I.References for StudyG. A. Coe,Education in Religion and Morals, chaps. i, ii, xii, xiii. Revell, $1.35.George Hodges,Training of Children in Religion, chaps. i, ii. Appleton, $1.50.J. T. McFarland,Preservation versus Resurrection. Eaton & Mains, $0.07.II.Further ReadingC. W. Votaw,Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home. Religious Education Association, $0.25.George Hodges,Training of Children, chaps. i, ii, xv. Appleton, $1.50.G. A. Coe,Education in Religion and Morals, chaps. i, iv, xvi. Revell, $1.35.E. C. Wilm,Culture of Religion, chaps. i, ii. Pilgrim Press, $0.75.C. W. Rischell,The Child as God's Child. Methodist Book Concern, $0.75.E. E. Read Mumford,The Dawn of Character. Longmans, Green & Co., $1.20. See especially chap. xii on "The Dawn of Religion."III.Topics for Discussion1. How would you define education?2. What is the difference between education and religious education?3. What makes the home especially effective in education?4. Is it true that it is possible to discover the laws of growth and so determine the development of character?5. Recall any very early manifestations of religious character in small children. What would you regard as the best kind of manifestation?6. What is the essential principle of the right life? How may we develop this in childhood?7. What are the things which most of all impress children?8. Would you think it wise to bring a child under the influence of a religious revival?
I.References for Study
G. A. Coe,Education in Religion and Morals, chaps. i, ii, xii, xiii. Revell, $1.35.
George Hodges,Training of Children in Religion, chaps. i, ii. Appleton, $1.50.
J. T. McFarland,Preservation versus Resurrection. Eaton & Mains, $0.07.
II.Further Reading
C. W. Votaw,Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home. Religious Education Association, $0.25.
George Hodges,Training of Children, chaps. i, ii, xv. Appleton, $1.50.
G. A. Coe,Education in Religion and Morals, chaps. i, iv, xvi. Revell, $1.35.
E. C. Wilm,Culture of Religion, chaps. i, ii. Pilgrim Press, $0.75.
C. W. Rischell,The Child as God's Child. Methodist Book Concern, $0.75.
E. E. Read Mumford,The Dawn of Character. Longmans, Green & Co., $1.20. See especially chap. xii on "The Dawn of Religion."
III.Topics for Discussion
1. How would you define education?
2. What is the difference between education and religious education?
3. What makes the home especially effective in education?
4. Is it true that it is possible to discover the laws of growth and so determine the development of character?
5. Recall any very early manifestations of religious character in small children. What would you regard as the best kind of manifestation?
6. What is the essential principle of the right life? How may we develop this in childhood?
7. What are the things which most of all impress children?
8. Would you think it wise to bring a child under the influence of a religious revival?
How shall I begin to talk with my child about religion? Even the most religious parents feel hesitancy here. It may not be at all due to the unfamiliarity of the subject, though that is often the case; hesitation is due principally to a conscious artificiality in the action. It seems unnatural to say, "My child, I want to talk with you about your religious life." And so it is. There is something wrong when that appears to be the only way. That situation indicates a lack of freedom of thought and intercourse with the child and a lack of naturalness in religion.
The instinct is correct that tells us that we should be trespassing on a child's rights, or breaking down his proper reticence, in abruptly and formally questioning him about his religious life. The reserve of children in this matter must be respected. The inner life of aspiration, of conscious relationship to the divine, is too sacred for display, even to those who are near to us. He violates the child's reverence who tears away his reticence. Even though the child may not consciously object, theprocess leads him toward the irreverent, facile self-exposure of the soul that characterizes some prayer meetings. But we may, also, as easily err in the other direction and, by failing to invite the confidences of our children, lead them to suppose we have no interest in their higher life.
First, we must be content to wait for the child to open his heart. We must not force the door. But we can invite him to open, and the one form of invitation that scarcely ever fails is for you to give him your confidence. Talk honestly, simply to him of the aspects of your religious life that he can understand. If he knows that you confide in him, he will confide in you. Here beware of sentimentality. Religion to the child will find expression in everyday experiences. Your philosophy of religion he cannot comprehend, and with your mature emotions he has no point of contact. Perhaps the best method of approach is to relate your memories of those experiences which younow seeto have had religious significance to you. At the time they may have had no such special meaning. You did not then analyze them. Your child will not and must not analyze them, either; he must simply feel them.
Secondly, rid your mind of the "times and seasons" notion. There is no more reason whyyou should talk religion on Sunday than on Monday, unless the day's interests have quickened the child's questioning. There can be no set period; no times when you say, "This is the forty-five minutes of spiritual instruction and conversation." The time available may be very short, only a sentence may be possible, or it may be lengthened; everything will depend on the interest. It must be natural, a real part of the everyday thought and talk, lifted by its character and subject to its own level. Its value depends on its natural reality.
Thirdly, avoid the mistake of confounding conversation on "religion" with religious conversation, of thinking that the desired end has been attained when you have discussed the terminology of theology. To illustrate, in the family one hardly ever hears the word hygiene, but well-trained children learn much about the care of their bodies in health, and the family economy is directed consciously to that end. A good, nourishing meal always contributes more to health than many lectures on dietetics. Yet back, hidden away in the manager's mind, is the science of dietetics. So is it with quickening the child's power and thought in the spiritual life. We must avoid the abstract, the intellectually analytical. Religion should presentitself concretely, practically, and as an atmosphere and ideal in the family. We parents must not look for theological interest in the child. A Timothy Dwight at ten or twelve, though once found in Sunday-school library books, is a monstrosity. The child's aspiration, his religious devotion, his love for God will find expression in almost every other way before it will be formulated into questions of a serious theological character. Nor ought we to force upon him the phrases of religion to which we are accustomed. He will live in another day and must speak its tongue. His faith must find itself in consciousness and then be permitted to clothe itself in appropriate garments of words. Those garments must be woven out of the realities of actual experiences in the child's life. We cannot prepare or make them for him. The expression of religion will be consonant with the stage of development. If his faith is to be real he must never be allowed or tempted to imagine that if only he can use the words, the verbal symbol, he has the fact, the life-experience. Try then to use words which are simple and meaningful to him and be content to wait for life to lead him to formulate vital verbal forms for himself.
