Aspects of child life and education / by G. Stanley Hall and some of his pupils; ed. by Theodate L. Smith, Ph.D.

  • Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley), 1844-1924.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Aspects of child life and education / by G. Stanley Hall and some of his pupils; ed. by Theodate L. Smith, Ph.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    the child there is a sacredness about interest, for when mature in the adult it is this impulse that has created the whole domain of knowledge and made man master of nature. To tell just how to feed it is about the whole duty of didactics. The Story of a Sand Pile is a very inadequate record of unique and chiefly spontaneous development that seemed to the writer an idyl of recapitulation. I know nothing quite comparable with it, except J. Johnson's Rudimentary Society among Boys, cited on page 156. The lads of the MacDonogh Institute range over some eight hundred acres, and have spontaneously evolved social, political, and business institu- tions in a crude way, rudely repeating the evolution of human society. This paper should be read by all who would know what a group of boys can do when left to themselves in the country. To compare such records with Crusoe on his island is well calculated to impress the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction even at its best can be. Such studies take us of the present back to prehistoric times, and enable us to see to-day how primitive society first arose. Some principles here suggested have found their way into the practices of the George Junior Repubhc. The lesson also should be heeded by those who study the pedagogy of pre- paring the rising generation for future citizenship. Such and other curricula have not as yet, I fancy, profited as they should by these examples. It is strange indeed that dolls, which are always and every- where inseparable from child life, have never before been made a subject of serious study until the paper here presented appeared. Dolls have figured in toy congresses and in sev- eral learned accounts of ancient and primitive people, but it remained for Dr. Ellis to show in detail the immense signifi- cance they may have for the development of the individual, social, and moral life of the child. For boys they rarely represent babies, and do not always do so for girls, but are