Coming of Age in Samoa

الكاتبة (مارغريت ميد)

عالمة أنثروبولوجيا ولدت مارغريت ميد في عام 1901 في فيلادلفيا، بنسلفانيا. أخذت درجة البكالوريوس في بارنارد الكلية في عام 1923 وبعد ذلك على درجة الماجستير والدكتوراه في جامعة كولومبيا. في عام 1925 فازت بزمالة مجلس البحوث الوطنية وذهبت إلى ساموا

لدراسة حياة المراهقات في ذلك البلد، و من ملاحظاتها كتب كتابها "بلوغ سن الرشد" في ساموا.و في 1928 فازت بزمالة بحثية أخرى وزارت قبيلة مانوس في جزر الأميرالية، غينيا الجديدة، وكانت النتيجة التي كان لها الكتاب الثاني ،ومنذ ذلك الحين درست ستة شعوب أخرى.

توفيت ميد بسرطان البنكرياس عام 1978 ودُفنت في مقبرة ترينتي للكنيسة الأسقفية في باكينغهام بولاية بنسلفانيا بالولايات المتحدة الأمريكية.

شعب الساموا

نقلا

اكتشف الهولندي جاكوب روجفين ساموا عام 1722م، وفي عام 1768 سميت الجزر بجرز المبحر، ثم توافد إليها الإنجليز والمبشرون عام 1830م بقيادة جون ويليامز، وفي بداية هذه الحملة التبشيرية واجه الإنجليز المشاحنات العنيفة والحروب من سكان ساموا كحروبهم مع القوات الألمانية، والأمريكية، والفرنسية، ومع نهاية القرن التاسع عشر أصبحت مركزاً استخدمه الألمان لمعالجة حبوب الكاكاو، ولب جوز الهند، كما استولت الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية على جزيرتي توتولى ومنوا وعرفتا باسم ساموا الأمريكية، كما شهدت ساموا تسابق في التسلح من القوات الأمريكية والبريطانية والألمانية، ولكن سرعان ما انتهى ذلك بعاصفة قوية دمرت جميع سفن هذه القوات العسكرية. مع بداية القرن العشرين كانت جزيرة ساموا مقسمة إلى قسمين؛ وهما: القسم الغربي الذي تشرف عليه ألمانيا، والقسم الشرقي الذي تشرف عليه أمريكا، ومع بداية الحرب العالمية الأولى سلمت السلطات الألمانية السلطة إلى القوات النيوزلندية، ومع المدى الطويل أصبحت نيوزيلندا الوصية على ساموا، ومع إساءة المعاملة ضد السامويين نشبت حركة شعبية مقاومة لهذا الحكم الاستعماري، ومع حلول عام 1962م حصلت البلاد على استقلالها، ووقِّعت معاهدة صداقة مع نيوزيلندا. طبيعة تضاريس دولة ساموا تعتبر جزر ساموا من أصل نشاط بركاني، وتشتهر جزيرة سافاي بأنها ما زالت الأكثر نشاطاً بثوران البراكين؛ لذلك يقل عدد السكان فيها، ويعتبر جبل سيلسيلي أعلى نقطة في ساموا، ويبلغ ارتفاعه الجبل 1858م، وتشتهر البلاد بغابة فاليالوبو الماطرة في سافاي. ديانة سكان دولة ساموا نتيجة حركة الإنجليز التبشيرية يعتنق 98% من السامويين الديانة المسيحية، أما ما تبقى منهم لا ينتمون لأي ديانة، ومن أبرز الكنائس في ساموا: كنيسة حبل مريم الطاهر الكاثوليكية. النشاط الاقتصادي في دولة ساموا تشتهر ساموا بإنتاج جوز الهند، وتصدر نسبة كبيرة من كريم وزيت جوز الهند، إضافة إلى لب جوز الهند المجفف، وكذلك حبوب الكاكاو، والموز، وإلى جانب الزراعة ينهض كل من القطاعين الصناعي والسياحي في دعم اقتصاد هذه المدينة.

ملحوظة : قامت مارغريت ميد بنشر كتابها لأول مرة عام 1928.

الكتاب

• 
  

Coming of Age in Samoa هو كتاب من تأليف عالمة الأنثروبولوجيا الأمريكية مارغريت ميد استنادًا إلى بحثها ودراستها عن الشباب -الفتيات المراهقات بشكل أساسي- في جزيرة تاو في جزر ساموا . يُفصِّل الكتاب الحياة الجنسية للمراهقين في مجتمع ساموا في أوائل القرن العشرين ، ويفترض أن للثقافة تأثيرًا رائدًا على التطور النفسي الجنسي.

قدمت ميد الكتاب بمناقشة عامة للمشاكل التي تواجه المراهقين في المجتمع الحديث والمقاربات المختلفة لفهم هذه المشاكل: الدين والفلسفة والنظرية التربوية وعلم النفس. تناقش القيود المختلفة في كل نهج ثم تقدم مجال الأنثروبولوجيا الجديد كعلم بديل واعد يعتمد على تحليل الهياكل والديناميكيات الاجتماعية. فهي تقارن منهجية عالم الأنثروبولوجيا مع الدراسات العلمية الأخرى للسلوك والأسباب الواضحة التي تجعل التجارب المضبوطة أكثر صعوبة على الأنثروبولوجيا من العلوم الأخرى. لهذا السبب فإن منهجيتها هي دراسة المجتمعات في بيئتها الطبيعية. وبدلاً من اختيار ثقافة مفهومة جيدًا مثل أوروبا أو أمريكا ، فإنها تختارسكان جزر بحر الجنوب لأن ثقافتهم تختلف اختلافًا جذريًا عن الثقافة الغربية ومن المحتمل أن تسفر عن بيانات أكثر فائدة نتيجة لذلك. ومع ذلك ، فهي تقدم تعقيدًا جديدًا من خلال القيام بذلك حيث يجب عليها أولاً أن تفهم طبيعة ثقافة بحر الجنوب نفسها وأن تنقلها إلى قرائها بدلاً من الخوض مباشرة في قضايا المراهقة كما تستطيع في ثقافة أكثر مألوفة. بمجرد أن تفهم ثقافة ساموا ، سوف تتعمق في تفاصيل كيفية تنفيذ تعليم المراهقين والتنشئة الاجتماعية في ثقافة ساموا ومقارنتها بالثقافة الغربية. وصفت ميد الهدف من بحثها على النحو التالي: "لقد حاولت أن أجيب على السؤال الذي أرسلني إلى ساموا: هل الاضطرابات التي تزعج أبنائنا بسبب طبيعة المراهقة نفسها أم إلى الحضارة؟ في ظل ظروف مختلفة ، هل تقدم للمراهقة صورة مختلفة؟" [7] للإجابة على هذا السؤال ، أجرت دراستها بين مجموعة صغيرة من سكان ساموا. وجدت قرية يسكنها 600 شخص في جزيرة تاو ، تعرفت فيها على مدى ستة إلى تسعة أشهر ، وعاشت معها ، وراقبت ، وقابلت (بعد أن تعلمت بعضًا من لغة ساموا) 68 شابة تتراوح أعمارهم بين 9 و 20 عامًا. درست ميد الحياة اليومية ، والتعليم ، والبنى الاجتماعية والديناميكيات ، والطقوس ، وآداب السلوك ، وما إلى ذلك.

