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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013798776 
 
THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN IN THE 
 CHRISTIAN FAMILY 
 
The Training of Children 
 
 in the 
 
 Christian Family 
 
 BY 
 
 LUTHER ALLAN WEIGLE 
 
 Horace Bushnell Professor of Christian Nurture 
 Yale University- 
 
 Author of "The Pupil and the Teacher," "Talks to Sunday 
 School Teachers," " Training the Devotional Life," etc. 
 
 THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 
 BOSTON CHICAGO 
 
Copyright 1922 
 By S. A. WESTON 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 BOSTON 
 
TO 
 
 Eltaa latttri UrtgU, ®.S. 
 
 AND 
 
 Manual! Urram OTrtgte 
 
 MY PARENTS 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This is a book for parents which deals with princi- 
 ples rather than with problems or cases. It aims 
 to help parents to think for themselves; and does 
 not undertake to present ready-made formulas for 
 the training of children or prescriptions for use in 
 various emergencies. It is not mere theory, how- 
 ever; most of its materials lie within the author's 
 experience as parent and as teacher. 
 
 The outline of the book is that of an introductory 
 course for the training of parents, prepared and 
 released by the International Sunday School Lesson 
 Committee under the title of " Hints on Child- 
 Training," as one of its elective courses for adult 
 classes in the Sunday school. The editors of The 
 Church School requested me to prepare a series of 
 articles, following this outline, which might be used 
 as a basis for study and discussion in parents' 
 classes. In that form, the chapters of this book 
 appeared in that publication, and have been used as 
 a course of study by classes of parents in Sunday 
 schools of various denominations, and as the basis 
 for a year's programs and discussions by mothers' 
 clubs and parent-teacher associations. It is hoped 
 that the book may find a yet wider use by such 
 classes and groups, as well as commend itself to the 
 reading of individual fathers and mothers. My 
 
viii Preface 
 
 thanks are due to the editors of The Church School, 
 not only for permission to republish, but for making 
 available the reports of the experience of various 
 classes who used the course. 
 
 Questions for investigation and discussion, and 
 suggestions for further reading, are appended to 
 each chapter, and may be used as fully or as little as 
 desired. Many individual readers, doubtless, will 
 choose to ignore this apparatus for study; classes 
 and clubs, on the other hand, will find ample, ma- 
 terial suggested here for as full programs as they may 
 wish to plan. 
 
 The resolution of the International Sunday School 
 Lesson Committee which provided for the outlining 
 of this course, stated that it should be " based upon 
 Biblical principles but not necessarily confined to the 
 Bible for lesson material." In accordance with this 
 resolution, the Committee made no attempt to 
 furnish Biblical passages as the basis of the lesson 
 study; but they " added to each lesson one or more 
 Biblical passages, which may be read and used for 
 devotional purposes." The list of these devotional 
 passages, revised to accord with the measure of 
 revision which the author has made in the outline of 
 the lessons themselves, is as follows: 
 
 Chapter I. Ephesians 5 : 22 to 6 : 9. 
 
 II. Philippians 2 : 5-11; James 1 : 5-8. 
 
 III. Philippians 4 : 1-9. 
 
 IV. Romans 12 : 1-21. 
 
 V. Proverbs 22 : 1-6; Galatians 6 : 1-10. 
 
Preface ix 
 
 VI. Matthew 18:1-5; 1 Corinthians 
 
 9 : 24-27. 
 VII. Ephesians 4 : 1-16. 
 VIII. Proverbs 4 : 10-19; 2 Timothy 3 : 
 14-17. 
 IX. Joshua 1 : 7-9; Acts 8 : 26-39. 
 X. 1 Samuel 18 : 1-4; 20:1-4. 
 XI. Luke 10 : 25-37. 
 
 XII. 1 Samuel 1 : 21-28; Psalm 100 : 1-5. 
 XIII. Luke 2 : 41-52; Mark 10 : 13-16. , 
 
 I have dedicated this book to my father and 
 mother. I cannot say in this public way all that I 
 feel toward them; but they will recognize in this 
 book their own spirit, and will read between its 
 lines their son's appreciation of the Christian home 
 in which he was brought up and his gratitude for 
 parents such as they have been and are. 
 
 L. A. WEIGLE. 
 
 Yale University, 
 
 February 1, 1922. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Christian Family 3 
 
 II. The Modern Home and Its Per- 
 plexities 17 
 
 III. The Home Atmosphere 33 
 
 IV. Building Strong Bodies 50 
 
 V. Forming Right Habits 68 
 
 VI. The Child at Play 83 
 
 VII. The Child at Work 100 
 
 VIII. The Child at Study 119 
 
 IX. Developing a Taste for Good 
 
 Reading 138 
 
 X. The Child and His Friends 158 
 
 XI. Doing for Others 173 
 
 XII. Training the Devotional Life.. . . 188 
 
 XIII. The Child and the Church 205 
 
THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN IN THE 
 CHRISTIAN FAMILY 
 
The Training of Children in the 
 Christian Family 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 The Christian Family 
 
 Wanted: A New Set of Parents 
 
 A recent conference of educators was discussing 
 the problem of vocational guidance, and canvassing 
 the various ways in which schools and colleges 
 may help young people to decide wisely the all- 
 important question of their occupation in life. One 
 speaker gave pungent expression to a conviction 
 which met with the evident approbation of most of 
 the teachers present: 
 
 " I do not hesitate to say that in my opinion the 
 children of today do not need vocational guides so 
 much as they need a new set of parents; parents 
 who have spunk enough to climb back upon the 
 thrones in their own households which they have 
 abdicated in favor of their children; parents who 
 have energy enough to get their children out of bed 
 in the morning early enough for them to wash their 
 faces, comb their hair, and lace their shoes without 
 the schools being obliged to give promotion credit 
 for their doing so; parents who, when the shades of 
 night begin to fall, look after their boys with the 
 same degree of care that they give to their bull pup, 
 
4 The Training of Children 
 
 which they chain up, lest he associate with the 
 strange cur upon the street. We have state autoc- 
 racy enough in education; what we need most is 
 authority in the home." 
 
 An utterance of this sort, propounded glibly, 
 wins ready assent; but later begets misgivings. 
 Just what sort of authority, we begin to wonder, 
 did the speaker have in mind? Parents need more 
 than spunk or energy if they are to deal wisely with 
 their children; chaining up is a poor way to care for 
 boys; and no household ought to have a throne. 
 The speaker's phrases have a backward-looking, 
 monarchical air about them that makes us pause. 
 
 Yet his main point is true. The children of today 
 do need a new set of parents. Better schools, more 
 playgrounds, efficient health organizations, adequate 
 laws properly enforced, social settlements, boys' 
 and girls' clubs, and churches that have caught the 
 vision of their educational opportunity and re- 
 sponsibility, may do much to determine the character 
 of the next generation. But beneath all these, and 
 more vital in its influence than any, is the home life 
 of the child. Failure there is fundamental. And too 
 many homes of today are failing, at one point or 
 another, to be all that they ought to be, and to do 
 all that they ought to do, for their children. 
 
 The fundamental principles of child-training 
 remain the same for generation after generation, for 
 they depend in part upon the natural laws of the 
 child's growth and development and in part upon the 
 
The Christian Family 5 
 
 essential principles of human morality. Yet the 
 particular problems of parents change with changing 
 material and social conditions; new methods of 
 observation and experiment bring more assured 
 knowledge of the facts and laws of child-life; and 
 moral ideals themselves develop as the race grows 
 in experience. 
 
 We shall begin by discussing in this chapter the 
 functions of the family. We shall go on, in the next 
 chapter, to consider some of the perplexing condi- 
 tions which seem, at least, to make it hard, in these 
 days, to maintain a Christian home and to bring 
 up children wisely and well. We shall then take 
 up, one by one, the more fundamental problems of 
 the parents who seek to promote the all-round wel- 
 fare of their children — physical, mental, moral, 
 social, and religious. 
 
 Functions of the Family 
 
 The functions of the family in human life are five- 
 fold: (1) biological; (2) educational; (3) moral; 
 (4) social; (5) religious. 
 
