The psychology of the adolescent / by Leta S. Hollingworth.

  • Leta Stetter Hollingworth
Date:
1930
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of the adolescent / by Leta S. Hollingworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    31/196 (page 27)
    CHAPTER II The ceremonies The Beginning of Formal Education Among savage peoples tKere is widespreadl and probably universal behaviour wbicb shows that puberty is a matter of very great importance to the primitive mind. The psychology of the puberty initiations, as described by anthropologists, is of deep interest to those w^ho study adolescence. Pubic ceremonies and formalities of the most solemn character attend the emergence from childhood. Conscious, organized education began among our remote ancestors with these sacred, primitive rites, and gradually extended to those younger and older, as civilization progressed. At the lowest stages of culture the sole formal at- tempt at education that we find is comprised in the pubic cere¬ monials. Among more advanced peoples only do we find organ¬ ized education for young children, while in the most highly cultured communities education also extends up through adoles¬ cence, and into adulthood, as among ourselves. The profession of teaching had its first crude beginnings in the tortures, humiliations, instructions, and, to us, immoral cere¬ monies of the initiations into manhood and womanhood. With the advent of puberty, the child was considered adult in privilege and responsibi lity. The years of growth and change which follow, and which civilized peoples call adolescence, were and are usually disregarded in the practices of savage tribes. The boy became a warrior before he was fully grown. Girls became wives and mothers at an age when we now regard them as little more than children. It is important to bear in mind that the evidence from antiquity shows these social phenomena to have