Character Education in Adolescence

by Rudolf Allers, Ph.D.

I. Introductory Remarks. General Psychology of Adolescence

All pedagogues are agreed that education has to be more than merely imparting knowledge or training the young people for a certain kind of job and teaching them how to behave. Education has to build up character. But there is but little agreement on how this has to be done, not even on what the goal is. There are so many psychologies today, each of them having its own ideas on the human mind and on human behavior, and not agreeing at all as to what character is and as to the factors on which it depends. It is nearly useless to turn for advice to the psychologists; one gets as many different answers as there are psychologists. This were not so bad, if education did not feel obliged to regard psychology as its very foundation. The confusion reigning in modern psychology thus entails an equally unlucky situation in pedagogy. The various psychologies disagree but little on facts; they disagree profoundly on interpretations. The controversy between all these schools is, in truth, not on psychological facts, but on the philosophical background of psychology. A psychological theory ought to be examined first of all in regard to the philosophy it implies.

But education cannot wait until these differences between the psychologists are settled. There are children to be educated, and educated so that they shall become good citizens and useful members of society and true sons of the Church. There has been education nearly as long as humanity exists. It is perhaps not even to be desired that education becomes imbued so thoroughly with ideas derived from scientific psychology. Science is subject to great variations; it is not less influenced by fashion than are other sides of human endeavor. But the goals of education are not to be exposed to suchlike influences. Children of today cannot be educated exactly in the way which pedagogues of the thirteenth or even the eighteenth century used to follow; the ways of education have to change, but its goals remain steadfast and unchanged throughout the ages and centuries. Education may learn from psychology how to proceed; but psychology has nothing to say on the aims of education. The task of the psychologist is limited to answering certain questions the pedagogue may desire to ask. A psychologist talking on the aims of education becomes guilty of a "metabasis eis allo genos" (an invasion of an alien domain); or he is, at least, no longer a psychologist, but has assumed the role of the philosopher.

Psychology cannot teach us anything on the aims of education in general, or on those of character education in particular. But it may supply some valuable information on the conditions determining the development of character, and accordingly on the means for influencing it. When we turn to psychology for information, we have, however, to be rather careful. But too often the psychologists describe as facts things which are in truth more than mere facts; they are facts clad in the language of a definite theory which is no longer purely psychological, but depends very much on definite philosophical attitudes. What, for example, the psychoanalytical school of Freud calls a fact, is almost without exception couched in the terminology peculiar to this school, and thus presupposes all the theories this school professes. We are told, for instance, of the great role the so-called "Œdipus-complex" plays in the development of character, and we are told that this influence is a fact. But merely by using the term of "Œdipus-complex" we imply that there are such things as complexes, that there is some truth in the idea of incestuous tendencies being alive in the mind of children, that infantile sexuality exists in the very sense as taught by Freud, etc. The statement of the "Œdipus-complex" being influential has a sensible meaning only when the whole of the Freudian psychology is accepted. The same holds true, though perhaps in a lesser degree, of all the various schools of psychology. If we want, therefore, to make use of the findings of psychology for the sake of education, we have first of all to divest the statements of the psychologists of their specific terminology and go back to the bare facts as they present themselves to an unprejudiced and unsophisticated mind.

The various schools, bitter though their controversies are, have nevertheless some points in common. They are all agreed that the years of childhood play a very decisive role in the formation of character. The interpretation given to this fact differs, of course, in each of the schools. Modern psychology claims to have discovered this role of the influences the child had to suffer. But this is, in truth, an idea as old probably as the study of human nature. In many a story and in many an adage this conviction has found its expression; it is not alive only in legends and folklore, but also in the theories on education as contained in the great treatises on morals and on philosophy. But it is true that the influence exercised by childhood experiences on the development of character in later years has not been studied systematically before our own times.

A boy or a girl entering into the period of adolescence is not a tabula rasa. Important though these years are for the development and the final formation of character, they can but modify a material already pre-formed and molded by the past. It has been pointed out elsewhere that the way a child is treated during the first years of his life becomes definitely important for the later evolution of character. The set-up of the adolescent mind, however, may by itself and by the influences brought to bear on it in this stage become decisive for the type of character the adult person will present.

The years of adolescence are known to be years of crisis. It needs sometimes very little to push the growing personality into a wrong direction. A thorough knowledge of the peculiarities of the adolescent mind is, therefore, of primary importance.

The general nature of the adolescent mind can be described by one sentence: these years are essentially years of uncertainty. Many, perhaps the large majority, of all the character features one observes in the adolescent have to be considered as effects of this one basic feature. There is, in fact, nothing of which the youthful mind is not uncertain. The adolescent feels that he is no longer a child, and that the ways of thinking, of acting, of feeling he was used to, are not any more suited to his present state: but he is very acutely aware also that he is not yet grown up, and that the ways of the adult are not better suited to him. Habits of childhood still cling on; new habits have not yet become fixed. The young people move in a borderland, which is not without some pleasant features, but which is also overhung by clouds, darkening the way and not seldom veiling it altogether. The world around changes in a mysterious and unaccountable way, because the adolescent himself is changing continuously. The adolescent does not know, so to speak, just what kind of person he will rise the next morning. Unheard-of and strange things may occur overnight. What seemed delectable today, may be disgusting tomorrow; things which appeared to be uninteresting but yesterday have suddenly become absolutely enthralling. New sensations arise within the body and the mind. The feeling of having left behind childhood and all the security it gave is very strong; but there is nothing as yet to replace the old world the child moved in with so much confidence. The necessity of relying on oneself is imposing itself, but the self is still a floating, uncertain, changing something which is not really known, and cannot be known, since it is not yet formed. The main characteristic of adolescence is indeed the definite formation of this self.

The common opinion which saw the main feature of adolescence in the awakening of sexual desires has been abandoned by nearly all leading psychologists. The phenomena and problems connected with sex play indeed a great role, but they are not the fundamental facts. The mental crisis may, in certain cases, become separated by a long interval from the bodily development and the ripening of sexuality. There is not seldom a severance of sexuality and mental crisis; the latter may develop without any immediate connection with sexual problems. Sexuality and the difficulties related to it are but a partial aspect of the total evolution, or even revolution, going on during these years. The problem of the relation to the other sex is but one peculiar side of the general problem of the relations between the ego and the world or reality.

A struggle is going on between reality or the objective world, on one side, and the subjective world of thoughts, of feelings, of dreams, on the other. Some psychologists have described this by speaking of an alternation of extraverted and introverted attitudes. Right though this description is, it is insufficient from the point of view which education has to take. Extraversion and introversion are names for mental states or attitudes; but education has to consider the individual, not only in its subjective set-up, but also in its concrete relations to reality. The psychologist may up to a certain degree neglect the fact of man being incessantly in the midst of reality and being a part of it. Psychology deals mainly with the formal side of mental life; its researches are, for example, on how man thinks, but not on what he thinks. Pedagogy has, however, to care very much for what man thinks, and has accordingly to consider the world he lives in and the way he looks at it. It is, therefore, not enough to say that a man is extraverted; one has to know also to what kind of a world he is turning. And it is not enough to call one introverted; one has to know the things within his self which captivate his interest.

Introversion means a withdrawal from reality. This reaction occurs whenever an individual feals scared by reality or has suffered defeat by it. Both events are very common in adolescence, because the lack of knowledge about reality and the rapid changes of personality reveal ever new and unknown and of ten terrific sides of the world, and because the ego is not as yet able to deal with this world. The new aspects of reality awaken the natural curiosity of the mind, and, at the same time, make the ego recoil from the unknown. Thus, youth is attracted and repulsed by the world, and this augments the uncertainty which pervades the adolescent mind.

The very moment the basic role played by uncertainty has been thoroughly grasped, many of the peculiarities of adolescent behavior become quite intelligible. The oscillations between extreme types of behavior are but the necessary consequences of this state of mind. The instability for which young people are so often rebuked by their elders — unjustly, in truth — results from their being the prey of uncertainty and of their having no definite idea either of themselves or of the world.

The child, when his mind has become capable of some understanding, finds himself in a strange and bewildering world. But he has his parents to rely upon and feels that they give security, that they are able to explain things, and that they, at least, are always the same. The child becomes gradually accustomed to reality, and feels, at the age of about five or six years, sufficiently at home therein. Healthy children develop even a funny kind of certainty and of self-assurance. This happy state does not last very long; as soon as the first changes preluding adolescence set in, everything assumes a new and appalling face.

