Produced by Curtis Weyant, Thomas Hutchinson and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE BOY
AND THE
SUNDAY SCHOOL
A Manual of Principle and Method for
the Work of the Sunday School
with Teen Age Boys
JOHN L. ALEXANDER
_Superintendent Secondary Division
International Sunday School Association
Author and Editor "Boy Training," "The Sunday
School and the Teens," "Boys' Hand
Book, Boy Scouts of America"
"Sex Instruction for Boys," etc_.
=Introduction by=
MARION LAWRANCE
_General Secretary, World's and
International Sunday School Associations_
ASSOCIATION PRESS
NEW YORK: 347 MADISON AVENUE
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF
YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS
THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEN WHO MUST FACE ALL THE PROBLEMS
OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL--TO THE MEN WHO HOLD THE KEY TO ALL THE LIFE AND
PROGRESS OF THE SCHOOL--THE SUPERINTENDENTS OF NORTH AMERICA.
INTRODUCTION
The Sunday school chapter of Church history is now being written. It
comes late in the volume, but those who are writing it and those who are
reading it realize--as never before--that the Sunday school is rapidly
coming to its rightful place. In the Sunday school, as elsewhere, it is
the little child who has led the way to improvement. The commanding
appeal of the little ones opened the door of advance, and, as a result,
the Elementary Division of the school has outstripped the rest in its
efficiency.
Where children go adults will follow, and so we discover that the Adult
Division was the next to receive attention, until today its manly
strength and power are the admiration of the Church.
Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that the middle
division, called the Secondary, and covering the "Teen Age," has been
sadly neglected--the joint in the harness of our Sunday school fabric.
Here we have met with many a signal defeat, for the doors of our Sunday
schools have seemed to swing outward and the boys and girls have gone
from us, many of them never to return. We have busied ourselves to such
an extent in studying the problem of the boy and the girl that the real
problem--the problem of leadership--has been overlooked.
The Secondary Division is the challenge of the Sunday school and of the
Church today. It is during the "Teen Age" that more decisions are made
_for_ Christ and _against_ him than in any other period of life. It is
here that Sunday school workers have found their greatest difficulty in
meeting the issue, largely because they have not understood the material
with which they have to deal.
We are rejoiced, however, to know that the Secondary Division is now
coming to be better understood and recognized as the firing line of the
Sunday school.
What has been needed and is now being supplied is authoritative
literature concerning this critical period. Indeed, the Sunday school
literature for the Secondary Division is probably appearing more rapidly
now than that for any other division of the school.
This book is a choice contribution to that literature. It comes from a
man who has devoted his life to the boys and girls, and who is probably
the highest authority in our country in this Department. The largest
contribution he is making to the advancement of the whole Sunday school
work is in showing the fascination, as well as the possibilities, of the
Secondary Division. We are sure this little book will bring rich returns
to the Sunday schools, because of the large number who will be
influenced, through reading its pages, to devote their lives to the
bright boys and fair girls in whom is the hope, not only of the Church,
but of the World.
=Marion Lawrance.=
Chicago, June 1, 1913.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Foreword 13
I The Home and the Boy 23
II The Public School and the Boy 32
III The Church and the Boy 37
IV The Sunday School or Church School 41
V The Boy and the Sunday School 48
VI Fundamental Principles in Sunday School Work with Boys 57
VII Method and Organization 62
VIII The Organized Sunday School Bible Class 74
IX Bible Study for Boys 93
X Through-the-Week Activities for Boys' Organized Classes 104
XI The Boys' Department in the Sunday School 120
XII Inter-Sunday School Effort for Boys 135
XIII The Older Boys' Conference or Congress 138
XIV The Secondary Division or Teen Age Boys' Crusade 158
XV Sex Education for Boys and the Sunday School 176
XVI The Teen Boy and Missions 193
XVII Temperance and the Teen Age 202
XVIII Building up the Boy's Spiritual Life 208
XIX The Teen Age Teacher 215
XX Danger Points 265
XXI The Rural Sunday School 268
XXII The Relation of the Sunday
School to Community Organizations 277
FOREWORD
A great deal of material has come from the pens of various writers on
boy life in the last few years. Quite a little, also, has been written
about the Sunday school, and a few attempts have been made to hitch the
boy of the teen years and the Sunday school together. Most of these
attempts, however, have been far from successful; due, in part, to lack
of knowledge of the boy on the one hand, or of the Sunday school on the
other. Generous criticism of the Sunday school has been made by experts
on boy life, but this generally has been nullified by the fact that the
critics have had no adequate touch with the Sunday school or its
problems--their bread-and-butter experience lay in another field.
