ABSTRACT
In the early school years children often become especially interested in forming ‘official’ groups. A commonly observed pattern is for a group of eight-or nine-year-olds to form a club-typically admitting only boys or only girls-invest a tremendous amount of energy into deciding on officers and their official titles, find nothing to do after that, and then disband. For my own part, I was a charter member of a club for seven-year-olds called the Penguins whose two major activities were acquiring extensive information about penguins and standing outside in the freezing weather without a coat for as long as we could. Like most other groups of this sort, the Penguins did not last very long. But in the making and unmaking of such groups, children are conducting what may be informative experiments in social organization. Through such experiences, children develop increasingly sophisticated understandings of groups, from an early conception of a group as merely a collection of people in one place to a later conception of a group as a collective organization in which individuals are united by common interests and goals.
