Chapter XIV (2)

"The school is a little society, whose citizens are the scholars. The teacher has not merely to instruct the pupil, but ought also to teach him to live in the little school-society and thus fitly prepare him to live in the great society of humanity. And just as men are classified in human society, so ought to be classified the scholars in the little school-society; and just as the teacher looks upon the great human world in movement upon the earth, so ought he also to look upon that little world called the school, observing its elements with a positive eye, without preconceptions and without prejudices. The teacher, therefore, in regard to the school-organism, is as a legislator in regard to society. And the true and wise legislator does not give laws to the governed, does not offer security and liberty to the citizens, until after he has made a profound study of his country and of society. Let the teacher try for some time to take these criteria into his school; let him try to apply in the school many of those facts and usages which are commonly employed in human society, and he will see how, little by little, almost unnoticeably, the primitive idea of the school will be modified in his mind, and he will see how the school itself will assume the true character which it ought to have, that is, the character of a microscopic social organism. This legislator for our children, by making the children and youths clearly see of themselves that the school is nothing else but a little society, where they are taught to live, and by making them see the points of resemblance and of contact with the great human society, will engender in the minds of the pupils the conscience of duty and of right; will create in them the primitive feeling of justice and of equity. And the pupils, feeling that there is a real association, feeling that they do form part of a little world, and are not something merely gathered together by chance for a few hours, will form a compact homogeneous scholastic association, in which all will try to be something, and of which all will be proud. In this way will the assemblage of disparate, diverse, heterogeneous elements, with which the school begins the year, be able to become homogeneous and create a true school organism. And if the teacher will persevere, whether in the direction of the school, in the classification of the pupils, or in the different contingencies that arise, in applying those criteria, those ideas, those forms, which are commonly employed in society, he will be favouring the homogeneity of the little organism which he has to instruct and to educate. He will thus have always before his mind all the organic, psychic, and moral characteristics of human society and will see the differences from, and the resemblances to, those of the school-organism. In so far will he have an example, a law, a criterion, a form to follow in the direction of the little human society entrusted to him, with its beautiful and its ugly side, its good and its bad, its vices and its virtues. This idea of the school as an organism, however much it seems destined to overturn ideas of the past, will be the crucible from which will be turned out in the near future all the reforms and many new ideas."

This view of the school as an organism, a social microcosm, a little society within the great human society, having its resemblances to, and its differences from, the family and the nation, is one that the new development of "child-study" seems bound to promote and advance. Rank paternalism has made its exit from the great human society, but it has yet a strong hold upon the school. It is only in comparatively recent times that motherhood, which, as Zmigrodzki says, has been the basis of our civilization, has been allowed to exercise its best influence upon the scholastic microcosm. Paternalism and celibacy must be made to yield up the strong grasp which they have upon the educational institutions of the land, and the early years of the life of man must be confided to the care of the mother-spirit, which the individual man and the race alike have deified in their golden age. The mother who laid so well the foundations of the great human society, the originator of its earliest arts, the warder of its faiths and its beliefs, the mother, who built up the family, must be trusted with some large share in the building of the school.

_Child-Sociology._

In _The Story of a Sand-Pile_ (255), President G. Stanley Hall has chronicled for us the life-course of a primitive social community-nine summers of work and play by a number of boys with a sand-pile in the yard of one of their parents. Here we are introduced to the originality and imitation of children in agriculture, architecture, industrial arts, trade and commerce, money and exchange, government, law and justice, charity, etc. The results of this spontaneous and varied exercise, which, the parents say, "has been of about as much yearly educational value to the boys as the eight months of school," and in contrast with which "the concentrative methodic unities of Ziller seem artificial, and, as Bacon said of scholastic methods, very inadequate to subtlety of nature," Dr. Hall sums up as follows (255. 696):--

"Very many problems that puzzle older brains have been met in simpler terms and solved wisely and well. The spirit and habit of active and even prying observation has been greatly quickened. Industrial processes, institutions, and methods of administration and organization have been appropriated and put into practice. The boys have grown more companionable and rational, learning many a lesson of self-control, and developed a spirit of self-help. The parents have been enabled to control indirectly the associations of their boys, and, in a very mixed boy-community, to have them in a measure under observation without in the least restricting their freedom. The habit of loafing, and the evils that attend it, have been avoided, a strong practical and even industrial bent has been given to their development, and much social morality has been taught in the often complicated _modus vivendi_ with others that has been evolved. Finally, this may perhaps be called one illustration of the education according to nature we so often hear and speak of."

