The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-DayChamberlain, Alexander Francis
Science
The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-Day
Chamberlain, Alexander Francis
Child rearing; Children -- Folklore; Folklore and children
"After such great matters as religion and politics, it may seem trifling
to illustrate the subject from little boys. But it is not trifling. The
bane of philosophy is pomposity: people will not see that small things
are the miniatures of greater, and it seems a loss of abstract dignity
to freshen their minds by object lessons from what they know. But every
boarding-school changes as a nation changes. Most of us may remember
thinking,' How odd it is that this _half_ should be so unlike last
_half_; now we never go out of bounds, last half we were always
going; now we play rounders, then we played prisoner's base,' and so
through all the easy life of that time. In fact, some ruling spirits,
some one or two ascendant boys, had left, one or two others had come,
and so all was changed. The models were changed, and the copies changed;
a different thing was praised, and a different thing bullied." It was in
the spirit of this extract (part of which he quotes), that the editor of
the "Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political
Science" happily admitted into that series of monographs, Mr. J. H.
Johnson's _Rudimentary Society among Boys_(272), a sociological
study of peculiar interest and importance--"a microcosm, not only of
the agrarian, but of the political and economic history of society." Mr.
Johnson has graphically described the development of society among some
fifty boys on the farm belonging to the McDonogh School, not far from
the city of Baltimore, Maryland; land-tenure, boy-legislation, judicial
procedure, boy-economy, are all treated of in detail and many analogies
with the life and habits of primitive peoples brought out, and the
author has gone a long way towards realizing the thesis that "To show a
decided resemblance between barbarian political institutions and those
of communities of civilized children, would be a long step towards
founding a science of Social Embryology" (272. 61).
_"Gangs."_
Mr. Stewart Culin (212) in his interesting account of the "Street Games
of Boys in Brooklyn, N.Y." notices _en passant_ the existence of
"gangs" of boys--boys' societies of the ruder and rougher kind. As
evidence of the extent to which these organizations have flourished, the
following somewhat complete list of those known to have existed in the
city of Philadelphia is given:--
Badgers, Bed Bugs, Bleeders, Blossoms, Bouncers, Buena Vistas,
Buffaloes, Bull Dogs, Bullets, Bunker Hills, Canaries, Clippers,
Corkies, Cow Towners, Cruisers, Darts, Didos, Dirty Dozen, Dumplingtown
Hivers, Dung Hills, Muters, Forest Eose, Forties, Garroters, Gas House
Tarriers, Glassgous, Golden Hours, Gut Gang, Haymakers, Hawk-Towners,
Hivers, Killers, Lancers, Lions, Mountaineers, Murderers, Niggers, Pigs,
Pluckers, Pots, Prairie Hens, Railroad Roughs, Rats, Ramblers, Ravens,
Riverside, Eovers, Schuylkill Eangers, Skinners, Snappers, Spigots,
Tigers, Tormentors, War Dogs, Wayne Towners.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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