Gone is the absolute confidence in the wisdom of the parents. This disappearance of the former trusting attitude is due partly, even to a large extent, to the clumsiness with which parents so often handle the mind of their children. Instead of carefully preserving the confidence the children felt for them, they behave in a manner as if they intended to destroy this trust. But the change in question results also from the intrinsic nature of the evolution in adolescence. It is nearly impossible to feel confidence, when one neither knows what to confide nor how to say it; the things troubling the adolescent mind are still too nebulous and strange, they still escape the grasp of reason too much to be put into words. There is, furthermore, the newly awakened consciousness of the ego and of its absolute uniqueness, which forbids speaking out the troubles going on in this ego's very depths. The child is, of course, an ego, since it is a person; but this ego is not fully conscious of its uniqueness and of its being separated from the rest of the world by a deep abyss. The child lives, naively, "in harmony with the universe." The average child belongs to what a modern school of psychology describes as the "integrated" type, in the life of which inner and outer experiences become merged into each other. But in adolescence the distance between the ego and its objects becomes more and more apparent. The consciousness of existing as a being per se, substantially separated from the rest of reality, gives rise to a peculiar feeling of shame and discretion — taking this term in its original sense, as it is used (e.g.) in the Rule of St. Benedict — which feeling, being new and unwonted, easily develops into an exaggerated secretiveness.

This breach which widens gradually the distance between the young soul and his elders, becomes the starting point of a vicious circle. The uncertainty about the self and the world conditions the above-mentioned secretiveness, and diminishes the confidence existing in earlier years. The loss of contact with the parents, the feeling that they are no longer as reliable as they appeared to be a few months ago, and the inability to seek help and advice from them, increases the uncertainty. It is not difficult to see that the adolescent is driven into a growing isolation.

It is this dim feeling of becoming isolated which makes young people seek for new company; they feel drawn to one another because they have the idea that they ought to associate with their likes, with minds feeling as they do, whereas they believe that the older generation is unable to understand them. The older people are indeed not unable, but they are — a sad but a true observation — very often unwilling. They have forgotten that they went through the very same troubles themselves; or, if they remember them, they are more impressed by the fact that these troubles passed away, than by the memory of their intensity.

Young people are very often reproached for being fickle, for having no stable convictions, for changing their interests very quickly, for not forming lasting friendships, for neglecting their duties, for being cross and so on. It is true that this behavior is unpleasant enough for others, but the reproaches are not quite reasonable, because many of these features are the direct effect of the average mental state characteristic of these years.

The peculiarities of the youthful mind create very serious difficulties for all educational influences. They favor, on the other hand, these influences, because the adolescent may be quite accessible to suggestions, provided that he is approached in the right manner and in the right spirit.*

* In the next article of this series Dr. Allers will discuss "Ways of Understanding and Approach."

II. Ways of Understanding and Approach

One must understand a person if one wants to gain some influence over him. This is particularly true of young people during the period of adolescence. With children who are still attached to their elders by the original bond of loving trust, and with adults who acknowledge the authority of experience or of position, it is different; they will let themselves be influenced — the former because they do not wish for anything better than having decisions made for them and being helped along in a still unknown world, the latter because they recognize that others may know better or that these are charged with the management of things. But adolescence is not any longer inclined to rely on others, nor has it gained a sufficient insight to make it trust in authority. No age is more difficult to approach and to manage; nowhere is the educator, accordingly, more in need of a thorough understanding of the personality which he has to direct and to mould.

Understanding means, in the most literal sense of the word, standing under another — that is, bearing his burden and taking his place, sharing therefore his point of view. The fact of having given birth to this expression is a definite credit to the psychological insight of the nordic languages; understanding and the corresponding words in German, Dutch, etc., expresses the real situation much better than does the Latin comprehendere and its derivatives. To understand the adolescent mind, we have to become fully aware of the way it conceives itself and reality.

The main feature of the adolescent mind is, as has been pointed out before, uncertainty. To understand the situation of youth and to put oneself in its place, one has to realize what it means to be uncertain and how the world looks to a person who has fallen into the clutches of uncertainty. Uncertainty is the subjective state corresponding to an objectively unknown something which the mind has to face. The uncertainty of adolescence is doubled by the fact that not only the objective world but also the subjective are unknown and bewildering.

When confronted by the unknown, the typical reaction of a mind, especially of one not sure of itself, is anguish or anxiety. Children having still to find their way in a strange and incomprehensible world are, even the most healthy of them, very much disposed to become anxious. If they are not anxious habitually, but only in exceptional situations, it is because they feel protected by the adults surrounding them. Anxiety may show itself also in another manner. He who whistles while walking through a dark wood, is afraid notwithstanding his display of courage. The well-known mechanism of compensation, and even overcompensation, tends to veil the manifestations of uncertainty; this is especially the case in adolescents, because they are uncertain of their self, and because this feeling is particularly intolerable to the human mind. A good deal of what impresses the observer as rashness, rudeness, conceit, exaggerated self-assertion, is due in adolescents to an attempt to hide the basic uncertainty from the individual's own eyes; and even less, of course, do they want other people to guess at their state of mind.

The adolescent is difficult to approach, because he is anxious to let no one guess at his state of mind. He is reticent, and resents being questioned, still more being teased or being told that his problems are very common ones. Uncertain of himself and at a loss to understand reality, he is on the other hand keenly conscious of his personality and its uniqueness. This latter factor induces him easily to develop a species of relativistic ideas by making "man the measure of all things." The authority of his elders and of tradition has lost its impressiveness, since reason becoming conscious of its individuality does not any more accept the hitherto believed statements; the ever-changing aspects of the world make values appear uncertain and vague, since what was attractive yesterday may become repulsive tomorrow.

Changing though their ideas may be, young people are nevertheless deadly in earnest about them. They regard their ideas and feelings as much more important than what older people speak of; this is, partly, the result of the impression that all these things are absolutely new and have never been thought or felt before. The tendency to consider one's own experiences as quite singular is not limited to the adolescent's mind. Many people feel definitely shocked by being told that their feelings, or maybe symptoms, are very well known. In one way this idea of uniqueness is indeed true, since every individual has a unique and personal note of experience; but the idea is wrong in the sense it is understood by most of those who hold it. The impression of novelty is, however, so strong with the adolescents that they take remarks pointing to the frequency of such experiences as a sure sign of a lack of understanding.

If you want to gain the confidence of young people, the first thing to do is to take their ideas and problems seriously. To make light of their difficulties bars the way to their inner life. Only long after having got them to believe that their adviser understands them, may one point out to them that all these problems and difficulties belong to human nature and cannot be considered as absolutely unique. It is quite permissible to tell the young people that one has already known many adolescents and been able to advise them, but it would be a mistake to tell them that one has heard the very same thing already so many times.

To get in touch with young people one will do best to try an approach on some more peripheric point. Sometimes indeed the young mind will feel so confused and so much at a loss that it will turn to an older person for advice. But this is not the rule; generally the adolescents will wrestle with their difficulties all alone and in silence, and even resent very much the simple question which parents so easily put: "What is the matter with you?" Parents are indeed very often the last persons the adolescent will turn to for advice. For this there are many reasons; besides the fact already alluded to, that parents only too often behave in a manner calculated to destroy the confidence their children had formerly felt, there is the other fact that the children are very much aware of their having become different; they feel that the discovery of such a change will be a shock to the parents. The behavior of the parents, moreover, denotes that they still think of their children as they used to do, that their attitude towards them has not changed, while the children have already changed very much. Even though the confidence may have disappeared, or at least have diminished very much, the children still are attached to their parents, and they do not want to wound them or to disappoint them; but they know that their personality is no longer the one the parents used to know.

A boy or a girl, at this period, not seldom tries first to turn to the parents or some other older person for advice or enlightenment; it is only after having discovered that the older generation is, as the young like to say, incapable of understanding, that they begin to hide their feelings and to seek the company of their peers. Youth belongs to youth, as one frequently hears, and there is indeed some truth in this saying. But the communing exclusively with young minds involves also a definite danger. It is but too well known that bad example has a destructive and fatal influence. Example as such has no definite power; to be influenced by it, the assenting will of the individual is needed. But it is much easier to go down an incline than to climb a steep path to the heights. The seduction by bad example is markedly reinforced by the discouragement which sets in whenever a person feels uncertain.

The arrogance and conceit which many of the youngsters display is due, to a great extent, to their having lost courage and self-reliance. They attribute the uncertainty which has got hold of their minds to some defects of their personality; they will not admit this, either to themselves or to others, but try to silence the troubling voices of their mind by acting and behaving as if they were quite sure of themselves and of all things in the world.