This study of child-sociology is a _rara avis in terra_; it is to be hoped, however, that if any other parents have "refrained from suggestions, and left the hand and fancy of the boys to educate each other under the tuition of the mysterious play-instinct," they may be as fortunate in securing for the deeds of their young off-spring, as observant and as sympathetic a historian as he who has told the story of the sand-pile in that little New England town.

Bagehot, in the course of his chapter on "Nation-Making," observes (395. 91):--

"After such great matters as religion and politics, it may seem trifling to illustrate the subject from little boys. But it is not trifling. The bane of philosophy is pomposity: people will not see that small things are the miniatures of greater, and it seems a loss of abstract dignity to freshen their minds by object lessons from what they know. But every boarding-school changes as a nation changes. Most of us may remember thinking,' How odd it is that this _half_ should be so unlike last _half_; now we never go out of bounds, last half we were always going; now we play rounders, then we played prisoner's base,' and so through all the easy life of that time. In fact, some ruling spirits, some one or two ascendant boys, had left, one or two others had come, and so all was changed. The models were changed, and the copies changed; a different thing was praised, and a different thing bullied." It was in the spirit of this extract (part of which he quotes), that the editor of the "Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science" happily admitted into that series of monographs, Mr. J. H. Johnson's _Rudimentary Society among Boys_(272), a sociological study of peculiar interest and importance--"a microcosm, not only of the agrarian, but of the political and economic history of society." Mr. Johnson has graphically described the development of society among some fifty boys on the farm belonging to the McDonogh School, not far from the city of Baltimore, Maryland; land-tenure, boy-legislation, judicial procedure, boy-economy, are all treated of in detail and many analogies with the life and habits of primitive peoples brought out, and the author has gone a long way towards realizing the thesis that "To show a decided resemblance between barbarian political institutions and those of communities of civilized children, would be a long step towards founding a science of Social Embryology" (272. 61).

_"Gangs."_

Mr. Stewart Culin (212) in his interesting account of the "Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N.Y." notices _en passant_ the existence of "gangs" of boys--boys' societies of the ruder and rougher kind. As evidence of the extent to which these organizations have flourished, the following somewhat complete list of those known to have existed in the city of Philadelphia is given:--

Badgers, Bed Bugs, Bleeders, Blossoms, Bouncers, Buena Vistas, Buffaloes, Bull Dogs, Bullets, Bunker Hills, Canaries, Clippers, Corkies, Cow Towners, Cruisers, Darts, Didos, Dirty Dozen, Dumplingtown Hivers, Dung Hills, Muters, Forest Eose, Forties, Garroters, Gas House Tarriers, Glassgous, Golden Hours, Gut Gang, Haymakers, Hawk-Towners, Hivers, Killers, Lancers, Lions, Mountaineers, Murderers, Niggers, Pigs, Pluckers, Pots, Prairie Hens, Railroad Roughs, Rats, Ramblers, Ravens, Riverside, Eovers, Schuylkill Eangers, Skinners, Snappers, Spigots, Tigers, Tormentors, War Dogs, Wayne Towners.

Of these Mr. Culin remarks: "They had their laws and customs, their feuds and compacts. The former were more numerous than the latter, and they fought on every possible occasion. A kind of half-secret organization existed among them, and new members passed through a ceremony called 'initiation,' which was not confined to the lower classes, from which most of them were recruited. Almost every Philadelphia boy, as late as twenty years ago, went through some sort of ordeal when he first entered into active boyhood. Being triced up by legs and arms, and swung violently against a gate, was usually part of this ceremony, and it no doubt still exists, although I have no particular information, which indeed is rather difficult to obtain, as boys, while they remain boys, are reticent concerning all such matters" (212. 236).

These street-organizations exist in other cities also, and have their ramifications in the school-life of children, who either belong to, or are in some way subject to, these curious associations. Every ward, nay, every street of any importance, seems to have its "gang," and it is no small experience in a boy's life to pass the ordeal of initiation, battle with alien organizations, and retire, as childhood recedes, unharmed by the primitive _entourage_.

No doubt, from these street-gangs many pass into the junior criminal societies which are known to exist in many great cities, the training-schools for theft, prostitution, murder, the feeding-grounds for the "White Caps," "Molly Maguires," "Ku-Klux," "Mafia," "Camorra," and other secret political or criminal associations, who know but too well how to recruit their numbers from the young. The gentler side of the social instinct is seen in the formation of friendships among children, associations born of the nursery or the school-room which last often through life. The study of these early friendships offers a tempting field for sociological research and investigation.