"The Men and Religion Forward Movement," in its continent-wide work,
discovered not a few of the problems of the Sunday school, and
attempted a partial solution in the volume on boys' work in the
"Messages" of the Movement. It was but partial, however, first, because
the volume tried to deal with the boy, the church and the community all
together, and second, because it failed to take into account the fact
that there are two sexes in the church school and that the boy, however
important, constitutes but a section of the Sunday school and its
problems.
In view of this, it may not be amiss to set forth in a new volume a more
or less thorough study of the Sunday school and the adolescent or teen
age boy, the one in relationship to the other, and at the same time to
set forth as clearly as possible the present plans, methods and attitude
of the Sunday school, denominationally and interdenominationally.
In the preparation of this little book I have utilized considerable
material written by me for other purposes. Generous use has also been
made of the Secondary Division Leaflets of the International Sunday
School Association. A deep debt of gratitude is mine to the members of
the International Secondary Committee: Messrs. E.H. Nichols, Frank L.
Brown, Eugene C. Foster, William C. Johnston, William H. Danforth, S.F.
Shattuck, R.A. Waite, Mrs. M.S. Lamoreaux, and the Misses Minnie E.
Kennedy, Anna Branch Binford and Helen Gill Lovett, for their great help
and counsel in preparing the above leaflets. Grateful acknowledgment is
also made to Miss Margaret Slattery, Mrs. J.W. Barnes, Rev. Charles D.
Bulla, D.D., Rev. William E. Chalmers, B.D., Rev. C.H. Hubbell, D.D.,
Rev. A.L. Phillips, D.D., Rev. J.C. Robertson, B.D., and the Rev. R.P.
Shepherd, Ph.D., for their advice and suggestions as members of the
Committee on Young People's Work of the Sunday School Council of
Evangelical Denominations. The plans and methods of these leaflets have
the approval of the denominational and interdenominational leaders of
North America. I wish, also, to make public mention of the great
assistance that Mr. Preston G. Orwig and my colleague, Rev. William A.
Brown, have rendered me in the practical working out of many of the
methods contained in this volume. Two articles written for the "Boys'
Work" volume of the Men and Religion Messages, and one for "Making
Religion Efficient" have been modified somewhat for this present work.
The aim has been to set forth as completely as possible the relationship
of the Sunday school and the boy of the teen years in the light of the
genius of the Sunday school.
No attempt has been made in this volume to discuss the boy
psychologically or otherwise. This has been done so often that the
subject has become matter-of-fact. My little volume on "Boy Training,"
so generously shared in by other writers who are authorities on their
subjects, may be referred to for information of this sort. "The Sunday
School and the Teens" will, likewise, afford valuable technical
information about the Sunday school, it being the report of the
International Commission on Adolescence.
This book is largely a volume of method and suggestion for leaders and
teachers in the Sunday school, to promote the better handling of the
so-called boy problem; for the Sunday school must solve the problem of
getting and holding the teen age boy, if growth and development are to
mark its future progress. Of the approximately ten million teen age boys
in the field of the International Sunday School Association, ninety per
cent are not now reached by the Sunday school. Of the five per cent
enrolled (less than 1,500,000) seventy-five per cent are dropping from
its membership. Every village, town and city contributes its share
toward this unwarranted leakage. The problem is a universal one.
The teen age represents the most important period of life. Ideals and
standards are set up, habits formed and decisions made that will make or
mar a life. The high-water mark of conversion is reached at fifteen, and
between the ages of thirteen and eighteen more definite stands are made
for the Christian life than in all the other combined years of a
lifetime.
It marks the period of adolescence, when the powers and passions of
manhood enter into the life of the boy, and when the will is not strong
enough to control these great forces. Powers must be unfolded before
ability to use them can develop, and instincts must be controlled while
these are in the process of development. The importance of systematic
adult leadership during this period of storm and stress cannot be too
strongly emphasized.
The teen age boy is naturally religious. Opportunity, however, must be
given him to express his religion in forms that appeal to and are
understood by him. In other words, his religion, like his nature, is a
positive quantity, and will be carried by him throughout the day, to
dominate all of the activities in which he engages.
The problem also reaches through the entire teen years and must be
regarded as a whole, rather than as a series of successive stages, each
stage being separate and complete in itself.
The great problem, then, which confronts us is to keep the boys in the
church and Sunday school during the critical years of adolescence and
to bring to their support the strength which comes from God's Word and
true Christian friendship, to the end that they may be related to the
Son of God as Saviour and Lord through personal faith and loyal service.
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, Editor.--Boy Training (.75). The Sunday School and the Teens.
(The Report of the International Commission on Adolescence) ($1.00).
Alexander, Editor.--The Teens and the Rural Sunday School. (The Report
of the International Commission on Rural Adolescence.) _In preparation_.
Boys' Work Message (Men and Religion Movement) ($1.00).
Fiske.--Boy Life and Self-Government ($1.00).