المقال

بعد التعريف بالكاتبة" فإن ما يهمنا هو توضيح نقاط هامة نبينها تباعا دون ترتيب لما جاء في النص. إن هذا الفصل من هذا الكتاب الرائع هو دراسة مستفادة تحوي نتائج هامة تبين قدرة الباحث على المقارنة والإستنتاج ومحاولة إيجاد حلول لمشكلات قائمة فعلية. ويوضح كيف يمكن للباحث أن يجري هذا الإستنتاج من خلال الإلمام بالمشكلة من كافة جوانبها من ثم محاولة إيجاد حلول وقد قامت الكاتبة هنا بعمل مقارنة بيئية /ثقافية بين مجتمع كان محل دراستها الأنثربيولوجية وبين مجتمعها هي التي جاءت منه.فلم تكتفي بعمل رصد لمجتمع (ساموا) على غير عادة الكثير من الباحثين الذين يكتفون بالدراسة دون محاولة لعمل مقارنة نافعة لمشكلات تواجه مجتمعاتهم. فبعد أن استعرضت مارغريت ميد فصولا هي موضوع بحثها في (ساموا) كان هذا الفصل الهام الذي بين أيدينا لندرك منه إشكالية ما يسمى (المراهقة). هذه الفترة العمرية التي هي المشكل الرئيس للإنسان. مرحلة الإنتقال من طور الطفولة إلى طور النضج. ولعلها لم تردإلى الدخول في نوعية مشاكل هذه الفترة. وتعاملت معها كأنها مشاكل معلومة للجميع.إلا أنه يمكن تبين نوع المشالات التي كانت تدور في ذهنها حين طرحت هذه المقارنة التي بدت نصا أدبيا توجيها يطرح من خلال المفارقة حلولا كلية من خلال وجهة نظرها. عنونت مارغريت ميد هذا الفصل بعنوان " مشاكلنا التعليمية في ضوء المفارقة الساموية" لتدخل في خضم طرح أدبي لمفاهيم النمو الجسمي/ العقلي عند السامويين. فبينما تصر أمريكا مثلا كبيئة وظروف ومجتمع ودولة على أن تحدد شكل ومصير أفرادها تبعا لتقانة تشغيلية دوافعها التميز والأفضلية مستخدمة (أو الشعب/المجتمع) أساليب مادية ومعنوية. كالإستهزاء من الخاسر وصولا إلى نبذه وتشجيع الناجح دوما والإهتمام بالبحث في الفروق الموهبية لدى الأفراد والتي لا دخل لهم فيها وبناء المؤسسات التعليمية تبعا لمعايير لا تناسب الجميع وكأنها بنيت لنوعية بعينها من الأفراد لهم وحدهم من خلالها حق التميز والتواجد.فإن ساموا كمجتمع بدائي لا يعاني من هذه الإشكالية فهناك ينعدم الخوف من مشكلات رأت مارغريت ميد أن لا وجود لها إلا في المجتمعات المعقدة/المركبة إن صح التعبير. ويمكننا تفهم رؤية مارغريت ميد من خلال نموذج بنائي لفكرتها من خلال تفهمنا لكتابها. رأت مارغريت ميد أن مجتمع (ساموا) بظروفه وطريقة عيشه هو مجتمع بدائي أولي مسطح يصلح كمقياس تتدرج عليه المجتمعات وتعقيدتها وتركبياتها وصولا إلى الذروة في تصورها ألا وهي أمريكا. فأمريكا يمكن تصورها هنا أنها مجتمع ليس فقط مفارق لمجتمع ساموا بل مغاير له في كثير من الأوضاع والظروف. فمجتمع ساموا لا يخش الفقر نتاج قلة الموارد ولا كثرة الإستهلاك. كذا لا يخش الحياة ويتعامل فيها بطريقة خالية من ضغوط داخلية أو خارجية. ويمكن تقسيم الضغوط من خلال رؤيتنالنصها إلى ضغوط إنسانية وضغوط طبيعية وضغوط علية نتاج التوارث والمعتقد. فالإنسان في ساموا لا يمكن أن يعاني من اضطهاد ديني على سبيل المثال من مواطنه من نفس مجتمعه لأنهم ببساطة يؤمنون بمعتقدات بسيطة لن يحدث أن نجد فيها مغايرات تصل إلى تناقضات دينية بين أفراد المجتمع الواحد. كذا تشير هي إلى أنهم مجتمع لا يخش إله سريع الغضب قاسي يمكنه أن يعاقب أو يراقبهم طوال حياتهم ليوقع بهم عقوباته. فالإختيارات عند إنسان ساموا محدودة وبسيطة ولا نجد تعقيدا حداثيا يخلق صراعات نفسية داخل الشخص الواحد نتاج تعدد توجهات الحياة الحديثة. فالإنسان في أمريكا على سبيل المثال أمامه آلاف الوظائف وعليه أن يختار طريقة ليتم بها حياته .طريقة تمكنه من العيش في ظل ظروف تنافسية نتاج القلق والخوف والحروب . فهي باختصار تشير إلى لامجانية العيش الأمريكي إلى الثمن الباهظ الذي يدفعه الإنسان الذي يعيش في مجتمع حديث مقابل الثمن الزهيد الذي سيدفعه راضيا للعيش في مجتمع بسيط كمجتمع ساموا. وإذ بها حاولت رصد أسس العيش البسيط فهي لم تغفل العلاقة بين الرجل والمرأة في مجتمع ساموا كذا لم تغفل ديانة المجتمع وكيفية الحياة الدينية المشتركة. فالمشاكل في ساموا بسيطة وتحل ببساطة. فرجل يشكو من جاره يمكنه بسهولة الإنتقال إلى قرية مجاورة .وأكبر مشكلة يمكن أن تواجه الطفل أن يعبر الشارع حبن يطلب منه والداه أن يعبره بانتباه ليصل سالما من ناحية إلى ناحية.فهي ترى الحياة في المجتمعات الحديثة أشبه بالحرب القاسية من يستسلم يموت.ولا رحمة بالخاسرين الذين فشلوا في إثبات وجودهم تبعا لمعايير ومقاييس المجتمع. في مقابل مجتمع ساموا حيث الأب الحنون والأم المحبة.حيث العلاقة بين الرجل والمرأة في الأسرة لا يشوبها التعقيد الإجتماعي الذي نراه في المجتمعات الحديثة. كذا الوفرة في نص مارغريت ميد لها دور كبير. وهذا العرض منها هو خاص بظروف مجتمع ساموا .ونرى أنه من الصعب أن نحدد الوفرة كنتاج لسلوك مجتمع ساموا. فالوفرة ليست فقط متعلقة بالسلوك بل تتعلق بالبيئة و الظروف المحيطة. وبنظرة كلية للنص نرى ما سبق وذكرناه. إلا أنه بالتدقيق قد نجد محاولات عرضية جيدة متمثلة في آمال وطموحات كلية تهم الجميع كانعدام الحروب والرضا والسعادة والعيش بسرور وهناء ونظام لا يظلم. إلا أنها ساقت أمنياتها ورؤيتها الشخصية ضمن هذه الطموحات الكلية من خلال عرض مقدمات خرجت منها بنتائج قد لا توافق بالضرورة تلك المقدمات وإن بدت أنها تتسلسل في نمط منطقي مقبول. فمثلا قد رأت أن الإختلاط بين الجنسين هو أمر مهم لإزالة الحواجز المجتمعية التي تنشأ من خلال التركيز على الفروقات البيولوجية بين الذكر والأنثى واتخاذها وسيلة تفريقية تنبثق منها مشكلات كبرى كاضطهاد المرأة ونبذها وتعنيفها والتقليل من شأنها ودورها المجتمعي . كذا رأت الحرية الجنسية حلا لكثير من المشكلات إلى جوار مشكلة الشذوذ الجنسي التي هي في رأيها مشكلة نتاج معتقدات دينية تعسفية. إلى جانب الإشكالية الكبرى متمثلة في نبذ الصراعات الدينية. وإذ بدى هذا الفصل مشوقا مليئا بالمفارقات التي أبدتها مارغريت ميد إلا أنها تجاهلت تماما طبيعة الأديان لترى أن الحل بكل سهولة هو نبذ الصراعات الدينية وكأن الأديان لها طبيعة غير متصارعة وأن الصراع هو نتاج تفهمنا الخاطىء لتعددها! ولعلنا نود الإشارة إلى أهم نقاط هذا الفصل تبعا لرؤيتنا الإستفادية لا التحليلية. أن سن المراهقة هو صناعة مجتمعية ولا علاقة له بالنمو الجسماني بالشكل الذي نتصوره ونردده على الدوام.وأن تنشئة الطفل هي المؤثر الرئيس له فيما بعد. وأن على المؤسسات التعليمية والحكومية مراعاة الإختلافات الإنسانية بين الأطفال أثناء ممارستها للعملية التعليمية والتوقف عن اتخاذ نماذج اختبارية لها سمات محددة لا تشمل جميع البنى العقلية للأطفال .وكأنها صنعت للأذكياء فقط.مما يجعل المجتمع دائما عبارة عن بيت جميل واحد تحيط به الخرائب من كل مكان. محمد شحاته حسين مصر 2020 النص نقلا عن كتاب coming of age in samoa Our Educational Problems in the Light of Samoan Contrasts For many chapters we have followed the lives of Samoan girls, watched them change from babies to baby-tenders, learn to make the oven and weave fine mats, forsake the life of the gang to become more active members of the house- hold, defer marriage through as many years of casual love- making as possible, finally imrry and settle down to rearing children who will repeat the same cycle. As far as our material permitted, an experiment has been conducted to discover what the process of development was like in a society very different from our own. Because the length of human life and the complexity of our society did not permit us to make our experiment here, to choose a group of baby girls and bring them to maturity under conditions created for the experiment, it was necessary to go instead to another country where history had set the stage for us. There we found girl children passing through the same process of physical development through which our girls go, cutting their first teeth and losing them, cutting their second teeth, growing tall and ungainly, reaching puberty with their first menstruation, gradually reaching physical maturity, and becoming ready to produce the next genera- tion. It was possible to say : Here are the proper conditions for an experiment; the developing girl is a constant factor in America and in Samoa; the civilization of America and the civilization of Samoa are different. In the course of develop- ment, the process of growth by which the girl baby becomes a grown woman, are the sudden and conspicuous bodily changes which take place at puberty accompanied by a development which is spasmodic, emotionally charged, and accompanied by an awakened religious sense, a flowering *57 158 Coming of Age in Samoa of idealism, a great desire for assertion of self against autho- rity - or not? Is adolescence a period of mental and emotional distress for the growing girl as inevitably as teething is a period of misery for the small baby? Can we think of adolescence as a time in the life history of every girl child which carries with it symptoms of conflict and stress as surely as it implies a change in the girl’s body? Following the Samoan girls through every aspect of their lives we have tried to answer this question, and we found throughout that we had to answer it in the negative. The adolescent girl in Samoa differed from her sister who had not reached puberty in one chief respect, that in the older girl certain bodily changes were present which were absent in the younger girl. There were no other great differences to set off the group passing through adolescence from the group which would become adolescent in two years or the group which had become adolescent two years before. And if one girl past puberty is undersized while her cousin is tall and able to do heavier work, there will be a difference between them, due to their different physical endowment, which will be far greater than that which is due to puberty. The tall, husky girl will be isolated from her companions, forced to do longer, more adult tasks, rendered shy by a change of clothing, while her cousin, slower to attain her growth, will still be treated as a child and will have to solve only the slightly fewer problems of childhood. The precedent of educators here who recommend special tactics in the treatment of adolescent girls translated into Samoan terms would read: Tall girls are different from short girls of the same age, we must adopt a different method of educating them. But when we have answered the question we set out to answer we have not finished with the problem. A further question presents itself. If it is proved that adolescence is not necessarily a specially difficult period in a girl’s life - Our Educational Problems 159 and proved it is if we can find any society in which that is so - then what accounts for the presence of storm and stress in American adolescents? First, we may say quite simply that there must be something in the two civilizations to account for the difference. If the same process takes a different form in two different environments, we cannot make any explanations in terms of the process, for that is the same in both cases. But the social environment is very different, and it is to it that we must look for an explanation. What is there in Samoa which is absent in America, what is there in America which is absent in Samoa, which will account for this difference? Such a question has enormous implications and any at- tempt to answer it will be subject to many possibilities of error. But if we narrow our question to the way in which aspects of Samoan life which irremediably affect the life of the adolescent girl differ from the forces which influence our growing girls, it is possible to try to answer it. The background of these differences is a broad one, with two important components: one is due to characteristics which are Samoan, the other to characteristics which are primitive. The Samoan background which makes growing up so easy, so simple a matter, is the general casualness of the whole society. For Samoa is a place where no one plays, for very high stakes, no one pays very heavy prices, no one suffers for his convictions, or fights to the death for special . ends. Disagreements between parent and child are settled by the child’s moving across the street, between a man and his village by the man’s removal to the next village, between a husband and his wife’s seducer by a few fine mats. Neither poverty nor great disasters threaten the people to make them hold their lives dearly and tremble for continued existence. No implacable gods, swift to anger and strong to punish, disturb the even tenor of their days. Wars and 160 Coming of Age in Samoa cannibalism are long since passed away, and now the greatest cause for tears, short of death itself, is a journey of a relative to another island. No one is hurried along in life or punished harshly for slowness of development. Instead the gifted, the precocious, are held back, until the slowest among them have caught the pace. And in personal relations, caring is as slight. Love and hate, jealousy and revenge, sorrow and bereavement, are all matters of weeks. From the first months of its life, when the child is handed carelessly from one woman's hands to another’s, the lesson is learned of not caring for one person greatly, not setting high hopes on any one relationship. And just as we may feel that the Occident penalizes those unfortunates who are born into Western civilization with a taste for meditation and a complete distaste for activity so we may say that Samoa is kind to those who have learned the lesson of not caring, and hard upon those few individuals who have failed to learn it. Lola and Mala and little Siva, Lola's sister, all were girls with a capacity for emotion greater than their fellows. And Lola and