Shaw * tested memory in 700 school children by dividing a story of 324 words into 152 phrases, having it read and immediately repro- duced by them, and selecting alternate grades from the third grammar to the end of the high school, with a few college students. The maxi- mum 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, substitution, and displace- ment. " 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 puberty occurs earlier in girls than in boys."
In a careful study of children's memory, Kemsies a concludes that the quality of memory improves with age more rapidly than the quantity.
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 sexes. For both sexes, 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 sexes. 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 sexes gained to their maxi- mum 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.3 Netschajeff* subjected 637 school children, well distributed be- tween the ages of nine and eighteen, to the following tests. Twelve very distinct objects were shown them, each for two seconds, which must then 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 1 A Test of Memory in School Children. Fed. Sem., October, 1896, vol. iv, 1 Zeits. f. Pad. Psychologic und Pathologic. Heft i, 1900.
1 See Scripture: Scientific Child Study. Handbook of the 111. Soc. for Child 4 Experimentelle Untersuchungen iiber die Gedachtnissentwickelung bei Schul« kindern. Zeits. f. Psychologic, 1900, vol. xxiv, p. 32. 70 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE GIRLS that suggested noises, words designating touch, temperature, and muscle sensations, words describing states of feeling, and names of abstract ideas were also 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 ten- dency to decline at or just before puberty, then to rise and to slight- ly decline after the six- teenth or seventeenth year. Memory for objects showed the greatest amount of in- crease during the year studied, and words for feel- ing next, although at all ages the latter was consid- erably below the former. Boys showed stronger memory for real impres- sions, 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 be- tween the sexes lay be- tween eleven and fourteen years. This seems at eight- een or nineteen to be slight- ly increased. " This is especially great at the age of puberty." Children from nine to eleven have but slight power of reproduc- ing emotions, but this in- creases 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. Illu- sions in reproducing words which mistake sense, sound, and rhythm, which is not infrequent with younger children, decline with age especially at puberty. Up to this period girls are most subject to these illusions, and afterward boys. The following tables, in which the ordinates represent the number of correct reproductions and the abscissas the age, are interesting.
_. Numbers Visualized Words -Sound Concepts >. Touch .Feeling i Abstract Ideas Age BOYS INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 49 l Lobsien * made tests similar to those of Netschajeff, with modifi- cations for greater accuracy, upon 238 boys and 224 girls from nine to fourteen and a half years of age. The following tables show the development of the various kinds of memory for boys and girls: BOYS.
AGE.
Objects.
Noises.
Number.
Visual Concepts.
Acoustic Concepts.
Touch Concepts.
Feeling Concepts.
Sounds.
56.OO IO-II 9-IO 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 impres- sions, 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 shows a 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 passing 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 objects 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 1 Exp. Untersuch. ii. d. Gedachtnissentwickelung bei Schulkindern. Zeits. L Psychologic, 13d. 27, Heft 1-2, 1901.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE 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 gen- eral girls slightly exceed boys in recalling numbers, touch concepts, and sounds, and largely exceed in recalling feeling concepts, real things and visual concepts.
Colegrove * tabulated returns from the early memories of 1,658 correspondents with 6,069 memories, from which he reached the con- clusions, represented in the following curves, for the earliest three memories of white males and females.
In the cuts below, the heavy line represents the first memory, the broken the second, and the dotted line the third memory. Age at the time of reporting is represented in distance to the right, and the age * BOYS 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 adoles- cence. 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 puberty there is a 1 Memory: An Inductive Study, by F. W. Colegrove. Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1900, p. 229. See also Individual Memories. Am. Jour, of Psy., INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 493 marked and characteristic obliteration of infantile memories which lapse to oblivion with augmented absorption in the present.
It was found that males have the greatest number of memories for protracted or repeated occurrences, for people, and clothing, topo- graphical 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 de- crease 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 sex 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 adoles- cence is one of great psychical awakening. 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 boys 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 in- terests than self and immediate friends bcome the objects of reflec- tion and recollection."
After twenty there is a 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 topo- graphical 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 mem- ories culminate at different periods, and bear immediate relation to the whole mental life of the period. While perhaps some of the finer analyses 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 494 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE 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, un- pleasant 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 fur- nishing the memory plexus, while the seventh and eighth years 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 ap- pointments, tie knots in the handkerchief, put shoes on the dressing- table, hide garments, associate 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 puberty.
