THE CHILD'S IDEAL LIFE
The modern child is likely to miss one of the great character enrichings
which his parents had, in that he is in danger of growing up entirely
ignorant of the poetic setting of religious thought in historic and
dignified hymns. The great hymns have done more for religious thought
and character than all the sermons that have ever been preached. Even in
the adult of the purely intellectual cast the hymn, aided by rhythm,
music, repetition, and emotion, is likely to become a more permanent
part of the mental substratum than any formal logical presentation of
ideas. How much more will this be the case with the child who feels more
than he reasons, who delights in cadence and rhythm, and who loves a
world of imagery!
§ 1. SONG AND STORY
Very early life's ideals are presented in poetic form; plays,
school-life, love of country, friendships, all take or are given metric
expression. So, for children, hymns have a perfectly natural place. The
child sings as he plays, sings as he works, sings in school, and, as
long as life and memory hold, these words of song will be his
possession; in declining years, when eyes are failing and other
interests may wane, fragments of childhood's songs and youth's poems
will sing themselves over in his memory; while in the years between how
often will some stanza or line spring into the focus of thought just at
the moment when it can give brave and helpful direction!
Those years of facile memorization should be like the ant's summer, a
period of steady storing in mind of the world's treasures of thought. No
man ever had too many good and beautiful thoughts in his memory. Few
have failed to recall with gratitude some apparently long-forgotten word
of cheer, light, and inspiration stored in childhood. The special virtue
of the hymn, among all poetic forms of great thoughts, is that memory is
strengthened by the music and the thought further idealized by it, while
frequent repetition fixes it the more firmly and repetition in
congregational song adds the high value of emotional association.
But what kinds of memory treasures are being given to the modern child
in the realm of religion? In by far the greater number of instances in
the United States neither church nor Sunday school nor home brings to
him any knowledge of the great hymns of religion.[15] In the churches
that use these hymns the child is frequently not in the Sunday
services; he is in the children's service or the school, while in the
majority of churches a weak-minded endeavor for amusement has
substituted meaningless rag-time trivialities for rich and dignified
hymns. Perhaps the custom of encouraging congregations to jig, dance,
cavort, or drone through the frivolities of "popular" gospel songs is
only a passing craze, but it is a most unfortunate one; it tends to
divorce worship and thought, to make worship a matter of purely
superficial emotions, and to form the habit of expressing religion, the
highest experience of life, in language, often irreverent and almost
always trivial, slangy, or ridiculous. It is an insult to the
intelligence of children to ask them to sing
We're pilgrims o'er the sands of time,
We have not long to stay,
The lifeboat soon is coming,
To carry the pilgrims away.
It is the duty of parents to know what their children are learning in
the Sunday school. Not only are they often missing the opportunity to
lay up the treasure of elevating, inspiring thoughts; they are acquiring
crude, mistaken, misleading theological concepts in the hideous,
revolting figures of "evangelistic songs"; they are storing their minds
with atrocities in English and in figures of speech; they are acquiring
the habits of sentimentality in religion and inhibiting the finer,
higher feelings. They are blunting their higher feelings by repeating
incongruous and nauseating figures of being "washed in blood," or they
are carelessly singing sentiments they do not understand.
What can the family do about this? It ought to assert its rights in the
church. It ought to protest and rebel against the debauching of mind and
the degrading of religion (all for the sake of selling trashy books at
$25 per hundred). A parent would do better to keep his child from church
and Sunday school than to permit his mind to be filled with the
sanguinary pictures of God, the mediaeval theology of the modern
songbook, and its offenses against truth in thought and form. But the
family can work positively and more effectively by providing good hymns
for children in the home.
§ 2. TRAINING IN SONG
Almost without exception all children will sing if encouraged early in
life. In the family group one has only to start a familiar song and soon
all will be singing. It is just as natural to sing "Abide with Me" when
the family sits together in the evening as it is to start "My Alabama
Choo-choo." Children like the swing of "Onward, Christian Soldiers" just
as much as in the northern states they like "Marching through Georgia."
If they do not know the hymns the home is the best of all places in
which to learn them.
A large section of real family life is missing in families that do not
sing together. A home without song lacks one of the strongest bonds of
family unity, and the after-years will be deprived of a memory dear
indeed to many others. Days often come when the wheels of family life
seem to develop friction, when little rifts seem to throw the members
far apart, but the evening song brings them together. The unity of
action, of feeling, the development of emotions above the day's
irritation and strife, all help to new joys in family living.