Mala, passionately desiring affection and too violently venting upon the com- munity their disappointment over their lack of it, were both delinquent, unhappy misfits in a society which gave all the rewards to those who took defeat lightly and turned to some other goal with a smile. In this casual attitude towards life, in this avoidance of conflict, of poignant situations, Samoa contrasts strongly not only with America but also with most primitive civiliza- tions. And however much we may deplore such an attitude and feel that important personalities and great art are not bom in so shallow a society, we must recognize that here is a strong factor in the painless development from childhood to womanhood. For where no one feels very strongly, the adolescent will not be tortured by poignant situations. There are no such disastrous choices as those which con- Our Educational Problems 161 fronted young people who felt that the service of God demanded forswearing the world for ever, as in the Middle Ages, or cutting off one’s finger as a religious offering, as among the Plains Indians. So, high up in our list of ex- planations we must place the lack of deep feeling which the' Samoans have conventionalized until it is the very frame- work of all their attitudes towards life. And next there is the most striking way in which all isolated primitive civilizations and many modern ones differ from our own, in the number of choices which are per- mitted to each individual. Our children grow up to find a world of choices dazzling their unaccustomed eyes. In reli- gion they may be Catholics, Protestants, Christian Scientists, Spiritualists, Agnostics, Atheists, or even pay no attention at all to religion. This is an unthinkable situation in any primitive society not exposed to foreign influence. There is one set of gods, one accepted religious practice, and if a man does not believe, his only recourse is to believe less than his fellows; he may scoff, but there is no new faith to which he may turn. Present-day Manu’a approximates to this condition; all are Christians of the same sect. There is no conflict in matters of belief, although there is a difference in practice between church members and non-church- members. And it was remarked that in the case of several of the growing girls the need for choice between these two practices may some day produce a conflict. But at present the Church makes too slight a bid for young unmarried members to force the adolescent to make any decision. Similarly, our children are faced with half a dozen standards of morality: a double sex standard for men and women, a single standard for men and women, and groups which advocate that the single standard should be free- dom, while others argue that the single standard should be absolute monogamy. Trial marriage, companionate marriage, contract- marriage - all these possible solutions 1 62 Coming of Age in Samoa of a social impasse are paraded before the growing children, while the actual conditions in their own communities and the moving pictures and magazines inform them of mass violations of every code, violations which march under no banners of social reform. The Samoan child faces no such dilemma. Sex is a natural, pleasurable thing; the freedom with which it may be indulged in is limited by just one consideration, social status. Chiefs 5 daughters and chiefs 5 wives should indulge in no extra-marital experiments. Responsible adults, heads of households and mothers of families should have too many important matters on hand to leave them much time for casual amorous adventures. Everyone in the community agrees about the matter ; the only dissenters are the mission- aries, who dissent so vainly that their protests are unim- portant. But as soon as a sufficient sentiment gathers about the missionary attitude with its European standard of sex behaviour, the need for choice, the forerunner of conflict, will enter into Samoan society. Our young people are faced by a series of different groups which believe different things and advocate different practices, and to each of which some trusted friend or rela- tive may belong. So a girl’s father may be a Presbyterian, an imperialist, a vegetarian, a teetotaller, with a strong literary preference for Edmund Burke, a believer in the open shop and a high tariff, who believes that women’s place is in the home, that young girls should wear corsets, not roll their stockings, not smoke, nor go riding with young men in the evening. But her mother’s father may be a Low Episcopalian, a believer in high living, a strong advocate of States’ Rights and the Monroe Doctrine, who reads Rabelais, likes to go to musical shows and horse races. Her aunt is an agnostic, an ardent advocate of women’s rights, an internationalist who rests all her hopes on Esperanto, is devoted to Bernard Shaw, and spends her spare time in Our Educational Problems 163 campaigns of anti-vivisection. Her elder brother, whom she admires exceedingly, has just spent two years at Oxford. He is an Anglo-Catholic, an enthusiast concerning all things medieval, writes mystical poetry, reads Chesterton, and means to devote his life to seeking for the lost secret of medieval stained glass. Her mother’s younger brother is an engineer, a strict materialist, who never recovered from reading Haeckel in his youth; he scorns art, believes that science will save the world, scoffs at everything that was said and thought before the nineteenth century, and ruins his health by experiments in the scientific elimination of sleep. Her mother is of a quietistic frame of mind, very much interested in Indian philosophy, a pacifist, a strict non-participator in life, who in spite of her daughter’s devotion to her will not make any move to enlist her en- thusiasms. And this may be within the girl’s own household. Add to it the groups represented, defended, advocated by her friends, her teachers, and the books which she reads by accident, and the list of possible enthusiasms, of suggested allegiances, incompatible with one another, becomes appalling. The Samoan girl’s choices are far otherwise. Her father is a member of the church and so is her uncle. Her father lives in a village where there is good fishing, her uncle in a village where there are plenty of coconut crabs. Her father is a good fisherman and in his house there is plenty to eat; her uncle is a talking chief and his frequent presents of bark cloth provide excellent dance dresses. Her paternal grandmother, who lives with her uncle, can teach her many secrets of healing; her maternal grandmother, who lives with her mother, is an expert weaver of fans. The boys in her uncle’s village are admitted younger into the aum- aga and are not much fun when they come to call; but there are three boys in her own village whom she likes very much. And her great dilemma is whether to live with her 164 Coming of Age in Samoa father or her uncle, a frank, straightforward problem which introduces no ethical perplexities, no question of impersonal logic. Nor will her choice be taken as a personal matter, as the American girl’s allegiance to the views of one relative might be interpreted by her other relatives. The Samoans will be sure she chose one residence rather than the other for perfectly good reasons; the food was better, she had a lover in one village, or she had quarrelled with a lover k the other village. In each case she was making concrete choices within one recognized pattern of behaviour. She was never called upon to make choices involving an actua rejection of the standards of her social group, such as the daughter of Puritan parents, who permits indiscriminate caresses, must make in our society. And not only are our developing children faced by a serie of groups advocating different and mutually exclusiv< standards, but a more perplexing problem presents itsel to them. Because our civilization is woven of so many divers* strands, the ideas which any one group accepts will b found to contain numerous contradictions. So if the gk has given her allegiance whole-heartedly to some one grou] and has accepted in good faith their asseverations that the alone are right and all other philosophies of life are Anti christ and anathema, her troubles are still not over. Whil the less thoughtful receives her worst blows in the dis covery that what father thinks is good, grandfather think is bad, and that things which are permitted at home ar banned at school, the more thoughtful child has subtle difficulties in store for her. If she has philosophically ac cepted the fact that there are several standards amon which she must choose, she may still preserve a child-lik faith in the coherence of her chosen philosophy. Beyond th .immediate choice which was so puzzling and hard to mak< which perhaps involved hurting her parents or alienatin her friends, she expects peace. But she has not reckone Our, Educational Problems 165 with the fact that each of the philosophies with which she is confronted is itself but the half-ripened fruit of compro- mise. If she accepts Christianity, she is immediately con- fused betw r een the Gospel teachings concerning peace and the value of human life and the Church’s whole-hearted acceptance of war. The compromise made seventeen cen- turies ago between the Roman philosophy of war and domination, and the early Church doctrine of peace and humility, is still present to confuse the modern child. If she accepts the philosophic premises upon which the Declara- tion of Independence of the United States was founded, she finds herself faced with the necessity of reconciling the belief in the equality of man and our institutional pledges of equality of opportunity with our treatment of the Negro and the Oriental, The diversity of standards in present-day society is so striking that the dullest, the most incurious, can- not fail to notice it. And this diversity is so old, so embodied in semi-solutions, in those compromises between different philosophies which we call Christianity, or democracy, or humanitarianism, that it baffles the most intelligent, the most curious, the most analytical. So for the explanation of the lack of poignancy in the choices of growing girls in Samoa, we must look to the temperament of the Samoan civilization which discounts strong feeling. But for the explanation of the lack of conflict we must look principally to the difference between a simple, homogeneous primitive civilization, a civilization which changes so slowly that to each generation it appears static, and a motley, diverse, heterogeneous modern civilization. And in making the comparison there is a third considera- tion, the lack of neuroses among the Samoans, the great number of neuroses among ourselves. We must examine the factors in the early education of the Samoan children which have fitted them for a normal, unneurotic development. 