_Secret Societies of the Young._

There are among primitive peoples many secret societies to which children and youth are allowed to belong, or which are wholly composed of such.

Among the secret societies of the Kwakiutl Indians, of British Columbia, Dr. Boas mentions the "Keki'qalak--( = the crows)," formed from the children (403. 53). The same author speaks of the Tsimshians, another British Columbia tribe, in these terms (403. 57):--

"A man who is not a member of a secret society is a 'common man.' He becomes a middle-class man after the first initiation, and attains higher rank by repeated initiations. The novice disappears in the same way as among the Kwakiutl. It is supposed that he goes to heaven. During the dancing season a feast is given, and while the women are dancing the novice is suddenly said to have disappeared. If he is a child, he stays away four days; youths remain absent six days, and grown-up persons several months. Chiefs are supposed to stay in heaven during the fall and entire winter. When this period has elapsed, they suddenly reappear on the beach, carried by an artificially-made monster belonging to their crest. Then all the members of the secret society to which the novice is to belong gather and walk down in grand procession to the beach to fetch the child. At this time the child's parents bring presents, particularly elk skins, strung on a rope as long as the procession, to be given at a subsequent feast. The people surround the novice and lead him into every house in order to show that he has returned. Then he is taken to the house of his parents and a bunch of cedar-bark is fastened over the door, to show that the place is tabooed, and nobody is allowed to enter." The dance and other ceremonies which follow may be read of in Dr. Boas' report.

Dr. Daniels, in his study of _Regeneration_, has called attention to "seclusion" and "disappearance," followed by reappearance and adoption as members of society, as characteristic practices in vogue among many savage and semi-civilized tribes with respect to children and those approaching the age of puberty--a change of name sometimes accompanies the "entering upon the new life," as it is often called. Of the Australians we read: "The boy at eight or ten years of age must leave the hut of his father and live in common with the other young men of the tribe. He is called by another name than that which he has borne from birth and his diet is regulated to some extent." In New Guinea, in Africa, and among some of the tribes of American aborigines like habits prevail. The custom of certain Indians formerly inhabiting Virginia is thus described: "After a very severe beating the boys are sent into a secluded spot. There they must stay nine months and can associate with no human being. They are fed during this time with a kind of intoxicating preparation of roots to make them forget all about their past life. After their return home everything must seem strange to them. In this way it is thought that they 'begin to live anew.' They are thought of as having been dead for a short time and are 'numbered among the older citizens after forgetting that they once were boys'" (214. 11-13).

In the African district of Quoja existed a secret society called Belly-Paaro, "the members of which had to spend a long time in a holy thicket. Whoever broke the rules of this society was seized upon by the Jannanes, or spirits of the dead, who dwelt in the thicket and brought thither, whence he was unable to return" (127. I. 240). Of this practice Kulischer remarks: "'It is a death and a new birth, since they are wholly changed in the consecrated thicket, dying to the old life and existence, and receiving a new understanding.' When the youths return from the thicket, they act as if they had come into the world for the first time, and had never known where their parents lived or their names, what sort of people they were, how to wash themselves" (214. 12).

Of another part of Africa we read: "In the country of Ambamba each person must die once, and come to life again. Accordingly, when a fetich-priest shakes his calabash at a village, those men and youths whose hour is come fall into a state of death-like torpor, from which they recover usually in the course of three days. But if there is any one that the fetich loves, him he takes into the bush and buries in the fetich-house. Oftentimes he remains buried for a long series of years. When he comes to life again, he begins to eat and drink as before, but his reason is gone, and the fetich-man is obliged to train him and instruct him in the simplest bodily movements, like a little child. At first the stick is only the instrument of education, but gradually his senses come back to him, and he begins to speak. As soon as his education is finished, the priest restores him to his parents. They seldom recognize their son, but accept the express assurance of the feticero, who also reminds them of events in the past. In Ambamba a man who has not passed through the process of dying and coming to life again is held in contempt, nor is he permitted to join in the dance" (529. 56).

Some recollection, perhaps, of similar customs and ideas appears in the game of "Ruripsken," which, according to Schambach, is played by children in Gottingen: One of the children lies on the ground, pretending to be dead, the others running up and singing out "Ruripsken, are you alive yet?" Suddenly he springs up and seizes one of the other players, who has to take his place, and so the game goes on.