Perhaps nothing in the history of the world has ever been supported by a consensus of belief more universal than that which sustains education to-day and which has almost attained the semper ubiqiie, et ab omnibus which the early Church strove for in vain. The world goes to school. This has become the method of colonization and completes the work of conquest by armies. When Germany won a part of Poland, and then Schleswig-Holstein, and Alsace-Lorraine, she founded or re- created at lavish expense the universities at Breslau, Kiel, and Strassburg respectively to show her new subjects what she meant by education. France thus strives to civilize Algiers, and England her possessions everywhere, Professor Fitch de- claring the schools of Madagascar now probably the best or- ganized in the world. I have seen good schools in the east and south of Russia and in Finland, that all must commend. France soon after the war of 1870 increased her educational budget over seven hundred per cent. In China education INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 495 has long been the basis of the civil service, old men striving, in the thousands of individual booths erected for the pur- pose, to attain the degree of Han Sin, and all with a fervor that suggests that, if modern culture should ever be the grist ground in these mills, Europe must look out for her laurels. The success of republics is especially dependent on the edu- cation of their citizens, and refusal to send to or attend school is civic recreancy akin to refusal to pay taxes or fight when the Fatherland is in danger. Schools are often the best things and housed in the best buildings in town, although but lately many doubted whether high schools should be supported at public cost. We have just passed a period of renaissance in secondary education, and the recent multiplication of col- leges and the increase of students is startling. It is almost a heresy to urge that there are some who should not go to school at all, or that many who are there would be better off elsewhere. Most permanent results, however, are staked on whether this material installation, numerical expansion, and mechanical organization are to be regarded as finalities or recognized as only promising first steps, as we gird our- selves to the yet greater and longer task of internal development and progressive reconstruction till a qualitative that is proportionate to the quantitative development is attained. This is the most vital and burning question, and may well give pause to all those who hold a brief for youth and work in their cause and name. A hasty glance at one or more aspects of each of the three stages of education that spans the interval from thirteen to twenty-one must here suffice.
(D) Normal Schools. The professional training of teach- ers seventy years ago marked an epoch; this work has enlisted the services of some of the best men and women, and some of these private and public institutions could hardly be im- proved, while others are not only wooden but petrified. Most entirely lack efficient inspection. On the Continent the state always follows up all its growth by tests, but here many of these public institutions are essentially private. Male teachers are diminishing and male pupils are in many if not most of them a negligible quantity. A large but never ascertained proportion of teachers are not graduates of colleges but only of normal schools, perhaps the very one in which they teach, 496 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE and colleges are perhaps nowhere held in such doubtful esteem. The philosophy of education taught under various names is sometimes as obsolete as if in schools of theology only patristics was studied. There are definitions that triangulate vast vacant spaces in the teachers' minds, conspectuses of human faculties, metaphysical theories of mind inherited from the pedagogic fathers. The departments of human knowledge are classified, correlated, coordinated, and educational value is discussed in an abstract way, with an aloofness for detailed externality that is an anachronism in a concrete age, while the cult of Herbart and Froebel flourishes as a finality instead of a prologue to a great drama now well on in its first act.
The most fatal infection to which normal schools are liable is that of teaching to dissect large living wholes, which pubes- cents crave, into elements, which they abhor. This involves logic chopping, formal steps, analysis of processes that should never be analyzed, and overexplanation. The soul naturally storms its way to the center of things with a rapid impetuosity, but the methodaster and macerator blunts the intuitions, the best thing in youth, drags down thoughts that fly and makes them crawl at a slow, senescent pace. More yet, it tends to pedantry that shields ignorance from exposure, teaches the art of seeming wise with empty minds, brings complacency that tends to arrest in the teacher, and whips up a modicum of knowledge to deceptive proportions, as the barber's appren- tice was dubbed master when he could make two ounces of soap into two barrels of lather. Scholarship tends to be in- versely as mechanical methods. By demanding a prede- termined way the pupil is exhausted, and, in Plato's phrase, there is no true parturition but only a wind-birth. The arid wastes of short steps and sequences and weary morselization of rudiments better represent the second childhood of senility than the golden dawn of divination with which childhood is endowed, but which is so easily blighted.