1 66 Coming of Age in Samoa The findings of the behaviourists and of the psycho- analysts alike lay great emphasis upon the enormous role which is played by the environment of the first few years. Children who have been given a bad start are often found to function badly later on when they are faced with im- portant choices. And we know that the more severe the choice, the more conflict; the more poignancy is attached to the demands made upon the individual, the more neuroses will result. History, in the form of the world war, provided a stupendous illustration of the great number of maimed and handicapped individuals whose defects showed only under very special and terrible stress. Without the war, there is no reason to believe that many of these shell-shocked indi- viduals might not have gone through life unremarked; the bad start, the fears, the complexes, the bad conditionings of early childhood, would never have borne positive enough fruit to attract the attention of society. The implications of this observation are double. Samoa’s lack of difficult situations, of conflicting choice of situations in which fear or pain or anxiety are sharpened to a knife edge, will probably account for a large part of the absence of psychological maladjustment. Just as a low-grade moron ■ would not be hopelessly handicapped in Samoa, although he would be a public charge in a large American city, so individuals with slight nervous instability have a much more favourable chance in Samoa than in America. Further- more the amount of individualization, the range of variation, is much smaller in Samoa. Within our wider limits of deviation there are inevitably found weak: and non-resistant temperaments. And just as our society shows a greater development of personality, so also it shows a larger pro- portion of individuals who have succumbed before the complicated exactions of modern life. Nevertheless, it is possible that there are factors in the early environment of the Samoan child which are particu- Our Educational Problems 167 larly favourable to the establishment of nervous stability. Just as a child from a better home environment in our civilization may be presumed to have a better chance under all circumstances, it is conceivable that the Samoan child is not only handled more gently by its culture but that it is also better equipped for those difficulties which it does meet. Such an assumption is given force by the fact that little Samoan children pass apparently unharmed through ex- periences which often have grave effects on individual development in our civilization. Our life-histories are filled with the later difficulties which can be traced back to some early, highly charged experience with sex or with birth or death. And yet Samoan children are familiarized at an early age, and without disaster, with all three. It is very possible that there are aspects of the life of the young child in Samoa which equip it particularly well for passing through life without nervous instability. With this hypothesis in mind it is worth while to consider in more detail which parts of the young child’s social environment are most strikingly different from ours. Most of these centre about the family situation, the environment which impinges earliest and most intensely upon the child’s consciousness. The organization of a Samoan household eliminates at one stroke, in almost all cases, many of the special situations which are believed to be productive of undesirable emotional sets. The youngest, the oldest, and the only child, hardly ever occur because of the large num- ber of children in a household, all of whom receive the same treatment. Few children are weighed down with re- sponsibility, or rendered domineering and overbearing as eldest children so often are, or isolated, condemned to the society of adults and robbed of the socializing effect of contact with other children, as only children so often are. No child is petted and spoiled until its view of its own deserts is hopelessly distorted, as is so often the fate of the 1 68 Coming of Age in Samoa youngest child. But in the few cases where Samoan family life does approximate to ours, the special attitudes incident to order of birth and to close affectional ties with the parent tend to develop. The close relationship between parent and child, which has such a decisive influence upon so many in our civiliza- tion that submission to the parent or defiance of the parent may become the dominating pattern of a lifetime, is not found in Samoa. Children reared in households where there are half a dozen adult women to care for them and dry their tears, and a half dozen adult males, all of whom represent constituted authority, do not distinguish their parents as sharply as our children do. The image of the fostering, loving mother, or the admirable father, which may serve to determine affectional choices later in life, is a composite affair, composed of several aunts, cousins, older sisters, and grandmothers ; of chief, father, uncles, brothers, and cousins. Instead of learning as its first lesson that here is a kind mother whose special and principal care is for its welfare, and a father whose authority is to be deferred to, the Samoan baby learns that its world is composed of a hierarchy of male and female adults, all of whom can be depended upon and must be deferred to. The lack of specialized feeling which results from this diffusion of affection in the household is further reinforced by the segregation of the boys from the girls, so that a child regards the children of the opposite sex as taboo relatives, regardless of individuality, or as present enemies and future lovers, again regardless of individuality. And the substitution of relationship for preference in forming friend- ship completes the work. By the time she reaches puberty the Samoan girl had learned to subordinate choice in the selection of friends or lovers to an observance of certain categories. Friends must be relatives of one’s own sex;" lovers, non-relatives. All claim of personal attraction or Our Educational Problems 169 congeniality between relatives of opposite sex must be flouted. All this means that casual sex relations carry no onus of strong attachment, that the marriage of convenience dictated by economic and social considerations is easily borne and casually broken without strong emotion. Nothing could present a sharper contrast to the average American home, with its small number of children, the close, theoretically permanent tie between the parents, the drama of the entrance of each new child upon the scene and the deposition of the last baby. Here the growing girl learns to depend upon a few individuals, to expect the rewards of life horn certain kinds of personalities. With this first set towards preference in personal relations she grows up play- ing with boys as well as with girls, learning to know well brothers and cousins and schoolmates. She does not think of boys as a class but as individuals, nice ones like the brother of whom she is fond, or disagreeable, domineering ones, like a brother with whom she is always on bad terms. Preference in physical make-up, in temperament, in charac- ter, develops and forms the foundations for a very different adult attitude in which choice plays a vivid role. The Samoan girl never tastes the rewards of romantic love as we know it, nor does she suffer as an old maid who has appealed to no lover or found no lover appealing to her, or as the frustrated wife in a marriage which has not fulfilled her high demands. Having learned a little of the art of disciplining sex feel- ing into special channels approved by the whole person- ality, we shall be inclined to account our solution better than the Samoans 9 . To attain what we consider a more dignified standard of personal relations we are willing to pay the penalty of frigidity in marriage and a huge toll of barren, unmarried women who move in unsatisfied pro- cession across the American and English stage. But while granting the desirability of this development of sensitive. 170 Coming of Age in Samoa discriminating response to personality, as a better basis for dignified human lives than an automatic, undifferentiated response to sex attraction, we may still, in the light of Samoan solutions, count our methods exceedingly expensive. The strict segregation of related boys and girls, the in- stitutionalized hostility between pre-adolescent children of opposite sexes in Samoa are cultural features with which we are completely out of sympathy. For the vestiges of such attitudes, expressed in our one-sex schools, we are trying to substitute coeducation, to habituate one sex to another sufficiently so that difference of sex will be lost sight of in the more important and more striking differences in person- ality. There are no recognizable gains in the Samoan system of taboo and segregation, of response to a group rather than response to an individual. But when we contrast the other factor of difference the conclusion is not so sure. What are the rewards of the tiny, ingrown, biological family opposing its closed circle of affection to a forbidding world, of the strong ties between parents and children, ties which imply an active personal relation from birth until death? Special- ization of affection, it is true, but at the price of many individuals 3 preserving through life the attitude of dependent children, of ties between parents and children which suc- cessfully defeat the children’s attempts to make other adjustments, of necessary choices made unnecessarily poign- ant because they become issues in an intense emotional relationship. Perhaps these are too heavy prices to pay for a specialization of emotion which might be brought about in other ways, notably through coeducation. And with such a question in our minds it is interesting to note that a larger family community, in which there are several adult men and women, seems to ensure the child against the development of the crippling, attitudes which have been labelled Oedipus complexes, Electra complexes, and so on. The Samoan picture shows that it is not necessary to Our Educational Problems 171 channel so deeply the affection of a child for its parents, and suggests that while we would reject that part of the Samoan scheme which holds no rewards for us, the segre- gation of the sexes before puberty, we may learn from a picture in which the home does not dominate and distort the life of the child. The presence of many strongly held and contradictory points of view and the enormous influence of individuals in the lives of their children in our country play into each other’s hands in producing situations fraught with emotion and pain. In Samoa the fact that one girl’s father is a domi- neering, dogmatic person, her cousin’s father a gentle, reasonable person, and another cousin’s father a vivid, bril- liant, eccentric person, will influence the three girls in only one respect, choice of residence if any one of the three fathers is the head of a household. But the attitudes of the three girls towards sex, and towards religion, will not be affected by the different temperaments of their three fathers, for the fathers play too slight a role in their lives. They are schooled not by an individual but by an army of relatives into a general conformity upon which the personality of their parents has a very slight effect. And through an endless chain of cause and effect, individual differences of standard are not perpetuated through the children’s adherence to the parents’ position, nor are children thrown into bizarre, untypical attitudes which might form the basis for departure and change. It is possible that where our own culture is so charged with choice, it would be desirable to mitigate, at least in some slight measure, the strong role which parents play in children’s lives, and so eliminate one of the most powerful accidental factors in the choices of any individual life. The Samoan parent would reject as unseemly and odious an ethical plea made to a child in terms of personal affec- tion. fi Be good to please mother.’ ‘Go to church for father’s 172 Coming of Age in Samoa sake.’ ‘Don’t be so disagreeable to your sister, it makes father so unhappy. 5 Where there is one standard of conduct and only one, such undignified confusion of ethics and affection is blessedly eliminated. But where there are many standards and all adults are striving desperately to bind their own children to the particular courses which they themselves have chosen, recourse is had to devious and non-reputable means. Beliefs, practices, courses of action, are pressed upon the child in the name of filial loyalty. In our ideal picture of the freedom of the individual and the dignity of human relations it is not pleasant to realize that we have developed a form of family organization which often cripples the emotional life, and warps and confuses the growth of many individuals’ power consciously to live their own lives. The third element in the Samoan pattern of lack of personal relationships and lack of specialized affection is the case of friendship. Here, most of all, individuals are- placed in categories and the response is to the category, ‘relative’, or ‘wife of my husband’s talking chief’, or ‘son of my father’s talking chief’, or ‘daughter of my father’s talking chief’. Considerations of congeniality, of like- mindedness, are all ironed out in favour of regimented associations. Such attitudes we should of course reject completely. Drawing the threads of this particular discussion to- gether, we may say that one striking difference between Samoan society and our own is the lack of the specializa- tion of feeling, and particularly of sex feeling, among the Samoans. To this difference is undoubtedly due a part of the lack of difficulty of marital adjustments in a marriage of convenience, and the lack of frigidity or psychic impotence. This lack of specialization of feeling must be attributed to the large heterogeneous household, the segregation of the sexes before adolescence, and the regimentation of friend- ship - chiefly along relationship lines. And yet, although Our Educational Problems 173 we deplore the prices in maladjusted and