 The Biological Function 
 
 The biological function of the family is the per- 
 petuation of the race. It is to beget children. This 
 remains true, no matter what one may deem to be 
 the proper number of children for a single family, 
 and without regard to one's opinion concerning the 
 wisdom or unwisdom, the morality or immorality, 
 
6 The Training of Children 
 
 of birth-control. Without children, the family. is 
 incomplete, and marriage has fallen short of its full 
 end. It is not merely to enjoy one another that 
 a man and a woman are joined in marriage, however 
 noble and precious and removed from mere passion 
 their mutual devotion may be and become. It is 
 that they may beget and rear children. The instincts 
 of sex constitute no end in themselves; they are a 
 means to the further end of the reproduction of the 
 species. 
 
 The Educational Function 
 
 The educational function of the family is the 
 mental, moral, and spiritual perpetuation of the race. 
 It is not enough that, from one generation to another, 
 life is passed on by the bringing into physical exist- 
 ence of little human animals. These little animals 
 must be cared for during a period of helplessness and 
 dependence. And that period must be one of educa- 
 tion, wherein is begun, at least, the transmission of 
 life upon its higher levels, the reproduction of the 
 distinctively human powers of thinking, feeling and 
 doing, and the communication of the habits, informa- 
 tion, skills, interests, purposes, opinions, beliefs, 
 ideals, standards, and hopes which constitute the 
 characteristic achievements, thus far, of human 
 society. 
 
 Here lies the fundamental reason for the continued 
 existence of a family as contrasted with the mere 
 mating and subsequent separation of a male and a 
 
The Christian Family 7 
 
 female. Historically, indeed, it seems clear that 
 the origin of the family is due primarily to the rela- 
 tive helplessness of the offspring. Their need of 
 food, protection, help, and education has been the 
 most potent factor in the creation of permanent 
 family groups. 
 
 In the life of the race the family was the first and, 
 for a time, the only educational institution. This is 
 exemplified in the history of the Hebrew people, 
 who had no elementary schools until about the time 
 of Christ. Every Hebrew home was a school, where 
 the father and mother taught their children the 
 principles of the Law and trained them for the 
 practical duties of life. 
 
 As the experience of the race accumulates, as 
 knowledge grows, arts and sciences expand and 
 develop, occupations diversify and life becomes more 
 intricate and complex, the education of children 
 becomes a task too great for the unaided parent. 
 It requires more time than he can give and more 
 technical ability than he possesses, for they can no 
 longer be taught by simple association with himself 
 in the common duties of home life. So schools come 
 into existence; and education becomes in part the 
 business of a specially trained teacher, who brings 
 children into a specially arranged institutional 
 environment and furnishes them with material 
 that has been carefully selected and graded with a 
 view to its educative value. 
 
 Just what shall be the precise balance between that 
 
8 The Training of Children 
 
 part of the education of children which may best be 
 accomplished by the direct and formal methods of 
 the school, and that part of their education which 
 depends upon the more informal, vital influences of 
 the home and of social environment generally, is a 
 problem which each generation, doubtless, must 
 meet and solve for itself. This one thing, however, 
 is certain: that the whole work of education can 
 never be accomplished by schools, however wisely 
 these may be planned and administered. 
 
 The family cannot wholly surrender its educa- 
 tional function without ceasing to exist. The head- 
 master of Eton School calls the influences of home 
 life in early childhood the corner-stone of education, 
 in a striking book under this title. 1 He maintains 
 that the fundamental issues of character have been 
 settled for most boys before they enter public 
 school, as a result of these same quiet influences 
 and associations. Horace Bushnell held that the 
 first three years of a child's life are more important, 
 as a general fact, in their bearing upon education and 
 character, than all the years of discipline that may 
 come afterward. 2 
 
 We may not here enter into the reasons for these 
 convictions, which will be brought out in detail 
 when we come to study " The Home Atmosphere." 
 Let us note simply: (a) that the family, in its home 
 life, has the child first, and that the impressions which 
 
 » Edward Ly ttdton: The Cormr-Slone of Education. 
 « Horace Bushnell: Ckristian Nurture, Pt. II, Ch. 1. 
 
The Christian Family 9 
 
 he then receives will serve as background, foundation 
 and apperceptive basis for all subsequent education; 
 
 (b) that it has him in his most impressionable years 
 and educates him by the method of constant contact 
 and association, with influences all the more vital 
 because for the most part indirect and unnoticed; 
 
 (c) that these influences are of especial importance in 
 their bearing upon the growing character of the child. 
 
 The Moral Function 
 
 The moral function of the family is the develop- 
 ment of the character of its members, both parents 
 and children. Here is a little group of old and 
 young, mature and immature, living together in 
 mutual affection, placing personal values first, con- 
 strained by the manifold contacts of their common 
 life each to have regard for the things of the other, 
 always giving and receiving service, with opportuni- 
 ties for helpfulness, unselfishness, and even self- 
 sacrifice, so constant as to make these a matter of 
 course — what finer soil for the virtues, what better 
 training ground for character, could there be? 
 It is not to be wondered at that John Fiske found in 
 the evolution of the family " the cosmic roots of 
 love and self-sacrifice " and Henry Drummond the 
 path of "the ascent of man"; that Alexander 
 Sutherland should have been able to trace to the 
 same source " the origin and growth of the moral 
 instinct "; and that W. F. Lofthouse, at the close of 
 his study of " Ethics and the Family," should con- 
 
10 The Training of Children 
 
 elude that " the mutual forbearance, common 
 endeavor and spontaneous, self-effacing and self- 
 fulfilling affection native in true family life " con- 
 stitute " the type of all social and religious well- 
 being." "All that has made human life worth 
 remembering," the latter author goes on to say, 
 " has had its origin in the simple restraints and 
 services of the family. All that will make it worth 
 admiring will flow from their preservation, consecra- 
 tion and extension." 
 
 One may well doubt whether this moral function 
 of the family could ever be fulfilled by any other 
 institution. Schools may take over the larger part 
 of the education of children; and the state may 
 exercise supervision and control in many matters 
 that, under simpler conditions of life, were left to 
 the parent. The life of the school and the service 
 of the state, moreover, can do much to bring out the 
 sturdier virtues and to train the character of the 
 young. But these must deal with children in 
 large groups and in relatively cold and impersonal 
 ways. They can never beget and train the inner 
 emotional springs of the moral life as the family does 
 in its atmosphere of personal affection, love, and 
 loyalty. Were there no family, the state would 
 doubtless be obliged to invent some such small social 
 groupings as might be expected, in some measure, 
 to fulfill its function in this respect. Public institu- 
 tions do something of the sort when they adopt the 
 policy of house or cottage dormitories; colleges, 
 
The Christian Family 11 
 
 when they permit the organization of fraternities. 
 But no substitute that has yet been tried or imagined 
 can take the place, morally, of a real home, or com- 
 pensate for the loss of father and mother and the 
 lack of a genuine family life. 
 
 It is not simply the children who are thus built 
 up in character by the experiences and mutual 
 services of life within the family. The father and 
 mother gain more than they give; their self-denial 
 is their self-fulfillment. " There are some who 
 become of the blessed by laying down their lives for 
 their mature friends. There are a few who attain 
 blessedness by putting themselves out for their 
 parents and elders. But for one who does either of 
 these things there are hundreds who approach to 
 Christian character by sacrificing themselves for 
 their children. When Jesus' disciples asked what 
 they should do to attain eternal life, the Master 
 knew human nature exceedingly well, when, in 
 answer, he placed a child in the midst, and told them 
 to see to it that no stumbling-blocks were put in the 
 way of these little ones." 1 
 
 The Social Function 
 
 The social function of the family is to serve as the 
 elemental unit of the organization of society, as an 
 instrument of social control and social progress, and 
 as a training-school for life in the larger social and 
 political relations. 
 
 > Bernard I. Bell: Right and Wrong After tht War, pp. 102, 103. 
 
12 The Training of Children 
 
 The Religious Function 
 
 The religious function of the family is to serve as a 
 center of Christian living and of Christian worship, 
 as a basis for the child's understanding of the father- 
 hood of God and the brotherhood of man, and as an 
 elemental unit in the realization upon earth of the 
 kingdom of God. 
 
 These two functions belong together, as the two 
 commandments belong together, in which Jesus 
 summed up the whole duty of man. True religion 
 involves effective social good- will; the kingdom of 
 God means a regeneration, not simply of indi- 
 viduals, but of the whole corporate life of mankind, 
 social, economic, and political. 
 
