cent would have the criminal punished according to law. Thus "with the dawn of
adolescence at the age of twelve or shortly after comes the recognition of a
larger life, a life to be lived in common with others, and with this recognition the
desire to sustain the social code made for the common welfare," and punishment
is no longer regarded as an individual and arbitrary matter.
From another question answered by 1,914 children[19] it was found that with the
development of the psychic faculties in youth, there was an increasing
appreciation of punishment as preventive; an increasing sense of the value of
individuality and of the tendency to demand protection of personal rights; a
change from a sense of justice based on feeling and on faith in authority to that
based on reason and understanding. Children's attitude toward punishment for
weak time sense, tested by 2,536 children from six to sixteen,[20] showed also a
marked pubescent increase in the sense of the need of the remedial function of
punishment as distinct from the view of it as vindictive, or getting even,
common in earlier years. There is also a marked increase in discriminating the
kinds and degrees of offenses; in taking account of mitigating circumstances, the
inconvenience caused others, the involuntary nature of the offense and the
purpose of the culprit. All this continues to increase up to sixteen, where these
studies leave the child.
An interesting effect of the social instinct appears in August Mayer's[21]
elaborate study made up on fourteen boys in the fifth and sixth grade of a
Würzburg school to determine whether they could work better together or alone.
The tests were in dictation, mental and written arithmetic, memory, and
Ebbinghaus's combination exercises and all were given with every practicable
precaution to make the other conditions uniform. The conclusions demonstrate
the advantages of collective over individual instruction. Under the former
condition, emulation is stronger and work more rapid and better in quality. From
this it is inferred that pupils should not be grouped according to ability, for the
dull are most stimulated by the presence of the bright, the bad by the good, etc.
Thus work at home is prone to deteriorate, and experimental pedagogy shows
that the social impulse is on the whole a stronger spur for boys of eleven or
twelve than the absence of distraction which solitude brings.
From the answers of 1,068 boys and 1,268 girls from seven to sixteen on the
kind of chum they liked best,[22] it appears that with the teens children are more
anxious for chums that can keep secrets and dress neatly, and there is an
increased number who are liked for qualities that supplement rather than