frustrated lives, which we must pay for the greater specialization of sex feeling in our own society, we nevertheless vote the develop- ment of specialized response as a gain which we would not relinquish. But an examination of these three causal factors suggests that we might accomplish our desired end, the development of a consciousness of personality, through coeducation and free and unregimented friendships, and possibly do away with the evils inherent in the too intimate family organization, thus eliminating a part of our penalty of maladjustment without sacrificing any of our dearly bought gains. The next great difference between Samoa and our own culture which may be credited with a lower .production of maladjusted individuals is the difference in the attitude towards sex and the education of the children in matters pertaining to birth and death. None of the facts of sex or of birth are regarded as unfit for children, no child has to conceal its knowledge for fear of punishment or ponder painfully over little-understood occurrences. Secrecy, ignor- ance, guilty knowledge, faulty speculations resulting in grotesque conceptions which may have far-reaching results, a knowledge of the bare physical facts of sex without a knowledge of the accompanying excitement, of the fact of birth without the pains of labour, of the fact of death without the fact of corruption - all the chief flaws in our fatal philosophy of sparing children a knowledge of the dreadful truth - are absent in Samoa. Furthermore, the Samoan child who participates intimately in the lives of a host of relatives has many and varied experiences upon which to base its emotional attitudes. Our children, con- fined within one family circle (and such confinement is be- coming more and more frequent with the growth of cities and the substitution of apartment houses with a transitory population for a neighbourhood of householders), often owe 174 Coming of Age in Samoa their only experience of birth or death to the birth of a younger brother or sister or the death of a parent or grand- parent. Their knowledge of sex, aside from children’s gossip, comes from an accidental glimpse of parental activity. This has several very obvious disadavantages. In the first place, the child is dependent for its knowledge upon birth and death entering its own home; the youngest child in a family where there are no deaths may grow to adult life without ever having had any close knowledge of pregnancy, experi- ence with young children, or contact with death. A host of ill-digested fragmentary conceptions of life and death will fester in the ignorant, inexperienced mind and provide a fertile field for the later growth of unfortunate attitudes. Second, such children draw their experiences from too emotionally toned a field; one birth may be the only one with which they come in close contact for the first twenty years of their lives. And upon the accidental aspects of this particular birth their whole attitude is dependent. If the birth is that of a younger child who usurps the elder’s place, if the mother dies in child-bed, or if the child which is born is deformed, birth may seem a horrible thing, fraught with only unwelcome conse- quences. If the only death-bed at which one has ever watched is the death-bed of one’s mother, the bare fact of death may carry all the emotion which that bereavement aroused, carry for ever an effect out of all proportion to the particular deaths encountered later in life. And intercourse seen only once or twice, between relatives towards whom the child has complicated emotional attitudes, may produce any. number of false assumptions. Our records of mal- adjusted children are full of cases where children have mis- understood the nature of the sexual act, have interpreted it as struggle accompanied by anger, or as chastisement, have recoiled in terror from one highly charged experience. ,So our children are dependent upon accident for their Our Educational Problems *75 experience of life and death; and those experiences which they are vouchsafed, lie within the intimate family circle, and so are the worst possible way of learning general facts about which it is important to acquire no special, distorted attitudes. One death, two births, one sex experience, is a generous total for the child brought up under living con- ditions which we consider consonant with an American standard of living. And considering the number of illus- trations which we consider it necessary to give of how to calculate the number of square feet of paper necessary to paper a room eight feet by twelve feet by fourteen feet, or how to parse an English sentence, this is a low standard of illustration. It might be argued that these are experiences of such high emotional tone that repetition is unnecessary. It might also be argued if a child were severely beaten before being given its first lesson in calculating how to paper a room, and as a sequel to the lessons, saw its father hit its mother with the poker, it would always remember that arithmetic lesson. But what it would know about the real nature of calculations involved in room-papering is doubt- ful. In one or two experiences, the child is given no per- spective, no chance to relegate the grotesque and unfamiliar physical details of the life process to their proper place. False impressions, part impressions, repulsion, nausea, horror, grow up about some fact experienced only once under intense emotional stress and in an atmosphere un- favourable to the child’s attaining any real understanding. A standard of reticence which forbids the child any sort of comment upon its experiences makes for the continuance of such false impressions, such hampering emotional atti- tudes, questions such as 4 Why were grandma’s lips so blue ? 5 are promptly hushed. In Samoa, where decomposition sets in almost at once, a frank, naive repugnance to the odours of corruption on the part of all the participants at a funeral robs the physical aspect of death of any special significance. 176 Coming of Age in Samoa So, in our arrangements, the child is not allowed to repeat his experiences, and he is not permitted to discuss those which he has had and correct his mistakes. With the Samoan child it is profoundly different. Inter- course, pregnancy, childbirth, death, are all familiar occurrences. And the Samoan child experiences them in no such ordered fashion as we, were we to decide for widening the child’s experimental field, would regard as essential. In a civilization which suspects privacy, children of neigh- bours will be accidental and unemotional spectators in a house where the head of the household is dying or the wife is delivered of a miscarriage. The pathology of the life processes is known to them, as well as the normal. One impression corrects an earlier one until they are able, as adolescents, to think about life and death and emotion with- out undue preoccupation with the purely physical details. It must not be supposed, however, that the mere exposure of children to scenes of birth and death would be a sufficient guarantee against the growth of undesirable attitudes. Probably even more influential than the facts which are so copiously presented to them, is the attitude of mind with which their elders regard the matter. To them, birth and sex and death are the natural, inevitable structure of exist- ence, of an existence in which they expect their youngest children to share. Our so often repeated comment that 6 it’s not natural 5 for children to be permitted to encounter death would seem as incongruous to them as if we were to say it was not natural for children to see other people eat or sleep. And this calm, matter-of-fact acceptance of their children’s presence envelops the children in a protective atmosphere, saves them from shock and binds them closer to the common emotion which is so dignifiedly permitted them. As in every case, it is here impossible to separate attitude from practice and say which is primary. The distinction is made only for our use in another civilization. The inch- Our Educational Problems 177 vidual American parents, who believe in a practice like the Samoan, and permit their children to see adult human bodies and gain a wider experience of the functioning of the human body than is commonly permitted in our civiliza- tion, are building upon sand. For the child, as soon as it leaves the protecting circle of its home, is blasted by an at- titude which regards such experience in children as ugly and unnatural. As likely as not, the attempt of the individual parents will have done the child more harm than good, for the necessary supporting social attitude is lacking. This is just a further example of the possibilities of maladjustment inherent in a society where each home differs from each other home ; for it is in the fact of difference that the strain lies rather than in the nature of the difference. Upon this quiet acceptance of the physical facts of life the Samoans build, as they grow older, an acceptance of sex. Here again it is necessary to sort out which parts of their practice seem to produce results which we certainly deprecate, and which produce results which we desire. It is possible to analyse Samoan sex practice from the standpoint of development of personal relationships on the one hand, and of the obviation of specific difficulties upon the other. We have seen that the Samoans have a low level of ap- preciation of personality differences, and a poverty of con- ception of personal relations. To such an attitude the acceptance of promiscuity undoubtedly contributes. The contemporaneousness of several experiences, their short duration, the definite avoidance of forming any affectional ties, the blithe acceptance of the dictates of a favourable occasion, as in the expectation of infidelity in any wife whose husband is long from home, all serve to make sex an end rather than a means, something which is valued in itself, and deprecated inasmuch as it tends to bind one individual to another. Whether such a disregard of personal relations is completely contingent upon the sex habit of the T-h 178 Coming of Age in Samoa people is doubtful. It probably is also a reflection of a more general cultural attitude in which personality is consistently disregarded. But there is one respect in which these very practices make possible a recognition of personality which is often denied to many in our civilization, because, from the Samoans’ complete knowledge of sex, its possibilities and its rewards, they are able to count it at its true value. And if they have no preference for reserving sex activity for important relationships, neither do they regard relation- ships as important because they are productive of sex satis- faction. The Samoan girl who shrugs her shoulders over the excellent technique of some young Lothario is nearer to the recognition of sex as an impersonal force without any intrinsic validity than is the sheltered American girl who falls in love with the first man who kisses her. From their familiarity with the reverberations which accompany sex excitement comes this recognition of the essential imper- sonality of sex attraction which we may well envy them; from the too slight, too casual practice comes the disregard of personality which seems to us unlovely. The fashion in which their sex practice reduces the pos- sibility of neuroses has already been discussed. By discount- ing our category of perversion, as applied to practice, and reserving it for the occasional psychic pervert, they legis- late a whole field of neurotic possibility out of existence. Onanism, homosexuality, statistically unusual forms of heterosexual activity, are neither banned nor institution- alized. The wider range which these practices give prevents the development of obsessions of guilt which are so frequent a cause of maladjustment among us. The more varied practices permitted heterosexually preserve any individual from being penalized for special conditioning. This accept- ance of a wider range as e normal ’ provides a cultural atmos- phere in which frigidity and psychic impotence do not occur and in which a satisfactory sex adjustment in marriage Our Educational Problems *79 can always be established. The acceptance of such an at- titude without in any way accepting promiscuity would go a long way towards solving many marital impasses and emptying our park benches and our houses of prostitution. Among the factors in the Samoan scheme of life which are influential in producing