 No family can completely fulfill its educational 
 and moral functions without going beyond its own 
 bounds into the larger relations of life. Conversely, 
 state and church, democracy and religion, depend 
 ultimately upon the family and upon the character 
 of its life. There need be no antagonism between 
 the larger and the smaller group, the broader and 
 the more narrow loyalty. Our larger human loyal- 
 ties are rather, as Professor Royce has so well shown 
 in his Philosophy of Loyalty, strengthened by and 
 built upon the lesser, local and family loyalties which 
 lie nearest at hand. A good son and brother is a 
 better neighbor, citizen and patriot; and a good 
 neighbor and patriot is better qualified to do his 
 duty as a citizen of the world than the so-called 
 
The Christian Family 13 
 
 " internationalist," who is so devoted to everything 
 in general as to recognize no particular ties of country 
 or of kindred. 
 
 The Christian religion universalizes the relations of 
 family life. Jesus' teachings concerning God as 
 well as concerning human duty, are based upon these 
 relations. God, he tells us, is our Father; and all 
 we are brethren. Our understanding of these teach- 
 ings depends upon the quality of our own family life. 
 It is the privilege and responsibility of the parent to 
 interpret God to his children in terms of his own 
 character, and so to direct the spirit of his family that 
 it may fitly serve as the type for all good social liv- 
 ing. A Christian family is one which, established in 
 the Christian convictions of the parents, seeks so to 
 express these convictions in its spirit and practice 
 that its children may grow up to be children of God. 
 
 The Child is the Center of the Family 
 
 The functions of the family, as we have thus 
 canvassed them, center about the children. To 
 beget children, and to bring them up that they may 
 come into possession of their full heritage — physical, 
 mental, moral, social, and religious — as members of 
 the human race, and may be qualified, in point both 
 of ability and of good-will, to undertake their share 
 of its common enterprises and to labor for the good 
 of mankind and for the kingdom of God — this !is 
 the real end and purpose of family life. It was for 
 this end, so far as our human minds can judge, that 
 
14 The Training of Children 
 
 God ordained the family. It is this end, certainly, 
 that its whole history in human evolution justifies. 
 
 Has the family, as a social institution, outlived its 
 usefulness ? There are not wanting those in our own 
 day who would answer that question in the affirma- 
 tive. And they would base their answer primarily 
 upon the alleged failure of the family to beget and 
 to rear such children as the welfare of the species 
 demands. " Socialism," says Mr. H. G. Wells, 
 " states definitely what almost everybody recognizes 
 nowadays with greater or less clearness, and that is 
 the concern of the state for children." 1 
 
 Recognizing the justice of that concern, we may 
 still believe that the needs of the modern state, which 
 are the needs of the race, may best be met by the 
 ancient institution of the family. But to do so the 
 family must squarely face its responsibilities and 
 put first things first; it must meet and solve the 
 problems presented by modern material and social 
 conditions; above all, it must become more genuinely 
 democratic and more whole-heartedly Christian. 
 The training of children is no mere side-issue; it is 
 the main business of those of us who are parents. 
 
 ■H. G. WdU, Socialism and the Family, pages 60, 61. 
 
The Christian Family 15 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 The numerals refer to the various titles of the bibliography which 
 follows. 
 
 1. What are the functions of the family? Formulate your own ideas 
 on this point, and state them in your own words. Compare the state- 
 ment given in the chapter with those given in 2, ch. 1 and 4; 4, ch. 1-8, 
 23-24; 9, ch. 1; 14, ch. 6. 
 
 2. Is the birthrate in America falling? Find out the facts and the 
 reasons assigned. Was the late President Roosevelt justified in his 
 strictures on race-suicide? 9, ch. 4; 10, ch. 13. 
 
 3. What is the meaning of infancy among the animals and in men? 
 See 7, 8, or 13. 
 
 4. What is the meaning and what are the aims of education? 3, ch. 
 l;5,ch.l-2. 
 
 5. Show how the schools are necessarily, in these days, assuming cer- 
 tain functions formerly fulfilled by the home. See 6, ch. 1. 
 
 6. Should the schools give credit for the pupil's performance of home 
 duties? See 1. 
 
 7. Do the relative functions of home and school differ in the city and 
 in rural districts? Give reasons for your answer. 
 
 8. Are there aspects of the work of education that necessarily depend 
 upon the family, in the sense that the schools cannot do these as well? 
 If so, what? And why? 
 
 9. What do you think of the views of Lyttelton (12) and Bushnell 
 (2 pt. 2 ch. 1) which are referred to in the chapter? 
 
 10. The primitive family as an educational agency. 10, ch. 2; IS. 
 
 11. The Hebrew family. 10, ch. 3; articles on " Education " and 
 " Family " in Hastings' Bible Dictionary. 
 
 12. The Christian ideal for the family. 2; 4; 11; 14, ch. 3-6. 
 
 13. Show from the teachings of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, 
 how the Christian religion centers about and universalizes the relations 
 of family life. 
 
 14. In what sense is the development of character the distinctive func- 
 tion of family life? See 11. 
 
 15. What is the attitude of Socialism toward the family? For a radical 
 view see Frederick Engels: The Origin of the Family. For a more 
 moderate view see H. G. Wells: Socialism and the Family. 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 1. L. R. Alderman: School Credit for Home Work. 
 
 2. Horace Bushnell: Christian Nurture. 
 
 3. N. M. Butler: The Meaning of Education. 
 
 4. H. F. Cope: Religious Education in the Family. 
 
 5. John Dewey: Democracy and Education. 
 
 6. John Dewey: The School and Society. 
 
16 The Training of Children 
 
 7. Henry Drummond: The Ascent of Man. 
 
 8. John Fiske: The Meaning of Infancy. 
 
 9. J. M. Gillette: The Family and Society. 
 
 10. W. Goodsell: The Family as a Social and Educational Institution. 
 
 11. W. F. Loft house: Ethics and the Family. 
 
 12. E. Lyttelton: The Corner-Stone of Education. 
 
 13. A. Sutherland: The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct. 
 
 14. C. F. & C. B. Thwing: The Family, an Historical and Social Study. 
 
 15. A. J. Todd: The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 The Modern Home and Its Perplexities 
 
 The Changing Home 
 
 The home is the dwelling-place of a family. The 
 family is a group of persons; the home is their 
 material habitation. The functions of the family, 
 we have seen, are biological, educational, moral, 
 social, and religious; the purpose of the home is to 
 furnish a place and material equipment for the ful- 
 filling of these functions. The family creates the 
 home; but the home, in turn, does much to determine 
 the life and character of the family and of its mem- 
 bers. 
 
 The homes of today are different from those of a 
 century, or even a generation, ago: in some respects 
 richer, and in some respects poorer. Changing 
 material and social conditions make it no longer 
 possible for most of us to maintain, for our children, 
 just the sort of home that our parents maintained for 
 us. None of us, perhaps, should desire to reproduce 
 precisely the home in which we were brought up. 
 But there is real danger that the homes which we 
 furnish to our children may not be better, but rather 
 worse, than the homes of our childhood. 
 
 The changing conditions of home life will appear 
 in detail as we take up, in successive chapters, the 
 
18 The Training of Children 
 
 various problems of parents which we are to study 
 together. We shall seek in this chapter to gain a 
 comprehensive preliminary view of the more funda- 
 mental of these changes and to state, rather than to 
 try to solve, the outstanding problems which they 
 raise. The perplexities of the modern home are due 
 in large part to conditions which may be grouped 
 into five classes, according as they are involved in 
 (1) the transfer of industry from the home to factory 
 and office; (2) the massing of the population in 
 cities; (3) the commercialization of life; (4) the 
 changing status of woman; (5) the changing charac- 
 ter of parental authority. 
 
 The Transfer of Industry from the Home to Factory 
 and Office 
 The world's work is no longer done, as it once was, 
 by hand and in the home. Daniel DeFoe, in his 
 record of " A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great 
 Britain," made about 1725, has left an interesting 
 picture of the cloth-making industries of England, 
 as these were carried on in the separate households of 
 the country-sides : " We saw the Houses full of lusty 
 Fellows, some at the Dye-vat, some at the Loom, 
 others dressing the Cloths; the Women and Children 
 carding or spinning; all employed from the youngest 
 to the oldest; scarce anything above four Years old, 
 but its Hands were sufficient for its own Support." 
 But we need not go so far back. President Stanley 
 Hall, in his account of " Boy Life in a Massachusetts 
 
The Modern Home and Its Perplexities 19 
 
 Country Town Forty Years Ago " (written in 1891, 
 hence referring to the period of the 'SO's) recalls most 
 vividly the days when not only sowing and reaping, 
 stock-raising and dairying, brewing and baking, 
 but the grinding of grain into flour and meal, the 
 dressing of flax, sheep-shearing, wool-carding, spin- 
 ning, weaving of all sorts, garment-making, butcher- 
 ing, soap-making, candle-making, the tanning of 
 hides, shoe-making and cobbling, wood-working, 
 carpentering and forging were either the occupa- 
 tions, on occasion, of every home or the business of 
 some one in every neighborhood. 
 