Fourthly, we must have faith in God's laws of growth. If we be but faithful, furnishing the soil,the seed, the nurture, we must wait for the increase. Many factors which we cannot control will determine whether it shall be early or late and what form it shall take. We must wait. It is high folly that pulls up the sprouting grain to see whether it is growing properly.
Fifthly, manifestations of the religious life will vary in children and in families. The commonest error is to expect some one popular form alone, to imagine that all children must pass through some standardized experiences. Mrs. Brown's Willy may rise in prayer meeting. Do not be downhearted. Willy is only doing that which he has seen his parents do, and, usually, only because they do it. Your boy, or girl, is seeking health of life, of thought, of action; is growing in character. Let them grow, help them to grow. You know they love you even when they say little about it; you do not expect them to climb to the housetop and declare their affection. A flower does not sing about the sun, it grows toward it. That is the test of the child's religion: Is he growing Godward in life, action, character?
Sixthly, deal most carefully with the child's consciousness of God. The truth is that the child in the average home has a consciousness of God. It grows out of formal references in social ritesand customs, informal allusions in conversation, and direct statements and instruction. But frequently the resultant mental picture is a misleading one, sometimes even vicious in its moral effect. Where superstitious servants take more interest in the child's religious ideas than do his parents, we have the child whose life is darkened by the fear of an omnipotent ogre. Nursemaids will slothfully scare small children into silence by threats of the awful presence of a bogey god. The life of the spirit cannot be trusted to the hireling. Parents must be sure of the character as well as the superficial competency of those who come closest to childhood. A child's ideas are formed before he goes to school. The family cannot delegate the formation of dominant ideas to persons trained only for nursery tasks.
But frequently the mother is a misleading teacher. To her the child goes with all the big questions outside the immediate world of things. Is she prepared to answer the questions? Few dilemmas of our life today are more pathetic than this: the mother has outgrown the theology of her childhood; she remembers keenly the suffering and superstition, the struggle that followed the darkened pictures she received as a little one, but she has nothing better to offer the child. No one has taught her how to put the later, more spiritual concepts into language for the child of our day.Weakly she falls back on the forms of words she once abhorred.
There are certainly two approaches of reality for the child-mind to the idea of God. Two immediate experiences are rich in meaning; they are the life of the family and the wonder of the everyday world, the life and variety of nature and human activities. The first is a very simple and rich approach. By every possible means help children in the family to think of God as the great and good Father of us all. Do this in the phrasing of prayers and graces, in the answers to their questions, in the casual word. Why should we assume that the Fatherhood of God is for the adult alone? And why should it be that this rich concept dawns on us like a new day of freedom in truth in later years instead of becoming ours in childhood and so determining the habit and attitude of our lives? The finest, the ideal person is, to the child, the father. God in terms of fatherhood is the sum and source of all that is ideal in personality.
The child's keen interest in the world of nature is our opportunity to lead him to love the gracious source of all beauty and goodness. How keen is the child's enjoyment of the beauty of the world! Can we forever fix the general concept of all this beauty as the thought of God in the words of flower and leaf, mountain and stream? And might we not also connect the idea of God with the affairsof daily life? That depends on the parent's attitude of mind; if we think of the universal life that is behind all battles and business and affairs, there will be a difference in our answers to the thousand curious inquiries that rise in the child's mind.
Nor must we leave the child to think of God as a separate, far-off person, on a throne somewhere in the skies. The child is finding his way into a universe. The God who is a minute fraction of that universe makes possible the religion that is no more than a negligible fraction of life. The child asks concerning clouds, the sea, the trees, the birds, and all the world about him; he tends to interpret it causally and ideally. Childhood affords the great opportunity for giving the color, the beauty and glory, the life of the divine to all this universe, to instil the feeling that God is everywhere, in all and through all, and that in him we live and move and have our being. The child's joy in this world can thus be given a religious meaning. He sings
My God, I thank thee thou hast madeThis earth so bright....,
My God, I thank thee thou hast madeThis earth so bright....,
and so beauty and joy become part of his religion. His faith becomes a gladsome thing; he knows that the trees of the forest clap their hands, the mountains and the hills sing, and the morning stars chant together in the gladness of the divine life.
Such a view of the world comes not by prearranged and indoor interviews. One must walkout into the good outdoor world for the opportunity and the inspiration. The garden plot, the park, and, best of all, the open fields and woods speak to a child and furnish us an open book from which we may teach him to read. Recalling religious impressions, the writer would testify to feeling nothing deeper, as a result of church attendance in childhood, than the shapes of seats and the colors of walls; but there remain deep impressions of wonder, beauty, and the meaning of God from Sunday mornings spent with his father under the great beeches in Epping Forest, listening to the reading and singing of the old hymns, or joining in conversation on the woods and the flowers, and even on the legends of Robin Hood in the forest.
Seventhly, natural conversation affords the best opportunity for direct instruction. A child is a peripatetic interrogation. His questions cover the universe; there are no doors which you desire to see opened that he will not approach at some time. There is great advantage when the religious question rises normally; when the child begins it and when the interest continues with the same naturalness as in conversation on any other subject. Then questions usually take one of three forms: mere childish, curious questions, questions on conduct, and questions on religion in its organized form.