Only a person whose authority is undisputed even by the young people, or someone who is gifted with a peculiar tact, may attempt a direct approach. It is much better, generally, to get in touch with the adolescent mind in a more neutral field. But this field should not be too distant from the personal problems. Being on good terms with young people, for instance, on the playground is no guarantee ensuring an approach in personal matters. Common intellectual or political or cultural interests may afford a better opportunity. The overwhelming interest young people show for sport is not only due to the great place sport and suchlike things occupy today in the general mentality; it is, to a rather large extent, due to their wanting to escape from the disquieting problems which they are doing their utmost to ignore.

For the understanding of a personality, it is not enough to know something of the general condition characteristic of his age; it is not even enough to be acquainted with his ways of life. Real understanding, such as is necessary for efficient direction, demands a thorough knowledge of the particular personality. The side from which we approach a personality is more or less indifferent; personality is a "whole," and will reveal something of its intimate structure in each of its manifestations. There are, of course, sides of personality which reveal more of the basic attitudes, and others which reveal less. But there is none which could be called uninteresting. We ought to be glad whenever we get an adolescent to talk to us of things he is interested in; it is a mistake to discard such reports and to say: "Well, all right, but I want to hear of your real difficulties."

In an age in which intellectual and cultural problems were held in higher esteem, the approach was somehow easier; discussion on general problems or on questions bordering on philosophy led rather soon to a revealing of personal attitudes. But there is no direct way to the center of a personality from the interest in games or athletics. Nevertheless, even apparently superficial interests may prove a starting point for more searching inquiries. The pleasure young people derive from the moving pictures is generally rather superficial; but by discussing a play and the reasons of its enthralling power one may sometimes become aware of the deeper and carefully hidden attitudes. It would not be advisable to jump, as it were, at such a discovery. It is better to let it pass without comment, though not unremarked. By collecting such observations we may, at a later time, make a guess at what the young mind feels, and by this make the adolescent realize that we are after all capable of understanding him.

It is not advisable to attempt to get hold of the adolescent's mind by surprise; he does not want to be found out, though he may very much desire to tell what is on his mind. But surprise may scare him away. It is better to proceed slowly and with great patience. There are, of course, cases which do not allow for patience; when we see one of these youngsters going astray in a dangerous matter, we cannot avoid tackling him directly. The outcome of such intervention is, however, always rather doubtful.

The adolescent mind is oscillating, in often very wide excursions, between an excessive interest in his inner life and an equally overwrought interest in the things of the outer world. In regard to the latter, the adolescent feels attracted by all things he may grasp without difficulty, because he shuns effort 151; not only in consequence of the natural laziness of human nature, but also because of his distrusting his own capacities. Much may be gained by interesting young people in some topic higher than just baseball or certain shallow amusements.

No quality is of greater importance, when dealing with young people (or, for that matter, with older too), than patience. To be able to help, we must wait until an opportunity is offered to us. The better we know how to wait, the more surely will such an opportunity be given to us. All information reaching us by personal observation or by things we are told concerning a person we have to influence, is worthy of consideration; but we have to keep those things in our mind and not hurl them at the boy or the girl the very next time we meet them. The too often used phrase: "What is it that I hear of you?" ought to be discarded altogether. Young people do not want to be spied upon, they do not like feeling controlled, and they are easily scared away, because they are very anxious to preserve what they call their independence.

We have always to bear in mind that many of the undesirable behavior traits young people may show are but rudimentary forms of features which will be unobjectionable in the adult personality. The adult has to be independent in his decision; he has to take the whole responsibility of his actions, and he has, though he may listen to the advice of others, to make up his mind all by himself. The habit of acting only on the advice of others is an easy way of getting rid of responsibility. Young people are not yet able to decide for themselves, but they have to learn how to do it. It is dangerous to influence them too much; after a short time they will have to build up their own life, and then they will be fully responsible for all their actions. Adolescence is a period of training; training means acquiring a faculty not yet developed. We ought not to be shocked by the clumsiness of the youthful attempts to master reality. Rebuking a youth sternly is not the right way of approach.

The adolescent is, in truth, not difficult to understand. One has but to become fully aware of the general mentality of adolescence and of this individual's peculiar situation, and then one can understand and predict his behavior. But to be capable of such an understanding, one has to become intimately acquainted with all the single features of this personality and his life. There is nothing, in an individual, which is uninteresting and nothing we might justly call negligible. To find a way of approach we have, first of all, to keep our eyes open, to free ourselves from all prejudices, and to observe objectively with the cool mind of the scientist.

One great difficulty has to be mentioned. The adolescent desires, in the depths of his soul, to become an object of personal interest to someone he likes; but he resents, at the same time, all display of sentiment and, more than anything, of pity. There are but very few moments when he will be grateful for being pitied. One has, accordingly, to find a middle way; one has to make the youngster guess at one's personal interest, so that he will not feel being but the object of a perfunctory or merely psychological interest. One must, however, beware of displaying too much of this interest. Keeping the just middle between these attitudes is the more important, since we have to avoid strengthening the "introverted" tendency and the withdrawal from reality.

III. Ways of Influencing Adolescents

Given the peculiarities of the mental make-up of adolescents and the difficulties of approaching them, the problem of how to influence and to guide them becomes indeed a very perplexing one. The adolescent inclines, as has been already explained, towards a relativistic view on truths and values. He is no longer disposed to take an order of values as granted, simply because it is that which his parents or other persons of authority believe to be the right one. He will accept only laws and statements he approves of himself. But his "self" is not yet sufficiently consolidated to afford any stability of views. The attitude of the adolescent becomes, accordingly, in the main one of denial. Young people are quick in rejecting views held by the older generation, but they are not capable of replacing these views by others. This is one of the reasons why the young mind so easily succumbs to all kinds of new and modern ideas, especially if these ideas are of a destructive and revolutionary order. The adolescent feels that he cannot side with the traditional ideas; every philosophy or political theory which contradicts the tradition appeals to him, just because of its contradictory character and independently of its material content.

Authority is one of the things the young people most resent. It is, strange enough, at the same time one of the things for which they long most. This ambiguous attitude is easily explained by the ambiguity of the total situation characteristic of the adolescent mind. The denial of authority springs from the growing consciousness which the adolescent feels of being a person in his own right; the desire for authority springs from the uncertainty which seeks for relief. Because of this peculiar structure of the adolescent mind, we see quite frequently the very same youngsters who revolt against some traditional authority (of parents, of teachers, or of Church) astonishingly ready to submit to some other authority (for instance, that of a revolutionary party). The same youngsters who deny the rights of established authority become the most obedient followers and even slaves of some other authority, because it is not the old one and because it appears as the representative of a new order.

Education might make use of this desire for authority for its own ends, if it knew the right way to handle things. Authority as such does not impress youthful minds. They are impressed only when this authority either appears as one defending ideas akin to their own, or when they can be made to see its rights and necessities.

The general mentality of an historical period and the particular political situation is not without a marked influence. In periods of greater uncertainty, be it because of increasing economic or because of menacing political difficulties, youth feels its own uncertainty more keenly than ever; it is perhaps because of this factor that one sees the young people in certain countries so amazingly ready to join military organizations and to submit to very stern rules and to obey the authorities in a very unrestricted way. Much depends, as it seems, on the intensity with which the outer uncertainty imposes itself, or on the relative strength of the outer and the inner elements composing the mental situation of the adolescents.

Authority is of some avail only when it can make itself accepted by the adolescent. The authority of personalities is, therefore, generally greater than that of institutions. Adolescence is an age of reconstruction. The personality of the child has to change into that of the adult. The ripe mind accepts authority as a necessary factor in the arrangement of individual and social life. The child accepted it as a matter of course, because it knew no other world besides one regulated by authority. One cannot well leave to the single individual the rediscovery of authority as an essential and unavoidable factor in reality. Mistakes made are too often not corrected later, even though their error may have been disclosed. Vanity and pride forbid such a correction. Authority is, however, so absolutely necessary that its denial cannot but lead into steadily growing difficulties. It is, therefore, urgent that we prepare the adolescent mind for seeing this fact, even that we make authority acceptable during adolescence itself.

A brutal and "authoritative" assertion of authority will not help; it will probably work just in the opposite direction. Other ways must be discovered for making authority acceptable to the adolescents. There are, in the main, but two ways. Authority may become established on the basis of personal relations, or it may become acceptable because its necessity is approved by reason.