 All this is now changed. We live in an age of 
 machinery, of great factories, and of minute speciali- 
 zation in industry. The labor-saving inventions of 
 the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century 
 began the industrial revolution, as it has come to 
 be called, which is not yet ended — the revolution 
 which has replaced and is replacing hand-labor with 
 machines, and has transferred practically the whole 
 of modern industry from the homes to the factories 
 of the land. In agriculture alone does the domestic 
 control of industry survive in any effective fashion, 
 and even in this field it has changed and is 
 changing. 
 
 The effects upon the home of the progressive 
 deprivation of its industrial functions have been 
 great and far-reaching. One of the first effects of the 
 industrial revolution was to take women and chil- 
 dren, as well as men, out of the home and to set them 
 
20 The Training of Children 
 
 to work in factories. The whole family, each mem- 
 ber according to his or her ability, had cooperated 
 in the industry of the home; and it was but natural, 
 when this industry was transferred to a factory, that 
 the women and children should accompany husband 
 and father, to undertake in the new environment 
 duties analogous to those which they had performed 
 in the home. And other reasons speedily appeared. 
 The new machinery made it possible for women and 
 children to do many things that formerly had to be 
 done by men; and the lower wages for which they 
 could be secured made it profitable for the factory 
 owner to use as many of them as possible, and to 
 reduce to the necessary minimum the number of men 
 in his employ. The result was the hideous system of 
 woman and child labor which cursed England in 
 the early nineteenth century and which later began 
 to. fasten itself upon America. 
 
 For women and children to work in their homes, 
 cooperating with fathers and older brothers in an 
 industry domestically controlled, may be, and was, 
 for the most part, good; but for women and children 
 to work in factories, except under conditions wisely 
 planned and carefully controlled, is bad. It means 
 women unfitted for motherhood, and mothers unable 
 to care properly for their children; it means children 
 stunted in body, mind and soul, who will in turn 
 breed a generation worse than themselves. Unregu- 
 lated woman- and child-labor, under the present 
 industrial system, not only ruins the life of the home: 
 
The Modern Home and Its Perplexities 21 
 
 it brings about the degeneration of a people; it is 
 a sure pathway to race-suicide. Fortunately, the 
 world is awaking to these facts. Much remains to 
 be done in the way of constructive reform; but a 
 beginning has been made toward adequate laws 
 restricting child labor and regulating the conditions 
 under which women may be employed in industrial 
 establishments. 
 
 These more obviously sinister effects of the 
 industrial revolution upon the life of the home, 
 however, are by no means the only ones. In the 
 case also of those families where the earnings of the 
 father are sufficient for maintenance and where 
 neither mother nor children are sent beyond the 
 bounds of the home to labor for wages, problems 
 concerning the bringing up of the children are raised 
 by conditions incidental to the transfer of industry 
 from home and neighborhood to factories and 
 offices. 
 
 (1) The children of today fail to get the education 
 and discipline which were afforded to former genera- 
 tions of children by their sharing in the common 
 occupations and responsibilities of homes which were 
 centers of industry. Professor Dewey has described 
 this so well that we quote him at length. Under the 
 older system, he says, 
 
 « i 
 
 The entire industrial process stood revealed, 
 from the production on the farm of the raw materials, 
 till the finished article was actually put to use. 
 Not only this, but practically every member of the 
 
22 The Training of Children 
 
 household had his own share in the work. The 
 children, as they gained in strength and capacity, 
 were gradually initiated into the mysteries of the 
 several processes. It was a matter of immediate 
 and personal concern, even to the point of actual 
 participation. We cannot overlook the factors of 
 discipline and of character-building involved in this: 
 training in habits of order and of industry, and in 
 the idea of responsibility, of obligation to do some- 
 thing, to produce something, in the world. There 
 was always something which really needed to be 
 done, and a real necessity that each member of the 
 household should do his own part faithfully and in 
 cooperation with others. Personalities which be- 
 came effective in action were bred and tested in the 
 medium of action. Again, we cannot overlook the 
 importance for educational purposes of the close and 
 intimate acquaintance got with nature at first-hand, 
 with real things and materials, with the actual pro- 
 cesses of their manipulation, and the knowledge of 
 their social necessities and uses. In all this there 
 was continual training of observation, of ingenuity, 
 of constructive imagination, of logical thought, and 
 of the sense of reality acquired through first-hand 
 contact with actualities." 1 
 
 This education, this discipline, most children of 
 our day do not get. No such work goes on in their 
 homes. The educational, moral, and social func- 
 tions of the family, as we have described them, are 
 to that extent made more difficult. We seek to 
 make up for it by sending children to school for 
 
 1 John Dewey: School and Society, pp. 23, 24. 
 
The Modern Home and Its Perplexities 23 
 
 longer terms, and by laying upon our schools the 
 new duty of supplying the practical training and 
 discipline which was formerly furnished in the home. 
 But we have not as yet wholly succeeded. 
 
 (2) The children of today fail to get the personal 
 contact and association with their parents, especially 
 with the father, that was characteristic of the older, 
 industrial family life. When a father leaves home 
 at seven, or even eight, in the morning, spends the 
 day in a factory, store or office, and does not return 
 until after six in the evening, his children's opportu- 
 nities to know him and his opportunities to be their 
 comrade, leader and counsellor are limited to holi- 
 days, Sundays, and evenings. And all too often 
 these are not used to the best advantage of the chil- 
 dren. In the evenings, for example, the factory- 
 worker is apt to seek amusement and relaxation in 
 saloon, lodge, or movie-show; while the " tired 
 business man " wants to be let alone with his pipe 
 and paper, unworried by the " kids." , 
 
 The Massing of the Population in Cities 
 
 The massing of the population in cities is a direct 
 consequence of the industrial revolution. In 1800 
 one out of thirty persons in the United States lived 
 in cities with a population of 8000 or more; in 1900 
 one person out of three lived in cities of 8000 or more. 
 The U. S. Census Bureau now classifies a community 
 of 2500 or more as a city, and figures on this basis 
 are available since 1880. In that year 29.5 per cent 
 
24 The Training of Children 
 
 of the total population of the United States lived in 
 cities of 2S00 or more; in 1890, 26.1 per cent; in 
 1900, 40.5 per cent; in 1910, 46.3 per cent. The 
 census of 1920 has shown that nearly 52 per cent of 
 the population of this country now dwell in cities of 
 2500 or more; and that 70 per cent of these, con- 
 stituting about 36 per cent of the total population, 
 live in the larger cities, 287 in number, which have 
 25,000 inhabitants or more. 
 
 This massing of people in cities works a change in 
 the character of the home. Instead of the detached 
 house, with its lawn and garden, the home of one 
 family, there is now the huge tenement or apart- 
 ment house, which furnishes homes in suites of rooms 
 under its one roof to a dozen or a score or more of 
 families. Under these circumstances, it is harder 
 to provide adequately for the up-bringing of 
 children. Indeed they become so much of a 
 problem as to be regarded by many landlords as a 
 nuisance; and there are many apartment houses 
 where children are not desired, and some where 
 families with more than one child are not granted a 
 lease. 
 
 Children need plenty of light and fresh air, pure 
 milk, wholesome food, proper sanitation, and space 
 to run and play. The lack of these is notorious in 
 the poorer quarters of our large cities; but it is 
 often difficult even for the comparatively well-to-do 
 dweller in a " fiat " to afford these to' his children in 
 the measure that they should have them- The 
 
The Modern Home and Its Perplexities 25 
 
 death-rate of children under five is over fifty per cent 
 higher in the cities of the United States than in the 
 rural districts. In England and Wales, in 1914, the 
 death-rate of children under five was 44.1 per thou- 
 sand in the county boroughs, as contrasted with 24.5 
 in the rural districts. In Oldham, an industrial 
 city, the death-rate of male children under five, for 
 the years 1911-14, was 55.6 per thousand, while the 
 death-rate of the like group of children in Oxford,the 
 seat of Oxford University, was 26.8. 
 