The child's curiosity is the basis of even those questions which have usually been credited to preternatural piety. The tiny youngster who asks strange questions about God asks equally startling ones about fairies or about his grandmother. But his questions give us the chance to direct him to right thoughts of God. Here we need to be sure of our own thoughts and to keep in mind our principal purpose, to quicken in this child loyalty to the highest and best. He must be shown a God whom he can love and, at the same time, one who will call for his growing loyalty, his courage, and devotion. Everything for the child's future depends on the pictures he now forms. We all carry to a large degree our childhood's view of God.
Some of the child's questions probe deep; how shall we answer them? When you know the truth tell him the truth, being sure that it is told in language that really conveys truth to his mind. The danger is that parents will attempt to tell more than they know, to answer questions that cannot be answered, or that they will, in sloth or cowardice or ignorance, tell children untrue things. If a child asks, "Did God make the world?" the answer that will be true to the child may be a simple affirmative. If the child asks or his query implies, "Did God make the leaves, or the birds, with his fingers?" we had better take time to showthe difference between man's making of things and the working of the divine energy through all the process of the development of the world. When the child asks, "Mother, if God made all things, why did he make the devil?" it would surely be wise and opportune to correct the child's mental picture of a personal anti-God and to take from him his bogey of a "devil." But the question of the relation of God to the existence of evil would remain, and the best a parent could do would be to illustrate the necessities of freedom of choice and will in life by similar freedom in the family.
It must be remembered that children's curious questions are only their attempt to discover their world, that they have no peculiar religious significance, but that they afford the parent a vital opportunity for direct religious instruction. These questions must be treated seriously; something is missing in parental consciousness when the child's questions furnish only material for jesting relation to the family friends.
Questions on conduct: Scores of times in the day the children come in from play or from school and tell of what has happened. Their more or less breathless recitals very often include vigorous accounts of "cheating," "naughtiness," unfair play,unkind words, discourtesies, all dependent as to their character on the age of the children and all opening doors for free conversation on duties and conduct. Here lies one of the large opportunities for moral instruction. There is no need to attempt to make formal occasions for this; so long as children play and live with others they are under the experience of learning the art of living with one another; this is the simple essence of morality. The parent's answers to their questions on conduct, the comments on their criticisms, and the conversation that may easily be directed on these subjects count tremendously with the child in establishing his ideals and modes of conduct. Returning to his play, there is no mightier authority he can quote than to say, "My mother says—," or "My father says—."
Let no one say that instruction in moral living is not religious, for there can be no adequate guidance in morals without religion, nor can the religious quality of the life find expression adequately except through conduct in social living. Children need more than the rules for living; they must feel motives and see ideals. They do not live by rules any more than we do. Besides the rule that is known there must be a reason for following it and a strong desire to do so. All ethical teaching needs this imperative and motivation of religion, the quickening of loyalty to highideals, the doing of the right for reasons of love as well as of duty and profit.
The father's opportunity comes especially with the boys. They are sure to bring to him their ethical questions on games and sport; he knows more about boys' fights and struggles than does the mother. When the boys begin to discuss their games the father cannot afford to lack interest. Trivial as the question may seem to be, it is the most important one of the day to the boy and, for the interests of his character, it may be the most important for many a day to the father. If he answers with sympathy and interest this question on a "foul ball" or on marbles or peg-tops, he has opened a door that will always stay open so long as he approaches it with sincerity; if he slights it, if he is too busy with those lesser things that seem great to him, he has closed a door into the boy's life; it may never be opened again. Children learn life through the life they are now living. Real preparation for the world of business and larger responsibilities comes by the child's experiences of his present world of play and schooling and family living. To help him to live this present life aright is the best training that can be given for the right living of all life.
Questions on organized religion: As children grow up, the church comes into their range of interests. Just as they often make the day schoolfocal for conversation, as they recount their day's work there, so they retain impressions of the church school, of the services of the church, and will always ask many questions about this institution and its observances. Here is the opportunity, in free conversation, to tell the child the meaning of the church, the significance of membership therein, and to lead him to conscious relationship to the society of the followers of Jesus. (See chap. xvii, "The Family and the Church.")
I.References for StudyAlice E. Fitts, "Consciousness of God in Children,"The Aims of Religious Education, pp. 330-38. Religious Education Association, $1.00.W. G. Koons,Child's Religious Life, sec. II. Eaton & Mains, $1.00.J. Sully,Children's Ways, chap. vi. Appleton, $1.25.II.Further ReadingGeorge Hodges,The Training of Children in Religion, chaps. i-vi. Appleton, $1.50.George E. Dawson,The Child and His Religion, chap. ii. The University of Chicago Press, $0.75.Edward Lyttleton,The Corner-Stone of Education, chap. viii. Putnam, $1.50.T. Stephens (ed.),The Child and Religion. Putnam, $1.50.C. W. Richell,The Child as God's Child. Eaton & Mains, $0.75.W. G. Koons,The Child's Religious Nature. Eaton & Mains, $1.00.III.Topics for Discussion1. What are the special difficulties which you feel about introducing the topic of religion to children? Describe any methods or modes of approach which have seemed successful?2. Would you regard it as a fault if a child seems unwilling to talk about religion? What do you think "religion" means to the child-mind?3. In what ways do children's aptitudes differ and what factors probably determine the difference? What was your own childish conception of God? Did you love God or fear him? Why?4. Is it ever right to teach the child those conceptions which we have outgrown? What about Santa Claus and fairies? How can you use childish figures of speech as an avenue to more exact truth?5. Does the child learn more through ears or eyes? Through which agency do we seek to convey religious ideas?6. Is it possible to make the child see the intimate relation between conduct and religion? How would you do this?7. Give some of the characteristics of a religious child of seven years, of ten.
