Excerpt from Education, Vol. 43: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Science, Art, Philosophy and Literature of Education; September, 1922 June, 1923

I. What is adolescence? A. Physiologically. B. Psychologically. II. What is the relation of the school to the adolescent?

Most people understand that a human being, in the progress from birth to death, passes through certain stages of growth and development each characterized by peculiar activities or traits. It is not our purpose here to deal with any of these periods except one. The student, the scientist, the practical man of affairs, the mother and even the poet agree that the period known as the teens is the most important because certain social instincts then become more pronounced and begin to shape the individual permanently in both body and mind. As teachers we have been slow to fall into line, and we have made no change, or very little, in the way we have handled the boys and girls in the high school, from that which was used in the grades. But we are waking up. We are indebted to psychology for the great interest we are now taking in our young people; not the psychology of the laboratory scientist so much as the psychology of the school man who takes the experiences of the home, the kindergarten, the lower grades, the high school, the store, the shop, the factory, the street, the alley, the court room, the doctor's office, the reformatory and even the institutions for the care of the unfortunate and interprets them all in terms of human be havior based on heredity and environment and sees man and his fellows in the process of making. The data thus gathered makes it impossible to leave the adolescent out in judging the worth of secondary education.

The child up to this period known as the teens is a sensual, materialistic being, (youth is idealistic while adult is realistic). He revels in life with almost the abandon of the animal. He cares for nothing so long as he is fed, happy and looked after. He is attracted by every movement, color and sound. He eats, kicks.

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