 But the problem of physical health is not the only 
 one raised by the conditions of city life. It is hard to 
 develop life-long associations and to acquire a sense 
 of permanency in a " flat "; there is less of privacy 
 than in the detached house, and the family life is 
 apt to lack center and substance. The sights and 
 sounds of the city continually assail the senses; 
 there is a chronic atmosphere of bustle, hurry, con- 
 fusion and stress. Over-stimulation brings fatigue, 
 and recreation is sought in amusement rather than 
 in play or rest. Artificial allurements abound; and the 
 members of the family too often scatter their several 
 ways, each to the amusement of his or her taste. 
 To be tempted is easy, and children early become 
 acquainted with the ways of " the world." On 
 the whole, the material and social conditions of life 
 in cities operate more to hinder than to reinforce the 
 unity of family life, and render more difficult the 
 fulfilling of the family's educational, moral and social 
 functions. 
 
26 The Training of Children 
 
 The Commercialization of Life 
 
 The commercialization of life is another effect of 
 the industrial revolution. Under the older system 
 of industry, every household produced many things 
 for the use or consumption of its members; every 
 householder was something of a Jack-of-all-trades. 
 The father in his off-hours cultivated a garden and 
 grew vegetables for the family table, besides turning 
 barber, smith, carpenter, or even cabinet-maker, 
 when there was occasion. The mother not only 
 cooked, but baked bread, canned fruit and vegeta- 
 bles, made clothes, curtains, and coverlets, and from 
 time to time laid by various choice products of her 
 handiwork for the bridal chests of her daughters. 
 
 Now we buy everything " ready-made." We 
 make almost nothing ourselves. It is easier to buy 
 than to make, and it is cheaper, we think, if one 
 counts in his own time; besides, the factory turns 
 out a better product, whether it be bread or cake, 
 baked beans, soups ready to eat, shirts, tailored 
 suits, women's gowns, blankets, or furniture. Our 
 homes are no longer places of production; they are 
 places of consumption merely or of storage. Home 
 has become in our day, some one has said, simply 
 " a name for the place where we put the things that 
 we buy." 
 
 The conditions of modern life and industry have 
 made specialists of us all — some of us more, some 
 less, narrow in the field of labor for which we are 
 
The Modern Home and Its Perplexities 27 
 
 fitted by education and experience. A social order 
 of specialists is necessarily a social order highly 
 interdependent and commercial. We must depend 
 upon others for all those things that lie outside our 
 special field of production; we must buy from them, 
 and we must sell our own labor or its products in 
 order that we may obtain money wherewith to 
 buy. 
 
 The commercialization of life causes money to 
 play a larger part in the life of the family of today 
 than it did in the life of former generations, and to 
 occupy a larger place in the thoughts of the family's 
 members. It is continually raising the problem of 
 the adjustment of wages and prices. It makes 
 many families feel the pressure of economic necessity 
 or the bite of poverty. It encourages spending 
 when there is money to spend, and fosters both the 
 petty squandering of the poor and the luxuries of the 
 rich. It begets specious standards of success. It 
 renders parents dependent upon what the shops 
 offer in the way of furnishings for the home and 
 materials for the care and education of their children; 
 and it causes the shops to offer anything that will 
 sell. It sends the people to commercial places of 
 amusement, and moves their exploiters to pander to 
 low tastes because more money may thus be made. 
 In these and other ways, the commercialization of 
 life raises grave problems for the father and mother 
 who seek so to bring up their children that they may 
 know and love and do the best. '* 
 
28 The Training of Children 
 
 The Changing Status of Women 
 
 The changing status of women has caused some to 
 fear for the future of the family. The race-old 
 prejudice has been to regard women as the property 
 of men, or as Hausfrauen merely, bearers of children 
 and keepers of the domestic hearth, who promise in 
 the marriage ceremony to love, honor and obey 
 their husbands, and whose assumption of the hus- 
 band's name evidences their subjection. That preju- 
 dice is in our time rapidly disappearing, and women 
 are coming into possession both of their rights and of 
 their obligations as members of the human race, 
 co-equal with men. Democracy is becoming really 
 universal. It is extending itself to that " better 
 half " of the race which has been hitherto unfran- 
 chised. 
 
 We have no sufficient indications of the present 
 bearing of this movement upon the family and the 
 home, and no data upon which to base predictions 
 concerning its ultimate effects. There are those who 
 fear that it will mean the neglect of children, the 
 break-up of home life, and the prevalence of divorce. 
 But for such forebodings we have no adequate 
 justification in known bodies of fact. Far saner and 
 more probable is the view of Dean Bell: 
 
 " None of these evil effects will ensue to the family, 
 for a very simple and yet very profound reason. 
 The reason is this: — Since the sole natural purpose 
 of marriage is to insure the proper production and 
 
The Modern Home and Its Perplexities 29 
 
 rearing of children, it would seem to be the wisest 
 possible plan for society, if it wishes the institution 
 to be guarded and preserved, to entrust its super- 
 vision largely to those people who are most interested 
 in children. Such women notoriously and incontro- 
 vertibly are. Women are the last people to be apt 
 to injure that institution which, better than any 
 other plan yet devised — and many others have been 
 tried from time to time — better than other plans 
 because it is Nature's own plan — secures the proper 
 safeguarding of their offspring. Women will, rather, 
 insist upon a more real and ' a more meticulous 
 recognition of the sanctity of marriage by all con- 
 cerned. They will insist, however, that the pres- 
 ervation of its sanctity shall be equally the task of 
 both sexes. There need be feared little lowering of 
 the morality of women to the level of the average 
 male. Women will insist upon the raising of the 
 morality of men to the level of the average female." 1 
 
 The Changing Character of Parental Authority 
 
 A common wail among middle-aged folk who are 
 beginning to dwell in their memories is that " chil- 
 dren aren't made to obey any more." The measure of 
 truth beneath this observation is that the ancient 
 patriarchal type of parental authority is fast disap- 
 pearing — where the father was an absolute monarch, 
 and the children had to yield immediate and un- 
 questioning obedience to the mere expression of his 
 
 will: 
 
 " Theirs not to reason why." 
 
 We have come to see that such discipline is not really 
 
 » 8. 1. Bell: JRi^kt and TTron$ after the War, pp. 79-81. 
 
30 The Training of Children 
 
 educative. And in most homes of today the attempt 
 is made to exert an authority that is reasonable rather 
 than arbitrary, that helps children to understand 
 why parental commands are given, and leads them 
 to obey the principles of the moral life through us 
 who are their parents, rather than merely to bow their 
 wills to us. It is true that the exercise of such 
 reasonable authority is more difficult than simply 
 to exact absolute and unthinking obedience to a rule 
 of force. It demands of parents that they be reason- 
 able. And it requires that they undertake to solve 
 their problems instead of cutting their way through 
 these Gordian-knot-wise. It takes thinking, in 
 other words; and thinking is always hard both to 
 stop for and to do. But it is infinitely worth while 
 to take thought upon such problems as how best to 
 bring up our children. 
 
The Modern Home and Its Perplexities 31 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 The numerals refer to the various titles of the bibliography which 
 follows. The bibliographies in connection with the various chapters 
 will be numbered consecutively, each title retaining the number assigned 
 it when first mentioned. 
 
 1. Describe the industrial revolution, and such of its social effects as 
 have come under your observation. 10; 17; 18; 30. 
 
 2. Bring evidences from your own childhood of the larger measure of 
 domestic industry characteristic of that time as compared with the 
 present. Compare 27. 
 
 3. In the early years of the industrial revolution in England a curious 
 inversion of the relations of the sexes sometimes appeared — the women 
 working in the mills, while their husbands had to attend to the duties of 
 the home. Why was this? Show the tendencies toward racial degenera- 
 tion involved in such a situation. 
 
 4. What are the differences between the domestic control of industry 
 and the sweating system of the present? 17; 29. 
 
 5. Find out some of the conditions and problems concerning the 
 employment of women in industry. 16; 28. 
 
 6. Find out some of the present conditions and problems concerning 
 child-labor. 17; 29. 
 
 7. What can the public schools do to help children get the practical 
 training and discipline formerly furnished by their sharing in the industry 
 of the home? Find out something about the Gary schools as an example. 
 6; 20; 22. 
 
 8. Get a diary for a week or two of the amount of time that some father 
 spends in association with his children, and what they did together. 
 