I.References for Study
Alice E. Fitts, "Consciousness of God in Children,"The Aims of Religious Education, pp. 330-38. Religious Education Association, $1.00.
W. G. Koons,Child's Religious Life, sec. II. Eaton & Mains, $1.00.
J. Sully,Children's Ways, chap. vi. Appleton, $1.25.
II.Further Reading
George Hodges,The Training of Children in Religion, chaps. i-vi. Appleton, $1.50.
George E. Dawson,The Child and His Religion, chap. ii. The University of Chicago Press, $0.75.
Edward Lyttleton,The Corner-Stone of Education, chap. viii. Putnam, $1.50.
T. Stephens (ed.),The Child and Religion. Putnam, $1.50.
C. W. Richell,The Child as God's Child. Eaton & Mains, $0.75.
W. G. Koons,The Child's Religious Nature. Eaton & Mains, $1.00.
III.Topics for Discussion
1. What are the special difficulties which you feel about introducing the topic of religion to children? Describe any methods or modes of approach which have seemed successful?
2. Would you regard it as a fault if a child seems unwilling to talk about religion? What do you think "religion" means to the child-mind?
3. In what ways do children's aptitudes differ and what factors probably determine the difference? What was your own childish conception of God? Did you love God or fear him? Why?
4. Is it ever right to teach the child those conceptions which we have outgrown? What about Santa Claus and fairies? How can you use childish figures of speech as an avenue to more exact truth?
5. Does the child learn more through ears or eyes? Through which agency do we seek to convey religious ideas?
6. Is it possible to make the child see the intimate relation between conduct and religion? How would you do this?
7. Give some of the characteristics of a religious child of seven years, of ten.
Probably all parents find themselves at some time thinking that the real, fundamental problem of training their children lies in dealing with their superabundant energy. "He is such an active child!" mothers complain. Were he otherwise a physician might properly be consulted. But the child's activity does seriously interfere with parental peace. It takes us all a long time to learn that we are not, after all, in our homes in order to enjoy peaceful rest, but in order to train children into fulness of life. That does not mean that the home should be without quiet and rest, but that we must not hope to repress the energy of childhood. One might as well hope to plug up a spring in the hillside. Our work is to direct that activity into glad, useful service.
The things we do not only indicate character, they determine it. Our thoughts have value and power as they get into action. To bend our energies toward an ideal is to make it more real, to make it a part of ourselves. Children learn by doing—learn not only that which they are doing but life itself.
It may be doubted whether a child ever grew who did not plead to have a share in the work he saw going on about him. That desire to help is part of that fundamental virtue of loyalty of which we have spoken above; it is his desire to be true to the tendency of the home, to give himself to the realization of its purposes. Of course he does not think this out at all. But this desire on the part of the child to have a hand in the day's work is the parent's fine opportunity for a most valuable and influential form of character direction.
One of the tests of a worthy character is whether the life is contributory or parasitic, whether one carries his load, does his work, makes his contribution, or simply waits on the world for what he can get. A religious interpretation of and attitude toward life is essentially that of self-giving in service. "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." "I must be about my Father's business." How noticeable is the child's interest in the vivid word-picture of One who "went about doing good"!
The home is the first place for life's habituation to service. The child is greatly to be pitied who has no duties, no share in the work. Where the hands are unsoiled the heart is the easier sullied. It is the height of mistaken kindness, one of the common errors of an unthinking, superficial affection, to protect our children from work. This is a world of the moral order and of the glory of work.
When the child is very small it must learn this by having committed to it very simple duties. As soon as it is able to handle things it may learn to do that which is most helpful with those things, to care for its toys, to put them away neatly. A child can learn while very young to take care of its spoon, of certain clothes, of chair, and pencil and paper. True, it is much easier to "pick up" after the child; but to do so is to yield to our own sloth. The more tedious way is the one we must follow if we would train the child.
Besides the care of his possessions the child will gladly take a share in the general work of the home. Let some daily duty be assigned to each one; such simple responsibilities as picking up all papers and magazines and seeing that they are properly stacked or disposed of may be given to one; another may sweep the stairs every day with a whisk broom (in one instance a boy of eight did this daily); another may be "librarian," caring for all books; each one, after eight years of age, should make her own bed; each one should be entirely responsible for his own table in his room. Many homes permit of many other "chores," such as keeping up the supply of small kindling, caring for a pet or even a larger animal, keeping a little personal garden or vegetable plot. Under those normal conditionsof living, which some day we may reach, where each family, or all families, have trees and flowers and ample space, the opportunities are increased for joyous child activities which consciously contribute to social well-being as a whole.
Perhaps some will say, this is not religious education, it is everyday training. Yes, it is "everyday training," but it is the training of a religious person with the religious purpose of habituating the child to give his life in service to his world. That is precisely what we need—religion in everyday action. The atmosphere and habitual attitude and conversation of the family must be depended on to give a really religious meaning to these everyday acts, to make them as religious as going to church, perhaps more so, and so to make them a training for the life that is religious, not in word only, but in deed and in truth.
Whatever we may say to children on the subject of religion, whether directly or in teaching by indirection through songs and worship, must pass over somehow into action in order to have meaning and reality. It must be realized in order to be real. The difficulty that appears is that of connecting the daily act with its spiritual significance. Yet that is not as difficult as it seems. If the acthas religious significance to us, if we form the habit of really worshiping God with our work, seeking in it to do his will, the child will know it. We cannot keep that hidden. The spiritual life will never be more real to the child than it is to us, and no amount of moralizing or spiritualizing about our acts or his will give them religious significance.