Hall.--Developing into Manhood (Sex Education Series) (.25)
Hall.--Life's Beginnings (Sex Education Series) (.25)
Secondary Division Leaflets, International Sunday School Association
(Free).
1. Secondary Division Organization.
2. The Organized Class.
3. State and County Work.
4. Through-the-week Activities.
5. The Secondary Division Crusade.
Swift--Youth and the Race ($1.50).
THE BOY AND HIS EDUCATION
Three institutions are responsible for the education of the adolescent
boy. By "education" is meant not merely the acquisition of certain forms
of related knowledge, but the symmetrical adaptation of the life to the
community in which it lives. The three institutions that cooperate in
the community for this purpose are: the _home_, the _school_, and the
_church_. There are many organizations and orders that have a large
place in the life of the growing boy, but these must be viewed solely in
the light of auxiliaries to the home, school and church in the
production of efficient boyhood and trained manhood.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON EDUCATION
Draper.--American Education ($2.00).
Payot.--Education of the Will ($1.50).
I
THE HOME AND THE BOY
The greatest of the three institutions affecting boy life, from the very
fact that it is the primary one, is the home. The home is the basis of
the community, the community merely being the aggregation of a large
number of well-organized or ill-organized homes. The first impressions
the boy receives are through his home life, and the bent of his whole
career is often determined by the home relationships.
The large majority of homes today are merely places in which a boy may
eat and sleep. The original prerogatives of the father and mother, so
far as they pertain to the physical, social, mental and moral
development of boyhood, have been farmed out to other organizations in
the community. The home life of today greatly differs from that of
previous generations. This is very largely due to social and economic
conditions. Our social and economic revolution has made vast inroads
upon our normal home life, with the result that the home has been
seriously weakened and the boy has been deprived of his normal home
heritage.
To give the home at least some of the old power that it used to have
over the boy life, there must needs be recognized the very definite
place a boy must have in the family councils. The general tendency
today, as far as the boy is concerned, is an utter disregard on the part
of the father and mother of the importance of the boy as a partner in
the family. He is merely the son of his father and mother, and their
obligations to him seemingly end in providing him with wholesome food,
warm clothing, a place to sleep and a room in which to study and play in
common with other members of the household. Very little thought is given
on the part of the father and mother to the real part the boy should
play in the direction of the family life. Family matters are never
determined with the help of his judgment. They are even rarely discussed
in his presence. Instead of being a partner in the family life, doing
his share of the family work and being recognized as a necessary part of
its welfare, he is only recognized as a dependent member, to be cared
for until he is old enough to strike out and make a place for himself.
This sometimes is modified when the boy comes to the wage-earning age,
when he is required to assist in the support of the family, but even
then his place in the family councils to determine the policy of the
family is usually a very small one.
In the home of today few fathers and mothers seem to realize the claim
that the boy has upon them in the matter of comradeship. The parent
looks upon himself very largely in the light of the provider, and but
very little attention is paid to the companionship call that is coming
from the life of his boy. After a strenuous day's work the father is
often physically incapacitated for such comradeship and only the
strongest effort of will on his part can force him to recognize this
fundamental need of his boy's life. It is just as necessary that the
father should play with and be the companion of his boy as it is for him
to see that he has good food, warm clothing, and a comfortable bed to
sleep in. The father generally is the boy's hero up to a certain age.
This seems to be an unwritten, natural law of the boy's life, and the
father often forfeits this worship and respect of his boy by failing to
afford him the natural companionship necessary to keep it alive. In
addition to a place and a voice in the councils of the family, it is
necessary that the boy should have steady parental companionship to
bring out the best that is in him.
The ownership of personal property and its recognition by the parent in
the life of the boy is fundamental to the boy's later understanding of
the home and community life. Comparatively few fathers and mothers ever
recognize the deep call of the boy life to own things, and frequently
the boy's property is taken from him and he is deprived of its use as a
means of punishment for some breach of home discipline. In many families
the boy grows up altogether without any adequate idea of what the right
of private property really is, with the result that when he reaches the
adolescent years and is swayed by the gang spirit, whatever comes in his
way, as one of the gang, is appropriated by him to the gang use. This
means that the boy, because of his ignorance, becomes a ward of the
Juvenile Court and a breaker of community laws. The tendency, however,
today in legal procedure is to hold the parents of such a boy liable for
the offenses which may be committed. Instead of talking about juvenile
delinquency today we are beginning to comprehend the larger meaning of
parental and community delinquency. Out of nearly six hundred cases
which came before the Juvenile Court in San Francisco last year only
nineteen, by the testimony of the judge, were due to delinquency on the
part of the offender himself. The majority of the remaining cases were
due to parental delinquency, or neglect of the father and mother. A
real part in the home life may be given to the boy by recognizing his
individual and sole claim to certain things in the home life.