 9. What has inquiry revealed as to the home conditions of delinquent 
 children? 21. 
 
 10. Problems of housing in cities, and their bearing upon the life of the 
 family and the bringing up of children. 19; 26. 
 
 11. The health problem in cities. Read 26. 
 
 12. What is the situation in your community with respect to the 
 commercialization of amusements? What can the church do to meet the 
 problem thus raised? 
 
 13. The changing status of woman, and its relation to the life of the 
 family. 19; 30. 
 
 14. The changing conception of parental authority, 23. 
 
 15. The possibility of educating children to be self-reliant, under 
 apartment house conditions. 24. 
 
 16. In what respects and in what measure do the conditions cited in 
 this chapter apply to the life of rural communities as well as to that of 
 cities? See 25. 
 
32 The Training of Children 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 6. John Dewey: The School and Society. 
 10. W. Goodsell: The Family as a Social and Educational Institution. 
 
 16. Edith Abbott: Women in Industry. 
 
 17. T. S. Adams and H. L. Sumner: Labor Problems. 
 
 18. Charles Beard: The Industrial Revolution. 
 
 19. B. I. Bell: Right and Wrong after the War. 
 
 20. R. S. Bourne: The Gary Schools. 
 
 21. S. P. Breckenridge and E. Abbott: The Delinquent Child and the 
 Home. 
 
 22. J. and E. Dewey: Schools of Tomorrow. 
 
 23. Dorothy C. Fisher: Mothers and Children. 
 
 24. Dorothy C. Fisher: Self-reliance. 
 
 25. T. M. Gillette: Constructive Rural Sociology. 
 
 26. Hollis Godfrey: The Health of the City. 
 
 27. G. S. Hall: Aspects of Child Life and Education, pp. 300-321. 
 
 28. B. L. Hutchins: Women in Modern Industry. 
 
 29. E. T. Towne: Sofia/ Problems. 
 
 30. J. H. Tufts: The Real Business of Living. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 The Home Atmosphere 
 
 What is Atmosphere? 
 
 Literally, it is the air we breathe. Figuratively, 
 it is the whole environment, in its social and moral 
 aspects. The family fulfills its functions in the 
 upbringing of children, not merely by what parents 
 say, but by all that they do, and not so much by 
 what they do with the ostensible purpose of influenc- 
 ing the children as by what they do and the spirit 
 they manifest when " off guard " in the common 
 round of every-day behavior. The home atmos- 
 phere, then, is a name for the total spirit and quality 
 of the family life, viewed as constituting the social 
 environment of the children. 
 
 Horace Bushnell founded his doctrine of Christian 
 nurture, psychologically, upon what he termed 
 " the organic unity of the family." 
 
 " In maintaining the organic unity of the family, 
 I mean to assert that a power is exerted by parents 
 over children, not only when they teach, encourage, 
 persuade, and govern, but without any purposed 
 control whatever. The bond is so intimate that 
 they do it unconsciously and undesignedly — they 
 must do it. Their character, feelings, spirit, and 
 principles must propagate themselves, whether they 
 
34 The Training of Children 
 
 will or not ... in the same way as if the effect 
 accrued under the law of simple contagion. . . . 
 We conceive the manners, personal views, preju- 
 dices, practical motives, and spirit of the house as 
 an atmosphere which passes into all and pervades 
 all, as naturally as the air they breathe. . . . Some- 
 times the child, passing into the sphere of other 
 causes, as in the school, the church, neighboring 
 families, or general society, will emerge and take a 
 character partially distinct — partially, I say; never 
 wholly. The odor of the house will always be in his 
 garments, and the internal difficulties with which 
 he has to struggle will spring of the family seeds 
 planted in his nature." 1 
 
 Note the varied figures of speech whereby Bush- 
 nell seeks in this passage to express the fact that 
 the character of the parents tends to reproduce itself 
 in the character of the child. He speaks not only of 
 " atmosphere," but of " contagion," of " the odor 
 of the house," of " the family seeds planted in his 
 nature." In other passages he used yet another 
 figure. No child, he held, is fully born when his 
 little body emerges from the womb, for his mental, 
 moral, and spiritual being is still in process of birth, 
 held in the matrix of the family life and molded by 
 its influence quite as really as his physical being 
 had been held and shaped by the life of the 
 mother. 
 
 The investigations of modern psychology and 
 sociology tend to corroborate Bushnell's view. 
 
 'Horace Bushnell: Christian Nurture (1916 edition, pp. 76-78). 
 
The Home Atmosphere 35 
 
 But we must get beneath his figures of speech and 
 discover the facts and laws which underlie them. 
 Just how, we ask, does the atmosphere of the home 
 work to produce its effects? 
 
 The Impressionability of Children 
 
 The home atmosphere works, upon the instinctive 
 level, through three general innate tendencies of the 
 human mind, which Professor McDougall describes 
 in his Social Psychology as sympathy, suggestion, 
 and imitation. Sympathy is the tendency to feel 
 as others feel; suggestion, the tendency to think as 
 others think; imitation, the tendency to do as others 
 do. From these tendencies we never wholly emanci- 
 pate ourselves. But in childhood, like other in- 
 stincts and innate tendencies, they manifest them- 
 selves with especial clearness. They are closely 
 related, it is obvious; and we may for convenience 
 group them under one term, as constituting the native 
 impressionability of children. 
 
 Sympathy 
 
 We so often use the word " sympathy " to denote 
 pity or compassion that we have almost forgotten 
 its primary meaning of " feeling with," that is, 
 " the experiencing of any feeling or emotion when 
 and because we observe in other persons or creatures 
 the expression of that feeling or emotion." 1 Feelings 
 are contagious; they are inducted from person to 
 
 > McDougall: An Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 92. 
 
36 The Training of Children 
 
 person. Happiness begets happiness; fear begets 
 fear. It is hard to keep from feeling depressed 
 when others round us are gloomy; from feeling 
 upset, worried or touchy in a social atmosphere that 
 is nervous and tense. 
 
 " This sympathetic induction of emotion and 
 feeling may be observed in children at an age at 
 which they cannot be credited with understanding 
 of the significance of the expressions that provoke 
 their reactions. Perhaps the expression to which 
 they respond earliest is the sound of the wailing of 
 other children. A little later the sight of a smiling 
 face, the expression of pleasure, provokes a smile. 
 Later still, fear, curiosity, and, I think, anger, are 
 communicated readily in this direct fashion from 
 one child to another. Laughter is notoriously 
 infectious all through life, and this, though not a 
 truly instinctive expression, affords the most familiar 
 example of sympathetic induction of an affective 
 state. This immediate and unrestrained responsive- 
 ness to the emotional expressions of others is one of 
 the great charms of childhood." 1 
 
 Suggestion 
 
 We tend to think as those about us think; to let 
 our beliefs be determined by the expression, in 
 whatever form, of their beliefs. This is especially 
 the case when we have no very clear grounds upon 
 which to base convictions of our own, or knowl- 
 edge enough to criticize the ideas presented to us, 
 or when we are in the presence of those whose 
 
 1 McDougall: Op. cit., p. 94. 
 
The Home Atmosphere 37 
 
 knowledge or position gives to them a certain degree 
 of prestige. Most of our religious beliefs and 
 political prejudices, for example, were first acquired 
 not by a process of rational conviction in the light 
 of all the grounds for their acceptance or rejection, 
 but because we found them a part of the social 
 environment in which we were brought up. The 
 process of suggestion is said to be direct when we 
 believe what others communicate to us with the 
 intent that we should so believe them; it is said to 
 be indirect in the absence of such purposeful com- 
 munication. 
 
 Children are especially suggestible (1) because the 
 world as a whole is new to them, and their attitude 
 toward it is one of eager curiosity, interest, and zest. 
 Round-eyed, quick to hear, and eager to touch, 
 they are busy absorbing the world about them. 
 (2) Because they have no assured, organized body 
 of knowledge wherewith to criticize, to evaluate, 
 and to accept or reject, the suggestions of their 
 social environment. Everything is possible to them, 
 and most things probable until disproved. (3) 
 " Because the superior size, strength, knowledge, 
 and reputation of their elders tend to evoke the 
 impulse of submission and to throw them into the 
 receptive attitude." 1 This is especially true of their 
 parents, upon whose love and care they are so 
 completely dependent, and whom they look up to, 
 for a time, as almighty and all-wise. 
 
 > McDougall: Op. cit., p. 100. 
 