At least one person will testify that, after being brought up in a really religious home, the most strikingly religious memory of that home is an occasion when he delightedly carried a tray of food to a sick neighbor. It was doing the very thing that he longed to do, realizing the aspiration that had been unable to find words or form before. So the life of action can be steadily trained by acts of kindness. Habits are acts repeated until they pass from the volitional to the involuntary. The only process we can follow is steadily to train the children in the willing and doing of the right, the good, and the kindly deed, until it becomes habitual. Let the child prepare the tray of delicacies, pack the flowers we are sending, carry them over if possible, at least have a share in all our ministries.12
The modern Sunday school recognizes the importance of activity in forming religious character; therefore it plans and organizes social activities for students to carry out.13The parents ought to know what is designed for each child in his respective grade and to plan to co-operate with the school. Where the family unites in the forms of service suggested for the children, these activities lose all perfunctoriness and take on a new reality. Social usefulness becomes a normal part of life.
Do we remember the best times of our childhood? Were they not when we were doing things? And were not the best of these best times when we were doing the best things, those that seemed ideal, that gave us a sense of helping someone or of putting into action the best of our thoughts? That is the chance and the joy our children are longing for, and that joy will be their strength.
The family has excellent opportunities for developing through its own activities and duties the habits of the religious life. Children may acquire through daily acts the habit of thinking of life as just the chance to love and serve. Service may become perfectly normal to life. Our modern paupers, whether they tramp the highways orride in private cars, came usually out of homes where the moral standard interpreted life as just the chance of graft, to gain without giving, to have without earning. Parental indulgence educates in pauperism. Let a boy remain the passive beneficiary of all the advantages of a home until he is sixteen or eighteen, and it will be exceedingly difficult to convert him from the pauper habit.
The hard task before parents is to save their children from the snare of passive luxury. Perhaps, remembering our toilsome youth, we seek to shield them. It is a serious unkindness. It is a wrong to our world. The religious mind is the one that takes life in terms of service, sees the days as doors to ways of usefulness, girds itself with the towel, and finds honor in bending to do the little things for the least of men. Vain is all family worship, all prayer and praise and catechism, unless we train the feet to walk this way so that they may visit the imprisoned, clothe the naked, comfort the sad, and cheer the broken in heart. The family may make this the normal way to live.
If the family would train boys and girls who shall be true followers of the great Servant, it must stand among men as a servant, it must see itself as set in the community to serve, and by habits of service and helpfulness, by its whole social tone, it must quicken in its own people the sense of social obligation and a realization of the delightin self-giving. A home that is selfish in relation to other homes, in relation to its community, can have no other than selfish, antisocial, and therefore irreligious children. The first step in the welfare of a child is to see that the home which constitutes his personal atmosphere is steeped in the spirit of good-will toward men.
The whole attitude of life is determined by the thought-atmosphere of the family. The greedy family makes the grafting citizen. The grasping home makes the pugnacious disturber of the public peace. Greater than the question whether you are a good citizen in your relation to the ballot box is the one whether you are a cultivator of good citizenship in your home. No amount of Sunday-school teaching on the Beatitudes or week-day teaching on civics is going to overcome the down-drag of envious, antisocial thought and feeling and conversation in the home. Home action and attitude count for more than all besides.
It is equally true that no other influence can offset the salutary power of a truly social home, that the easiest, most natural, and effective method of teaching social duty and unselfishness is to do our whole social duty unselfishly.
The supreme test of the religious life here is ability to live among men as brothers and to causethe conditions of the divine family to be realized on earth. If we can realize that the purpose of Jesus was to bring men into the family of God, that the aim of all religious endeavor is the family character in men and women and the conditions of that family in all society, we must surely appreciate the possibility of the human family as a training school for this larger family of humanity.
The infant approaches social living by the pathway of the society of the family. We all go out into life through widening circles, first the mother's arms, then the family, the neighborhood, the city, the state, the nation, the world-life. Each circle prepares for the next. The family is the child's social order; its life is his training for the larger life of nation and human brotherhood.
Just how men and women will live in society is determined principally by the bent of their characters in the social order of the family. Their attitude to the world follows the attitude of the family, especially of the parents. They interpret the larger world by the lesser. The home is the great school of citizenship and social living.
All the moral and religious problems of the family find a focus in the purpose of preparing persons for social living. The family justifies its cost to society in the contribution which it makes in trained and motived lives. As a religious family its first duty is to prepare the coming generationto live in a religious society, in one which will steadily move toward the divine ideal of perfect family relations through brotherhood and fatherhood. Its business is not to get children ready for heaven, but to train them to make all life heavenly. Its aim is not alone children who will not tear down the parents' reputation, but men and women who will build up the actual worth and beauty of all lives.
The realization, in the family, of the purpose of training youth to social living and service in the religious spirit depends on two things: a spirit and passion in the family for social justice and order, and the direction of the activities of the family toward training in social usefulness.
Only the social spirit can give birth to the social spirit. True lovers of men, who set the values of life and of the spirit first, who give their lives that all men may have freedom and means to find more abundant life, come out of the families where the passion of human love burns high. The selfish family, self-centered, caring not at all in any deep sense for the well-being of others, existing to extract the juice of life and let who will be nourished on the rind, becomes effective to make the social highwayman, the oppressor. From such a family comes he who breaks laws for his pocketbook and impedes the enactment of laws lest human rights should prevent his acquisition of wealth; he whohates his brother man—unless that brother has more than he has; the foe of the kingdom of goodness and peace and brotherhood.