stable, well-adjusted, robust individuals, the organization of the family and the attitude towards sex are undoubtedly the most important. But it is necessary to note also the general educational concept which disapproves of precocity and coddles the slow, the laggard, the inept. In a society where the tempo of life was faster, the rewards greater, the amount of energy expended larger, the bright children might develop symptoms of boredom. But the slower pace dictated by the climate, the complacent, peaceful society, and the compensation of the dance, in its blatant precocious display of individuality which drains off some of the discontent which the bright child feels, pre- vent any child from becoming too bored. And the dullard is not goaded and dragged along faster than he is able until, sick with making an impossible effort, he gives up entirely. This educational policy tends to blur individual differences and so to minimize jealousy, rivalry, emulation, those social attitudes which arise out of discrepancies of endowment and are so far-reaching in their effects upon the adult personality. It is one way of solving the problem of differences between individuals and a method of solution exceedingly congenial to a strict adult world. The longer the child is kept in a subject, non-initiating state, the more of the general cul- tural attitude it will absorb, the less of a disturbing element it will become. Furthermore, if time is given them, the dullards can learn enough to provide a stout body of con- servatives upon whose shoulders the burden of the civiliza- tion can safely rest. Giving titles to young men would put a pr emium upon the exceptional; giving titles to men of 180 Coming of Age in Samoa forty, who have at last acquired sufficient training to hold them, assures the continuation of the usual. It also discour- ages the brilliant so that their social contribution is slighter than it might otherwise have been. We are slowly feeling our way towards a solution of this problem, at least in the case of formal education. Until very recently our educational system offered only two very partial solutions of the difficulties inherent in a great dis- crepancy between children of different endowment and different rates of development. One solution was to allow a sufficiently long time to each educational step so that all but the mentally defective could succeed, a method similar to the Samoan one and without its compensatory dance- floor. The bright child, held back, at intolerably boring tasks, unless he was fortunate enough to find some other outlet for his unused energy, was likely to expend it upon truancy and general delinquency. Our only alternative to this was ‘skipping’ a child from one grade to another, rely- ing upon the child’s superior intelligence to bridge the gaps. This was a method congenial to American enthusiasms for meteoric careers from canal boat and log cabin to the White House. Its disadvantages in giving the child a sketchy, dis- continuous background, in removing it from its age group, have been enumerated too often to need repetition here. But it is worthy of note that with a very different valuation of individual ability than that entertained by Samoan society we used for years one solution, similar and less satis- factory than theirs, in our formal educational attempts. The methods which experimental educators are sub- stituting for these unsatisfactory solutions, schemes like the Dalton Plan, or the rapidly moving classes in which a group of children can move ahead at a high, even rate of speed without hurt to themselves or to their duller fellows, are a striking example of the results of applying reason to the institutions of our society. The old red school-house was Our Educational Problems 181 almost as haphazard and accidental a phenomenon as the Samoan dance-floor. It was an institution which had grown up in response to a vaguely felt, unanalysed need. Its methods were analogous to the methods used by primitive peoples, non-rationalized solutions of pressing problems. But the institutionalization of different methods of education for children of different capacities and different rates of development is not like anything which we find in Samoa or in any other primitive society. It is the conscious, intelligent directing of human institutions in response to observed human needs. Still another factor in Samoan education which results in different attitudes is the place of work and play in the chil- dren’s lives. Samoan children do not learn to work through lear nin g to play, as the children of many primitive peoples do. Nor are they permitted a period of lack of responsibility such as our children are allowed. From the time they are four or five years old they perform definite tasks, graded to their strength and intelligence, but still tasks which have a meaning in the structure of the whole society. This does not mean that they have less time for play than American children who are shut up in schools from nine to three o’clock every day. Before the introduction of schools to com- plicate the ordered routine of their lives, the time spent by the Samoan child in running errands, sweeping the house, carrying water, and taking actual care of the baby, was possibly less than that which the American school child devotes to her studies. The difference lies not in the proportion of time in which their activities are directed and the proportion in which they are free, but rather in the difference of attitude. With the professionalization of education and the specialization of industrial tasks which has stripped the individual home of its former variety of activities, our children are not made to feel that the time they do devote to supervised activity 1 82 Coming oj Age in Samoa is functionally related to the world of adult activity. Al- though this lack of connexion is more apparent than real, it is still sufficiently vivid to be a powerful determinant in the child’s attitude. The Samoan girl who tends babies, carries water, sweeps the floor; or the little boy who digs for bait, or collects coconuts, has no such difficulty. The necessary nature of their tasks is obvious. And the practice of giving a child a task which he can do well and never permitting a childish, inefficient tinkering with adult appar- atus, such as we permit to our children, who bang aimlessly and destructively on their fathers 9 typewriters, results in a different attitude towards work. American children spend hours in schools learning tasks whose visible relation to their mothers’ and fathers’ activities is often quite impossible to recognize. Their participation in adults’ activities is either in terms of toys, tea-sets and dolls and toy automobiles, or else a meaningless and harmful tampering with the electric light system. (It must be understood that here, as always, when I say American, I do not mean those Americans recently arrived from Europe, who still present a different tradition of education. Such a group would be the Southern Italians, who still expectproductive workfrom their children.) So our children make a false set of categories, work, play, and school; work for adults, play for children’s pleasure, and school as an inexplicable nuisance with some com- pensations. These false distinctions are likely to produce all sorts of strange attitudes, an apathetic treatment of a school which bears no known relation to life, a false dichotomy between work and play, which may result either in a dread of work as implying irksome responsibility or in a later contempt for play as childish. The Samoan child’s dichotomy is different. Work con- sists of those necessary tasks which keep the social life going : planting and harvesting and preparation of food, fishing, house-building, mat-making, care of children, collecting of Our Educational Problems i 83 property to validate marriages and births and succession to titles and to entertain strangers, these are the necessary activities of life, activities in which every member of the community, down to the smallest child, has a part. Work is not a way of acquiring leisure; where every household pro- duces its own food and clothes and furniture, where there is no large amount of fixed capital and households of high rank are simply characterized by greater industry in the discharge of greater obligations, our whole picture of saving, of investment, of deferred enjoyment, is completely absent. (There is even a lack of clearly defined seasons of harvest, which would result in special abundance of food and con- sequent feasting. Food is always abundant, except in some particular village where a few weeks of scarcity may follow a period of lavish entertaining.) Rather, work is something which goes on all the time for everyone; no one is exempt; few are overworked. There is social reward for the indus- trious, social toleration for the man who does barely enough. And there is always leisure - leisure, be it noted, which is not the result of hard work or accumulated capital at all, but is merely the result of a kindly climate, a small popula- tion, a well-integrated social system, and no social demands for spectacular expenditure. And play is what one does with the time left over from working, a way of filling in the wide spaces in a structure of unirksome work. Play includes dancing, singing, games, weaving necklaces of flowers, flirting, repartee, all forms of sex activity. And there are social institutions like the ceremonial inter-village visit which partake of both work and play. But the distinc- tions between work as something one has to do but dislikes, and play as something one wants to do; of work as the main business of adults, play as the main concern of children, are conspicuously absent. Childrens 5 play is like adults* play in kind, interest, and in its proportion to work. And the Samoan child has no desire to turn adult activities into 184 Coming of Age in Samoa play, to translate one sphere into the other. I had a box of white clay pipes for blowing soap bubbles sent me. The children were familiar with soap bubbles, but their native method of blowing them was very inferior to the use of clay pipes. But after a few minutes 5 delight in the unusual size and beauty of the soap bubbles, one little girl after another asked me if she might please take her pipe home to her mother, for pipes were meant to smoke, not to play with. Foreign dolls did not interest them, and they have no dolls of their own, although children of other islands weave dolls from the palm leaves from which Samoan children weave balls. They never make toy houses, nor play house, nor sail toy boats. Little boys would climb into a real outrigger canoe and practise paddling it within the safety of the lagoon. This whole attitude gave a greater coherence to the children’s lives than we often afford our children. The intelligibility of a child’s life among us is measured only in terms of the behaviour of other children. If all the other children go to school the child who does not feels incongruous in their midst. If the little girl next door is taking music lessons, why can’t Mary? or why must Mary take music lessons if the other little girl doesn’t take them? But so sharp is our sense of difference between the concerns of children and of adults that the child does not learn to judge its own behaviour in relationship to adult life. So children often learn to regard play as something inherently undignified, and as adults mangle pitifully their few moments of leisure. But the Samoan child measures her every act of work or play in terms of her whole community; each item of conduct is dignified in terms of its realized relationship to the only standard she knows, the life of a Samoan village. So complex and stratified a society as ours cannot hope to develop spontaneously any such simple scheme of education. Again we will be hard put to it to devise ways of participa* lion for children, and means of articulating their school life Out Educational Problems 185 with the rest of life which will give them the same dignity which Samoa affords her children. Last among the cultural differences which may influence the emotional stability of the child is the lack of pressure to make important choices. Children are urged to learn, urged to behave, urged to work, but they are not urged to hasten in the choices which they make themselves. The first point at which this attitude makes itself felt is in the matter of the brother and sister taboo, a cardinal point of modesty and decency. Yet the exact