38 The Training of Children 
 
 Imitation 
 
 We tend to act as others act. Psychologists differ 
 as to whether or not animals or men possess a general 
 instinct to imitate the actions of others which they 
 observe. On the whole it seems clear that there is 
 no such instinct, which mechanically impels one to 
 attempt to do anything and everything that he sees 
 others do. Yet it remains true that habits of 
 imitation are among the earliest learned and the most 
 persistent of human habits. It is from the behavior 
 of others that we draw the models for our own 
 behavior; the observed results of actions of other 
 folk constitute motives that impel us to try to gain 
 these same results in the same way; and in general 
 the material out of which we construct our own life 
 of action is suggested to us by that most interesting 
 and important of all the aspects of the world about 
 us, the behavior of other persons. 
 
 Children's acquisition of language is an example. 
 " Thy speech betrayeth thee," said they who stood 
 by the fire in the court of the high priest's palace 
 when they accused Peter of being a Galilean and a 
 follower of Jesus of Nazareth. So it is with most 
 folk. Their manner of speech betrays the section 
 of country in which they were brought up — New 
 England, Pennsylvania, the South, the Middle 
 West. Children will reproduce the intonations of 
 their elders even before they are able to form articu- 
 late words, and later their enunciation, emphasis, 
 
The Home Atmosphere 39 
 
 and characteristic phrases stamp them more or less 
 clearly as " chips of the old block." What is true 
 of speech is true of countless other acquired habits 
 and characteristics — of gestures, postures, facial 
 expressions, one's way of walking, of manners good 
 and bad. I remember a friend who insisted that he 
 could always recognize a member of a certain family 
 by the way he would blow his nose. 
 
 Mrs. Fisher tells a pointed story of a four-year-old, 
 who thrust a pair of rubbers in her face and ex- 
 claimed in a loud, hard tone of command: "Put 
 my rubbers on, why don't ye? " She put them on, 
 but with a reproof that took the sunshine out of his 
 face and sent him gloomily out to his play. Then 
 the thought came — perhaps the child was not to 
 blame for his rudeness. She called him in. 
 
 " ' Jack,' I asked, ' what does Maida say to you 
 when she asks you to do something ? ' Jack is 
 being brought up under the nurse-maid system. 
 Maida is the name of his kindly, German-American, 
 warm-hearted nurse-girl. Jack stared at me blankly, 
 evidently not understanding my question. I re- 
 peated it in a simpler form: ' Why, when she wants 
 you to take off your coat, what does she say? ' 
 Jack's reply opened wide the door of comprehension 
 for me. ' She says,' the little boy quoted the 
 phrase and intonation with loud, ready confi- 
 dence, ' she says, "Take off your coat, why don't 
 ye?"'" 1 
 
 > D. C. Fisher: Mothers and Children, pp. 15-18. 
 
40 The Training of Children 
 
 The Rationality of Children 
 
 Sympathy, suggestion and imitation, as we have 
 described them, are instinctive tendencies which 
 may operate in more or less blind, unintelligent 
 fashion. But children are more than the creatures 
 of these or other instinctive tendencies. They pos- 
 sess intelligence. They develop rationality. They 
 form ideas of their own. They are capable of under- 
 standing the issues of life; and upon the basis of 
 their understanding they acquire self-control. 
 
 The rationality of children, however, does not 
 involve their emancipation from the atmosphere of 
 the home. Sympathy, suggestion and imitation 
 may act in and through intelligence as well as in 
 relatively unintelligent ways. Intelligence, more- 
 over, requires data; reason must have materials 
 upon which to work. And the materials out of 
 which a child shapes his own ideas concerning life 
 are furnished him for the most part by the behavior' 
 of his elders and by what he can sense of their 
 motives. 
 
 No one has stated this more clearly or forcefully 
 than Dr. Edward Lyttelton, the headmaster of 
 Eton School, in his book on The Corner-Stone of 
 Education. " The child," he says, " grows to be 
 that which his view of life tells him to be; and he 
 must form that view on his parents' sayings and 
 doings. ... If we bring before his eyes a picture of 
 lives lived in discord with the ideal which we try to 
 
The Home Atmosphere 41 
 
 teach him, he rationally infers that he is brought into 
 the world of chaos." Should objection be made 
 that this postulates too much reasoning power in 
 children, his answer is that it is not so much a matter 
 of reasoning power as of " yielding to overmastering 
 influences which insist on life being interpreted in a 
 certain way. . . . The child is only unreasoning in 
 the sense that he has tested very few facts for him- 
 self; but where he does test them he draws the cor- 
 rect inference without fail, though he often cannot 
 explain why." Every soul must face for itself the 
 question: " Is life a stage for the gratification of 
 desires or for something higher?" While we fail 
 to note it, our children are occupied with the settling 
 for themselves of that question; and often enough 
 it is being silently settled in the wrong way. " It 
 is being settled by an unremitting scrutiny of the 
 parents' life, and by a continuous imbibing of the 
 principles and motives which appear to be at work. 
 For we must remember that what the parents' 
 deepest motives may be is not the question; the 
 question is, what motives the child can discern." 1 
 
 No parent of experience needs to go far for illus- 
 trations of this scrutiny and its results. The ques- 
 tions of children reveal constantly the eagerness with 
 which, on the basis of their study of older folks, they 
 are reaching out toward more adequate ideas as to 
 what to be and do. Sully relates an amusing 
 instance: 
 
 1 E. Lyttelton: The Corner-Stane oj Education, pp. 102, 165. 
 
42 The Training of Children 
 
 " A little boy, Edgar by name, aged five and three- 
 quarter years, was going out to take tea with some 
 little girls. His mother, as is usual on such occa- 
 sions, primed him with special directions as to 
 behavior, saying: ' Remember to give way to them 
 like father does to me.' To which Edgar, after 
 thinking a brief instant, replied : ' Oh, but not all at 
 once. You have to persuade him.' ' n 
 
 The Sociability of Children 
 
 Children are sociable little beings. They are 
 persons, not toys. They feel the social impulses 
 that are characteristic of persons, and they want to 
 be treated as such. 
 
 For some time the theory has been popular that 
 children recapitulate in their development the stages 
 through which the evolution of the race has passed. 
 Influenced by this theory, some writers have under- 
 estimated the social impulses and capacities of 
 children, and have looked upon them as primitive, 
 egoistic, and even anti-social in their instincts, until 
 the on-coming of adolescence works a face-about 
 toward love, altruism and service. E. S. Ames, 
 for example, in his Psychology of Religious Experi- 
 ence, speaks of early childhood as non-personal, 
 non-social, and non-religious, and holds that until 
 the age of nine it is impossible for a child to pass 
 much beyond the non-social attitude, which is for 
 Ames equivalent to non-religious as well. 
 
 The recapitulation theory is being fast given up, 
 
 » J. Sully: Studiii of Childhood, p. 272. 
 
The Home Atmosphere 43 
 
 as the direct study of children has made plain the 
 meagerness of the evidence for it, and the greater 
 weight of the exceptions that must be made to it. 
 It is true that children possess instincts that have 
 come down through the centuries from an ancestry 
 exceedingly remote; but it is not true that these 
 instincts emerge in anything like an order that 
 recapitulates the history of their dominance in the 
 life of the race, and it is not true that they prevent 
 children from entering happily into the life of today 
 and profiting fully from their present experiences. 
 
 Children are social, then. They are not only 
 gregarious and eager for the approval of others; 
 they are as ready to give approval as to receive it; 
 they like to help as well as to be helped. They feel, 
 quite as keenly as older folk, the zest of cooperation, 
 even though they are not able to hold themselves 
 down with persistence to a long-drawn-out task. 
 They are happy to bear little responsibilities, espe- 
 cially if they can feel that they are thus of real 
 service. They love as well as are loved; they care 
 for others, in the measure of their ability, as well as 
 receive care from them. " Nothing," says Professor 
 Coe, " seems to evoke filial affection as surely as 
 being permitted to help father and mother. Doing 
 things for a child does not touch his heart half as 
 much as permitting him to do things for you." 1 
 
 The atmosphere of a sensible home is one of 
 cooperation. The mutual affection of its members 
 
 > G. A. Coe: A Social Theory oj Religious Education, p. 128. 
 
44 The Training of Children 
 
 expresses itself in a sharing of interests and duties. 
 Each has his particular responsibilities, large or 
 small; each labors with the rest for the common 
 good. The parents know what their children are 
 doing in school and on the playground; they share 
 their interests, enter into their problems, and rejoice 
 with them over their achievements. And the chil- 
 dren in turn are permitted to share the interests of 
 their parents, in so far as their experience makes this 
 possible. 
 