And goodness is as contagious as badness. Children catch the spirit of social love and idealism in the family. Where men and women are deeply concerned with all that makes the world better for lives, better for babies and mothers, for workers, and, above all, for the values of the spirit gained through leisure, opportunities, and higher incentives; where the family is more concerned with folks than with furniture; where habitually it thinks of people as Jesus did, as the objects most of all worth seeking, worth investing in, there children receive direction, habituation, and motivation for the life of religion, the life that binds them in glad love to the service of their fellows, and makes them think of all their life as the one great chance to serve, to make a better world, and to bring God's great family closer together here.
I.References for StudyG. A. Coe,Education in Religion and Morals, pp. 142-50. Revell, $1.35.W. S. Athearn,The Church School, pp. 85-102. Pilgrim Press, $1.00.G. Johnson,Education by Plays and Games, Part I. Ginn & Co., $0.90.II.Further ReadingE. D. Angell,Play. Little, Brown & Co., $1.50.Fisher, Gulick,et al., "Ethical Significance of Play,"Materials for Religious Education, pp. 197-215. Religious Education Association, $0.50.Publications of the Play Ground Association.III.Methods and MaterialsPLAYForbush,Manual of Play. Jacobs, $1.00.A. Newton,Graded Games. Barnes, $1.25.Von Palm,Rainy Day Pastimes. Dana Estes, $1.00.Johnson,When Mother Lets Us Help. Moffat, Yard & Co., $0.75.WORKCanfield,What Shall We Do Now?Stokes, $1.50.Beard,Jack of All Trades. Scribner, $2.00.Beard,Things Worth Doing. Scribner, $2.00.Bailey,Garden Making. Macmillan, $1.50.Bailey (ed.),Something to Do(magazine). School Arts Publishing Co.IV.Topics for Discussion1. Is the quiet child an ideal child? How far should we go in restraining activity?2. The relative advantages of work and leisure for children. What of the value of chores to you; did you do them? Describe any forms of children's service in the home which have come under your observation.3. What forms of community service can be done by children and by young people?4. Recall any lessons learned by activity in your early home life.5. Give in their order, according to your judgment, the potencies for religious character in the home.
I.References for Study
G. A. Coe,Education in Religion and Morals, pp. 142-50. Revell, $1.35.
W. S. Athearn,The Church School, pp. 85-102. Pilgrim Press, $1.00.
G. Johnson,Education by Plays and Games, Part I. Ginn & Co., $0.90.
II.Further Reading
E. D. Angell,Play. Little, Brown & Co., $1.50.
Fisher, Gulick,et al., "Ethical Significance of Play,"Materials for Religious Education, pp. 197-215. Religious Education Association, $0.50.
Publications of the Play Ground Association.
III.Methods and Materials
PLAY
Forbush,Manual of Play. Jacobs, $1.00.
A. Newton,Graded Games. Barnes, $1.25.
Von Palm,Rainy Day Pastimes. Dana Estes, $1.00.
Johnson,When Mother Lets Us Help. Moffat, Yard & Co., $0.75.
WORK
Canfield,What Shall We Do Now?Stokes, $1.50.
Beard,Jack of All Trades. Scribner, $2.00.
Beard,Things Worth Doing. Scribner, $2.00.
Bailey,Garden Making. Macmillan, $1.50.
Bailey (ed.),Something to Do(magazine). School Arts Publishing Co.
IV.Topics for Discussion
1. Is the quiet child an ideal child? How far should we go in restraining activity?
2. The relative advantages of work and leisure for children. What of the value of chores to you; did you do them? Describe any forms of children's service in the home which have come under your observation.
3. What forms of community service can be done by children and by young people?
4. Recall any lessons learned by activity in your early home life.
5. Give in their order, according to your judgment, the potencies for religious character in the home.
12A short list of books on child activity in the home is appended at the end of this chapter; a fairly complete list, long enough for any family, will be found on p. 117 ofThe Church School, by W. S. Athearn.13See W. N. Hutchins,Graded Social Service for the Sunday School.
12A short list of books on child activity in the home is appended at the end of this chapter; a fairly complete list, long enough for any family, will be found on p. 117 ofThe Church School, by W. S. Athearn.
12A short list of books on child activity in the home is appended at the end of this chapter; a fairly complete list, long enough for any family, will be found on p. 117 ofThe Church School, by W. S. Athearn.
13See W. N. Hutchins,Graded Social Service for the Sunday School.
13See W. N. Hutchins,Graded Social Service for the Sunday School.
The home is so mighty as a school because, requiring little time for formal instruction, it enlists its scholars so largely in informal activities. It trains for life by living; it trains as an institution, by a group of activities, a series of duties, a set of habits. If the home is to prepare for social living it will be most of all and best of all by its organization and conduct as a social institution.
For the purposes of society homes must be social-training centers; they must be conducted as communities if their members are to be fitted for communal living. No boy is likely to be ready for the responsibilities of free citizenship who has spent his years in a home under an absolute monarchy; or, as is today perhaps more frequently the case, in a condition of unmitigated anarchy. A free society cannot consist of units not free. The problems of parental discipline arise and appear as persistently irritating and perplexingstumbling-blocks in many a home simply because that home is organized altogether out of harmony and relation with the normal life in which it is set. Society environing the home gives its members the habits of twentieth-century autonomy, individual initiative and responsibility, together with collective living and working, while the home often seeks to perpetuate thirteenth-century absolutism, serfdom, and subjection. In social living outside the home we learn to do the will of all; in the home we attempt to compel children to do the will of one.
The home organized as a social community will give to every member, according to his ability, a share in its guidance and will expect from every member the free contribution of his powers. Its rules will be made by the will of all, and its affairs governed, not by an executive board composed of the parents, but by the free participation and choice of all. The young will learn to choose by choosing; will learn both how to rule and to be ruled by a share in ruling.