Even children will not accept authority unquestioned, unless this authority be founded on love; even to the children authority has to justify its demands. These things have been discussed at some length elsewhere and need not be repeated here. Parents may try to keep up their authority — and so may all those who, more or less, stand in loco parentis — by adapting their attitude to the gradual changes of their children's minds. But even then some difficulties are inevitable. Education during adolescence cannot simply rely on the authority as it existed during childhood. Authority has to be rebuilt. To assert itself, authority has to be of such a kind as to impress the mind of the adolescent. This does not mean the pretence of infallibility; nothing could be more reprehensible than that. He who would become an authority to the youngsters has to be proof against their criticism; the one thing he has most carefully to avoid is to make demands he himself does not fulfill. Nor must he resent even personal attacks; instead of rebuking all kind of criticism, he would do much better to explain why he acts in this or that way and to concede his having made a mistake, when this should be the case.

There is a certain school of pedagogues who believe very much in the value of abolishing the distance between the pedagogue and the adolescent. There is some truth in this idea, but there is a rather great error, too. It is true that by treating young people more or less as equals one establishes contact with them more easily; they may feel more at home and not be afraid of being "preached to." It is definitely a way of establishing authority, but one has to display quite an amount of tact and of — tactics. But the distance has not really to be abolished; where there is no distance, there is no authority. One has to find a middle way, preserving the distance and nevertheless treating the youngsters in such a manner as not to wound their susceptibility.

It is in many cases advisable to explain things to the adolescents in an impersonal and more theoretical manner. These discussions have to avoid the impression of "delivering a sermon." Nor have they to be long and circumstantial. A casual remark, put in on some occasion, may make a deeper impression than a long speech. Such remarks may be made when some topic of general interest, which does not touch directly on the youngsters' affairs, turns up.

When rebuking the younger generation for something, many people are accustomed to tell them that they themselves never behaved in such a manner when they were young. This remark is generally quite ineffective; the younger generation does not believe it to be true (and it is not, in most cases), and if they do, they will either pity their parents for the uninteresting life they have had, or attribute the fact to the times having been so different when their parents were young. But it may be rather useful to explain why one ought not to behave in such a manner.

Reason has come to be rather despised by many people who think themselves very "progressive" and exceedingly "modern." They raise a war-cry against "intellectualism"; they preach what they call "irrationalism," and make an alleged overrating of intellect responsible for many of the evils of today. Whether this accusation is justified or not, it surely goes too far in denying all influence of reason and in declaring that reason is not the true guiding light man has to follow. There is, after all, no other way of becoming aware of truth than through reason. Truth is not felt, and it is not grasped by some mysterious instinctive faculty; it is seen in the cold and clear light of reason. Nor is it true that young people despise, on their own account, reason; they do so only because they are influenced in this way. The decline of intellectuality — to avoid the proscribed term of intellectualism — is, in fact, a very deplorable feature of modern mentality. The reestablishment of reason as the only reliable guide is a very urgent task, and we should do all we can to encourage intellectual interest in the younger generation and thus counterbalance the still growing tendency for anti-intellectual attitudes.

The general anti-intellectual trend of modern life has a definitely bad influence. It is, of course, much easier to live up to a level of unintellectuality; it does not need much intellectual effort to follow a screen play, to read "thrilling" stories in a magazine, or to keep abreast of the latest events in baseball and tennis. Not even an interest in technical things can be justly called intellectual in a higher sense. A real understanding of technique, indeed, demands quite a marked degree of intellectual capacity; but the average interest which young people display in technical achievements is nearly as shallow as the rest of their inclinations. Instead of encouraging this tendency for the superficial and shallow, we ought to try to arouse the slumbering interest for things intellectual. The task is indeed difficult because of the tremendous influence of general mentality in the opposite direction. A boy who does not display the usual interest in sporting events, or who does not know the famous screen actors, is regarded as crazy and as being behind his time. There is, furthermore, the seduction of the line of least resistance. Why trouble about things necessitating effort, when it is so easy to be up to the mark in a so much easier manner?

If one examines the whole situation somehow more closely, the criticism raised against intellectualism is found to be but a partial manifestation of a general attack against all things of a higher level. The idea that instincts and other "irrational" factors in human nature are the essential part of it, is a peculiar and veiled form of a materialistic philosophy. The strengthening of this kind of idea threatens to become a very serious handicap to education. There are no means of influencing directly, with some prospect of success, the instinctive forces alive within human nature. The way of reason is the only one which promises an influence over will. Nil volitum quin præcognitum.

Nor is it true that young people are hostile to reason. They do not believe in their capacity of understanding reasonings, and they fear the effort — even more that they may be laughed at because of their being "high-browed." The first thing to do is, therefore, to encourage them, to develop in them the confidence that they will be able to grasp intellectual things. We have to try to destroy the very common attitude of "this is too high for me."

Encouragement is something of which the adolescents are very much in need. They do not seem, as a rule, to be discouraged. Nor are they always. But every adolescent is subject, at least at times, to fits of despondency and of discouragement. This is, of course, very detrimental to moral evolution. The feeling that they will never overcome certain difficulties, never be able to realize some ideals, etc., works as a heavy weight, drawing them down to lower levels. Discouragement is the necessary consequence of uncertainty, especially of the uncertainty about the "self." They feel this "self" to be unreliable, because it is so changing, because it is still so strange, and slips, as it were, between their fingers whenever they try to get hold of it.

Success has a definitely encouraging influence. But not all success amounts to a general encouragement. Many a youngster may be very proud of his successes in sport and go on feeling discouraged in regard to other things. Things that a man — whether still an adolescent or already an adult — does not feel equal to do, are generally not attempted. But nobody can, in truth, foretell whether he will be able to do a thing unless he tries. Ambition often becomes a very strong handicap; ambition is not to be contented by medium successes, but longs for great ones. Great successes, however, are not to be had so easily; they are either for the genius, or they are the result of long training and strenuous endeavor. The adolescent, being uncertain of himself, needs repeated successes for strengthening his self-confidence; when he knows, or has found out already, that he cannot achieve successes as he wants them, there is a danger that he will give up all endeavor for higher aims.

The only solution of this difficulty is to make the young people see that they have to content themselves at first with smaller achievements. If one tells them so and refers them to the future, they do not feel encouraged. Granted that they want to be great and important and successful even now; that they cannot wait until a future becomes real, of which they have but a very dim idea. How can they indeed be expected to have a clearer idea of the future, when they have but a very blurred one of the present? Encouragement to be effective has to apply to actual things. One ought never to rebuke an adolescent for something wrong he has done, without letting him feel that one trusts in his capacity of behaving differently. One has to be very careful especially with a youngster who has just become merged in a fit of despondency. During such a fit an adolescent is not necessarily depressed or sad or sluggish; on the contrary, he may be impudent and restive and disobedient, and create the impression of being but too sure of himself. It is never sufficient to consider but one single feature of behavior; one must always take into account the total behavior. This constitutes, in fact, a serious difficulty, for the complexity of modern life makes it nearly impossible for one person to observe another in all the different situations making up his life. The parents do not know how the boy and the girl behave when they are with their comrades, nor what they do while in the classroom; the teacher does not know of the behavior at home or on the playground; the confessor does not know anything beyond what his penitents tell him. But a closer observation will reveal to the trained eye many little traits disclosing things which do not come to the surf ace.

The guidance and influencing of adolescents is not an easy task. But it can be done if we first become aware of the characteristics of the personality we have to form. There are certain features of behavior, some of them generally considered as faults, which reveal more of the deeper structure of personality than is commonly believed. But the educator has to beware carefully of assuming the attitude of the judge; his principal task is not to condemn but to understand. Condemnation may prove an efficient means of influencing, if it is used with discretion; so may punishment. But both presuppose a thorough understanding.

IV. Some Special Features

No feature of behavior or of character can be interpreted according to one set pattern. There is "no dictionary of symptoms." The same feature may have a very different significance in different personalities. We are, moreover, too much disposed to speak of the "same" feature and to disregard certain slight, but nevertheless significant, shades. Notwithstanding this general rule, we may rely on certain interpretations of more or less typical features of behavior. The reliability of these interpretations becomes greater, the nearer the phenomenon approaches to abnormality. It is much easier to develop a typology of abnormal characters than of normal ones. A pathological personality resembles another of the same kind much more than one normal person resembles another. There is no "originality" at all in abnormal features; only normal people have originality. In describing and interpreting certain "symptoms," which are not indeed abnormal but which are not quite normal either, we do not run much risk of doing violence to reality and substituting preconceived ideas for facts.

