Psychology and its Bearing on Education

C.W. Valentine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317480587
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Education in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1950, the author after many years' teaching of psychology, and previous school teaching experience, provided a book specially suitable for students in training colleges and university education departments, for teachers, youth leaders, and all concerned with the training of children and adolescents at the time. He aimed especially at clarity, the provision of concrete illustrations, and the stressing of material of general agreement among psychologists.

The topics include: The Development and Training of Personality and Character; The Basic Motives; Suggestion; Unconscious Influences; Sex Education; Learning and Remembering; Repression and Discipline; Play and Activity Methods; The Interests of Children; The Acquisition of Skill; Training in Reasoning; General Intelligence and Special Abilities, and their Testing; Estimating Personality and Character; Educational and Vocational Guidance; School Records; Stages of Development in Infancy, Middle Childhood and Adolescence; Backward, Problem and Delinquent Children.

The Appreciation of Beauty and Aesthetic Education: (1) Nature and Visual Art (2) Music (3) Poetry. Considerable space was given to these three in view of their usual neglect in textbooks of psychology at the time.

A brief appendix gives simple explanations of the most essential statistical methods applied to psychology and education.

The need of one book to cover the whole course in Psychology and its bearing on Education had long been felt, and it was hoped that this volume would fulfil this purpose.

Chapter XXXIII
Adolescence: Part I. General, Social, and Emotional

The change at adolescence. The poet Keats once wrote, ‘The imagination of a young boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life in between in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain.’ We may agree at once that this is an illuminating comment upon the peculiar characteristics of adolescence in a large number of cases. For many, this is, at times, a period of storm and stress, and of instability, not only of imagination but also of emotions, impulses, and interests. The youth with little more experience than that of a child may have the physical maturity of an adult, and he hates to be treated as a child. The development of sex brings disturbing emotions and new problems of self-control. There is often increased independence, or even opposition, in the attitude towards parents and others in authority; indeed, there should be now some weaning from too great a dependence on parents. At the same period for most youths there is the grave problem of the choice of a job, and for many the first experience of romantic love. It is a period of difficult adjustment within the self and in relation to others.

Keats shows, however, the over-emphasis and lack of qualifications that one may permit in the poet, but which must not be allowed in the psychologist. We must therefore repeat what was pointed out in Chapter XXXI, that the various stages of child development are not clearly marked off from one another; nor are there often any very sudden changes. The transition from one stage to the next is usually almost imperceptible to outside observers, and not fully realized at once by the child himself.

Adolescence means ‘growing up’; and the period is usually regarded as covering roughly the teens; but it is earlier by a year or two for girls than for boys.

The only instinctive impulse which may be regarded as substantially new is the physical element of sex; and, as we saw, some psychologists maintain that there are the embryonic beginnings of certain aspects of this before adolescence. But in the adolescent, whether it be chiefly the effect of this maturing sex instinct or not, some other impulses and emotions seem to be intensified, and especially there is a changeableness, an instability in emotions, impulses, attitudes, and interests greater than that of the relatively stable period of middle childhood, or of the more unified, controlled systems of later life.

The instability in adolescents is sometimes so great as to suggest a temporary neuroticism. Thus Dr W. D. Wall says that one-quarter of one club group he observed showed behaviour which would at any other period be regarded as neurotic, e.g., useless violence with furniture, obstinate silence, the bitter weeping of a girl and locking herself in a room because a friend had temporarily deserted her for another.¹

After long preaching on the part of psychologists the great importance of the period from an educational and social point of view is at last being widely recognized. Its importance from the religious point of view has long been recognized. The period is also a critical one for the development of criminality. A large proportion of confirmed criminals seriously begin their professional careers during adolescence, and the peak age for juvenile delinquency in this country among boys was 13; o in 1937;² in 1949, after the school-leaving age had been raised to 15; o the peak age also rose by a year, to 14; o. These figures show that the misdemeanours were not due to the fact that boys had been thrown out into the rough and tumble of industrial life at the age of fourteen, though that is probably an important factor in those youths who begin their delinquency only after leaving school, as we shall see later in Chapter XXXIV. The figures do, however, fit in with the supposition that the youths are impatient about getting into jobs with more freedom, and harassed by the problems before them.

Sex maturation at adolescence. The age for this maturing varies greatly. For example, about one-quarter of the girls in the United States begin menstruation before twelve and a half and one-quarter not until after fourteen and a half. The extreme range is very great; even among healthy girls it varies from about 9; o to about 20; o.¹

As to boys, the onset of puberty is harder to determine with precision, but recognized signs are the appearance of pubic hair, the breaking of the voice, and the beginnings of nocturnal emissions. For the very beginnings of puberty one investigator found among 4,800 boys in New York City an age range from twelve to seventeen and a half.²

Clearly we cannot assume that, in any class of fifty girls aged about thirteen (or of boys about fourteen), all are now adolescent in a physiological sense. Still less in a mixed class or club of those ages can we assume uniformity.

