CHARACTER EDUCATION IN ADOLESCENCE

Rudolf Allers

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 quamember — 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.

This item 7469 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org