The meaning given here to the term of normality needs elucidation. Normality means "according to a norm"; but our norm here is not that of the average, not the arithmetical or statistical mean, but the norm of the ideal. Even if, in some country, 99% of the inhabitants were affected with tuberculosis, the 1% free from the disease would represent normality. Even if some feature of behavior is observed in the great majority, it does not become normal unless it corresponds to the true idea of human nature. Certain features of behavior or traits of character which will be mentioned hereafter are quite common in adolescence; but they are not, for this, to be called normal. And because of their being "abnormal," they are susceptible to a more or less uniform interpretation. But we have nevertheless to bear in mind that they may assume an individual note according to the personality to which they belong.

Embarrassment or bashfulness is very frequently found in young people. If reactions or attitudes of this nature are more marked, they are felt, by those suffering from them and by third persons, to be definitely abnormal. A third feature one may well group with the two mentioned is timidity, though there is quite a difference, since in timidity a feeling of anxiousness is the primary element, whereas this emotion is secondary in embarrassment and bashfulness.

Embarrassment and bashfulness, or timidity, are believed to be "natural" in certain situations; but being natural does not mean that they are inevitable. It is noteworthy that these reactions were thought of differently in different ages. There was a time, and it is not long past either, when a young person (especially a girl) was supposed to be embarrassed and bashful under certain circumstances; not to feel — or at least not to behave — in this manner was definitely discreditable. But bashfulness is no longer considered a sign of a well-educated person, who "knows his station." This kind of behavior is, therefore, not the necessary effect of some objective situation; it is rather the outcome of a subjective attitude.

Embarrassment and timidity, and quite a few other behavior types, may be described as springing from an ambiguous basic structure; they are the result and the expression of cowardice combined with ambition. If the bashful person were indifferent to the impression he is about to make, he would not feel as he does. But because he attaches great importance to the impression he makes, he reacts in this manner. Nor would he so react if he were sure of making a good impression; being not sure of this, because he is not sure of himself and of his representing a real value, he becomes embarrassed. People are, of course, quite right in wanting to make a good impression; they should desire to do so for their own sake as well as for the sake of others. In so far as this wish is born from a due consideration of the feelings of our neighbors, it is absolutely right. There may be situations in which everyone will feel more or less embarrassed. But the main characteristic of habitually embarrassed people is that they are embarrassed even when there is manifestly no reason for feeling this emotion.

Embarrassment disappears when the person "feels at home" with others; that is, when he feels that he is sufficiently appreciated. There would be no embarrassment at all, if the individual were sure of being appreciated. An exaggerated tendency for embarrassment connotes, therefore, an equally strong longing for appreciation. This longing is unreasonable, because it expects success from the very first moment, and is unwilling to do anything to attain success. This habit is painful for him who is afflicted with it, but also for those who witness it. It serves therefore as a good excuse; bashfulness gives rise to the presumption that there is "more behind," and that the clumsiness or the mistakes of such a person are due merely to this habit. The habit of bashfulness says, in truth: "I long to make a tremendous impression, but not being sure of doing so and not content to put up with less, I shelter behind this behavior which hides my true feelings and at the same time supplies a valid excuse for my failure."

The high-strung demands alive in such a personality — though existing rather unconsciously — are even more easily detected in other states of "inhibition" and anxiety, as, for instance, in the confusion which seizes a person when he has to answer questions or to pass an examination. It is quite remarkable that these senseless attacks of fear in examination usually befall students who have worked very strenuously; one who has not worked must keep his head clear, this being his only chance. This characteristic becomes particularly visible in oral examinations. The state of fear, benumbing the intellectual faculties, does not help the student, but it serves as an excuse before his own conscience and before others. A person whose ambition stays within normal limits is satisfied with having done his work and with passing the examination. Overstrung ambition is satisfied only by a striking success; but this depends on several factors, some of which are independent of the student's personality, and make the result uncertain. A success less than the best possible is, to the mind of the overambitious, equivalent to defeat. Sometimes it is sufficient to tell such a person that it is not his task to be brilliant, and he will become conscious of his hitherto unnoticed longing for unheard-of successes. Although it is not sure that this knowledge alone will suffice to eradicate his unlucky habit, a recognition of its true nature is the indispensable beginning of the campaign to cure it.

The uncertainty which pervades the whole being of the adolescent makes him — without his understanding his own behavior — either seek for excuses to serve if he should fail to achieve what he aspires to, or avoid all situations which contain a threat of eventual defeat. Adolescents are very much inclined to confuse the notions of success and achievement — or, on the other hand, of failure and defeat. Not that this confusion is characteristic of adolescence alone; there are quite a few older people who make the same mistake. There is a kind of dullness and a laziness which have nothing to do, really, with lack of intelligence or of will for work; they are but habits of behavior built up for the sake of avoiding situations which might eventually bring about defeat. There are many kinds of dullness and of laziness, which cannot well be analyzed here. But it is well to emphasize that these notions are not univocal at all.

The physical state of the maturing organism plays surely a great role in the conditioning of certain features one often observes in adolescent years. But the mental factors are doubtless much more influential. The notion of "weak nerves" has to be discarded altogether; the nervous system is (even in a "nervous" person), as an anatomical and physiological unit, quite in order. We know that the behavior of the nervous may be changed very much by mental treatment, but there is no chance of changing the constitution of the nervous system by persuasion, suggestion, analysis, and what not. More important than the state of the nerves is in some cases general health; certain chronic diseases, even if they are but slight ones, may cause serious troubles of behavior by undermining abnormally the feeling of reliability of the body. Before attributing despondency, slackness, incapacity for work, etc., to mere mental causes, one will do well to have the adolescent examined by a physician.

A feature which is very common in adolescents, and which is often the occasion of great trouble to the educator, is instability of mood and of behavior in general. This problem has been mentioned already, but some few remarks may be added. It is wrong to consider this habit, unpleasant though it is, as simply a fault, and to attribute it to factors which the adolescent has the power to influence. The instability is the rather inevitable result of uncertainty. A man uncertain about the way he has to take will repeatedly turn first to one side and then to the other, before he can make up his mind. The greater the uncertainty is, the longer this state of doubt and of oscillation between the various possible ways will last. The adolescent is, as has been pointed out more than once, uncertain not only about the ways — that is, about reality — but also about himself. The world shows another face, so to say, every day, and the "ego" looking at the world is equally inconstant. This being the case, one should not wonder at the adolescent being unstable and changing his mind so often. He may be interested in his work today, because he feels equal to it, and he may lapse into indifference tomorrow, because he has lost the feeling of ability to achieve. He may understand something (e.g., a mathematical proposition or a reasoning on morals) today, and not understand it any more tomorrow, because he has become another person overnight. The same reason causes very often a marked unreliability. The youngster under consideration will promise to do something and not keep his promise: this is not necessarily the result of any real immorality or a neglect of moral obligations; it may as well be just the consequence of his having become different, so that the reasons he felt to be convincing but a day earlier have lost their solidity.

This behavior affords a point of attack. It would be wrong only to rebuke the adolescent for his lack of reliability; if he is not shown the causes of his behavior, he will not be improved by listening to reproaches. He knows, of course, that promises have to be kept; he knows, too, that there is no exception for him. But he feels that he is not quite as guilty as his judge believes him to be; this knowledge is not based on a clear idea of what prompted his behavior, it is but a dim awareness of there having entered into play factors he is unable to control. The subjective feelings, new and strange as they are, have a much greater influence on his mind than objective considerations. This fact has to be made clear to him. He has to be shown that human life is ruled first of all by objective laws — and that these laws are not only outside of personality, not only some powers one cannot help but obey, because they are so much stronger than the individual; he must be shown that the laws of reality are the laws of the single human individual too, since man belongs to reality, is part of it, and by rebelling against reality he undermines his own existence.

The adolescent will easily concede that human society cannot persist without honesty and reliability prevailing there. He must be led on to understand why he does not live up to his own principles. He will, of course, discover many reasons why he behaved as he did. By analyzing these reasons, he may be made to understand that they are not as good as he believes them to be.

Situations in which the adolescent knows himself guilty and where he expects to be reproached and punished, may be employed to great advantage for getting into closer touch with the young troubled mind, if they are carefully handled. By explaining to the culprit that one has of course to punish or at least to condemn the deed, but that one wants to understand his motives, one may not seldom pierce through the armor of reticence and stubbornness which the sensitive soul has donned.