Psychology is rightly called the teacher's Blackstone, but as the whole of biology, chemistry, or physics is too large for the farmer, electrician, photographer, or dyer to know, al- though their calling is permeated by the principles of these sciences, so the teacher needs to know chiefly specific things, memory, attention, association, something of feelings and INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 497 will, a little about reason, but more of hygiene, nutrition, enough to be a defender of health, very little about the brain, enough of logic to name its tools, simple tests of eye, ear, and motor ability, juvenile abnormalities, and moral perversions enough to detect defects, and something of Froebel, but with- out being a symbolist, either in a state of clairvoyance or muddle, or seeking to hatch out beautiful souls when the body most needs attention and the mind least. The teacher should, therefore, know something of nursing, the schools of which now require higher conditions of entrance, and longer and richer courses than kindergarten schools, should know some- thing of muscles as organs of the will, and of the psychology of play, habit, imitation, imagination, the organ of all that is absent in time and place, and some outlines of heredity and evo- lution, especially thafr of mind in animals and children. These are perhaps more easily taught to young women than to young men, for the former are less specialized and more generic, richer in intuition, and psychically nearer the child. Much of this lies so near the soul of normal youth that, once taught by the easy way of hints, it sinks deep and is never forgotten. It is akin to tact and taste, and should make these training classes the best of all schools for all the parental instincts. The good teacher learns far more from the children than he can ever teach them. We should remember, too, that we are not teaching the psychology of the adult mind, which at its best works logically, but the genetic philosophy of the young and growing mind where perception, intuition, and spontaneity are at their very best and the powers of introspection are weakest. This inculcates due respect for the child to whom, as the old proverb has it, the maximum of reverence is due. It teaches us to discriminate between the wide range of individual differ- ences and capacities from subnormal and defective to budding talent, and thus will tend to make the school, as it always should be, a life and career-saving station.1 Next to this, the heart of professional teacher training, should be the history of education to give a repertory of mo- tives and modes of approach. Rightly taught, this should in- spire high ideals for this most philosophic vocation of man.
•AC, Ellis: The Nornut School Course in Psychology. Proc. Ed. Ass'n. December, iqoi.
49 8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE It also has a very high culture value in itself. There is a sense in which the history of the world is the history of its great •teachers, religious as well as secular. From Plato down some of these great heroes, whose names are landmarks, are often the very best expression of the aspirations of their age. These things enter and live again in the soul of the young teacher. I have heard several normal principals in Germany teach this subject, there often central. I will try to illustrate their spirit and matter in introducing a class to Pestalozzi and to Fichte in this course, as follows: More than a century ago a remarkable story appeared in Europe. It was prolix after the fashion of that day and is now rarely read. Yet its characters and action were as real and as new in fiction as Kipling's best, while the author's passion for moral and social reforms was as all-controlling as Tolstoi's. It was a tale of homely life in a Swiss village, of peasants who beat their wives, and of dirty children who stole potatoes, and only on gala days had the cream left on their milk. The good preacher was growing duller, the doctor more quack- ish, the schoolmaster more mechanical. The squire, who also kept the beer house, was getting every one in his debt and extracting and using for his own wretched ends all domestic secrets. There was the gossip, the hypocrite, the liar, the fool, the sot, and everywhere in- creasing superstition, scandal, intrigue, and vice.
But there was one good woman in this dismal hamlet, Gertrude, the mason's wife, who taught her children cleanliness, courtesy, max- ims, hymns, prayers, and simple industries with such devotion and success that the neighbors begged that their children might come too, and soon began to come to see for themselves. An old nobleman visited her home-school and found a real vocation in starting a school himself. The pastor grew interested, and realized that his sermons had been dry, and began to preach in earnest. The spirit of home life and mutual improvement appeared. The beer house ceased to be the center of the village life. A few citizens met weekly to discuss the larger educational questions of public and private weal. At length a Royal Commission was sent to study Bonal, which had become the thriftiest village in the realm, and reported that they had discovered here the true principle of reform, prosperity, and universal govern- ment in education, with Gertrude's school at the root of all.
For Bonal is the world. All its degradations are but the natural offspring of ignorance, and Gertrude is the good teacher by whom alone society, state, and church can be regenerated. This tale of Pestalozzi's * shows us what a simple and unlearned man can do if he is in earnest, and if his cause is great. It was read everywhere; it was wept over; royal personages came to see the author, and gave 1 How Gertrude teaches her children.
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 499 him presents and decorations, and many greater men than he have since lit their torches at the fire he kindled.
Sixteen years later, in 1806, the power of Prussia was shattered at a blow by the battle of Jena. Its army was swept away; its allies, industries, and trade gone. The country was impoverished and ex- hausted and its capital garrisoned by French soldiers. Its soil had never been fertile nor its spirit practical. Its military situation, with strong nations on all sides, was the worst in history and its record had shown more discord than unity. The race had never felt such humiliation and the future had never seemed so dark. But the German stock was still vigorous and on every hand the cause of this unexpect- ed collapse was explained. Scharnhorst began to plan a comprehensive reorganization of the military system on its present basis. Stein set about reconstructing the land laws and the status of the peasants. Jahn founded everywhere his patriotic Turner societies and preached again the gospel of ancient Greece, that only strong muscles can make men great and nations free. But the key-word which guided and uni- fied all was spoken by Fichte in his so-called " addresses to the Ger- man nation," which w*ere given in Berlin every Sunday evening for an entire winter to large audiences of the best classes, with Napoleon's