judgments had been distributed in a purely random fashion over the entire period of ten to twenty-two years. The judgments as to least interest in reading for both men and women were scattered practically at random over the whole period.

Love of adventure reached its maximum for 70 per cent of the women in the years from fourteen to eighteen. In the case of the men the trait was more widely scattered, but 45 per cent of the men were included between the years fifteen and seventeen. A mere chance distribution of the trait would have given only 21 per cent to these three years. As to self-confidence, 80 per cent of the women and 75 per cent of the men fall between sixteen and twenty. The judgments of least self-confidence are distributed over the whole period of thirteen years almost at random.

The period of greatest intensity of emotional life is given by 74 per cent of the women and 62 per cent of the men between fifteen and nineteen. The period of least intensity is less definite. Fifty-eight per cent of the women and 48 per cent of the men falling between ten and fourteen.

The period of first romantic interest in the opposite sex is found to be from fourteen to seventeen for 76 per cent of the men and 73 per cent of the women. Sixty-eight per cent of the men and only 48 per cent of the women reported this interest grew in the years immediately following.

The chief exception to the common view of adolescent literature is in the case of love of home which seems to increase in the later teens instead of diminish.

Thorndike believes, on the basis of his study, that many of the characteristics assumed to belong to the adolescent period are really characteristics of very late adolescence or early manhood. The maxima of all the sixteen traits herewith reported are under twenty, and the groupings in most cases are close to the medians. Our census does not, of course, prove that the traits in question may not grow in intensity during the next ten years of these students' lives.

The fact that 330 of our subjects are twenty years of age or older, and 207 are twenty-one or older, and yet no medians

are over twenty, is certainly indicative that the traits in question are teen traits rather than traits more distinctive of the early twenties.

Our method of recording the judgments was the same as that adopted by Thorndike, namely to take the median year when a time of more than one year was mentioned in an Our group did not, however, mention extended periods with great frequency. Of the 386 papers received ninety-seven gave periods of two years or over rather frequently. The tendency to locate the trait indefinitely was much more common among the older members of our group than the younger. Forty-seven per cent of the students twenty-three years of age or over gave these indefinite answers, while less than 22 per cent of those under twenty-three gave periods of two years or more as the time of the greatest or least intensity of the various traits. It seems clear that the younger students were much more certain of specific times for the various traits than were the older ones.

Our general conclusion is that, with this group of 386 students of a median age of slightly more than twenty-one years, the alleged adolescent traits are fairly definite, especially if we are warranted in giving greater credit to the judgments of most, which seem, on the whole, more reliable than those of least.

STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

IRVING KING

IV

SOCIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES FUNDAMENTAL TO PEDAGOGICAL METHOD

A REPLY

The article under the heading given above in the February (1918) number of the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW by Dr. Ross L. Finney, introduces such fundamental considerations of educational practise and principle that it seems desirable that it be reviewed from what is a decidedly different interpretation of the facts of our present educational situation than that exprest by Dr. Finney.

Dr. Finney begins by analyzing the conflict which exists in societies between tendencies to maintain the established order of things, as hardened into taboos, mores, laws and constitutions and based on the fundamental psychology of habit, and other tendencies to seek for new adjustments when old social organizations fail to give satisfaction, which is the work of the reasoning, inventing, problem-solving side of mental life as exprest in social theories and philosophies of life. He also recognizes in the first pages of his article a fact that must never be lost sight of, namely, that the unrest of social readjustment is very directly caused by concrete, objective, describable, measurable, changes in social conditions. He points out certain periods of history in which the processes of change and readjustment appear to be hyperactive -periods of sudden crisis and rapid, deep-seated change, and other periods that are relatively so quiescent and so firmly set in the mold of custom that they present the general impression of immobility, security and social contentment.

Dr. Finney even describes briefly, or rather indicates, the actual gross changes in experience that have characterized the eras of rapid evolution, but this very important consideration of the objective, non-theoretical, unwished for and in

evitable effects of social change, with its far-reaching consequences for the remainder of the discussion, is neither developed nor taken account of. After barest mention it is laid aside for other considerations more consistent with his literary objective. And it is his very failure to establish and take as his point of departure the principle that the element of change and movement in a society, its extent and its rapidity, follow upon objective, brutally real modifications of the conditions of life which suggest and compel desirable or necessary readjustments-it is this failure that constitutes the reason for his inability, from the present writer's point of view, to do what he starts out to do, namely, to show how a study of contemporary sociological conditions must lead to his own particular conclusions regarding educational method. Since, as Mr. Finney points out, we are at the present time in a period of very marked social change, and since contemporary sociological conditions must so largely determine the principles and practises of education, it seems desirable to indicate briefly some of the major modifications of life that are now taking place among us, of late years at an accelerated pace owing to the tremendous pressure exerted in all fields. of experience by the war of the nations.

A highly important change in social life is represented in the growing self-consciousness of power and importance of those who work with their hands, and the increasing conviction among them that they are receiving an inadequate share of the profits of the industry made possible thru their cooperation. Another conditioning factor, which has finally come home to us in our immediately personal lives, is the alignment of the social order of the world upon racial and territorial lines as bound up in national states. Immediately following this fact is the very present necessity of showing a united front against a thoroly efficient, powerful and unscrupulous enemy, with its inevitable corollary of a demand for a greater degree of national solidarity. This demand has entailed the adoption of the principle of universal compulsory military service. It has compelled efforts to distinguish between treasonable and justifiable criticism of national poli

cies, with considerable modification of our traditional wideopen freedom of speech, press and assembly. It has pointed to the necessity of doing more than we have ever undertaken in the direction of assimilating large elements of unreconstructed, unamericanized foreign immigrant population. The failure of transportation and business production and exchange under the heavy demands of war has led to new methods of control on the part of the government and a limitation of competitive methods that bids fair to be, at least in part, permanent. The mounting expenditure of war has led to a consideration of the rights of collective society to the profits of business, and the pressure of necessary war production has introduced new feelings for the rights of society in general upon labor as well as upon capital and profits. Thus one might add largely to the collection of brute-fact changes in our common experience and lay strong foundations for the conclusion that at the present time many ways of conceiving life as held by our fathers and grandfathers are in a state of flux.

Yet another conditioning sociological factor of supreme importance for any discussion of educational policy is the fact that we are at present living under a form of government which implies the participation of all men over twenty-one years of age and a considerable proportion of women in the modification of social institutions to meet changed conditions of life. It may be that democracy will be less complete in the world at the close of the war than it is at present, but there are, in the present writer's mind, more considerations pointing to the conclusion that it will be more complete. At any rate, we must carry on our discussion under the controlling assumption that we are committed to a democratic form of social organization, and any discussion which fails to recognize that controlling assumption passes over into the field of free speculation.

But for such conditions of social change and for such a form of government, what habit of mind and what attitude of will are enjoined by Mr. Finney? The counsel to destroy within the body politic the bacilli of change; the advice to