Stubbornness and unwillingness to see another's point of view, the more or less arrogant upholding of their own ideas, and such like traits, are very common too with adolescents. Stubbornness in face of objectively convincing reasons is always a sign of an overstrung and vulnerable ambition. In such a case, one ought not reprove the adolescent and tell him that he is wrong in his ideas and perverted in his character; this can but strengthen his reluctance to acknowledge his having made a mistake or committed a fault. If his behavior is proved to be wrong and the reasons put before him cannot be answered, the adolescent will retire into a sullen silence. This behavior is often taken as a sign of offensiveness and of depravity, but it may as well be the expression of deeply wounded feelings and of pride which forbids all expression of these feelings. If one should tell the young people that one knows exactly how they feel, no great progress would be made; they would but reinforce their defense. One has to act on the basis of this knowledge, without mentioning it expressly. It is much better to explain the truth in a more objective manner, leaving aside for the moment the personal case. Many adolescents feel that they are utterly uncapable of behaving as they ought; they are not wrong, in a way, because they feel themselves so little reliable. It is not only the other people who cannot rely on the adolescent's promises; he too is fully aware of the fact that his resolutions are not worth very much.

Because of all the factors which have been mentioned repeatedly already, the adolescent is easily discouraged. There is always the danger of this discouragement increasing to a point where he loses altogether the hope of doing good. Some children, many adolescents, and not a few adults behave badly, simply because they despair of ever being able to behave well. "Many sins are done out of weakness, but few spring really from malice," St. Augustine says somewhere. This is particularly true of the adolescent; and his weakness is perhaps easier to understand and to condone than delinquencies of which so many grown-up people become guilty.

The adolescent must be shown that it is quite right indeed to strive for a high and lofty goal, but that to realize such goal demands the exercise of patience. The young mind is essentially impatient; it wants not only success, but immediate success. It believes that, in lecturing the younger generation to be patient, the older people are tired, that they have lost the fine élan of youth, that they are discouraged and despondent, and that it will be for the next generation to keep alive this energy, this aggressiveness, they believe they have. But only too often youth expends its enthusiasm on things not worthy of such a sentiment. Youth takes but too easily the sentiment itself for the thing that matters; youth is essentially subjectivistic in its attitudes. This subjectivism becomes an important factor also in regard to two great problems which adolescent education has to grapple with — daydreaming and sexuality.

V. Daydreams and Sexuality

Some will perhaps wonder at our linking together of daydreams and sexuality. Even though they are aware that sexual elements enter a good deal into daydreams and daydreaming very often accompanies sexual feelings, they do not see in this a sufficient reason for establishing a close connection between these two phenomena. Although the connection is indeed generally considered as a more or less accidental one, there is, in truth, a very close relationship between them, which justifies their being discussed under the same head.

Sexual desires arise because of physiological reasons. But human nature is not of a structure to allow so simple an explanation as that. The mental states corresponding to sexuality, the longings which draw the two sexes together, the love which may spring up in their hearts, are not mere effects of bodily processes. The materialist may indeed hold such a belief; but, to do so, he must shut his eyes to very obvious facts. One who sees in the relations of the sexes only the physiological factor and its immediately correlated mental phenomena (the craving for satisfaction and the desire for lust), misses some very essential elements. There is also love apart from sexuality; in fact, the narrow-mindedness of certain "psychologies" — lucus a non lucendo — which try to "explain" all kinds of love as being derived from sexuality, cannot withstand the impact of plain facts. Freudian psychology with its nonsensical exaggeration of the influence of sexuality could never have won such an applause, if descriptive psychology had not been so much neglected, and if an exact phenomenology of mental life had not been forgotten and replaced by a psychology fashioned according to the tenets of material science.

Even in the mind of the adolescents, much as they may be impressed by the crude manifestations of sexuality, there is more than a mere desire for lust or for the pleasant sensations to be got from sexual experience. This something more than mere sexuality is indeed very dim, and but little recognized in its true nature. The purely sexual longings are much more impressive, and seem to overlie completely the other factors. The adolescent mind is just awakening to the full consciousness of personality; it cannot but feel that human nature is not completely represented by only one of the sexes. Without any philosophy, human mind knows somehow that it is complete only in both sexes taken together. Man and woman God made him (mankind). Modern psychology of evolution speaks of a longing for completion, expressing by this term rather aptly a state of things that is really actual.

This longing becomes particularly strong in adolescence, not only because of the emergence of its somatic substratum, sexuality, but also because of the state of uncertainty which the adolescent mind is experiencing. But, in view of the complete ambiguity of this mental situation, the very same longing, born out of uncertainty and striving for its alleviation, increases the uncertainty. The world of sexuality, and of all the things more or less directly connected with it, gives rise to many new and formidable problems. It is part of the new world disclosing itself gradually to the eyes of the adolescents, and part also of the newborn personality which as yet does not know and cannot trust itself.

One way of escape is open to everyone who, bewildered by this "great and terrible world," looks out for some refuge wherein to dwell securely. This is the flight into imagination or into the realm of dreams. One who is dissatisfied with reality will imagine another world, more pleasant, more like what he desires, more able to give what reality withholds. And a person dissatisfied with himself will be as willing to withdraw into a world wherein he may see himself as he wishes to be — as a hero, as successful, as wealthy, as a lover, etc. No wonder, then, that the adolescent, finding himself surrounded by a reality he cannot understand and confronted by a future he cannot grasp, feeling himself furthermore a stranger within his own ego, turns to the world of dreams and of imagination. No wonder, indeed, that this flight from reality grows into a habit, and a dangerous one at that.

Losing touch with reality is always attended with danger; it may estrange the mind so far from reality that serious difficulties arise, handicapping real life. There is still another reason which makes this habit of dreaming very undesirable. Dreamers neglect, of course, their duties, which belong to reality; but this is not the greatest danger. Dreams are created out of the dreamer's own imagination, and they obey the laws laid down by his will. Dreams gratify, in but too cheap a manner, the desire for omnipotence; in dreams there are no obstacles to be surmounted, no difficulties to be reckoned with, no responsibility awaiting the actor. Things and fate and men obey the daydreamer's supreme will. He is "like unto God."

Daydreams are often, though not at all regularly, about things sexual. The sexual longings, craving for satisfaction denied to the dreamer in reality, seek for it in imagination. But there is still another reason for the great role played by sexuality in so many of these daydreams. The adolescent no longer possesses the faculty which enabled him as a child to build up an imaginary world without any real substratum whereupon to base it. This faculty diminishes gradually in the later years of childhood, and in most cases disappears altogether. Some portion of reality is now needed to serve as a basis for dreams. Sexuality which is always at hand, always ready to awaken, supplies this basis of reality. Quite a few daydreams — and not with young people alone — are in fact not about sexuality, though they are couched in the language, as it were, of sexuality.

A vicious circle becomes easily established, linking daydreams and sexuality. Daydreams afford satisfaction to sexual longings, and sexuality supplies a basis and a starting point for daydreams. Not seldom bad sexual habits spring, not immediately from an excessive sexual desire nor even from "weakness of will," but from the wish to withdraw into the pleasant world of dreams and to escape the unpleasantness of reality. And in quite a few cases it is more necessary to combat the tendency for dreaming than to direct the attack against the sexual habits themselves.

It is commonly said that, to counterbalance the allurements of sexuality, one has to divert the mind from them. This is quite true; but it is impossible to divert the mind from one thing without supplying something else to which the mind may turn. And this other thing must be at least as fascinating as the first is. Herein lies the great difficulty of the tactics of diversion. It is indeed nearly impossible to produce at a moment's notice, so to say, some topic which would captivate the adolescent's mind sufficiently to outweigh sexuality. Bodily exercise has been strongly recommended, more for physiological than for psychological reasons. Sometimes this method works all right, because bodily fatigue may overcome the sexual excitements. But there are also cases in which bodily exertion and fatigue act as a stimulant on sexuality. Sexual excitement is, after all, something quite normal; one cannot hope to extinguish sexuality. It would be much better if some way could be devised by which the right attitude towards these things would become established.

To reach this goal one has first of all, as it seems, to break down the habit of excessive subjectivism. The world of dreams is a merely subjective one, different from and antagonistic to reality. The more a person lives in touch with reality, and the more at home he is there, the less will he be tempted to withdraw into the dream world. The idea of reality must be taken in its fullest sense, including not only tangible things and society and economics, but the world of truth and of values too. We ought to train our children in a way that they shall become conscious of the fact that truth and value are realities or sides of reality. It is perhaps not quite to the point that, whenever we refer to morals, we usually speak of ideals. Moral laws are just as much laws of reality, as those of physics are.

