It makes little difference where one starts in the discussion of public-school or Sunday-school problems, he always comes back to the teacher. After all has been said, the teacher is the greatest force in establishing and maintaining a close relationship between the girl in her teens and the Sunday-school. "Ways and means" are necessary and to critics of the so-called "machinery" of the Sunday-school, I have only one answer-unless I can get a pupil to come, I can"t teach him. Absent and irregular pupils receive no benefit even from the finest of teachers, and any legitimate "means" by which a pupil may be induced to come, and a regularity of attendance be established, we have a right to welcome and use. But after the pupil has entered and become regularly enrolled it is the teacher who is the stimulating, guiding and holding power. To a.n.a.lyze the charm of personality which attracts and holds the girl in her teens is impossible, but there are certain things which the teacher must do that we may discuss.
She must remember that the girl in her teens has "grown up," and that she is very conscious of it. One must be more her friend than teacher.
In the earlier years every Sunday-school teacher really interested in her pupils calls freely in the home. When the girl reaches the teen age, the teacher must ask permission to call. "May I call on your mother?" often opens the way for a special invitation, or at least gives the girl an opportunity to make the invitation cordial or to let it be known that for some reason she prefers not to have her teacher call. I remember one girl of seventeen who never gave me any encouragement when I suggested calling, and I respected her wishes.
One day when she was very ill, the mother asked me to come. The girl had always dressed well, was intelligent and refined, and would have been supposed to come from a family of comfortable means. I found it to be a home of real poverty, where the father, a nervous wreck struggling with diabetes, was unable to work regularly, and the mother was obliged to a.s.sist. Even with the seventeen-year-old girl giving every cent she could spare, it was a hard struggle. The girl was proud and reticent; she had not wanted me to know, and I was glad I had not come until she was willing. That day when she was ill and discouraged she was willing-she really needed me.
There are many times when for reasons akin to this or others entirely different but equally good, a girl prefers to have her teacher see and know her apart from her home. Every woman who understands girlhood in the later teens respects such a wish.
The teacher"s home should, if possible, be always open to the girls and they should feel free to come. Sometimes it is not possible and then the cosiest corner in the smallest church parlor should be available.
As the girl approaches the later teens the Sunday-school cla.s.s should become more and more a place of training for service. It has been my experience that after seventeen many girls prefer to work in Sunday-school rather than to remain as pupils. If the girls express such a desire, or show particular willingness to act as subst.i.tutes, to help in the music of the elementary departments, or to tell stories to the beginners, such a desire should be recognized and an opportunity given a girl to test herself under supervision. The Sunday-school should be constantly preparing a.s.sistant superintendents, directors of music, secretaries and teachers.
Material for the teachers" training-cla.s.s is found in cla.s.ses in the later teens.
Some of the most loyal, responsive and successful teachers of pupils from nine to twelve, I have found in the boys and girls of the later teens. While they lack mature judgment and discretion, they have enthusiasm and desire to succeed in any undertaking. If the Sunday-school is constantly training such helpers as a.s.sistants, and testing them as subst.i.tutes, then the changes that are bound to come in the teaching force of any Sunday-school are not so disastrous, for some one will be ready to supply the need.
As has been hinted in previous studies, the Sunday-school should lend valuable a.s.sistance in making the church a social center for the young people who need it. To be of real vital interest to the girl, the Sunday-school must touch her everyday life. It does that through the social side of its work. The organized cla.s.s giving socials, entertainments, enjoying lectures and music, picnics, trolley parties, skating or camping has a decided influence for good on all the members. I know of one such organized cla.s.s of girls eighteen and nineteen years old which met three times a month for an entire year.
They met one week "for fun," the next to "go somewhere," or "to hear a talk," or "to sew and read, and talk if we want to," and the third for a "sing" to which they invited members of the boys" cla.s.ses. All these meetings were popular, well attended, and have meant a strong united cla.s.s with a splendid spirit.
The girl in her teens needs the Sunday-school because of the help and uplift which its teachings are bound to bring to her. Even if she belongs to a cla.s.s in its early teens which is given over to the giggles, to wandering thoughts, to all sorts of asides in more or less noticeable whispers, to the continual admixtures of the Bible lessons and the events of the week just pa.s.sed or to come,-even though as is often the case with the American girl, she is thoughtless enough to forget to be either reverent or courteous, still it pays for her to come. She gets something,-often more than we think.
And the Sunday-school needs the girl in her teens. It needs her devotion, her enthusiasm and eagerness, her close touch with both the real and ideal in life, that it may keep its balance, stay in the real world of need, and not walk far afield by paths of theory. The Sunday-school has awakened to its need of the girl, and now at its door lies the task of making her feel more and more her need of it.
