Recherches sur les Societes d’Enfants
- Author:
Varendonck. Brussels and
Leipzig: Misch and Thron, 1914. Pp. iv+95. (Notes et Memoires de l’Institut de Sociologie Solvay, No. 12.)
M. Varendonck, a professor in the intermediate school at Gand, Belgium, collected the material for his monograph chiefly by means of a questionnaire, of which one thousand copies were printed, half of them in French and half in Dutch, and distributed in 1910 to pupils of elementary, intermediate, and normal schools in Belgium, Holland, and northern France, as well as published in several psychological journals. Three hundred and eight replies were received by M. Varendonck from these young people; 174 had to be discarded as vague and therefore useless, and 134 were used as the basis for his study. The boys, he found, gave more definite information than did the girls. In preparing his material he did not rely exclusively upon the questionnaires. For a long time he had been collecting observations upon bands of children, and this body of fact served him as a touchstone to confirm the veracity of the returns.
He divides his monograph into four chapters, preceded by a copy of the questionnaire, which is long and most searching, and an account of its distribution and results. The first chapter is a general description of the groupings to which the gregarious instinct of children gives rise, their extent and internal organization. The second chapter considers the personality and authority of the leaders. In the third chapter the author discusses the psychology of the members, the collective consiciousness of the group, and the attitude assumed toward outsiders. Chapter four presents conclusions. It is followed by an appendix of typical documents describing the various organizations formed by children,?a band of warriors, of Indians, of nomads; a girls’ club, and a clan without other purpose than to be dominated for a time by the autocratic personality of the leader. Discussing the work of scholars who have studied children’s societies, M. Varendonck considers their classifications unsatisfactory. “It is very difficult,” he remarks, “to establish any distinction whatever which shall separate clearly one band from another, whether from the point of view of the age of its members, or with respect to their habitual occupations, except in abnormal cases like the associations of young thieves. For every society of children includes members of different ages, and on the other hand a group of boys devoted to playing hide-and-seek, for example, may suddenly organize for an adventurous walk through the woods.” He prefers a classification based upon complexity of organization. “It is natural,” he says, “that societies outside of school are in general more complexly organized than the groups formed in school,” and among the former we may distinguish those casually constituted from those having a more permanent existence. Pushing the analysis still further, M. Varendonck adds, “We may observe that among the permanent associations, in those which have chosen a specialty (to edit a paper, give theatrical performances, etc.), the division of labor is established in a perfectly adequate manner.” In the true “gang,” which he defines as an organization resulting from pronounced selection and which he believes has no real parallelism with primitive life, the individual is completely absorbed by the group,?there is a formal interdependence of the individual members. Small clubs are more common among girls than among boys, because of stricter oversight of girls by their parents. New members are admitted readily to the large associations, but only with difficulty to the small groups, particularly those made up of a few “inseparables”. In these tiny communities the individual is sacrificed to the group, and there is complete solidarity. Large associations, which welcome and even seek new members, generally meet in public, while small and exclusive clubs avoid other children, hold their meetings in secret, and are likely to have a secret code or alphabet.
M. Varendonck’s observations enable him to refute the assertion of G. Tarde that “the child knows no impersonal suggestions, that is to say the pressure exerted by a large body, crowd or public. He experiences only personal acts, he yields to examples which are distinct, not confused. And there is nothing in him which is not the reflection of some one else, always an unconscious reflection of someone whom he has always known.” On the contrary, M. Varendonck asks, “Who does not remember the crowd, composed sometimes of the pupils of the whole establishment, which was formed for the purpose of annoying a monitor in the study hall by giggling, or by knocking with the feet on the rungs of the benches? Who has not observed in the street a crowd of children chasing a drunkard and teasing him?” He comments, “One may ask whether crowds of children are not capable of committing praiseworthy acts,” and decides, “The response cannot be negative.” He relates a very pretty incident at which he was present. “Through the street with his heavy pushcart passed a lively old ragman, who entertained all the poorer quarters with his quaintness and good humor. Instead of uttering merely his professional cry, he amused himself by shouting at the top of his lungs all sorts of droll remarks, which he followed by a resounding and often repeated noise produced with his lips. He was known, moreover, for his kindness to the youngsters. Two ragged urchins approached, and without saying a word, began to help him shove his pushcart. The old man so encouraged these assistants fallen from heaven, that in the twinkling of an eye all the youngsters of the quarter, from no one knows where, girls and boys, lent a hand, some pushing, some pulling on the ropes. Their cries of joy turned the whole neighborhood upside down, and the delighted crowd of children accompanied the ragman all the way home. We do not know,” admits M. Varendonck, “very many examples of crowds of children with sentiments as generous. They are less frequent than the other kind. But this observation proves that a crowd of young persons is not necessarily misbehaved as some people are tempted to believe.” He quotes Lebon, who in his “Psychology of the Crowd,” sums up the principal characters of crowds composed of adults? ‘impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity for reasoning, absence of judgment and critical spirit, exaggeration of sentiment,” etc., while “disappearance of the conscious personality, predominance of the unconscious personality, orientation through suggestion and contagion of sentiments and ideas in the same way, tendency to transform suggested ideas immediately into acts,?these are the principal characters of individuals as a crowd.” M. Varendonck concludes, “We can affirm that in these respects, crowds of children differ very little from those of adults.”
The monograph is not only a scientific contribution to child psychology and sociology,?it is a most enjoyable bit of literature for those who read French. It would be well worth translating completely into English. A. T.
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