While all admit that environmental changes play an important part in the mental experiences of adolescence, there is general agreement that the maturing of sex is one major cause. Thus the Spens Report (in Chapter III, Part 2 – based on a memorandum by Professor BURT) states that the ‘modifications of character’ are ‘mainly due, directly or indirectly … at any rate so far as they are produced from within, to the maturing of the sexual glands and organs’.³ Injections of testosterone in young boys have been reported to be followed by ‘a definite increase in aggressiveness in all social relations’.¹

Not only the sex glands, however, are concerned. The Spens Report, in another section on physical development, states: ‘Some of the behaviour difficulties which occur in children during the states of puberty and adolescence are undoubtedly due to lack of balance in the secretions of the ductless glands.’²

Sex development may easily force itself upon the attention of the youth. Some girls become very self-conscious about the development of the breasts; the beginning of menstruation may be a disturbing experience, and even terrifying if the girl has not been warned beforehand. The more localized sensations of the boy in the genital organs, and the experience of erections, may be equally disturbing to boys, and nocturnal emissions alarming if the boys have not been informed beforehand. As we have already mentioned in Chapter IX on ‘Sex and Sex Education’, masturbation is extremely common and often gives rise to serious mental conflict.

The specific influence of sex maturation. In view of the great individual differences in the ages of sex maturing, it is very difficult to trace the precise influence of this on adolescent behaviour, as contrasted with the influence of environment. For such great changes as transference to the Secondary School, and leaving school and becoming a wage-earner, take place at about the same age for all, except for that minority who continue at school till sixteen or later, and the still smaller minority who go to a University or have some other type of college training. Most of the studies of adolescence relate simply to the age groups usually regarded as adolescent (say all the boys of thirteen or fourteen to about nineteen, or girls of about twelve to eighteen), without any inquiry as to when precisely the individuals entered on puberty. Such inquiries are of great value, but they do not enable us to distinguish clearly between the effects of physical maturation and of the other great personal problems appearing at this time.

There are, however, some few lines of evidence on the specific effects of sexual maturation. Clearest of all are the many reports of mental conflict just referred to, about the impulse to masturbate and worry about its consequences. The studies of cases of abnormally early or later puberty indicate that there is no close relationship between the growth of intelligence and the onset of puberty,¹ a fact already surmised from the absence of sudden increases in rates of growth of intelligence found in the study of age groups at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen.²

A few inquiries also have been made among boys (or girls) of the same age and similar social and economic environments, some of whom were known to have entered on puberty and the others not. One of these may be summarized briefly.³ It relates to 402 girls in two schools in the United States half of whom had begun to menstruate. We will refer to these as the ‘mature’ and to the others as ‘immature’. These girls were carefully selected from larger numbers so that each girl in the ‘mature’ group should be paired with one in the ‘immature’ group of the same chronological age and with a similar social and economic home status. Nearly all the girls were between twelve and fourteen and a half years of age. The girls were given detailed questionnaires chiefly as to social attitudes, family adjustments, play activities, and so on. The main findings were as follow.

The mature girls showed more frequently: (a) heterosexual interests; (b) interest in self-adornment and self-display; (c) day-dreaming and ‘imaginative’ activities. As we might expect, they showed less interest in games and activities of a vigorous type. The evidence was against the view that puberty increased family friction or the revolt against family discipline. It should be added that these girls were nearly all above average intelligence.

The number of studies as to mental changes in boys correlated with sex maturing is small, but so far as they go they tend in the same direction; among boys of a given age, those who have entered on puberty are more ‘mature’ mentally than those who have not.¹ Also in an inquiry with the Masculinity-Femininity test (as to attitudes and interests) it was found that among boys and girls tested at the average age of 16-5, boys who matured early showed more traits regarded as especially masculine than did the boys maturing later; and the early maturing girls were more essentially ‘feminine’ than the late maturing girls.²

Physical development at adolescence. It is clearly established that a marked increase in the rate of bodily growth appears at the time of puberty, beginning just before puberty, and following a period of relative stability in physical growth. This marked increase shows itself in height and still more in weight. The period demands a liberal diet, the avoidance of severe physical strains and of prolonged undesirable postures.³

There is general agreement that, as we have seen, girls mature sexually earlier than do boys. A number of estimates point to their being about one or two years ahead in the physical development spurt. Thus, in one investigation on over 216,000 children it was found that on the average the boys surpassed girls in weight up to the age of eleven and a half, but then the girls moved ahead and at thirteen and a half girls were 7 lb. heavier than boys. Then the boys began to gain, and by fifteen and a half were again slightly heavier than the girls.¹ Similarly, boys were at all ages taller than girls, except from eleven and a half to fourteen and a half, when the girls ...