Religious emotions and belief are among the most deeply imbedded instincts of the race. They are also some of the earliest manifestations of childhood. They accompany the individual throughout his entire life, exercising a profound influence over his thoughts and conduct, and they become the chief anchor of the soul when sorrow or old age comes. It would be a great calamity, therefore, if religious instincts and sentiment should suffer eclipse or disappear.
Rightly cultivated and trained, these natural feelings of religion grow to spiritual power within us. Without such power, man is of little consequence.
Upon the home naturally falls the duty of fostering the first feelings of reverence towards G.o.d. The child who learns to lisp his prayers at his mother"s knee is started aright. The home must give the first lessons in the love of G.o.d and goodness. If it fails, they are likely never to be learned.
But the home needs the influence of the church here. It must have it to round out the child"s religious development. The church can do many things for the child that the home cannot accomplish. It introduces him to religious ceremonies and observances that satisfy his soul, and it helps greatly to train him in religious habits.
One cannot estimate the value of all this upon the character of the child.
As a restraint from wrong conduct and an encouragement to right action, the work of the church is most salutary. The solemn ceremonies, the sacred music, the exhortations pointing heavenward, the general spirit of the group at humble worship--all exercise upon the child an influence for good, mysterious yet profound.
Clean, beautiful surroundings and orderly behavior are also very impressive. The work of our Sabbath Schools is most beneficial. They offer to parents a strong reinforcement in cultivating right religious habits and emotions in the child. To go into one of our well-conducted Sunday Schools, where order prevails, where the spirit of peace and prayer is uppermost, to join in the singing, to listen to the uplifting instruction, or, better still, to be given opportunity to take active part in this religious service--all these make a deep and lasting impression upon the youthful soul. Parents can do nothing better for their children and themselves than to support loyally their Sunday Schools and other religious organizations.
The habit of attending church should also be impressed during the habit-forming period. But the supreme opportunity of the church lies in its ability actually to convert the youth or maiden during the adolescent period. This is a privilege which neither the church nor the home has adequately comprehended. When the emotional nature of the individual is at white heat, as it then is, impressions made are lasting, and conversion, if made then, will be so deeply impressed that it is likely to last forever.
Churches in general fail to make the most of their opportunity here. They too often stuff the heads of children with religious facts and formulae, feeding them with the husks of theology, instead of giving them the upbuilding food they need. Children, too, often are starving for real spiritual food, hungering for the bread and thirsting for the water of life.
Parents and teachers generally need to correct their methods of presenting the gospel to children, especially to the adolescent, if they would get the results desired. It is their failure to meet the child on his own religious ground, not his indifference to religion that makes the boy and girl leave Sabbath School during the time he most needs such an influence. Let them study and master these problems: Are boys and girls being given ample opportunity for spiritual self-expression? Are the beautiful lessons of the gospel being translated into terms that appeal to their lives?
Our own church, we feel sure, is answering these questions in positive, practical ways better and better every day; but there is still much left to do even among us.
We have in our own church a working system that ministers to the daily moral and spiritual needs of humanity--a constructive Christianity that comes close to our lives. Our church is our opportunity to develop our own spiritual powers and to cultivate those of our children. The church needs our help to carry forward its ministry to mankind; but we need even more the help of the church to enspirit and to comfort our lives and to give to us and to our children the guidance and the training that will keep us all in the paths of safety and peace:
LESSON XX
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What have you observed in children to prove that religious emotions are instinctive?
2. In what ways can the home best foster the natural religious instincts of childhood?
3. What religious habits should the home cultivate?
4. What can the church best develop in children?
5. Why should the parents support loyally the Sunday Schools and other organizations of the church?
6. What is the supreme opportunity of the church during the adolescent age?
7. What means have you used successfully to develop the religious instincts of your own children?
8. What opportunities for spiritual self-expression and service does our own church offer?
9. In what ways are we richly rewarded by our free-will service in behalf of our church?
"The Child and His Religion," by Dawson, will be a helpful book to study in connection with this lesson.
TRAINING IN THE SCHOOL
_Certain Phases of Training and Education Can Be Accomplished Better by the School Than by Any Other Agency. A National System of Industrial and Vocational Education Should Be Established_
The school is a social inst.i.tution whose functions are becoming daily more widely understood and more clearly defined. In the history of civilization, the school, as we know it, is a very recent inst.i.tution. Nation after nation has arisen, reached its zenith, declined, and pa.s.sed away without dreaming of such a thing as universal education. With the growth of democracy, particularly during the Reformation, the ideal of education as the birthright of every child became well defined and during the years that have intervened, this ideal has become a living reality.
At first the universal education was advocated for the sake of the church.
Martin Luther believed that every child should have schooling so that he might be able to read the Bible and study the catechism. For some time the church had charge of and controlled education, but gradually, as democracy developed, the influence of the state began to overshadow that of the church, and education came to be recognized more and more as a function of the state, and its control was gradually taken over by the latter inst.i.tution.
The chief function of education, therefore, may be seen clearly from the foregoing. In a democracy it is necessary for every child to be educated because the existence of free inst.i.tutions is based upon the intelligence of the ma.s.ses. Jefferson once remarked: "If anyone believes that free government and an ignorant people can exist at one and the same time, he believes that which never was or never can be." Universal education is, therefore, a social necessity; its chief purpose is to train and instruct the child in the duties and ideals of citizenship. He must be instructed in the history of his country and learn what the ideals are for which his country stands; he must learn the real meaning of the words: equality, justice and freedom; he must be taught that obedience to law is the highest form of freedom, and that license is destructive both of self and country.
