Growing up in New Guinea, A Comparative Study of Primitive Education. By Margaret Mead, Assistant Curator of Ethnology, American Museum of Natural History. Published by  William Morrow & Co., New York, 1930. Pp.  372, including Appendices and Glossary. Illus.

This very interesting and important report by the author of “Coming of Age in Samoa” is a valuable contribution not only to anthropology but particularly to the influence of environmental factors, educational and personal, on the growth and development of the child mind. This, together with the previous work of the author, reviewed in THE PSYCHOANALYTIC REVIEW, Vol. XVI, No. 1, January, 1929, form in many respects contrast studies, because the Samoans and the Manus have very different types of culture.

The book is filled with first-hand observations of a most significant kind, only a very few of which can be mentioned. One of the very interesting and important observations is the lack of spontaneous creative development of the children, especially along the lines of artistic expression or inventiveness. The whole Manus culture is peculiarly barren in this respect. Even the language fails in its capacity for emotional and artistic expression. It would seem that the children are limited in their capacity for development entirely by the attitude of the adults, having little or no spontaneity and initiative on their own account. And this is so despite the fact that the children are intelligent and bright and when transferred to different cultural groups quickly pick up the characteristics of these groups. The significance of this observation is very great when attention is called to the fact that there is no spontaneous animistic stage of development in the child life of these people. Despite the fact that the adults have developed a very complicated, elaborate, and controlling spirit world to which they have to pay very strict attention, the children are quite derisive and negligent of all these spirit activities and it is only when they take on adulthood with its responsibilities and restrictions that they accept this world of spirits.

Another fact of importance in which these people contrast diametrically with the Samoans is their very great prudery and their rigid tab