Failure on the part of the father and mother to recognize the growth of
the boy likewise tends to interfere with normal relationships in the
home. Many a father and mother fail to see and appreciate the fact that
their boy really ceases to be a child. Because of this, parents very
often fail to show the proper respect for the personality of the boy,
riding rough-shod over his feelings and will. There follows in matters
of this kind a natural resentment on the part of the boy which sometimes
makes him moody and reticent. This, in its turn, causes the parents to
try to curb what they consider a disagreeable disposition on the part of
the boy. Sometimes this takes the form of resentment at the fact that
the boy wishes at times to be alone, and so fathers and mothers are
continually on the watch to prevent the boy from really having any time
of his own. All of these things put together have but one logical
result, the ultimate break between the boy and the home, and the
departure of the boy at the first real opportunity to strike out for
himself, thus sundering all the home relationships.
Perhaps one of the saddest things in the home life today is the neglect
of the father to see that his boy receives the necessary knowledge
concerning sex, that his life may be safeguarded from the moral perils
of the community. This is not always a willful breach of duty on the
part of the father, but usually comes from ignorance as to how to broach
this subject to the boy. A great many growing lives would be saved from
moral taint and become a blessing instead of a curse if the father
discharged his whole duty to his growing son, by putting at his disposal
the knowledge which is necessary to an understanding of the functions of
the sex life.
To recapitulate, several things are necessary to bring about real
relationships in the home life between the parents and the boy. These
are: a place for the boy in the family councils as a partner in the
home life, the boy's right to companionship with his parents, the
privilege and responsibility of private ownership, the right a boy has
to his personality and privacy, and tactful and timely instruction in
matters of sex. This might be enlarged by the parents' privilege of
caring for and developing social life for the boy in the home, a
carefully planned participation in its working life, instructions in
thrift and saving, and a general cooperation with the school and the
church, as well as the auxiliary organizations with which the boy may be
connected, so that the physical, social, mental and spiritual life of
the boy may become well balanced and symmetrical. Add to this the
Christian example of the father and mother, as expressed in the everyday
life of the home, and especially through family worship and a
recognition of the Divine Being at meal time, and without any cant or
undue pressure there will be produced such a wholesome home environment
as to assure the boy of an intelligent appreciation of not only his
father and mother, but of his home privileges in general, and of the
value of real religion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE HOME
Allen.--Making the Best of Our Children. Two vols. ($1.00 each).
Field.--Finger-posts to Children's Reading ($1.00).
Fiske.--Boy Life and Self-Government ($1.00).
Kirkpatrick.--Fundamentals of Child Study ($1.25).
Putnam.--Education for Parenthood (.65).
II
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND THE BOY
Of the primary institutions that are cooperating in the life of the boy
today, without a doubt the public school is the most efficient and most
serviceable. Today the school offers and compels a boy to get certain
related courses of study which will make him a better citizen by fitting
him in a measure for the procuring of an intelligent and adequate
livelihood. The school by no means is perfect in this matter, and as
long as over fifty per cent. of the boys fail to graduate even from the
eighth grade in the grammar school, and but one per cent. go to college,
there will be great need of a reconstruction of its methods of work.
Without question, the curricula of the public school should be modified
so as to meet the needs of all the boys in the community and vocational
and industrial training should have larger place in our educational
plans. The boy who is to earn his livelihood by his hands and head
should receive as much attention and intelligent instruction as the boy
who aims at a professional career. However, with all its limitations,
the public school is the only institution which has a definite policy in
the education of the boy. The leaders of the public school system know
whither they are going and the road they must travel to reach the goal.
Perhaps the greatest weakness of our public school system today is the
inability, because of our division between church and state, to give the
boy any religious instruction in connection with what is styled "secular
education." For the first time in the history of the world has religious
instruction been barred from the public school, and that in our free
America. Most intelligent Christian men now realize that, because of the
division between church and state in our country, religious instruction
in the public school is impossible, as the school is the instrument of
the state in the production of wealth-producing citizenship. The men who
with clear vision see these things also see this limitation of the
public school system and recognize that the church has a larger mission
to fulfill in America than in any other country, it the education of the
boy is to be symmetrical and well balanced.
Perhaps the problem of our public school system of education which has
not yet been solved is the vast possibility of the directed play life of
our boys. It is well known by students of boy life that the character of
the boy is very largely determined by the informal education which comes
from his part in sports and play. In some cities the public school has
sought to give partial direction to the play life of the boy through
public school athletic leagues, but even these leagues touch but a small
part of the boy life of any community. Besides the injection of
industrial and vocational training in large quantity in public school
curricula, more thought and place will have to be given to the
expression of the boy life in play than is now provided for.
