ABSTRACT
Recognition of individual and social problems specific to adolescence appears to be of relatively recent growth. A brief survey of its development is of some relevance here. Recorded discussions of education among Egyptians, Jews and Greeks in preChristian times carried memories of the rituals of primitive initiation ceremonies; and their expectation of uniform and sudden maturing was re-echoed through many later centuries by writers who had little to say beyond an emphasis on the discreteness of the different periods of childhood and an assumption that there was a clearly-defined and swift transition to adult status at some point at which wise admonition could profitably be directed by a parent to a child or by a teacher to a pupil.