To be explicit, suppose a piece of furniture is desired for the home. Two plans at least are possible: first, the "head of the home" may go forth and purchase it without consulting anyone, or after advising with the other "head"; or,second, before a purchase is made, the wisdom of such an addition to the furniture may be suggested in the open council of the whole family and the purchase discussed and determined by all. Such councils, usually coming at or after the principal meal, freely participated in by all, give even to the youngest a sense of the cost of a home, of the care that goes into it, with, what is more important, a sense of a share in these cares and costs; they cultivate habits of prudence, of consideration of a matter, of steady judgments, of deference to the wishes and wisdom of others. Of still greater importance is another practical issue of such a plan—that every member of the household has a new sense of proprietorship with deepened responsibility. Instead of thinking of any household possession as father's or mother's, or even mine, it becomesours. The parents no longer need to say, "Children, do not mar the furniture; it costs money to replace it." The children know that already, and they have the same pride in the home possessions and the same desire to preserve them as they have in that which is peculiarly their own. A habit of mind results from such a course so that, by thinking in terms of common possession of the best things of life, there is cultivated that respect for the rights of others which is simply right social thinking.
The same plan could be pursued in relation to almost every interest of the family—as the planningof the annual vacation and outing, the holidays, picnics, and birthday celebrations, the church and religious exercises. Above all, in the last mentioned, this social spirit may be cultivated. The father may cease to be the "high priest" for his family and become a worshiper along with the other members. The effect will be that his children are more likely to stay as worshipers with him than if they gazed on him as on some lonely elevation, unrelated to them in his religious exercises. The reading, the song, the prayers, the comment and discussion, the story-telling, and all that may make up the regular specific religious activities of the family should be such that all may have a share in them. Nothing could be finer, diviner, and bring larger helpfulness for social living than the attempt of the least little lisping child to throw herself into the unified family act of prayer, as when one little tot, unable to say the Lord's Prayer, united in worship at the time of that act by saying, as reverently as possible, "One, two, three, four, five," etc., up to ten. The ability to count was her latest accomplishment; counting to ten was bringing the very best thing she then had and, in the act of family worship, offering her part to the Most High. A fine sense of worship and a desire to be one with the others in this united, communal service prompted the participation.
Community service may be cultivated in the home. Here is the ideal social community, where there are neither parasites nor paupers, where all give of their best for the best of all. No one doubts that the baby gives its full share of happiness and cheer, and the aged their offering of consolation and experience; but the difficulty is supposed to be with the lad and the girl who would rather play than work. Usually this is because the habits of co-operation in the life of this community have been too long neglected. The small boy or girl had no share in its work. Parents are too busy to think through the matter of finding suitable duties for all. It is so much easier to do things one's self, even though the child misses the benefits of participation. More frequently the blame lies in the fact that parents desire to shield children from labor. Some would have them grow up without knowing what they count as the degradation of toil. But a boy who knows nothing of the "chores" has missed half the joys of boyhood, and has a terribly hard lesson ahead of him when he goes out to relate himself to life. No matter what one's station may be, there is a part to be played, and one's piece of work to be done. The greatest unkindness we can do our children is to train them to lives that do not play their part. The home is our chance to train a man to harmonious usefulnessin his world. Not only should the family train to social co-operation and service, but it should train to efficiency therein. Do not let your child's duties become a farce; let them exact as much of him as the world will exact also; that is, efficiency, accuracy, thoroughness, and fidelity.
The family trains lives for social ministry. The unsocial lives come out of unsocial homes. The home that exists for itself alone trains lives that exist only for themselves; these are the homes that throw the sand of selfishness into the wheels of society; they ultimately effect social suicide through selfishness. The attitude and atmosphere of the home are of first importance here. As we think, so will our children act. If the home is to us a place without responsibilities for the neighborhood, without duties to neighbors, without social roots, then it is a school for industrial, commercial, and social greed and warfare. As we think in our hearts and talk at our table, so are we educating those who sit thereat.
If we would have our homes really efficient and worthy agencies for education in social living, the first thing to do is to seek the social atmosphere, to cultivate all those influences which young lives unconsciously absorb. We all know that character comes through environment in large measure, andthat the mental and spiritual environment is by far the most potent. Here is something that affects us more than the finest or poorest furniture and that gives the real zest and flavor to any meal. The choice of our own reading enters here, not only the matter of reading in sociology, but of all reading, as to whether it blinds with class prejudices, intensifies caste feeling, or atrophies social sympathy by pandering to selfishness and sensuousness. The control of our own feelings and judgment enters here. Do we sedulously cultivate charity for others? Do we stifle impatience, bitterness, class feeling? Do we guide the conversation of visitors and the family group so that antisocial passions are subdued and a spirit of brotherly love and compassion for all is cultivated? Here men and women have opportunity to give evidence of a change of heart; here they need that awakening to social consciousness which is a new birth, a regeneration into the life of the Son of Man who came to give his life.
By its active ministry the family is training for social living. When a child carries a bowl of soup to some sick or needy one, he learns a lesson never to be forgotten. The memories of hours of planning and preparation for some neighborly service—the making of bread, the packing of a box, the preserves for the sick—shine out like sunshine spots along childhood's ways; they direct manhood's steps.
We are gradually learning that social duties are not learned save through social deeds; that even the most carefully prepared and perfectly pedagogical systems of instruction fail, standing alone. The college student uses the laboratory method in his sociology—though we know that sociology may be as far from social living as the poles are apart. The Social Service Association of the Young Men's Christian Association has given up attempts to teach social duty in favor of the plan of undertaking specific pieces of social activity. The home must adopt the laboratory method. The important thing is, not what the father or mother may systematically teach about the social duties of the children, but what kinds of service, of ministry and normal activity they may lead the children to; that is, in what ways they may all together discharge their functions in society.