In addition to this, the home and the church must render a united
cooperation to make the school life of the boy what it ought to be. The
Parents' and Teachers' Association in the public school is doing much to
bring this about between the home and the school, and it may be that a
Teachers' Association, consisting of officials and teachers of the
public school and the officials and teachers of the Sunday school, might
bring about a closer cooperation in the secular and religious education
of the boyhood of the community. Both these associations, if fostered,
would certainly tend to create a wholesome school atmosphere, which
would render a tremendous service in safeguarding the moral life of the
boy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON PUBLIC SCHOOL
Baldwin.--Industrial-social Education ($1.50).
Bloomfield.--Vocational Guidance of Youth (.60).
Brown.--The American High School ($1.40).
Crocker,--Religious Freedom in American Education ($1.00).
--Religious Education (.65).
III
THE CHURCH AND THE BOY
If the foregoing facts considering the home and school life are
absolutely true, and the consensus of opinion of the students of boy
life would have it so, it means that the church has a larger opportunity
than formerly supposed to influence the boy life of the community.
The investigator into the life of boyhood has revealed to us the fact
that a boy's life is not only fourfold--physical, social, mental and
spiritual--but is also unified in its process of development. If this be
so, there must be a common center for the boy's life, and neither the
home nor the school can, because of social or economic or political
conditions, become this center. The only remaining place where the boy's
life can be unified is the church.
The life of the church, generally speaking, is largely manipulated in
the services of worship, the Sunday school, and such auxiliary
organizations as the Brotherhood, Christian Endeavor, Missionary
societies, and other like organizations. At the present time the church
organization itself is but little adapted to the needs of the growing
boy, the church being a splendidly organized body for mature life. On
the other hand, until lately, the Sunday school has been recognized as a
place for children under twelve years of age. With the Adult Bible Class
movement of the past few years, there has come a revival in the Sunday
school in adult life, so that the place of adults and children in the
Sunday school has been magnified. There still remains, however, the need
of a modification of Sunday school organization to meet the need of the
adolescent boy.
The opportunity that faces the church and the Sunday school in this
adaptation is tremendous. Investigations of the past few years have
demonstrated beyond a doubt that the time to let loose impulses in the
life for the development of character is between the ages of fourteen
and twenty, or the plastic years of early and middle adolescence. Recent
studies have shown that the break in school life occurs at about
fourteen and a half or fifteen years, and that the majority of cases in
the juvenile courts fall in the same period. More souls are born into
the Kingdom of God in the early years of adolescence than at all other
ages of life put together, and the vantage ground of the church lies at
these ages, the effort necessary being the minimum and the results being
the maximum that can be attained.
The problem of the church in touching these adolescent years is to make
the right use of all the facts of boy life. Too long has the church
looked upon the boy as a mere field of operation. Too long has she
considered the boy as a dual personality and regarded life as both
secular and spiritual. Today she is beginning to understand that all
boyhood life is spiritual; that there are no secular activities in
boyhood, but that every activity that a boy enters into has tremendous
spiritual value, either for good or for bad. It is especially true in a
boy's life that the spiritual finds expression through the physical. It
should be true of all life, but a boy especially lives by physical
expression.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE CHURCH
Foster.--The Boy and the Church (.75).
Gray.--Non-Church Going, Its Reasons, and Remedies ($1.00).
Hodges.--Training of Children in Religion ($1.50).
Hulbert.--The Church and Her Children ($1.00).
IV
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL OR CHURCH SCHOOL
The Sunday school is the biggest force of the church in the life of the
boy. At times he refuses to attend the stated worship of the church, but
if the Sunday school be in the least interesting he will gladly attend
it. Its exercises and procedure must, however, be interesting, and
rightly so. The boy has the right to demand that the time, his own time,
which he gives to the Sunday school, should be utilized to some decently
profitable, pleasurable end. Education, even religious education, is not
necessarily a painful process. Discipline of mind or body has ceased to
be a series of disagreeable, rigid postures or exercises. Medicine has
no virtue merely because it is bad to the taste, and modern medical
usage prescribes free air and warm sunshine in large doses in place of
the old-time bitter nostrums. Even where the boy spirit needs
medication, the means employed need not be sepulchral gloom, solemn
warning, other-world songs, and penitential prayers, with great moral
applications of the non-understandable. The germs of spiritual disease
give way before the sunshine of the spirit, just as fast, if not faster,
than the microbes before the sun. The Sunday school, then, should be a
happy, joyous, sunny place, brimful of ideas, suggestion and impulse;
for these three are at once the giants and fairies of religious
education, and are the essential elements of character-making.
To produce all of the above, three things are needed: adequate
organization, careful supervision, and common-sense leading. The first
is imperative, because all education is a matter of organization. The
second is part of the first, as supervision is the genius of
organization. The third is fundamental, for all expression--true
education--depends on the teacher or leader, whose innate idea of the
fitness of things keeps him from doing, on the one hand, that which is
just customary, or, on the other hand, that which may appear to be just
scientific. The science of yesterday should be the tradition of today;
that is, if we are making progress in educational processes. Today's
science also should be fighting yesterday's for supremacy. Common sense
lies somewhere between the two.