Furthermore, he must learn that in a free country every individual must be taught to be self-dependent, that no one owes him a living, that he ought to produce a little more than he consumes for the sake of the unfortunate.
The school, therefore, may teach better than any other agency the habits and ideals of duty, social service, justice and patriotism. It also teaches frequently better than does the home, the habits of obedience, punctuality, regularity and industry.
A secondary purpose of the school is to a.s.sist the home to develop in the child the physical, mental, moral and social habits and ideals to which we have referred in previous lessons. To the shame of the home, it must be said that the school is accomplishing its particular function far better than is the home. The school rarely fails to exact obedience, regularity, punctuality, and industry from the pupil; the home, on the other hand, frequently fails to train children in these habits because of the softness and vacillation of the parents. The school trains to proper habits of hygiene and sanitation, and is often under the necessity of acquainting parents with physical defects in their children which too often they have overlooked.
Moreover, the school, as a larger social unit than the home, has some distinct advantages over the latter: It can teach the obstinate, quarrelsome child better than can the home the necessity of adjusting his conduct to the requirements of the social group with which he a.s.sociates.
In school, frequently for the first time, a child learns what is meant by the ideals of duty and justice; furthermore, he is usually trained to habits of industry, perseverance and self-control which the home too often is not well prepared to teach.
The home, however, is far more important than is the school; the latter might be abolished and some other form of education adopted by society without calamitous results; but if the home were suddenly abolished, it is probable that civilization itself would be shaken to its center, if not destroyed. The home, therefore, ought to be better prepared and equipped to fulfill its function than is the school; but not one parent in a thousand is specially prepared for the duties of parenthood. The teacher, on the other hand, is required to spend years in preparation for his work. He is expected, moreover, to set a worthy example for children to follow. "As the teacher so the school," is a maxim that has stood the test.
The school was never before so practical in its instruction as it is to-day. In most of the junior and senior high schools, industrial work and agriculture are taught. In the best schools girls are learning to sew, mend, darn and cook. Many of them make their own dresses and trim their own hats. In a few schools, uniform dress and shoes are adopted by the girl students for the sake of economy and to prevent the silly mode of dressing and the style of some girls. Much more could be done in this direction if all mothers were sensible, but now and again word comes to the teacher: "I can dress my girl well and I don"t care to have her wear your cheap uniform and your low-priced, low-heeled shoes." And again: "It"s none of your business how my girl dresses." Now, it must be conceded that the parent has this right to object, but we surely question the wisdom of her so doing. Many young girls on graduating from the eighth grade make their own graduation dresses and confine the cost of the entire costume, including shoes, to $5.00. Women graduating from the senior school often make their dresses and confine the cost to within $10.00.
Most young men are taught manual art of some kind and agriculture. It is seldom that any father objects to his son taking carpenter work, but once in a while a farmer smiles at the thought of a "professor" teaching farming. The results, however, of the good work in teaching better farming is already seen throughout our country, and the time is not far distant when "scientific agriculture" will return many fold the price of its investment. The agricultural department at Washington reports that the Burbank potato is adding $17,000,000 yearly to the wealth of the U.S.
The people, too, are well satisfied with this new type of school. They are beginning to see that education is a very practical and vital matter and is not merely for ornament. It is a rare thing now to hear the once common remark that education is too expensive.
Statistics show that the average wages paid to unskilled laborers in the U.
S. is about $500 per annum; careful reports indicate that the average yearly earnings of high school graduates is $1000. In a lifetime of 40 years the high school man will earn $20,000 more than the unlearned laborer.
From a financial standpoint it is very evident that education pays, yet five and one-half years is the average length of time the children of the U.S. attend school. The nation ought to enrich itself through putting more money into education.
The natural resources of the country are largely taken up and the free land is practically all occupied. What then is to be the future of the great ma.s.s of laborers unless a thorough-going system of industrial and vocational training is made possible? The Industrial Commission appointed recently by Congress found that three-fourths of the male laborers in the U.S. earn less than $600 per annum, yet the U.S. Government has found "that the point of adequate subsistence is not reached until the family income is about $800 a year. Less than half the wage-earners" families in the U.S.
have an annual income of that size."
Now the rich can take care of themselves and the very poor and unfortunate cannot be permanently helped, but this great middle cla.s.s, upon whom the nation must depend in every crisis, can and must be a.s.sisted to the extent, at least, that conditions be made possible through which they may raise their efficiency and so increase their earning capacity to a point commensurate with their needs. A thorough-going, national system of industrial and vocational "preparedness" would solve this problem.
The marvelous efficiency of Germany is due in large part to the fact that her great middle cla.s.ses have been made efficient through a national system of trade schools.
The prosperity and perpetuity of a nation rests largely upon its ability to provide an adequate number of highly trained experts to be leaders, inventors and executives. In a democracy, these skilled leaders are especially important. Among the problems to be solved are questions of government, education, finance, economics, business, industry, health, manufacturing, engineering and mining. Any nation that lacks guidance in these particulars is indeed weak and pitiful. The universities, colleges, and higher technical schools supply nine-tenths of these experts, yet in the U.S. to-day there are only 250,000 students enrolled in all the colleges and universities of the country; this is about one to 500 of the population, a number entirely inadequate to perform the tremendous service that will be expected of this nation in the near future.
LESSON XXI