Each family must clearly see its normal relations to its community, to the social whole; first, as an association of social beings having social duties, obligations, and privileges; then, to see that the ordering of the daily life is the largest single factor in determining the value of the family to the development of the community, fitting harmoniously into the larger community, and rendering its share of service.
The disorderly home spreads its immoral contagion beyond its walls, out into the front yard, out and up and down the street, and all through the village and city. The City Beautiful cannot come until we have the Home Beautiful. Training each one to play his part in keeping the house in order, picking up and setting in place his own tools and playthings, preventing and removing litter, scraps, and elements of disorder and discomfort, acquiring habits of neatness based on social motives—these things make more for the city of beauty and health than all our lectures on clean cities.
No family lives to itself. Young people need to see clearly how their homes and their habits in the home impinge on other homes and lives. This is impressed upon us in an accentuated and acute degree in city living. One can hardly imagine a finer discipline of grace than apartment living, though one may well question whether it is not morally and hygienically flying in the face of the natural order. We may not have for a long time municipal ordinances forbidding boiled dinners, limburger, and phonographs in city apartments; but if, unfortunately, we are compelled to live in these modern abominations, we ought to cultivate a conscience that will not inflict our idiosyncrasies, either in culinary aromas or in musical taste, on our neighbors. But there are matters greater thanthese by which the home trains for social thoughtfulness. No man has a right to grow weeds at home, because the seeds never stay there. A howling dog, a disease-breeding sty, a fly-harboring stable, must be viewed, not from the point of the family's convenience, but from that of others' welfare.
The family has a duty to train children for Christian citizenship. No other institution can take its place even here. Courses of lectures in churches and settlements effect excellent results, and the study of civics from the moral and ideal viewpoint should be encouraged in the schools; but the home is the place where, after all, citizens are trained and the value or menace of their citizenship determined. If we stop long enough to get a clear understanding of what we mean by citizenship this will be the more evident.
Citizenship is the condition of full communal, social living in a democracy. It is not a special department or activity of a man's life which he exercises once in a while, as at the primary or at the polls or through the political campaign; it is a permanent condition, the condition of his social living in a democracy. It seems to be worth while to think of this enough to be quite sure of it, for we have thought too long of citizenship as a special aspect of one's life or as an occasional duty; wehave called for good citizenship at times of election and have been content with dormant citizenship at other times; we have said that one was exercising his citizenship when he voted, and have forgotten that he was exercising it or abusing or neglecting it as he walked the streets, talked with his neighbors, or in any way lived the life that has relations to other lives.
Matters of citizenship are simply matters of social living, as social living expresses itself through what we call government; that is, through communal, civic, national administration and regulation. Citizenship is social control in action, not through political activity alone, but through all that concerns civic and communal life. In view of this it may be worth while to look a little more closely into the relations of family life to this matter of the determination of the character of our citizenship.
The family is an agency for religious training in citizenship. The family is the first, smallest, and still the most common and potent social group. It is the community in which we nearly all learn communal living. At first it is a child's world, then comes his city, and then his nation, but ere long again the family is his own kingdom. Its ideals, constantly interpreted in action, determine our ideals. Where the father is greedy, self-centered, regarding the home as solely for his convenience as his private boarding-house, where he is a despoticboss, why should not the son at least tolerate bossism in his city if he does not himself pattern after his father on a wider scale and regard the city or the state as his private boarding-house and the treasury as his private manger? Where the mother is a petty parasite, what wonder the children regard with indifference, if not even with admiration, the whole system of civic and social barnacles, leeches, and other parasites?
The very organization of the home must prepare for civic duty by laying upon all appropriate duties and activities. It ought to be an ideal type of community. But that can never be until we take the training of parents seriously in hand; until we cease to delegate the pedagogy of courtship, marriage, and home-founding to the comic supplements of the Sunday papers and to the joke columns. Parents must themselves be trained for the business of the organization of homes as educational agencies.
The life and work of the home ought to train religiously for citizenship, by causing each to bear his due share of the burdens of all. Where the child has been forced to do the indolent parent's share, to support the slothful father, he can only look forward to the time when he will be free to support only himself, and have no other than purely egoistic obligations; this is an utterly immoral conception, and one squarely opposed to good citizenship. Where the boy or the girl hasbeen trained to regard all toil as dishonorable, where each has been taught scrupulously to avoid every burden, they come into social living with habits set against bearing their share and toward making others carry them. The indolent parent makes the tax-dodging citizen, as the indulgent parent often makes the place-hunting citizen who becomes a tax on the public.
The ideals of the family determine the needs of citizens. Its conversation, its reading, its customs, set the standard of social needs. Where the father laughs at the smartness of the artful dodge in politics, where the mother sighs after the tinsel and toys that she knows others have bought with corrupt cash, where the conversation at the meal-table steadily, though often unconsciously, lifts up and lauds those who are out after the "real thing," the eager ears about that board drink it in and childish hearts resolve what they will do when they have a chance. Where no voice speaks for high things, where no tide of indignation against wrong sweeps into language, where the children never feel that the parents have great moral convictions—where no vision is, the people perish.
Yet to realize this civic responsibility of the home would be, in the greater number of instances, to remedy it. In those other instances where there are no civic ideals, where the domestic conscienceis dead, there rests upon the state, upon society, for its own sake, the responsibility to train those children so that, at any rate, they will not perpetuate homes of this type. We may do very much by the stimulation and direction of parents. Men need but to be reminded of their duty to make it a part of their business to train their children in social duty.