This training ought to be started long before the troubles of adolescence begin. There is no such thing as an education in sexuality; one cannot educate sexuality, one can only educate a human person. The moral attitudes needed for making resistance to temptation possible in the field of sexuality are the same as enable an individual to resist every other kind of temptation. Young people who have not learned before how to offer resistance to the many allurements of the world, will hardly be able to act in the right manner when sexual temptations arise. But people who have been denied all gratification of even their most legitimate desires will behave not better, perhaps even worse. They encounter in the field of sexuality at last some means for gratifying certain desires, means moreover quite independent of the consent of other people. Children who have been subjected to an overstrict education are as prone to indulge in sexual satisfaction as are those who never learned to deny themselves anything. Here as everywhere, a just mean has to be observed.

It is very necessary to ascertain exactly the general behavior of an adolescent, and to become as fully acquainted as possible with his previous history, if one wishes to devise ways to keep him straight in regard to sexuality. There is no panacea which one could apply in all cases, regardless of individual peculiarities.

Sexual education has always to steer its course between the Scylla of overdone restriction and the Charybdis of exaggerated laxity. Restriction which attempts to keep the young people entirely out of touch with sexual things is futile, because modern life supplies quite ample contact with sexual matters, and this policy is dangerous because it increases curiosity and the natural tendency towards things forbidden. Laxity which does not mind whether the young minds get infected with insalubrious ideas, or does not care how they become acquainted with these things, is equally wrong. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the whole question would not be so hard to answer if all adolescents were ready to turn to their parents for information, and if parents were capable of imparting the necessary knowledge with the necessary tact. As it is, information on sexuality usually reaches the adolescents through channels which offer little guarantee that this information is of the kind one would wish it to be.

A very serious difficulty is created by the general attitude towards these things which prevails today. There is today a definite overrating of the importance of sexuality. Nobody will deny that sexuality plays an enormous role in human life. But the recognition of this fact is something very different from the way in which sexual questions are treated in many discussions and publications. This kind of literature has but little immediate influence on the mind of adolescents; generally speaking, they do not study it. But this so-called scientific psychology penetrates more and more into fiction, into popular articles on personal life, into magazines and all kinds of printed matter accessible also to the young people.

These well-known facts necessitate the creation of a counterbalancing influence. If we desire to imbue the minds of our adolescents with right ideas on sexuality, we shall have to find means of exposing all these pseudo-scientific statements. In regard to this matter also, the thesis presented already must be repeated: there is no other way but that of reason. Truths can be grasped only by reason. Sexual education cannot dispense with reasoning, and, to be effective, reasoning demands that reason shall have been trained, and that it is held in the esteem due to it. Nowhere are the evil consequences of the anti-intellectual mentality more apparent than in the field of sexual education.

Three things must be accomplished. The adolescent must develop a true idea of the role played by sexuality in human life. He must become aware of its place in the objective order of values. He has to learn how to behave in the case of sexual temptation and in face of situations implying a sexual note in general.

The first task cannot well be detached from a general instruction on human nature. It is the duty of our schools — and of all agencies imparting knowledge to youngsters — to give them the right ideas. The materialistic views which represent man as but one organism among millions of others must be eliminated altogether. These views are introduced not only by writings dealing explicitly with this matter; they find their way into the young mind by many other channels also. It is the general spirit which matters. A textbook of physiology may not mention the problem of the role played by instincts in human life, and nevertheless influence by its general spirit the reader in a highly undesirable manner. It is not enough to keep "immoral" literature from the young people; one has to be very careful in regard to all kinds of reading. But it would, nevertheless, be quite wrong to banish all information on these things, and to deny to the adolescents all access to things which cannot but interest them and which they have a right to know. It is our duty to point out that, important though sexuality is, it is nevertheless neither the most important side of human life nor the source of so many troubles as it is said to be by certain psychologies.

A true understanding of the role played by sexuality in human life cannot be attained unless a true idea of the order of values in general is also inculcated. The reversal of the objective order of values which largely characterizes modern life proves to be exceedingly detrimental to education, particularly to sexual education. It is indeed difficult to make the adolescent understand that he has to refrain from sexual satisfaction and that he has to pursue higher values, when he is not aware of the existence of these other values. As long as the higher values of the intellect, of culture and of art are held in scorn, as long as nobler and loftier sentiments are considered incompatible with the "modern" mentality, so long will there be but little hope of furnishing the mind of the adolescent with motives strong enough to make him desist from seeking unlawful satisfaction.

A certain laxity in the relations between both sexes which quite often may be harmless, but which may easily degenerate into rather dangerous ways of behavior, is probably due also to the blindness to higher values with which the modern world is afflicted.

Because of all this, the third and most urgent task of sexual education is very difficult, more difficult than it ever has been heretofore. There is, in fact, no reason besides those implied in faith which could be pointed out to the adolescent — as a motive for a right behavior. But the attitude towards faith is, in the adolescent mind, not such as to afford a reliable basis to build upon. The process of reconstruction which involves the whole personality goes on likewise in the region of the soul (if this expression be permitted), where religiosity has its seat. The unsophisticated belief of the child must be developed into the conscious and reasoned attitude of the adult. Faith is, with the adolescents, something still growing and changing.

Consequently, the problem of sexual education cannot and must not be separated from general education. Sexual behavior is but one feature among many others in which the basic attitudes of a person find their expression.

VI. Vocational Guidance

The problem of which vocation to follow becomes urgent in adolescence. Most of the youngsters have to decide on a job, because they will before long have to earn their living; the rest have at least to know what curriculum to choose. The problem is not an easy one to solve because of the many extrinsic factors which have to be considered (such as opportunities open, economic situation), and because of the intrinsic factors which are often even less clear than the extrinsic.

Children have, as a rule, quite definite ideas of what they would like to become; their ideas are of course childish, and for the most part are determined by merely accidental conditions. Very rarely does a child really know what he would like to be, in so far as this is to be determined by his likings in his later life. Only a very exceptional degree of talent becomes manifest already in childhood. Some famous mathematicians, composers, and other artists are known to have shown their genius in or before early puberty. Generally, however, the ideas which children have regarding their future work are of no great importance. With adolescence setting in and the knowledge of reality becoming more concrete, the purely imaginative choice of work has to be replaced by considerations based both on actual opportunities and on personal gifts. But the adolescent has but a very incomplete knowledge of the world or of himself; and even this incomplete knowledge cannot be utilized because of its inconstancy. Many adolescents do not know, accordingly, whither to turn; many let their choice be determined by mere accidents — by the advice of elders, by some job offered to them, by some opportunity which they or their elders believe they have discovered.

Guidance in regard to the choice of work is, therefore, very necessary. Vocational guidance of youth is desirable, not only because the young people do not know enough of the real opportunities, but also because they do not know enough of themselves. The leading idea of vocational guidance is, as is well known, to put the "right man in the right place." The assumption is that one has to find out the kind of work the single individual is best fitted to do. Fitness depends on talent and on inclination. People usually work badly if they loathe their work, though loving it is no guarantee of efficiency. Furthermore, the criterion of inclination is not very reliable. Many people feel attracted by jobs they are not at all fitted to fill. One has only to remember the great number of people who want to become some kind of artist. There is, moreover, no certainty that people are attracted really by the work and not by some of its accidental features. It is not easy to detect the real reasons by which a person is induced to choose a certain kind of work, because these reasons may be hidden from the person himself.

This is true, even in a special way, of adolescents. They know their minds even less than the average person does. The self-deceptions of youth are of a character somehow different from those common to an older age, but they are nevertheless there and are very influential. The statements which young people make regarding their inclinations have to be accepted with a good deal of distrust; their inclinations are subject to the same quick changes as everything else in their personality. But if one were to tell a youngster that he is mistaken in his purpose, that the work he chooses is not suited to him, and that before long he will have changed his mind, one would but supply a strong motive for his insisting on his choice. It is better to discuss the question in a matter-of-fact way, to explain all the objective sides of the problem, and let the young mind draw its own conclusions. It is often quite easy to guess at the true reasons — e.g., opposition, admiration, love of "glamour," etc. — which have nothing at all to do with the real thing. But it would be wrong to tell the adolescent bluntly that he is misled by merely accidental features. Even if he is ready, for the moment, to accept such a statement, he is sure to return to his ideas, because his acquiescence in the criticism offered by a third person would amount to the recognition of his own inferiority and uncertainty.

