The Adolescent Boy and Girl

Parent and Child, Volume III
by Mosiah Hall

(Page 6 of 10)

Growth During The High School Age

Dr. John M. Tyler

The boy and the girl during adolescence have now attained their full height and practically their full weight, although the boy has a little to gain still; they are pretty well grown by this time. If I had to choose between two questions, the first might be, "Have you a good appetite?" but the second question I would ask is, "What is your lung capacity?" The lungs have increased very rapidly at fourteen to sixteen in the boy; in the girl the increase has been smaller and quite irregular. It ought to be more regular than it is, I am convinced. The heart has gained greatly in capacity. The arteries have expanded much less than the heart, and the result is that there is a much higher blood pressure than there has been at any time before. The brain has attained practically full size and weight. The addition now will be mainly in the very highest area, where the addition of fibres might make all the difference between the possibility of genius and the possibility of mediocrity. The sensory and the nervous areas are fully matured. The higher mental area and the higher mental power are now coming on to stay.

The boy, you will notice, at this stage begins to argue a great deal more than he ever did before. He wants to argue nearly every question. He likes the debating society. His idea of heaven, it seems to me, is a place where debating is indulged in. A goodly amount of exercise for those psychological and mental powers will do him no harm.

The mortality, or the death rate, is low, but the morbidity is increasing at this time, in the boy at least. Vigorous physical exercise is now needed. Ordinary play is not enough. Gymnastics also for the development and training of the hand and the wrist, training in quickness and precision of movement are all excellent exercise, all the finer muscles should be trained now, and probably less training should be given to the heavy fundamental muscles which are all important in childhood.

Athletics are exceedingly useful. They should be, however, for all, and not merely for a few who join the teams, who need them the very least of all. I think our modern college athletics will some day be looked upon as one of the most ridiculous habits of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That twenty-two men should engage in mortal combat, with anywhere from one to twenty thousand on the side lines, - if you can get anything more ridiculous than that, I should like to know where you can find it. Athletics should not be too severe, however, yet, the boy ought not to have century runs and long halves of football, especially if the heart is still weak. The tissues of the body have not yet gained the toughness that they will gain at a later time. Every commander in the field dreads to have boys of eighteen, nineteen, or twenty sent to him, because, as Napoleon said of his young recruits, "they die off like flies." The hard bed, with light covering, the cold room, the cold bath will now aid in toughening the boy, provided he is healthy; but under no circumstances begin that until the pubertal period is fully by.

The danger of over-pressure in the high school, especially after the first year, is to my mind not very great. The boy and the girl now both stand a good deal of work; but the greatest danger for the boy and the girl in the high school is that they will take too much social enjoyment. An evening theatre party, followed by a supper, a late dance, will take more strength out of a boy and girl than three days of study. There is nothing that is so wearing. If you can keep down the social over-pressure, I do not believe the over-pressure from study will do any great harm in high schools.

The larger bodies, the large heart and lungs, well oxygenated blood, and fresh vitality of every artery and tissue, gives a buoyance, a strength and a courage, a source of power and sense of it too, a longing for complete freedom, a revolt against all control, which the boy will never feel later; if he does not feel it now. I am describing, perhaps, rather the college boy than the high school boy; but bear this in mind, that I am describing what your boys in the high school will be a year or two later if they are not that now, and it is for this stage you must prepare them, even, if they have not already entered upon it.

A new, wide world, just as fresh as on the morning of creation, a new fire, a life of boundless opportunity, which is endless in scope and time, are opening out before the boy and the girl. They see the parents and the teachers drag around, understanding, as they think, neither them nor life itself; and they are right to a certain extent. There is no doubt about that; we do not hold on to the vision of glory of this world and of this life which we had in youth as we ought to and as it is our duty to do. The boy and the girl criticize us fairly, when they think that we don't appreciate this magnificent world in which we live.

When a man gets to be my age, while I suppose he probably has more humility, he comes to know and he comes to have a very cheerful, optimistic view of the world. He has made up his mind that the Lord does not intend to change the world a great deal anyhow, and, on the whole, he is very much content to leave it the way it is. That is not so with young people at all. The boy and the girl must learn and know all about it. That is one thing they are determined to do at the outset. The boy girds up his loins and he goes whither he will. He must taste of every experience for himself. He will meet joy and sorrow with the same frolicking, welcoming spirit. He has never been saddened by experience nor disillusioned by disappointment and failure. He will try all the knowledge of good and evil if it costs him Paradise.

Nature is loosening every leading string now and is getting him free to complete his own individual development and to forge his own character. We cannot stop him if we would. It is very lucky that we cannot. It is better that we should not stop him even if we could; nevertheless, he has very little self-knowledge and still less self-control. Impulses well up from changes going on within him or from stimuli which come to him from without. He does not understand them. He does not know where they come from. He does not know what they mean. He is ill-prepared to face them, and now he goes one way and now the other. He has just about as clear a conception of the value of time as a child has. He has not outgrown childhood in that respect. He cannot possibly play a waiting game. That is the last thing that he can do. If the sun shines to-day it is always going to be bright weather. If the maiden of his adoration frowns to-day, the sun will never shine again. He is either on the Delectable Mountain or in the Valley of Humiliation, and he is far more frequently in the latter than we think. He is rarely between the two, and he is not going to tell us when he is in the Valley of Humiliation, nor when he is on the top of the Delectable Mountain.

Child Study and Training
1916