Among the Mandingos of the coast of Sierra Leone, the girls approaching puberty are taken by the women of the village to an out-of-the-way spot in the forest, where they remain for a month and a day in strictest seclusion, no one being permitted to see them except the old woman who has charge of their circumcision. Here they are instructed in religion and ceremonial, and at the expiration of the time set, are brought back to town at night, and indulge in a sort of Lady Godiva procession until daybreak. At the beginning of the dry-cool season among the Mundombe "boys of from eight to ten years of age are brought by the 'kilombola-masters' into a lonely uninhabited spot, where they remain for ninety days after their circumcision, during which time not even their own parents may visit them. After the wound heals, they are brought back to the village in triumph" (127. 1. 292).

With the Kaffirs the circumcision-rites last five months, "and during this whole time the youths go around with their bodies smeared with white clay. They form a secret society, and dwell apart from the village in a house built specially for them" (127. I. 292). Among the Susu there is a secret organization known as the _Semo_, the members of which use a peculiar secret language, and "the young people have to pass a whole year in the forest, and it is believed right for them to kill any one who comes near the wood, and who is not acquainted with this secret tongue" (127. I. 240). A very similar society exists among the tribes on the Rio Nunez. Here "the young people live for seven or eight years a life of seclusion in the forest." In Angoy there is the secret society of the _Sindungo_, membership in which passes from father to son; in Bomma, the secret orders of the fetich Undémbo; among the Shekiani and the Bakulai, that of the great spirit Mwetyi, the chief object of which is to keep in subjection women and children, and into which boys are initiated when between fourteen and eighteen years old; the Mumbo Jumbo society of the Mandingos, into which no one under sixteen years of age is allowed to enter (127. I. 241-247).

Among the Mpongwe the women have a secret society called _Njembe_, the object of which is to protect them against harsh treatment by the men. The initiation lasts several weeks, and girls from ten to twelve years of age are admissible (127. I. 245).

Of the Indians of the western plains of the United States of America we are told: "At twelve or thirteen these yearnings can no longer be suppressed; and, banded together, the youths of from twelve to sixteen years roam over the country; and some of the most cold-blooded atrocities, daring attacks, and desperate combats have been made by these children in pursuit of fame" (432. 191).

Among the Mandingos of West Africa, during the two months immediately following their circumcision, the youths "form a society called _Solimana_. They make visits to the neighbouring villages, where they sing and dance and are _fèted_ by the inhabitants."

In Angola the boys "live for a month under the care of a fetich-priest, passing their time in drum-beating, a wild sort of singing, and rat-hunting." Among the Beit Bidel "all the youths who are to be consecrated as men unite together. They deck themselves out with beads, hire a guitar-player, and retire to the woods, where they steal and kill goats from the herds of their tribe, and for a whole week amuse themselves with sport and song. The Wanika youths of like age betake themselves, wholly naked, to the woods, where they remain until they have slain a man." On the coast of Guinea, after their circumcision, "boys are allowed to exact presents from every one and to commit all sorts of excesses" (127. 1.291-4).

"Among the Fulas, boys who have been circumcised are a law unto themselves until the incision has healed. They can steal or take whatever suits them without its being counted an offence. In Bambuk, for fourteen days after the circumcision-_fête_, the young people are allowed to escape from the supervision of their parents. From sunrise to sunset they can leave the paternal roof and run about the fields near the village. They can demand meat and drink of whomsoever they please, but may not enter a house unless they have been invited to do so." In Darfur, "after their circumcision, the boys roamed around the adjacent villages and stole all the poultry" (127. I. 291).

_Modern Aspects_.

These secret societies and outbursts of primitive lawlessness recall at once to our attention the condition of affairs at some of our universities, colleges, and larger schools. The secret societies and student-organizations, with their initiations, feasts, and extravagant demonstrations, their harassing of the uninitiated, their despisal of municipal, collegiate, even parental authority, and their oftentime contempt and disregard of all social order, their not infrequent excesses and debauches, carry us back to their analogues in the institutions of barbarism and savagery, the accompaniments of the passage from childhood to manhood. Of late years, the same spirit has crept into our high schools, and is even making itself felt in the grammar grades, so imitative are the school-children of their brothers and sisters in the universities and colleges. Pennalism and fagging, so prevalent of old time in Germany and England, are not without their representatives in this country. The "freshman" in the high schools and colleges is often made to feel much as the savage does who is serving his time of preparation for admission into the mysteries of Mumbo- Jumbo.