Prior to all decision on a particular job, a man who is preparing for his life's work must develop the right attitude towards work in general. The necessity for such an attitude is so obvious that one might almost dispense with its further discussion. But it is worthwhile to devote some consideration to the nature of this attitude and to the ways of engendering it in the adolescent mind. Work means the production of values which last longer than the activity producing them; this factor distinguishes basically work from play. Work deals with reality, and therefore implies responsibility; play carries no responsibility, because winning and losing, or playing well or badly, has no influence on real life. Work means, furthermore, obedience to rules or laws; this feature is common to work and certain kinds of play, especially games. In so far as games teach man to obey rules and to serve for the sake of an impersonal aim, they may be helpful as a training for the life of work. But there is always the danger of taking too seriously things which are essentially unimportant. By laying too much stress on games, one risks blurring the distinctions between reality and play. The right attitude towards work is based on the full acknowledgment of service and duty towards society or community. Work is essentially cooperation; its full sense is accordingly not grasped when it is regarded only as a means for "making a living."

Vocational guidance is generally understood as a method devised for helping people to discover the right kind of work. It ought to be viewed in a broader sense, viz., as an educational influence towards developing the true idea of vocation. Vocation means being called to do a definite thing; but for this man has first to be ready to do something, not for himself but for the community. If this meaning of work is fully grasped, the problem of deciding in favor of a particular job becomes less arduous.

Developing the true sense of work is equivalent to developing a right understanding of responsibility. The adolescent is as yet far from a real understanding of responsibility. He is unable as yet to feel as a member of a community; being such a member means, in fact, being the equal — at least qua member — of all other members. But the community consists largely — and in so far as work is involved, nearly exclusively — of adults. The adolescent, though fully aware of his developing into an adult, feels that he has not as yet attained that status; he does not fit in, because he is not sure of himself and, therefore, not sure of being as much as the others are. His attitude towards work is dictated, to a great extent, by his desire for superiority; it is, accordingly, very egotistic. The idea of work as a social duty does not appeal to him.

The adolescent belongs, generally at least, to some kind of community. There is the set of youngsters of which he is part, the sporting club of which he is a member, the classroom, etc. But these communities are of a rather special character: they are limited, shut in within definite borders; they pursue, if any, very limited aims. There is no immediate link between these groups and the larger community of the nation or of humanity. The goal of humanity or of society is too vague to impress the mind of the adolescents. Religious education may, indeed, prove very helpful by pointing out the glorious idea of the Mystical Body of Christ, an idea which the adolescent mind is quite capable of grasping, and which, when presented in the right manner, may even arouse not a little enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is an attitude that the adolescent personality is very capable of assuming; it may, of course, easily lead adolescents astray, but it may also be used with great success. There is a tendency, today, to decry enthusiasm; a sedate, unenthusiastic — to tell the truth, even a blasé — manner is much cultivated by contemporary society. The adolescents, seeing this attitude in their elders, are very apt to adopt it because of the peculiarities of their own mentality. They have an extreme fear of seeming ridiculous; they are likewise afraid of showing their feelings; they are troubled by the intensity of their emotions which they do not understand. An attitude recommending unemotional behavior is, therefore, rather welcome. The coldness, the lack of interest, the overwrought egotism, the exaggerated materialism, the matter-of-fact attitude of our adolescents — all those characteristics which make it appear as if modern youth had lost many of even the essential qualities that earlier times used to credit it with — are very often not spontaneous manifestations of their true mind, but are artificially assumed as a means of defense. They are meant to shelter the sensitivity of youth, to build up a wall behind which the uncertain and troubled mind may hide and feel secure from being disturbed by the inner revolutions and by the threats of reality.

This state of the adolescent mind causes not seldom an attitude which becomes a serious obstacle for vocational guidance. The sophistication and hypocritical indifference which adolescents display induces them to make light of their inclinations and interests. Their minds are focused on the material side only; how to make money, how to gain influence, how to play a role, etc., seems more important than how to become useful and how to make the best use of one's personal qualities. A youngster may desire very much to study, to become a teacher, to do some special work, but he will not say so; he will even try to kill this inclination within himself, because he has come to think of it as nonsensical or as sentimental. The ideal of manhood is, to the mind of the adolescent, not of a person pursuing some goal with enthusiasm — not of one who believes in a mission, but of one who has attained success and a large income. This is a definite curse laid by some evil spirit on the world of today. It is nowhere as baneful as in the education of adolescents. How are we, who want to inculcate in the young souls the thirst for the ideal, the aspirations of lofty things, the reverence of truth, the admiration of all that is good and holy — how are we to overcome the seduction exercised by the utterly materialistic, opportunistic, and hedonistic spirit pervading the whole modern life, public as well as private?

It is a truism to assert that the general mentality is very much in need of reform. It is not less obvious that such a reform can be brought about only if we are able to reform the individual minds. We are evidently moving in a vicious circle. Difficult though it may be, we must nevertheless try to break through this circle. Influencing general mentality may be attempted by many means; it is not the task of education, which deals with individuals. A group or nation cannot be educated in the strict sense of the term; education, when spoken of in regard to a multitude of individuals, has but a metaphorical meaning. The one thing education can and must do is to exercise influence on individuals.

We have to combat in each individual the disastrous forces at work in the modern world. We have, therefore, to study every individual entrusted to our care and to discover the ways of approach suited to his personality and the means by which to influence him.

Much may be gained already by letting the adolescent know that we do consider him as an individual. Few things are so distasteful to the adolescent — and for that matter to the older people, too — as being looked at as a "case" or the representative of a "type." Much is expected, by many pedagogists, from typology; we hear of introverted and extraverted, of integrated and disintegrated, of cyclothymic and schizothymic types, and of quite a few others; and we are told that there are definite ways of dealing with a personality belonging to one of these types. Real personalities, however, are not sufficiently determined by the type they belong to, even if those types were clearly defined in each case, which in fact they are not. No real personality is exhaustively described by calling it by one of these names. Nor is the whole question of typology so far settled as to supply a reliable basis for educational endeavors. It is not at all sure whether these types are as constant as some would have them to be; it is quite possible, even probable, that the type may change in one person. By making out the kind of type an individual belongs to, we get no more than just a very preliminary idea of his general mental set-up; we know practically nothing about his real self. Every pedagogue will, of course, profit by experience; when studying a new pupil, he is sure to recall someone he is reminded of, a "case" like the one he has before him; he will know that he has been confronted by similar problems already more than once. But this is not the same attitude as the one provoked by too great a trust in the "scientific" statements of typology. The pedagogue recalls an individual, or may be several individuals, but not a type.

Generalization is all right in science; it is wrong in art. But education, like practical medicine, is an art. A painter does not draw a picture of "the Indian"; he portrays an individual person, this one Indian man, even though he may call his picture by a general name. The poet creates not a type, but a person, though his play may be named "The Misanthrope." The pedagogue deals with an individual person, though he may discuss the problems related to "the adolescent." Every individual is new, unique, not comparable to any other. Training has, therefore, to be individualized to the very extreme. There is never enough of individualization. The greatest mistake education can become guilty of is a strict adherence to one pattern.

Education is doomed the very moment it begins to become the slave of a definite pattern, however "progressive" it may claim to be. One may, of course, develop a certain technique of education; many things can be taught and learned. But the essence of pedagogy is nothing one can learn in the classroom, nothing that can be fully explained in treatises. Educational influence is based on the personal relation between the educator and the educated. The adolescents may have, as indeed they do have, many features in common; the basic attitude of uncertainty is present in each of them, though in different degrees and differently expressed. Notwithstanding this uniformity, we have to consider every boy or girl as a new problem in regard to study and to guidance.

Adolescents are difficult, but they are promising too, especially if they are bright. Dullness of intellect is indeed the greatest handicap of education. A dull person may be trained in a more or less automatic manner; he never can be really educated, because he is incapable of perceiving adequately the truths and the values. The obstacles arising from intellectual underdevelopment ought to warn us not to neglect the importance of reason in the education of character.

Character depends mostly on will; but will in itself is blind unless enlightened by reason. Values, the goals of action, are not "felt," but seen; the mind does not grope in the dark, but may pursue its aims in the full light of reason. There is not much hope for a true education of character as long as reason is held in scorn. It has been said unto man that he will know the truth, and that the truth will make him free.

© Joseph F. Wagner, Inc.

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