stage at which the taboo should be observed is always left to the younger child. When it reaches a point of discretion, of understanding, it will of itself feel ‘ashamed 9 and establish the formal barrier which will last until old age. Likewise, sex activity is never urged upon the young people, nor marriage forced upon them at a tender age. Where the possibilities of deviation from the accepted standard are so slight, a few years’ leeway holds no threat for the society. The child who comes later to a realization of the brother and sister taboo really en- dangers nothing. This laissez-faire attutude has been carried over into the S am oan Christian Church. The Samoan saw no reason why young unmarried people should be pressed to make momen- tous decisions which would spoil part of their fun in life. Time enough for such serious matters after they were mar- ried, or later still, when they were quite sure of what steps they were taking and were in less danger of falling from grace every month or so. The missionary authorities, realiz- ing the virtues of going slowly and sorely vexed to reconcile Samoan sex ethics with a Western European code, saw the great disadvantages of unmarried church members who . were not locked up in church schools. Consequently, far from urging the adolescent to think upon her soul, the native pastor advises her to wait until she is older, which she is only too glad to do. 186 . Coming of Age in Samoa But, especially in the case of our Protestant churches, there is a strong preference among us for the appeal to youth. The Reformation, with its emphasis upon individual choice, was unwilling to accept the tacit habitual church membership which was the Catholic pattern, a membership marked by additional sacramental gifts but demanding no sudden conversion, no renewal of religious feeling. But the Protestant solution is to defer the choice only so far as necessary, and the moment the child reaches an age which may be called ‘years of discretion 5 it makes a strong, dram- atic appeal. This appeal is reinforced by parental and social pressure; the child is bidden to choose now and wisely. While such a position in the churches which stem from the Reformation and its strong emphasis on individual choice was historically inevitable, it is regrettable that the con- vention has lasted so long. It has even been taken over by non-sectarian reform groups, all of whom regard the adolescent child as the most legitimate field of activity. In all of these comparisons between Samoan and Ameri- can culture, many points are useful only in throwing a spotlight upon our own solutions, while in others it is pos- sible to find suggestions for change. Whether or not we envy other peoples one of their solutions, our attitude towards our own solutions must be greatly broadened and deepened by a consideration of the way in which other peoples have met the same problems. Realizing that our own ways are not humanly inevitable nor God-ordained, but are the fruit of a long and turbulent history, we may well examine in turn all our institutions, thrown into strong relief against the his- tory of other civilizations, and, weighing them in the balance;, be not afraid to find them wanting. i4 Education for Choice We have been comparing, point for point, our civilization and the simpler civilization of Samoa, in order to illuminate our own methods of education. If now we turn from the Samoan picture and take away only the main lesson which we learned there, that adolescence is not necessarily a time of stress and strain, but that cultural conditions make it so, can we draw any conclusions which might bear fruit in the training of our adolescents? At first blush the answer seems simple enough. If adoles- cents are plunged into difficulties and distress only because of conditions in their social environment, then by all means let us so modify that environment as to reduce this stress and eliminate this strain and anguish of adjustment. But, un- fortunately, the conditions which vex our adolescents are the flesh and bone of our society, no more subject to straight- forward manipulation upon our part than is the language which we speak. We can alter a syllable here, a construc- tion there; but the great and far-reaching changes in lin- guistic structure (as in all parts of culture) are the work of time, a work in which each individual plays an uncon- scious and inconsiderable part. The principal causes of our adolescents 9 difficulty are the presence of conflicting stand- ards and the belief that every individual should make his or her own choices, coupled with a feeling that choice is an important matter. Given these cultural attitudes, adoles- cence, regarded now not as a period of physiological change, for we know that physiological puberty need not produce conflict, but as the beginning of mental and emotional maturity, is bound to be filled with conflicts and difficul- ties. A society which is clamouring for choice, which is i88 Coming of Age in Samoa filled with many articulate groups, each urging its own brand of salvation, its own variety of economic philosophy, will give each new generation no peace until all have chosen or gone under, unable to bear the conditions of choice. The stress is in our civilization, not in the physical changes through which our children pass, but it is none the less real nor the less inevitable in twentieth-century America. And if we look at the particular forms which this need for choice takes, the difficulty of the adolescent’s position is only documented further. Because the discussion is prin- cipally concerned with girls, I shall discuss the problem from the girl’s point of view, but in many respects the plight of the adolescent boy is very similar. Between fourteen and eighteen, the average American boy and girl finish school. They are now ready to go to work and must choose what type of work they wish to do. It might be argued that they often have remarkably little choice. Their education, the part of the country in which they live, their skill with their hands, will combine to dictate choice perhaps between the job of cash girl in a department store or of telephone operator, or of clerk or miner. But small as is the number of choices open to them in actuality, the significance of this narrow field of opportunity is blurred by our American theory of endless possibilities. Moving picture, magazine, newspaper, all reiterate the Cinderella story in one form or another, and often the interest lies as much in the way cash girl 456 becomes head buyer as. in her subsequent nuptials with the owner of the store. Our occupational classes are not fixed. So many children are better educated and hold more skilled positions than their parents that even the ever-present discrepancy between opportunities open to men and opportunities open to women, although present in a girl’s competition with her brother, is often absent as between her unskilled father and herself. It is needless to argue that these attitudes are products of conditions which Education for Choice 189 no longer exist, particularly the presence of a frontier and a large amount of free land which provided a perpetual alternative of occupational choice. A set which was given to our thinking in pioneer days is preserved in other terms. As long as we have immigrants from non-English-speaking countries, the gap in opportunities between non-English- speaking parents and English-speaking children will be vivid and dramatic. Until our standard of education becomes far more stable than it is at present, the continual raising of the age and grade until which schooling is compulsory ensures a wide educational gap between many parents and their children. And occupational shifts like the present move- ments of farmers and farm workers into urban occupations give the same picture. When the agricultural worker pic- tures urban work as a step up in the social scale, and the introduction of scientific farming is so radically reducing the numbers needed in agriculture, the movement of young people born on the farm to city jobs is bound to dazzle the imagination of our farming states during the next genera- tion at least. The substitution of machines for unskilled workers and the absorption of many of the workers and their children into positions where they manipulate machines affords another instance of the kind of historical change which keeps our myth of endless opportunity alive. Add to these special features, like the effect upon the prospects of Negro children of the tremendous exodus from the southern cornfields, or upon the children of New England mill-hands who are deprived of an opportunity to follow dully in their parents 9 footsteps and must at least seek new fields if not better ones. Careful students of the facts may tell us that class lines are becoming fixed; that while the children of immigrants make advances beyond their parents, they move up in step; that there are fewer spectacular successes among them than there used to be; that it is much more possible to predict i go Coming of Age in Samoa the future status of the child from the present status of the parent. But this measured comment of the statistician has not filtered into our literature, nor our moving pictures, nor in any way served to minimize the vividness of the improve- ment in the children’s condition as compared with the con- dition of their parents. Especially in cities, there is no such obvious demonstration of the fact that improvement is the rule for the children of a given class or district, and not merely a case of John Riley’s making twenty dollars a week as a crossing-man while Mary, his daughter, who has gone to business school, makes twenty-five dollars a week, work- ing shorter hours. The lure of correspondence-school advertising, the efflorescence of a doctrine of short-cuts to fame, all contrive to make an American boy’s or girl’s choice of a job different from that of English children, bom into a society where stratification is so old, so institutionalized, that the dullest cannot doubt it. So economic conditions force them to go to work and everything combines to make that choice a difficult one, whether in terms of abandoning a care-free existence for a confining, uncongenial one, or in terms of bitter rebellion against the choice which they must make in contrast to the opportunities which they are told are open to all Americans. And taking a job introduces other factors of difficulty into the adolescent girl’s home situation. Her dependence has always been demonstrated in terms of limits and curbs set upon her spontaneous activity in every field, from spending money to standards of dress and behaviour. Because of the essentially pecuniary nature of our society, the relationship of limitation in terms of allowance to limitation of behaviour are more far-reaching than in earlier times. Parental dis- approval of extreme styles of clothing would formerly have expressed itself in a mother’s making her daughter’s dresses high in the neck and long in the sleeve. Now it expresses itself in control through money. If Mary doesn’t stop Education for Choice 191 purchasing chiffon stockings, Mary shall have no money to buy stockings. Similarly, a taste for cigarettes and liquor can be gratified only through money; going to the movies, buying books and magazines of which her parents dis- approve, are all dependent upon a girl’s having the money, as well as upon her eluding more direct forms of control. And the importance of a supply of money in gratifying all a girl’s desires for clothes and for amusement makes money the easiest channel through which to exert parental autho- rity. So easy is it, that the threat of cutting off an allowance, taking away the money for the one movie a week or the coveted hat, has taken the place of the whippings and bread-and-water exiles which were favourite disciplinary methods in the last century. The parents come to rely upon this method of control. The daughters come to see all censoring of their behaviour, moral, religious or social, the ethical code and the slightest sumptuary provisions in terms of an economic threat. And then at sixteen or seven- teen the daughter gets a job. No matter how conscientiously she may contribute her share to the expenses of the house- hold, it is probably only in homes where a European tradition still lingers that the wage-earning daughter gives all her earnings to her parents. (This, of course, excludes the cases where the daughter supports her parents, where the vesting