THIRTEEN is probably not the most pleasant in life, either from the adult's point of view or that of the child. Certainly, adults prefer the golden age of ten or the altruism and budding soberness of sixteen. They like the wide-open and receptive and respectful mind of the ten-yearold and his relatively modest personal habits. They also like the new-found responsibility of sixteen, with its maidenly beauty in girls or its forecast of manliness and stability in boys. Adults do not like the impulsiveness, the irritability, the hostility, and the unbalanced physical turmoil of puberty in the thirteen-year-old. From the standpoint of the child, the experience of the pubescent years is not the most pleasant part of growing up. Probably few adults, if asked to think of the three-year period which they enjoyed most, would name the of twelve to fourteen, the junior high school age. In fact, it appears probable that most adults have extremely dim memories of their own lives during these three years. True to the principle that we forget selectively the things which were least pleasant in our experience, most of us are probably amnesic about our own puberty. The of twelve to fourteen is the when the child tries to be his own master but is often the slave of ill-controlled impulse. It is the when pretty little girls grow big and ungainly, before they round out and become womanly. During these years, boys' voices become harsh and discordant, and the boys themselves are slovenly and insolent to their elders. Nevertheless, this junior high school is a time when important events take place in the design of a life. Not only in our own society is this a turning point in life. In most primitive societies this age, or the slightly later one of fourteen to fifteen, is the of initiation into adult rights and duties for boys, of the puberty ceremony for girls which marks their entry into womanhood.