We may well think of the fine songs and the great hymns together. There
is no fixed wall between "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory," and "The Son
of God Goes Forth," nor between "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Jerusalem
the Golden." The modern home has the musical instruments to lead in
song--though they are not always essential--and lacks only the planning
and forethought to develop the joys of song. It must provide the thought
that applies the simpler forms of musical expression to the sweetening
and enriching of life.
Let no one say, "My family is not musical." That simply means that your
family does not take time for music and song. Build on the training in
patriotic and folk-songs given in the schools; sing these same songs
over in the home and then associate with the best of them the best of
the hymns. Cultivate the habit of binding the whole realm of feeling in
music together, the hymns and the songs, to make religion mean beauty
and devotion and to make the finer sentiments of life truly religious.
This costs time and thought. Someone must plan that the books of songs
and hymns are provided, that the opportunity is given, and that wise,
unobtrusive leadership is there. Have ready several copies of the book
containing the best hymns. Think out your plan of procedure in advance,
selecting the songs, or at least the first one. Then at the right time
simply begin to play that song and you will scarcely need to invite the
children to sing with you.
Should anyone doubt whether children will enjoy singing good hymns, he
may purchase a few records for the phonograph, for example, "O Come All
Ye Faithful," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "O Zion Haste," "Holy,
Holy, Holy," "Abide with Me." These will suit those of from ten upward;
younger children will enjoy "Can a Little Child Like Me," "Brightly
Gleams Our Banner," "Jesus Loves Me." "I Think When I Read That Sweet
Story," and "For the Beauty of the Earth," though they will join gladly
in the other hymns. Or, instead of using the phonograph, sit down
quietly at the piano and play these hymns, with just enough emphasis for
the children to catch the rhythm, and they will soon be standing at the
piano singing with you.[16]
§ 3. PLAY ACTIVITY
The child is a playing animal. Play is not an invention of the devil,
designed to plague parents and to lead children to waste their time. It
is nature's best method of education, for when a child plays he is
simply reaching forward in his activities to the realization of his
ideals. Play is idealized experiences. There is always a significance of
wider and maturer experience in children's play. Therefore the family
must find space and time and adaptation of organization to the child's
need of spontaneous, free activity in play.
The special religious value of play lies in the fact that the child in
his games is experimenting with life, learning its lessons; especially
is he learning the art of living with other lives. It is our religious
duty to see to it that our children become used to living in society by
playing in social groups. Scarcely anyone is more to be pitied than the
lonely child standing in the corner of the playground, able only to
watch the games, because parental prohibition has already made him a
solitary and unsocial creature.
The educational potencies of play are so great that we dare not leave
its activities to chance. Parents must study the power of play, its
psychological and educational values, in order to direct its activity to
the highest good.
The adequate care of a child's play-life will involve, in addition to
the trained intelligence of the parents, provision for space in the
house and also outdoors, willingness to subordinate our peace and our
pleasure to the child's play at times, a reasonable though not
necessarily expensive provision of play materials, attention to the
character of the plays and playmates. The home will not lose its harmony
and beauty if it is filled with playing children. Its function has to do
with their development rather than with the preservation of chairs.
I. References for Study
H.F. Cope, _Hymns You Ought to Know_, Introduction. Revell, $1.50.
W.F. Pratt, _Musical Ministries_. Revell, $1.00.
H.W. Hulbert, _The Church and Her Children_, chap. x. Revell,
$1.00.
II. Further Reading
For a list of great hymns see _Hymns You Ought to Know_, edited by
Henry F. Cope, and mentioned above. It contains one hundred
standard hymns with a brief account of each hymn and of each
author.
E.D. Eaton, "Hymns for Youth," _Religious Education_, December,
1912, VII, 509.
See report of the Commission on Worship in the Sunday School, in
_Religious Education_, October, 1914.
Read especially the chapter on this subject in H.H. Hartshorne,
_Worship in the Sunday School_. Columbia University, $1.25.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. What special advantages do songs and hymns have in their
pedagogical power?
2. What hymns do you remember from childhood? In what way are these
hymns valuable to you?
3. What changes would you like to see in the hymns the children
learn today?
4. What difficulties do you find in training children to sing in
the home?
5. Is it worth while to teach children to play? What games have
special educational value? What games have religious significance
or value? Give reasons for your opinions.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] One of the best collections of suitable religious songs is _Worship
and Song_. Pilgrim Press, $0.40.
[16] An excellent plan is worked out in _The Children's Hour of Story
and Song_ by Moffat and Hidden, Unitarian Sunday School Society, in
which children's stories are given and following them suitable songs and
hymns with the music for each.