of the economic responsibility in her hands changes the picture of parental control in another fashion.) For the first time in her life, she has an income of her own, with no strings of morals or of manners attached to its use. Her parents’ chief instrument of discipline is shattered at one blow, but not their desire to direct their daughters’ lives. They have not pictured their exercise of control as the right of those who provide to control those for whom they provide. They have pictured it in far more traditional terms, the right of parents to control their children, an attitude reinforced by years of practising such control. ig2 Coming of Age in Samoa But the daughter is in the position of one who has yielded unwillingly to someone who held a whip in his hand, and now sees the whip broken. Her unwillingness to obey, her chafing under special parental restrictions which children accept as inevitable in simpler cultures, is again a feature of our conglomerate civilization. When all the children in the community go to bed at curfew, one child is not as likely to rail against her parents for enforcing the rule. But when the little girl next door is allowed to stay up until eleven o’clock, why must Mary go to bed at eight? If all her com- panions at school are allowed to smoke, why can’t she? And conversely, for it is a question of the absence of a common standard far more than of the nature of the standards, if all the other little girls are given lovely fussy dresses and hats with flowers and ribbons, why must she be dressed in sen- sible, straight linen dresses and simple round hats? Barring an excessive and passionate devotion of the children to their parents, a devotion of a type which brings other more serious difficulties in its wake, children in a heterogeneous civilization will not accept unquestioningly their parents’ judgement, and the most obedient will temper present compliance with the hope of future emancipation. In a primitive, homogeneous community, disciplinary measures of parents are expended upon securing small con- cessions from children, in correcting the slight deviations which occur within one pattern of behaviour. But in our society, home discipline is used to establish one set of stand- ards as over against other sets of standards, each family group is fighting some kind of battle, bearing the onus of those who follow a middle course, stoutly defending a cause already lost in the community at large, or valiantly attempt- ing to plant a new standard far in advance of their neigh- bours. This propagandist aspect greatly increases the im- portance of home discipline in the development of a girl’s personality. So we have the picture of parents, shorn of their Education for Choice jgg • economic authority, trying to coerce the girl who still lives beneath their roof into an acceptance of standards against which she is rebelling. In this attempt they often find them- selves powerless, and as a result the control of the home breaks down suddenly, and breaks down just at the point where the girl, faced with other important choices, needs a steadying home environment. It is at about this time that sex begins to play a role in the girl’s life, and here also conflicting choices are presented to her. If she chooses the freer standards of her own generation she comes in conflict with her parents, and, perhaps more importantly, with the ideals which her parents have in- stilled. The present problem of the sex experimentation of yo ung people would be greatly simplified if it were con- ceived of as experimentation instead of as rebellion, if no Puritan self-accusations vexed their consciences. The intro- duction of an experimentation so much wider and more dangerous presents sufficient problems in our lack of social canons for such behaviour. For a new departure in the field of personal relations is always accompanied by the failure of those who are not strong enough to face an unpatterned situation. Canons of honour, of personal obligation, of the limits of responsibilities, grow up only slowly. And, of first experimenters, many perish in uncharted seas. But when there is added to the pitfalls of experiment the suspicion that the experiment is wrong, and the need for secrecy, lying, fear, the strain is so great that frequent downfall is inevitable. And if the girl chooses the other course, decides to remain true to the tradition of the last generation, she wins the sympathy and support of her parents at the expense of the comradeship of her contemporaries. Whichever way the die falls, the choice is attended by mental anguish. Only (waslonal children escape by various sorts of luck, a large enough group who have the same standards so that they are 194 Coming of Age in Samoa supported either against their parents or against the major- ity of their age mates, or by absorption in some other interest. But, with the exception of students for whom the problem of personal relations is sometimes mercifully defer- red for a later settlement, those who find some other interest so satisfying that they take no interest in the other sex often find themselves old maids without any opportunity to recoup their positions. The fear of spinsterhood is a fear which shadows the life of no primitive woman; it is another item of maladjustment which our civilization has produced. To the problem of present conduct are added all the perplexities introduced by varying concepts of marriage, the conflict between deferring marriage until a competence is assured, or marrying and sharing the expenses of the home with a struggling young husband. The knowledge of birth control, while greatly dignifying human life by intro- ducing the element of choice at the point where human beings have before been most abjectly subject to nature, introduces further perplexities. It complicates the issue from a straight marriage-home-and-children plan of life versus independent spinsterhood by permitting marriages without children, earlier marriages, marriages and careers, sex rela- tions without marriage and the responsibility of a home. And because the majority of girls still wish to marry and regard their occupations as stop-gaps, these problems not only influence their attitude towards men, but also their attitude towards their work and prevent them from hav- ing a sustained interest in the work which they are forced to do. Then we must add to the difficulties inherent in a new economic status and the necessity of adopting some standard of sex relations, ethical and religious issues to be solved. Here again the home is a powerful factor; the parents use . every ounce of emotional pressure to enlist their children in one of the dozen armies of salvation. The stress of the Education for Choice 195 revival meeting, the pressure of pastor and parent gives them no peace. And the basic difficulties of reconciling the teachings of authority with the practices of society and the findings of science, all trouble and perplex children already harassed beyond endurance. Granting that society presents too many problems to her adolescents, demands too many momentous decisions on a few months 5 notice, what is to be done about it? One panacea suggested would be to postpone at least some of the decisions, keep the child economically dependent, or segre- gate her from all contact with the other sex, present her with only one set of religious ideas, until she is older, more poised, better able to deal critically with the problems which will confront her. In a less articulate fashion, such an idea is behind various schemes for the prolongation of youth, through raising the working age, raising the school age, shielding school children from a knowledge of controversies like evolution versus fundamentalism, or any knowledge of sex hygiene or birth control. Even if such measures, specially initiated and legislatively enforced, could accomplish the end which they seek and postpone the period of choice, it is doubtful whether such a development would be desirable. It is unfair that very young children should be the battle- ground for conflicting standards, that their development should be hampered by propagandist attempts to enlist and condition them too young. It is probably equally unfair culturally to defer the decisions too late. Loss of one’s funda- mental religious faith is more of a wrench at thirty than at fifteen simply in terms of the number of years of acceptance which have accompanied the belief. A sudden knowledge of hitherto unsuspected aspects of sex, or a shattering of all the old conventions concerning sex behaviour, is more diffi- cult just in terms of the strength of the old attitudes. Further- more, in practical terms, such schemes would be as they are now, merely local, one state legislating against evolution, 196 Coming of Age in Samoa another against birth control, or one religious group seg- regating its unmarried girls. And these special local move- ments would simply unfit groups of young people for competing happily with children who had been permitted to make their choices earlier. Such an educational scheme, in addition to being almost impossible of execution, would be a step backward and would only beg the question. Instead, we must turn all our educational efforts to train- ing our children for the choices which will confront them. Education, in the home even more than at school, instead of being a special pleading for one regime, a desperate at- tempt to form one particular habit of mind which will withstand all outside influences, must be a preparation for those very influences. Such an education must give far more attention to mental and physical hygiene than it has given hitherto. The child who is to choose wisely must be healthy in mind and body, handicapped in no preventable fashion. And even more importantly, this child of the future must have an open mind. The home must cease to plead an ethical cause or a religious belief with smiles or frowns, caresses or threats. The children must be taught how to think, not what to think. And because old errors die slowly, they must be taught tolerance, just as today they are taught intolerance. They must be taught that many ways are open to them, no one sanctioned above its alternative, and that upon them and upon them alone lies the burden of choice. Unhampered by prejudices, unvexed by too early con- ditioning to any one standard, they must come clear-eyed to the choices which lie before them. For it must be realized by any student of civilization that we pay heavily for our heterogeneous, rapidly changing civilization; we pay in high proportions of crime and delin- quency, we pay in the conflicts of youth, we pay in an ever- increasing number of neuroses, we pay in the lack of a coherent tradition without which the development of art is Education for Choice 197 sadly handicapped. In such a list of prices, we must count our gains carefully, not to be discouraged. And chief among our gains must be reckoned this possibility of choice, the recognition of many possible ways of life, where other civiliz- ations have recognized only one. Where other civilizations give a satisfactory outlet to only one temperamental type, be he mystic or soldier, business man or artist, a civilization in which there are many standards offers a possibility of satisfactory adjustment to individuals of many different temperamental types, of diverse gifts and varying interests. At the present time we live in a period of transition. We have many standards but we still believe that only one standard can be the right one. We present to our children the picture of a battlefield where each group is fully arm- oured in a conviction of the righteousness of its cause. And each of these groups makes forays among the next genera- tion. But it is unthinkable that a final recognition of the great number of ways in which man, during the course of history and at the present time, is solving the problems of life, should not bring with it in turn the downfall of our belief in a single standard. And when no one group claims ethical sanction for its customs, and each group welcomes to its midst only those who are temperamentally fitted for membership, then we shall have realized the high point of individual choice and universal toleration which a hetero- geneous culture and a heterogeneous culture alone can at- tain. Samoa knows but one way of life and teaches it to her children. Will we, who have the knowledge of many ways, leave our children free to choose among them?

تم في 2020

محمد شحاته حسين

مصر/2020