"Under Petticoat Government"
One of the brightest women in the United States, a woman well known to
the Protestant churches of the world, was groaning to me the other
day: "What _shall_ I do with those boys in my Sunday-school class?
They are just at the age when they think they know a little more than
any _woman_. They need a man. Don't you think the superintendent ought
to remove them from under petticoat government?"
This cry, that came so strangely from a woman of her ability and fame,
comes also from a throng of baffled Sunday-school teachers. The answer
would be easy, if there were anything like as many good Sunday-school
teachers among the men as among the women. As it is, however, most boy
classes must be assigned either to a distasteful petticoat government,
or to an incompetent pantaloon government, or--cast adrift until, long
years afterward, they drop anchor in the haven of matrimony, and
happily, perchance, appear once more in the Sunday-school, in the
"Bible class."
The remedy, however, though not easy, is manifest. The boys do not
need a man, but they do need in their teacher certain manly qualities
that could be incorporated in a woman's teaching. These qualities all
women whom the Lord of the Sunday-school has set over a class of his
boys, should seek to get.
The most obvious of them, I think, is a certain dignity and reserve
that show themselves as well in refraining from scolding as in
declining to pat on the head or hold by the hand. Boys of the
undefinable age we are talking about highly appreciate the title "Mr."
Their greatest horror is petting; their greatest aversion is nagging.
A young man, set to teach a class of boys, will approach them with a
sense of comradeship; will at once make himself, if he is a teacher at
all, "hail fellow well met" among them; and yet, as the boys say,
"there is no nonsense about him."
It is far better--bad as that is--to talk over the heads of boys than to
talk down to them. It is far better to use too few words than too many.
If a teacher would hold boys, she must be concise, straightforward,
businesslike. Indeed, the latter adjective comes near to being the key
to the situation. Boys dislike fussiness, and wordiness, and beating
about the bush. Woman teachers that are eager for boys' souls will take
a long step toward their astonished approbation if they school
themselves to brevity, dignity, and "business."
Set the boys to work. Imitate common-school methods. In the public
school woman teachers hold the boys, and win their honest hearts. It is
largely because here there are definiteness of purpose and firm
continuity of aim. Boys are easily mastered by a taskmaster who is
master of her task. Boys that cannot be won by Sunday-school preaching
are readily won by Sunday-school _teaching_. Lay down a distinct course
of work, with a goal in fair view, and they will gird up the loins of
their minds; but they refuse to follow you in aimless wanderings through
a thicket. To learn in chronological order the seventy-five prominent
events in Christ's life; to trace through the Bible the doctrine of the
atonement; to commit to memory every Scripture passage bearing on the
temperance problem; to write a six-hundred-word abstract of the Book of
Genesis; to make a classification of the Psalms by topics; to compile
the Bible proverbs that have to do with money and wealth-getting; to
make a diagram graphically depicting the history of the Old Testament
Hebrews; to write out the Ten Commandments, and place in parallel
columns the New Testament enlargements and interpretations
thereof,--these are samples of the work boys would like to do. They
would give high praise to a teacher who conducted them through such
tasks. They would say that she "meant business."
And that leads me to mention another point in which woman teachers are
more likely than men to fail, though both are far too weak,--the use
of evidence, of proof. This is a hobby of mine, but it is the boys
themselves, and recollections of my own boyhood, that have set me on
the hobby. Wherever a thing is susceptible of proof, boys want it
proved to them. If it is not susceptible of proof, they want _that_
proved to them, also. Woman's traditional "because" does not commend
itself to the lawyerlike boys. Fresh from their botany in the public
schools, they refuse to take on faith the Cana miracle. Ready for
their physiology or physics the next day, they want more proof than a
"say so" that a leper was ever healed by a word or that Peter really
walked on the waves. "It is in the Bible" is not enough; they must
know why they must believe the Bible.
Now I am not so foolish as to advise any one to suggest skepticism to
a boy, and I know that there is a way of handling Scripture evidences
that serves rather to raise doubt than to confirm faith; but I have
enough of the boy in me to be sure that in no way can a teacher more
highly exalt both herself and Christianity in the eyes of the boys
than by insisting on the reasonableness of both. I had the best of
Sunday-school teachers, quite a score of them, women and men; yet
until full manhood I wrestled all alone with a concealed and absolute
skepticism that would not down until I had hunted out for myself the
many overwhelming proofs of the resurrection of Christ. If any of my
twenty teachers had set those proofs with lawyerlike force and
directness before my boyish mind, I should have been saved some very
dark years that came near making an infidel of me altogether. Because
I think that boys feel this need of proof and evidence more than
girls, and that women are less ready to meet the need than men, I have
ventured to add this suggestion to my list.
And that list may close with only one point further. Boys like to be
taught by men, because through men they get a telescope-view into the
life-work that lies before them. Men teachers draw their illustrations
from mannish things, from business life, from inventions, from politics,
from commerce, from the law. Where a woman might illustrate dishonesty
by apple-stealing, thereby causing every urchin before her to exclaim
"Chestnut!" under his breath, a man would be more likely to make some
discussion about watering stock or falsifying entries. A man is more
likely than a woman to render Scripture vivid and practical by reference
to current events, dropping a word here and there about the war between
China and Japan, about Gladstone's retirement, about the Manitoba school
question, about the Honduras lottery,--just a word, but the boys prick
up their ears. A woman might compare Gideon with David, but a man would
be far more likely to compare him with Parkhurst.
And now my point is that the boy needs both,--both David and
Parkhurst. There is no reason why the woman teacher cannot give the
boy everything he could get from a man teacher, and more. It is easy
to appear to a boy quite a Solon regarding current events. It is not
so very hard, by the exercise of a consecrated imagination, to place
yourself by the boy's side on the outskirts of the great, wide world
of busy activities he is soon to enter, and feel his impatience to be
there and his hunger for any tidings from that charmed country. Show
him how Christianity untangles the skeins of business, is the
master-key to all true politics, the foundation of law, the compass of
commerce, the force of civilization. Read the newspapers wisely, and
find out what is going on in the world. Read wisely the hearts of your
boys, and find out what is going on in that world. Lift manfully over
both worlds the banner of Christ.
One point at a time, with cheerful persistence, the teacher that
"means business" will win for her teaching these adaptations to the
needs of her boys. And in the process, losing nothing of womanliness,
she will have nobly broadened her own life, while as its result she
will have won a double hold, both a woman's hold and a man's hold, on
the hearts of the boys.