836 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
" The educational ideal is now to develop capacities in as many directions as possible," to keep up the conflict, the struggle, the ten- sion, but without allowing it ever to reach the breaking-point. " Let the diverse prepotencies struggle with each other." Keep everything fluid and fluent. " The possibility of variation in the soul is now at its height." " The chief end in view must now be to bring out all the polyphonous harmonies of human nature." The correlative educa- tional problem is the question of elective versus proscribed courses of study.
All teaching of adolescents should be primarily inspirational rather than simply instructional. Many bright children are perma- nently eclipsed at this stage by injudicious training. As Dr. Hall finely says :
There are many things it is impossible to do and remain a boy In
many a schoolroom, a boy's incorrigibility saves him ; the fussy martinet and
red tape of schools are objects that provoke revolt in the healthy soul
Youthful crime is an expression of educational failure.
In conclusion, it may be said that, in general, what is true of boys at this age is true of girls, with these two important exceptions: first, that the period of maximal growth at pubescence comes earlier in girls; and, second, that puberty is a more serious change for a girl, involving, as it often does, periodic incapacity for the ordinary activities of life. Whether the sex-difference should be made a fun- damental one in education ; whether woman's intellect is inferior to that of man ; whether scholastic training is injurious to woman, tending to reduce her fecundity by postponing or threatening her marriageability ; and coeducation versus exclusive education of adolescent boys and girls these are some of the problems which center about this important topic.
H. HEATH BAWDEN.
VASSAR COLLEGE.
First Report of the Tenement House Department of the City of New York, January I, ipoz-July I, 1903. Two volumes, pp. 426 and 480. By the Commissioners, ROBERT W. DE FOREST AND LAWRENCE VEILLU.
This model report is an illustration of the value of scientific training in the public service. Good citizenship, when it seeks to give effective form to amiable intentions, must supply itself with facts and present them to the public in intelligible and telling form.
