Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/266

 which a group of children can move ahead at a high, even rate of speed without hurt to themselves or to their duller fellows, is a striking example of the results of applying reason to the institutions of our society. The old red school-house was 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-rationalised solutions of pressing problems. But the institutionalisation 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 children's lives. Samoan children do not learn to work through learning 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