justice with the young are more prone to issue from emotional rather than from
intellectual processes. Country children seem more altruistic than those in the
city, and while girls are more sympathetic than boys, they are also more easily
prejudiced. Many of these returns bear unmistakable marks that in some homes
and schools moralization has been excessive and has produced a sentimental
type of morality and often a feverish desire to express ethical views instead of
trusting to suggestion. Children are very prone to have one code of ideals for
themselves and another for others. Boys, too, are more original than girls, and
country children more than city children.
Friedrich[13] asked German school children what person they chose as their
pattern. The result showed differences of age, sex, and creed. First of all came
characters in history, which seemed to show that this study for children of the
sixth and seventh grades was essentially ethical or a training of mood and
disposition (Gesinnungsunterricht), and this writer suggests reform in this
respect. He seems to think that the chief purpose of history for this age should be
ethical. Next came the influence of the Bible, although it was plain that this was
rather in spite of the catechism and the method of memoriter work. Here, too, the
immediate environment at this age furnished few ideals (four and one-fifth per
cent), for children seem to have keener eyes for the faults than for the virtues of
those near them. Religion, therefore, should chiefly be directed to the emotions
and not to the understanding. This census also suggested more care that the
reading of children should contain good examples in their environment, and also
that the matter of instruction should be more fully adapted to the conditions of
sex.
Friedrich found as his chief age result that children of the seventh or older class
in the German schools laid distinctly greater stress upon characters distinguished
by bravery and courage than did the children of the sixth grade, while the latter
more frequently selected characters illustrating piety and holiness. The author
divided his characters into thirty-five classes, illustrating qualities, and found
that national activity led, with piety a close second; that then came in order those
illustrating firmness of faith, bravery, modesty, and chastity; then pity and
sympathy, industry, goodness, patience, etc.
Taylor, Young, Hamilton, Chambers, and others, have also collected interesting
data on what children and young people hope to be, do, whom they would like to
be, or resemble, etc. Only a few at adolescence feel themselves so good or happy
that they are content to be themselves. Most show more or less discontent at