In the revels of "May Day," "Midsummer," "Eogation Week," "Whitsuntide," "All Fools' Day," "New Year's Day," "Hallow E'en," "Christmas," "Easter," etc., children throughout England and in many parts of Europe during the Middle Ages took a prominent part and _rôle_ in the customs and practices which survive even to-day, as may be seen in Brand, Grimm, and other books dealing with popular customs and festivals, social _fêtes_ and merry-makings.

In _Tennyson's May_ Queen we read:--

"You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow'll be the happiest time of all the glad New Year;
Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest, merriest day;
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May."

And a "mad, merry day" it certainly was in "merry England," when the fairest lass in the village was chosen "Queen of the May," and sang merry songs of Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

Polydore Virgil tells us that in ancient Home the "youths used to go into the fields and spend the Calends of May in dancing and singing in honour of Flora, goddess of fruits and flowers." Westermarck seems to think some of these popular customs have something to do with the increase of the sexual function in spring and early summer (166. 30).

In seizing upon this instinct for society-making among children and youth lies one of the greatest opportunities for the prevention of crime and immorality the world has ever known. To turn to good ends this spontaneity of action, to divert into channels of usefulness these currents of child-activity, will be to add immensely to the equipment of mankind in the struggle with vice. A certain bishop of the early Christian Church is credited with having declared that, if the authorities only took charge of the children soon enough, there would be no burning of heretics, no scandalous schisms in the body ecclesiastic; and there is a good deal of truth in this observation.

The Catholic Church, and many of the other Christian churches have seen the wisdom of appealing to, and availing themselves of, the child-power in social and socio-religious questions. Not a little of the great spread of the temperance movement in America and Europe of recent years is due to the formation of children's societies,--Bands of Hope, Blue Ribbon Clubs, Junior Temperance Societies and Prohibition Clubs, Young Templars' Associations, Junior Father Matthew Leagues, and the like,-- where a legitimate sphere is open to the ardour and enthusiasm of the young of both sexes. The great Methodist Church has been especially quick to recognize the value of this kind of work, and the junior chapters of the "Epworth League"--whose object is "to promote intelligence and loyal piety in its young members and friends and to train them in experimental religion, practical benevolence, and church work"--now numbers some three thousand, with a membership of about one hundred and twenty thousand. This society was organized at Cleveland, Ohio, May 15, 1889. The "Young People's Society of Christian Endeavour," the first society of which was established at Portland, Maine, February 2,1881, with the object of "promoting an earnest Christian life among its members, increasing their mutual acquaintance, and making them more useful in the service of God," has now enrolled nearly thirty-four thousand "Companies," with a total membership (active and associate) all over the world of over two million; of these societies 28,696 are in the United States and 2243 in Canada. Another society of great influence, having a membership in America and the Old World of some thirty-five thousand, is the "Ministering Children's League," founded by the Countess of Meath in 1885, and having as objects "to promote kindness, unselfishness, and the habit of usefulness amongst children, and to create in their minds an earnest desire to help the needy and suffering; to give them some definite work to do for others, that this desire may be brought to good effect"; there are also the "Lend-a-Hand Clubs" of the Unitarian Church. The Episcopal Church has its "Girls' Friendly Societies," its "Junior Auxiliaries to the Board of Missions"; its "Brotherhood of St. Andrew," and "Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip," for young men. For those of not too youthful years, the "Young Men's Christian Association," the associations of the "White," "Red," and "Iron Cross" exist in the various churches, besides many other "Guilds," "Alliances," "Leagues," etc. For those outside the churches there are "Boys' Clubs," and "Girls' Societies" in the cities and larger towns. The "Bands of Mercy" and the branches of the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" exert a widespread influence for good; while several of the secret benevolent associations, such as the "Foresters," for example, have instituted junior lodges, from which the youth are later on drafted into the society of their elders. There exist also many social clubs and societies, more or less under the supervision of the older members of the community, in which phases of human life other than the purely religious or benevolent find opportunity to display themselves; and between these and the somewhat sterner church-societies a connecting link is formed by the "Friday Night Clubs" of the Unitarian Church and the "Young People's Associations" of other liberal denominations. In the home itself, this society instinct is recognized, and the list of children's teas, dinners, parties, "receptions," "doll-parties," "doll-shows," etc., would be a long one. Among all peoples, barbarous as well as civilized, since man is by nature a social animal, the instinct for society develops early in the young, and the sociology of child-hood offers a most inviting field for research and investigation both in the Old World and in the New.