Within the past two decades an entirely new interest in the extra curricula activities of the youth has been taken by the school. In part, this change in attitude has been caused by the new disciplinary problems brought to the school through the recent great popularization of secondary education; in part by the marked increase in leisure time accuring to youth as a result of our increase in wealth and the application of recently enacted child labor laws; in part by the many new temptations to which young people in the present age are subjected, and in part by the general speeding up that all evolutionary social changes have experienced as a result of the World War.
Fundamentally, the movement is the result of a better understanding of the psychology of adolescence and of the proper means for training youth for citizenship. As a result of many psychological studies, made during the past third of a century, a wider recognition of the vast and far reaching physical, psychological, and social changes which take place with the outset of adolescense has become the common property of the teaching profession. The period of adolescence, we realize, is a period of the utmost significance for the school. New tendencies to action arise, new emotions begin to sway youth, new ideas as to life begin to formulate and tend to become fixed, serious thought is given to conduct, aspirations and visions of possible usefulness begin to take firm hold. Qualities of leadership emerge, social attitudes and tendencies of importance in after life incline to become fixed, and from impulses to action character is evolved