The only two of these three Sunday school essentials that this chapter
deals with are organization and supervision.
The Sunday school should be a kind of a religious regiment, martial both
in its music and its virtues for its challenge to the adolescent boy.
Now, every regiment, in peace or war, is properly organized with
battalions, companies, and squads. Everything is accounted for, arranged
for, and some one definitely held responsible for certain things--not
everything. The organization covers every member of the regiment; so
should the Sunday school.
In Sunday school nomenclature the regimental battalions are
"Divisions"--Elementary, Secondary, and Adult, by name. The companies
likewise are named "Departments," each division having its own as in the
"Elementary"--"Cradle Roll," "Beginners," "Primary," and "Junior." The
squads in each case are the "Classes" that make up the Departments. _It
is essential that the Secondary, or Teen Age Division, which enrolls the
adolescent boy, be adequately organized._
Regiments, Battalions, Companies, and Squads must be properly
officered--must be supervised. Colonels, Majors, Captains, Lieutenants,
Sergeants and Corporals are the arteries of an army. In Sunday school
language, the head of the regiment is the General Superintendent, and
all the heads of divisions and departments are likewise named
Superintendent. The leader of the squad is the Teacher. Then a properly
supervised Sunday school is organized not unlike an army, and would be,
according to a diagram, like the following:
General Superintendent
|
------+-----------------+----------+------+-----------------+---
| | | |
Elementary Secondary Adult Special
Superintendent Superintendent Superintendent Superintendent
Cradle Roll Intermediate Organized Bible
Superintendent Superintendent Class
Superintendent
Beginners' Senior Home Superintendent
Superintendent Superintendent
or
Primary Teen Age
Superintendent Superintendent
or
Junior Boys'
Superintendent Superintendent
and
Girls'
Superintendent
Thus the modern school of the church would have at least twelve
superintendents to oversee its work, to say nothing of the special
workers, such as Training, Missionary and Temperance. This may seem like
an unnecessary array of officers, but the experienced will admit that
they are essential to good results in teaching boys and girls of varying
requirements. _Not until the Secondary or Teen Age Division is
adequately supervised, will the teen age boy or his religious education
be properly cared for_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
Frost.--The Church School (.65).
Cope.--Efficiency in the Sunday School ($1.00).
Lawrance.--Housing the Sunday School ($2.00).
--How to Conduct a Sunday School ($1.25).
Meyer.--The Graded Sunday School in Principle and Practice (.75).
SCHEME OF ORGANIZATION OF THE MODERN SUNDAY SCHOOL
DIVISIONS AND DEPARTMENTS
============================================================
ELEMENTARY | SECONDARY | ADULT | SPECIAL
--------------+---------------+--------------+--------------
Cradle Roll | (A) | Adult | Missionary
(1 Minute-3 | Intermediate | Bible |
years) | Department | Class |
--------------| (13-16 years) | Department | Temperance
Beginners' |---------------| (21 years +) |
Department | Senior |--------------|
(4-5 years) | Department | Home[1] | Purity
--------------| (17-20 years) | Department |
Primary |===============| Visitation |
Department | (B) | Department | Training
(6-8 years) | Teen Age or | |
--------------| High School | |
Junior | Department | | Parents
Department |===============| |
--------------| Girls' | |
| Department | | Parents and
| (13-20 years) | | Teachers
| | |
| (C) | |
| Boys' | | Etc.
| Department | |
| (13-20 years) | |
============================================================
V
THE BOY AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
There are two factors in the above subject--the factor of the boy and
the factor of the Sunday school.
The factor of the boy is the more important of the two, as the Sunday
school exists merely for the purpose of serving the boy. The boy,
therefore, should be thought of first, and the Sunday school should be
planned to meet his needs.
What then is the factor of the boy? "The boy is a many-sided animal,
with budding tastes, clamorous appetites, primitive likes and dislikes,
varied interests; an idealist and hater of shams, a reservoir of nerve
force, a bundle of contradictions, a lover of fun but a possible lover
of the best, a loyal friend of his true friends; impulsive, erratic,
impressionable to an alarming degree." Furthermore, the boy is
maturing, traversing the path from boyhood to manhood, is unstable, not
only in his growth, but also in his thought, is restless because of his
natural instability, and sometimes suffers from headiness and
independence. Between boyhood and manhood he travels swiftly, the
scenery changes quickly as he travels--_but he is traveling to manhood_.
