least unity of any in the :ontemplated series, but are upon topics of most popular and perhaps practical interest. The first paper, "The Contents of Children's Minds on entering School," appeared almost twenty-five years ago, and is often referred to as marking the beginning of child study in America. It was suggested by a somewhat similar test made some years earlier by Professor Lazarus upon a large group of children in Berlin. • • • 111 iv CHILD LIFE AND EDUCATION The Boston study was made possible by the generosity of Mrs. Pauline Agassiz Shaw, the founder of the kindergarten system of that city, and by the devoted labors of four of the best of her experts, headed by Miss S. E. Wiltse and Miss L. H. Symonds, who under my direction devoted months of careful and conscientious work to collecting the material. This paper has been republished several times in English, and translated in whole or in part into several foreign languages. As here presented, I have enlarged it by incorporating the results of all other similar tests of value that I know of up to date. As children's mental content differs much in different localities, it has often been suggested that some such survey of children just entering school should be undertaken in every community, in order that the teacher may know just what knowledge and ignorance can be assumed as a basis of teaching. This has sometimes been done in such a way as to secure these practical advantages to the teacher, but by methods not accurate enough to give scientific results. A recent official report shows that children who enter the schools of London late tend to surpass those who enter early, because the former, under the educational influences of the street, have acquired a number of facts and concepts which constitute apperception organs that enable them better to assimilate the material of instruction. - The article on " The Psychology of Daydreams " shows how the spontaneous imagination of children often gives us a picture of the purest natural internal growth of the soul. Experiences and tales are not only rehearsed and amplified and sometimes idealized, but images are grouped into new combinations; and when we consider the favorite themes of childish reverie, and the modifications to which facts are sub jected, my own conclusion from the data presented in the original paper, here condensed, is that to explain all these processes we must often go back of events in the individual PREFACE V life of the child and invoke the inherited results of ancestral experience, and that this is true not only for adolescents but for young children. Vaschide ^ well says in substance; " Crea tive imagination is by no means founded on memory or even sense. Indeed, its richness often seems inversely as these. The ordinary laws of association do not dominate here. Instead of explaining the unknown by the known, the child often reverses this process." Daydreams often seem the expression in semiconsciousness of the actual growth process of the cerebral elements, and this favors the suggestion that we sometimes have here the rehearsals of the experiences of our remote forebears. Archaic laws often rule even where the material digested is made up of the facts of individual life. The full demonstration of this interpretation, which is at vari ance with most current psychology, and, I think, with the view of the author of this paper, will be forthcoming elsewhere. All agree, however, that reverie, save in the few cases where it threatens to become morbid, is a natural function and should usually be allowed free course. <Curiosity and interest are themes of cardinal moment for both P^vgholQg3L..^"^d for pedagogy. The chapter here pre sented is a contribution to their natural history. Copious as is the recent literature upon these themes, they are still but imperfectly understood. After we have traced the stages of their development in the individual from infancy, and classi fied their various directions and the objects upon which they focus, there still remains the larger problem as to why they take on specific forms and are often so innately strong. To this question we can only here suggest the general answer that all their outcrops represent the ways in which the soul of the young strives to expand to the dimensions of that of the race, to know what the life of m.an inJhis wprldîs andjjieans, and where each person is to find his place and function in jl^ In 1 " Recherches experimentales sur 1'imagination creatrice chez 1'enfant," IV^ Congres international de Psychologic, p. 251, Paris, 1900. vi CHILD LIFE AND EDUCATION the child there is a sacredness about interest, for when mature in the adult it is this impulse that has created the whole domain of knowledge and made man master of nature. To tell just how to feed it is about the whole duty of didactics. " The Story of a Sand Pile " is a very inadequate record of unique and chiefly spontaneous development that seemed to the writer an idyl of recapitulation, I know nothing quite comparable with it, except J. Johnson's " Rudimentary Society among Boys," cited on page 156. The lads of the MacDonogh Institute range over some eight hundred acres, and have spontaneously evolved social, political, and business institu tions in a crude way, rudely repeating the evolution of human society. This paper should be read by all who would know what a group of boys can do when left to themselves in the country. To compare such records with Crusoe on his island is well calculated to impress the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction even at its best can be. Such studies take us of the present back to prehistoric times, and enable us to see to-day how primitive society first arose. Some principles here suggested have found their way into the practices of the George Junior Republic. The lesson also should be heeded by those who study the pedagogy of pre paring the rising generation for future citizenship. Such and other curricula have not as yet, I fancy, profited as they should by these examples. Ît is strange indeed that dolls, which are always and every where inseparable from child life, have never before been made a subject of serious study until the paper here presented appeared. Dolls have figured in toy congresses and in sev eral learned accounts of ancient and primitive people, but it remained for Dr. Ellis to show in detail the immense signifi cance they may have for the development of the individual, social, and moral life of the child. For boys they rarely represent babies, and do not always do so for girls, but are PREFACE vii often simply adults reduced to the dimensions of the child's mind so that it can take in the details of their form, apparel, and environment at a glance. They also have relations to idols, and nowhere is the fecund fancy of children more rich than in the yi^riîTi fnrmg nf play It still remains to be shown how dolls can best be utilized in the kindergarten and in the primary school, to turn on the full psycho-motor power of this interest and to utilize it in the best way. /Collecting is often not only an instinct but almost a passion with children. Their collections are generally prompted not so much by the instinct to acquire and own as by the love of the activities involved in gathering and in accumulating many similar objects for comparison and for the mere enumeration. Some collections are spontaneously classified and even labeled, and some of them have an intrinsic value apart from their asso ciation. Collections varynotonly in the kinds of objects sought, which are many, but also with age, sex, environment, motive, and manner of collection, and all these distinctions are suggest ive. Imitation plays its part. In younger children it may appear as a blind impulse to hoard.

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