CHAPTER VII-HER RELATION TO THE CHURCH
The girl in her teens, in common with all humanity, needs the upward pull. Fresh air, suitable clothing, nourishing food, so desirable in all stages of her development, become, we have seen, an absolute necessity during her teens. If not supplied, her whole future is doomed to pay the penalty; and unless during the period of the awakening and strengthening of ideals, a steady, uplifting, spiritualizing force has a definite influence upon the rapidly changing and developing forces of her nature, the chances are that her whole future will pay the price neglect always demands. The steady, upward pull is a necessity.
There are so many things in life that furnish the downward pull. Even the more fortunate girl, who lives in her own home and spends the greater part of each day in the enlarging atmosphere of a good public school, feels the downward pull. In the most carefully selected of select schools, the girl, though guarded every moment, feels the downward pull of the petty, selfish and mean. The girl in her teens hard at work among the world"s toilers is painfully conscious of it in one or more of its many forms.
In the struggle between the higher and the lower-the upward and the downward pull-humanity finds its growth and development. If there is no struggle there is no strength. The girl in her teens does not know all this-her teacher does, and puts forth all her effort to strengthen the upward pull.
As we study and observe the girl in her development one question persistently follows us. To what shall we look for this upward pull?
There are many answers: the home, the school, friends, good environment, the church. With the last we are especially concerned.
Even the most open and avowed enemy of the church of to-day would not hesitate to place it definitely on the side of the upward pull. Its history, teachings and ideals, like its spires, point upward. It says reverently and steadily to a world of busy men so much engaged in the rush for mere things that they find it easy to forget all else, two simple, tremendously significant words-G.o.d IS. It says persistently, above the struggle for power through possessions,-"Truth, Righteousness, Justice, Love, these alone mean happiness," and at some time during his progress from childhood to old age man stops to listen. The most natural and effective time to stop is during the early teens.
Of course the church, being made up of humanity, has its weaknesses.
As an upward pulling force it is not perfect. Nothing is. Its most loyal friends are the ones most conscious of its faults and failures.
Its members feel its weakness more keenly than the outside world possibly can, just as the members of a family feel more deeply than the outside world the weakness and failures of its members in any particular.
But in spite of its errors of creed, its lack, in many cases, of authority and initiative, and its temptation to shun real problems, yet the members do feel the power of its upward pull, and the community in general is conscious of it.
To place the girl in her teens where she will feel most strongly the lifting power of the church is the business of her parents and teachers.
In the average community the girl has been more or less in contact with the church from her earliest years. Her estimation of its value, its purpose and power, has been built up through the years by what she has heard parents, companions and teachers say of it. It is a refuge for the weak, a company of people who think themselves better than others, a respectable moral organization through which men climb to higher social planes, a necessary guardian of good in the community; or, the visible expression of the religion of Jesus Christ, the highest and most potent force in the world to-day for the conversion and uplifting of mankind. Her opinion is in accordance with the general opinion of those in her immediate environment.
As she approaches her teens, if her parents are not church people, through the influence of the Sunday-school of which she is a member she usually becomes a more or less regular attendant upon the services of the church. If her teacher is wise she does all in her power to establish the habit of church attendance. If the pastor has a thought and a word for the younger members of his congregation the girl, interested and helped, responds according to her temperament.
About the time she enters her teens, if she is a Sunday-school girl, she has had, through Decision Day or in answer to the direct question of her pastor or teacher, the opportunity of saying, "I choose to be a Christian." If her teaching has been careful and wise she will know what being a Christian should mean to a girl of thirteen, and she will make the choice gladly and of her own free will. Before she is sixteen she will have met the question of her direct relation to the church.
Shall she join it in its work in the world? If "joining the church" is made the simple, sincere matter that it really is, the average girl responds easily and earnestly. Only those who year after year have helped girls from fourteen to sixteen decide to take the step can know the genuine, loving, devoted spirit in which they come to their decisions.
Through the weeks of instruction that follow the decision, when the girl learns, under her pastor"s or teacher"s direction, the history of the church, the development of her own denomination, and the statements of its creed, the work the church has done, and is actually doing for the poor and outcast, the rich and careless, her admiration for it deepens, and all the love and devotion of her girl heart goes out to Him whose wonderful life and sacrifice have inspired ordinary men and women to live in the world as real Christians.
After such instruction, when the Sunday comes on which she is to publicly unite with the church she _knows what she is doing_ and _why_. She knows as fully as any one can _what she believes_, for belief is a growth, and life and experience always modify it. The mystery of the communion service is to her as clear as it is to any of us, and she prays as truly and sincerely as the oldest and wisest.