No railway train or vehicle can keep pace with his speed. Morning sees
him a million miles farther on his way than night reckoned him but half
a day before. And yet, in all of it, he moves by well-defined stages in
his journey towards his destination of maturity. Today he is
individualistic, tomorrow heroic, a little later reflective and full of
thought, but in all of it is progressively active, moving forward by
leaps and bounds. His needs also increase with his pace, and must be
fully and timely met, if he is to reach symmetrical maturity. He needs
but three things to attain his best: proper sustenance, unlimited
activity, and careful guidance. Given these three rightly and at the
proper time, the quality of his manhood will go beyond our fondest hope.
The sustenance must be in keeping with his years, the activity in line
with his strength, and the guidance adapted to the needs of his
spirit--firm, compelling, but not irksome. In it all the boy is to be
encouraged in self-expression, resourcefulness, and independent manhood.
Such is a partial appreciation of the boy and his wonderful capacities,
a passing glimpse into a treasure house of wealth and possibility.
What now is the Sunday school? In the days that are past, it was looked
upon merely as a weekly meeting of boys and girls. Today it is regarded
as an institution for the releasing of great moral and religious
impulses into life. Of late there have even crept into its life the
names and some of the methods of our public school system. Grading and
trained teaching have also come into its life to stay; the modern Sunday
school is but little like that of a decade ago, and the changes are not
yet done with. Some of the innovations will be proved by experience and
retained with modification, while others doubtless will be eliminated as
worthless for the purposes of the Sunday school in its ideals of moral
and religious education. Improvement, however, is in the school
atmosphere.
However, with all the change, past, present and contemplated, the school
proper has but little time for the doing of its work. Fifty-two sessions
a year, of an hour's or an hour and a half's duration at best, fifty-two
or seventy-eight hours a year, only one-third of which is given to Bible
study, furnish a meager opportunity to accomplish its aim. Compared with
twelve hundred hours a year in the public school, or the twenty-eight
hundred hours a year a boy may work, it seems pitifully small, for the
aim of the Sunday school is bigger than the other two. The Sunday school
purposes to fit the boy to play the game in public school and work and
life. It seeks to give him impulses that will help him to keep clean,
inside and outside, to work with other boys in team play, to render
Christian service to his fellows, and to love and worship God as his
Father and Christ as his Saviour. The means it employs for these great
purposes are Bible study, Christian music, the association of the boys
in classes, and Christian leadership. To these the school is beginning
to add through-the-week meetings for what have been called its secular
activities. All this has come after a great deal of campaigning on the
part of groups of devoted men and women interested in boy life and
welfare. The Sunday school has had to overcome many handicaps in
reaching the boy of teen age, among which were the lack of efficient,
virile teachers, a misunderstanding of boy nature, lessons not adapted
to the boy's needs, music that was not appealing, and the indiscriminate
grouping of boys with members of the other sex. These, however, have
been rapidly overcome, and today the school is fairly well organized to
meet the needs of the boy.
There are yet some definite things to be written into the life of the
Sunday school to win and hold the boy of teen age in its membership for
life.
The first of these is the incorporation into the Sunday school
activities of those things that interest and touch and mold every phase
of a boy's life. It means the allotment of a definite part of the school
period for the discussion of the things the group of boys will engage in
during the week, and a through-the-week meeting as a real part of the
school work. This allows and provides for the athletic, outdoor,
camping, social, and literary outlet for the boy spirit.
Another forward step is graded Bible study, graded athletics, graded
service, graded social life, and graded mental activities. The work of
the school, to hold the boy, must be new and diverse in its interests,
and big enough and broad enough to command his constantly changing
attention. As his years so shall his interest be. To his years the work
of the Sunday school must correspond.
The Organized Bible Class that is self-governing must be added to the
above. Better have the gang on the inside of the church with a
Christian-altruistic content, than to permit the boys to organize under
self-direction on the outside. The Bible Class, too, has advantages over
every other form of organization. It has the Bible at its heart, the one
thing necessary to assure permanence, and never allows the thought of
graduation. Other boy organizations meet the need of certain specified
years; the Bible Class meets all the needs of all the years, and is
flexible enough to include all the special needs that are met by other
forms of organization.
The greatest need of the Sunday school is capable teaching. By it the
Bible Class becomes efficient or the reverse. For the boy the teacher
should be a man, a Christian man, who has personality enough to command
the boy's respect, and ability enough to direct the boy in doing things.
This means a comrade-relationship of work and play, Bible study and
athletics, spiritual and social activity, Sunday and week-day interest,
and a disposition on the part of the leader to get the boy to do
everything--government, planning, presiding, achieving--for himself.
This is true teaching and leadership. The greatest thing in the Sunday
school is the teacher. For now abideth the Lesson, the Class, and the
Teacher, but the greatest of these is the Teacher.
