Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and HygieneHall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Science
Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene
Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Adolescence; Children -- Health and hygiene; Educational psychology
Lancaster[14] gathered and glanced over a thousand biographies, from
which he selected 200 for careful study, choosing them to show
different typical directions of activity. Of these, 120 showed a
distinct craze for reading in adolescence; 109 became great lovers of
nature; 58 wrote poetry, 58 showed a great and sudden development of
energy; 55 showed great eagerness for school; 53 devoted themselves
for a season to art and music; 53 became very religious; 51 left home
in the teens; 51 showed dominant instincts of leadership; 49 had great
longings of many kinds; 46 developed scientific tastes; 41 grew very
anxious about the future; 34 developed increased keenness of sensation
or at least power of observation; in 32 cases health was better; 31
were passionately altruistic; 23 became idealists; 23 showed powers of
invention; 17 were devoted to older friends; 15 would reform society;
7 hated school. These, like many other statistics, have only
indicative value, as they are based on numbers that are not large
enough and upon returns not always complete.
A few typical instances from Lancaster must here suffice. Savonarola
was solitary, pondering, meditating, felt profoundly the evils of the
world and need of reform, and at twenty-two spent a whole night
planning his career. Shelley during these years was unsocial, much
alone, fantastic, wandered much by moonlight communing with stars and
moon, was attached to an older man. Beecher was intoxicated with
nature, which he declared afterward to have been the inspiration of
his life. George Eliot at thirteen had a passion for music and became
a clever pianist. At sixteen she was religious, founded societies for
the poor and for animals, and had fitting spells of misanthropy.
Edison undertook to read the Detroit Free Library through, read
fifteen solid feet as the books stand on the shelves, was stopped, and
says he has read comparatively little since. Tolstoi found the aspect
of things suddenly changed. Nature put on a new appearance. He felt he
might commit the most dreadful crimes with no purpose save curiosity
and the need of action. The future looked gloomy. He became furiously
angry without cause; thought he was lost, hated by everybody, was
perhaps not the son of his father, etc. At seventeen he was solitary,
musing about immortality, human destiny, feeling death at hand, giving
up his studies, fancying himself a great man with new truths for
humanity. By and by he took up the old virtuous course of life with
fresh power, new resolutions, with the feeling that he had lost much
time. He had a deep religious experience at seventeen and wept for joy
over his new life. He had a period before twenty when he told
desperate lies, for which he could not account, then a passion for
music, and later for French novels. Rousseau at this age was
discontented, immensely in love, wept often without cause, etc. Keats
had a great change at fourteen, wrestling with frequent obscure and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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