How much of uplift to her whole life her act has been can be known only to those who year after year have walked home with her after the service, received her notes so full of joy, and watched her effort to live aright in the weeks that follow.
So far in the relation of the church to the religious and spiritual development of the girl the steps have been successive, natural, and easy, but now the hard part comes.
She is on Monday, after uniting with the church, the same girl that she was on Sat.u.r.day before doing so. If she had a bad temper, she has it still; if she was easily tempted to be insincere, selfish, sarcastic, careless, unkind, the characteristics are with her still.
She has simply placed herself on the side of the upward pull, and every one of us who comes in contact with her should watch the struggle against the downward pull never with condemnation and criticism, but always with sympathy and a.s.sistance.
Here is where the church so often fails. Having joined the church she is ever after expected to be good. "The girl has joined the church, all is done," is a false and fatal conclusion.
I have been watching with real interest a young girl who, after a most happy engagement, a beautiful wedding, a delightful continental trip, is learning to live in the prosaic every day. She had forgotten that it is always there waiting for us. In her great uplift and happiness little things had not made her as angry as before. But she found out what could happen when "Harry" forgot to order the cream for the dinner party at which all her friends were present for the first time in her new home. After her outburst of anger she was so discouraged that she was tempted to think the whole thing was a mistake, that she could not have loved him, and she could never be happy again. She had not reckoned with herself. The plain details of everyday living reveal one to himself. He finds he cannot live in the clouds, and that the art of living harmoniously and finely in the valley must be learned, and it takes time.
The girl in her teens after uniting with the church and experiencing the uplift and stimulus must come back to the every day. Like my young friend, she so often thinks that she will "never feel angry again."
She does, and with the failure to control herself or the quick yielding to her special temptation comes the feeling of utter discouragement. She is not good enough to be a member of the church, and it was a mistake. She needs help-her mother or teacher-to make her see that even a deep love can not in a moment overcome a quick temper, nor uniting with the church overcome the habit of the unkind word and selfish act. It will give her comfort and courage to know that one becomes a real Christian by successive steps, and it will take all her life to accomplish the task.
The first thing a young member of the church needs to help her become what we want her to be, a sane, natural, happy girl, interested in, enjoying and loving all the things that belong to the normal girl in her teens, is work.
She must have something to do, for unless the emotions are given a sane, legitimate outlet, she may come to the fatal conclusion that religion is a thing apart from life, or there may follow a lowering of ideals, or the morbid introspection common to girls in their teens, but which the Christian should escape.
So we must direct her thoughts from herself to her companions. It is she who can establish a bond of interest between the other girl and the church. She can bring the other girl under its influence, and help her see what it stands for in the world.
"No," said a girl to me at a conference, "it isn"t any of the speakers, or the books, or sermons that have interested me; it is just Edith and Alice. They are such splendid girls and they just love the church and all the work they are doing. They are having such good times and are truly happy. I want to understand it. Whatever it is I want it." I have heard scores of girls say it in varying phraseology.
One girl influences another more than we can, so we may set her at work with her companions.
But that is not work enough-and it is too indefinite. She must have a part in the mission work, the social work, be interested in the sick and unfortunate, and learn now that the business of the church is to care about the lonely women, the toiling women and their children, the little, narrow, self-centered women, and those who find it hard to be good, just as its Lord and Master cared. Nothing is more encouraging to those who love the church than a large number of bright, attractive, natural girls, on whose hearts and lives this great truth is beginning to make an impression which must find expression.
The second thing necessary to the right development of the girl in her teens is ideal Christian women in the church of which she is a member.
The women of the church, from those a little older than herself up to those who for many years have been its support, must show to her what it means to be a Christian woman in the church, community and home.
Alas for those girls who see that it means only attendance upon the services of the church when perfectly convenient, and when minister and choir are entirely satisfactory! Alas for those girls who see that it means little more than a comfortable sense of respectability and social opportunity!
Fortunate are those girls who in their early teens see among the church members scores of sane, true, large-hearted women interested in every need, anxious to help, and willing to serve in every way that time and means will permit.
The church of whose women the girl in her teens, watching with her keen eye, can say, in her ardent way, "I"d rather be like Mrs. --, than any one I know-she is perfectly lovely," is of real value as an uplifting, vitalizing force in the world.
The girl in her teens needs the church to furnish the upward pull and there is need of greater effort in every line and by every member to bring her into contact with it.
The church needs the girl in her teens with all the intensity of her power of devotion and genuineness of her love; with all the strength of her emotions so easily turned under right conditions toward the best things in life.
CHAPTER VIII-HER RELATION TO THE BIBLE