In view, then, of all that has gone before, what shall be said of the
Sunday school and the boy? Each to each is the complement; the two
together form a winning combination. On the one hand, the modern Sunday
school should meet the boy's need at every stage of his development in a
physical, social, mental, and spiritual way. It should give him variety
and progression in the processes of his maturing, and suitable
organization and trained leadership for character-building and
man-making. On the other hand, the boy will render the Sunday school and
church his service, and through both give his heart's thought, devotion,
and worship to his Lord. This is the whole matter of the Sunday school
and the normal boy, and is our vision of the future of the church. The
past did not do it! The past is dead!
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE BOY AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
Boys' Work Message (Men and Religion Movement) ($1.00).
Foster.--The Boy and the Church (.75).
Lewis.--The Intermediate Worker and His Work (.50).
--The Senior Worker and His Work (.50).
Robinson.--The Adolescent Boy in the Sunday School (_American Youth_,
April, 1911) (.20).
VI
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES IN SUNDAY SCHOOL WORK WITH BOYS
Five fundamental principles must be kept in mind when work with boys in
the Sunday school is attempted, and without these five principles very
little will be accomplished:
1. _The first of these is the Fourfold Life_. A boy lives physically,
socially, and mentally, as well as spiritually. He lives seven days a
week, twenty-four hours a day, not merely an hour or an hour and a half
on Sunday. His spiritual impulses are received and find their expression
in the physical, social and mental activities in which he is engaged
during the week. Any work that is attempted with a group of boys which
ignores this fourfold life of the boy cannot be a success. The man,
then, who plans to work with boys must plan to touch the various phases
of the boys' lives as he works with them, and he must also do this work
in proportion, not putting too much emphasis on any one phase, but
allowing equal emphasis on all. The ideal for a perfect work with boys
is that which is gleaned from a study of the boyhood of Christ, for the
boy Jesus, "grew in wisdom" (mentally), "and in stature" (physically),
"and in favor with God" (spiritually), "and with man" (socially). The
secret of the life of the Christ as a boy lies in his symmetrical and
well-balanced growth.
2. _The second principle is Progression._ In a successful church work
with boys the activities must be graded and progressive. The public
school could not command the presence of a boy if the work which it gave
him today was the same as that of last week, and that of last week the
same as that of a year ago. The inherent interest of the public school
to a boy is that he is discovering new things for himself, or being
taught new things all the while. This principle must be incorporated in
church and Sunday school work to keep the continued interest of the boy.
It must be observed, not only in Bible study (and this should be
graded), but also in the physical, social, mental and service activities
in which the boy finds himself engaged.
3. _The third principle is Service_. Too long has the church bribed her
boys and expected them to remain with her and in her service after
offering them wages for doing the thing which they ought to have done
for sheer love of it. Socials and clubs and athletic organizations and
other devices have been used as a bid to hold the boy, instead of being
used because the church owed these things to the boy as part of his
all-round development. "Where the treasure is, there will the heart be
also"; and it stands to reason that the heart of the boy will be where
he is giving most of himself. If he is investing himself heavily in the
interest and service of the church, that is where his interest will be.
4. _The fourth principle is Organisation_.
The law of the boy life in adolescence is organization, or the gang.
The church has its choice, either to let the boys organize themselves on
the outside, under self-directed and therefore incompetent leadership,
or to organize the boys on the inside of the church, provide a definite
place for this organization, and so permeate the gang instinct with the
spirit of Christian altruism. Every church organization for boys, the
organized Bible class, the church club, and other church forms of
organization, are aiming to do just this thing. The law of the boy's
life is to associate with his fellows and the expression of his purposes
is team work. The church, through suitable organization, can meet this
need of the boy life.
5. _The fifth and last principle is Leadership_. Leadership is
inseparable from organization, and organization is useless without
leadership. The leadership which is necessary for a group of adolescent
boys is that of a man, and the problem which is presented to a leader
with a group of boys in the adolescent years is not that of teaching,
but of awakening virile ideas and purposes in the boy life. The leader
must be able to enter into sympathy with and in at least a partial way
into participation with all the activities of the group. Everything that
a boy does is just the thing that the man used to do. There is,
therefore, little hardship, but instead the joy of living again, when a
man becomes the leader of a group of boys.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
Alexander (Editor).--Boy Training (.75).
Boys' Work Message (Men and Religion Movement) ($1.00).
Robinson.--The Adolescent Boy in the Sunday School (_American Youth_,
April, 1911) (.20).
VII
METHOD AND ORGANIZATION
=Organization=
By organization is meant, of course, boy organization, the form of
organization that attempts to keep the adolescent boy tied up to the
interests of the church. Today the forms of organization for this
purpose are legion, and strangely enough every such form but one has its
headquarters outside of the local church it seeks to serve. The one
exception is the form known as the Boys' Organized Bible Class, an
integral part of the Sunday school with no allegiance of any sort or
kind to any organization but the local church of which it is a
part--bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh, muscle of its muscle.