 Double-Minded Homes 
 
 The most common failure of Christian homes, 
 says Dr. Lyttelton in the book which has already 
 been quoted, is their double-mindedness, by which he 
 means that in them precept and example conflict. 
 The parents say one thing and do another; they 
 pay respect to certain principles and in practice 
 conform to the opposite. The result is that the 
 atmosphere of the home is uncertain. The child's 
 impressions contradict one another; life presents to 
 his growing reason " a blurred picture of incon- 
 sistencies." 
 
 We profess to trust God, yet we worry and hurry, 
 fume and fret, as though we had no Father. We 
 hold that it is more blessed to give than to receive; 
 yet we live as though getting were the whole of life, 
 and we grumble every time we are asked to give, 
 however worthy the object; and we show that public 
 opinion is our real authority, by our anxiety to know 
 
The Home Atmosphere 45 
 
 what other folks are giving. We command our 
 children not to lie; and then compel them to lie 
 about their age when the question is whether or not 
 we should pay fare for them on the street car or 
 train — selling our integrity and their character for 
 a dollar or two, or perhaps even for five cents. 
 
 " Who can measure the harm done at home by 
 the elders reviling the weather? We come out of 
 church after lustily singing the harvest hymn which 
 ascribes the soft refreshing rain to God, and if the 
 said rain upsets our picnic we speak of it as if it 
 came straight from Satan. . . . Similarly, we undo 
 all our teachings of Christianity by revealing our 
 paganism at the slightest hint of the approach of 
 death. . . . Whereas a death ought to be, and 
 sometimes is, a wondrous lesson in the apprehen- 
 sion of the Unseen, it generally is little but a flat 
 contradiction to all a child has learnt about God." 1 
 
 The most potent influence for good that the world 
 knows is a whole-minded Christian home. In such 
 a home the life of the parents expresses their convic- 
 tions rather than their frailties; and their instruction 
 of the children in the truths of the Christian faith is 
 easy and natural, for it is but an explanation of the 
 motives which actually determine the behavior 
 which the children see and the conditions of life 
 which they share. Such a home is quiet, unhurried, 
 without strain and stress; and the feelings and 
 emotions inducted within the children by the conta- 
 
 > E. Lyttelton, op. tit., pp. 216-217. 
 
46 The Training of Children 
 
 gion of sympathy are unhectic, sound and wholesome. 
 The suggestions of such a home are in right direc- 
 tions, its unconscious models worthy of imitation. 
 Its authority is reasonable; its spirit that of mutual 
 affection; its members are friends and comrades 
 who stick together in work and in play. In such a 
 home the kingdom of God begins to come on earth — 
 that Kingdom which will come fully when all men 
 realize that they have one Father and are brethren. 
 To such a home many of us can look back; and we 
 thank God that it imparted its spirit, not just by 
 precept or instruction, but by the uncounted, unin- 
 tended, vital influences of its atmosphere. 
 
The Home Atmosphere 47 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 1. What are the facts that justify such statements of Horace Bushnell 
 as the following: 
 
 " The child, after birth, is still within the matrix of the parental life, 
 and will be, more or less, for many years. And the parental life will be 
 flowing into him all that time, just as naturally, and by a law as truly 
 organic, as when the sap of the trunk flows into a limb. We must not 
 govern our thoughts, in such a matter, by our eyes; and because the 
 physical separation has taken place, conclude that no organic relation 
 remains. . . . The will and character of the parents are designed to 
 be the matrix of the child's will and character. Meantime, he approaches 
 more and more closely, and by a gradual process, to the proper rank and 
 responsibility of an individual creature, during all which process of 
 separation he is having their exercises and ways translated into him." 
 (2, pp. 19-20.) 
 
 2. Discuss the issues raised in the following quotation from Mrs. 
 Mumford (34, pp. 7-8). Can you from memory or observation describe 
 analogous cases of unfortunate impressions caused by parents' thought- 
 lessness or lack of principle? 
 
 " Criticizing ourselves, rather than criticizing the children, is a branch 
 of Child Study the importance of which is, I think, too little realized. 
 We are thoughtless in the presence of children, talk glibly about ' little 
 pitchers having long ears,' and rouse an unhealthy curiosity by suddenly 
 ceasing our conversation, by talking French, or by hinting at possibilities 
 fraught with mystery to the child. These things are as tantalizing to the 
 child as it is tantalizing to us to receive a letter with something scratched 
 out so carefully that it is evident it was not meant for us to read! So- 
 called ' white lies ' are told in the children's presence; gossip is talked; 
 their questions are often thoughtlessly, sometimes untruthfully, an- 
 swered; their looks and their doings are discussed in their presence; 
 they are either ' shown off ' or thrust heedlessly into the background — 
 and all the while the child's character is being molded unconsciously by 
 the impressions so received. I once read of- a child who had been 
 severely reproved by his mother in the presence of a third person for 
 some childish fault which he had committed. The presence of the out- 
 sider at all in the circumstances was hard enough, but, just as the child 
 was leaving the room, he heard his mother make some remark to her 
 friend, making light of the fault which she had before been treating 
 apparently so seriously. He was a sensitive, serious little chap. The 
 impression thus made was never eradicated. His mother's influence over 
 him was lost from that moment." 
 
 3. Show from examples that have come under your observation how 
 children reflect the temper, feelings, tone of voice and demeanor of those 
 about them. 
 
 4. How would you go about it to develop poise and self-control within 
 a child? 
 
48 The Training of Children 
 
 5. Cite, if you can, some of the beliefs and impressions of your own 
 childhood, which you now see to be traceable to suggestions received, 
 directly or indirectly, from your social environment. 
 
 6. Which of your present beliefs and convictions are traceable rather 
 to social suggestions than to logically adequate grounds or personal 
 knowledge of facts? Are you justified in holding them? Why? 
 
 7. Give examples that have come under your observation of family 
 likenesses (mannerisms, etc.), due to imitation within the f amity group. 
 
 8. Give examples that have come under your observation of children's 
 reasoning concerning matters of conduct on the basis of their parents' 
 behavior. 
 
 9. Give examples of children's desire to help and of their self-control, 
 growing out of this cooperative motive. 
 
 10. Show how public schools are making use in their educational work 
 of the social instincts and impulses of children (20, 22, 36). 
 
 11. What is the " recapitulation theory " in child psychology and what 
 is its bearing upon the bringing up of children? Find out something of 
 the evidences for and against it (32, Chap. 12; 37, pp. 245-259, 270-282). 
 
 12. Cite examples from your own experience of double-mindedness in 
 Christian homes, in the sense in which that term has been employed 
 in this chapter. 
 
 13. Discuss the issue involved in such cases as the following, reported 
 by students to Professor Dewey: 
 
 " One was coaxed by older boys to steal some tobacco from his father. 
 ' I was caught and given a whipping, no questions being asked and no 
 explanation given. The result was certainly fear of punishment in 
 the future, but no moral impression. I thought my father whipped me 
 because he wanted the tobacco himself, and so objected to my having 
 any of it.' Another reports that the impression left by punishment was 
 a mixture of a feeling of personal indignity suffered — a feeling so strong 
 as to blot out the original offense — and a belief that she was punished 
 for being detected. Another thought she was punished because her 
 father was the stronger of the two; another tells that he longed for the 
 age of independence to arrive so that he might retaliate. One upon 
 whom fear of punishment from God was freely impressed formed the 
 idea that if he could put off death long enough, lying was the best way 
 out of some things " (31, 437-438). 
 
 14. If the book is available, let some one read The Child as Philosopher 
 and Kenneth and His Mother (23, pp. 126-142, 163-168). 
 
 15. How may children be trained in religious attitudes through the 
 atmosphere of the home? Read 35. - 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 2. Horace Bushnell: Christian Nurture. 
 12. E.Lyttelton: The Corner-Stone of Education. 
 20. R. S. Bourne: The Gary Schools. 
 22. J. and E. Dewey: Schools of Tomorrow. 
 
The Home Atmosphere 49 
 
 23. Dorothy C. Fisher: Mothers and Children. 
 
 24. Dorothy C. Fisher: Self-Reliance. 
 
 31. John Dewey: The Chaos in Moral Training, Popular Science 
 Monthly, 1894, pp. 433-443. 
 
 32. G. A. Coe: A Social Theory of Religious Education. 
 
 33. William McDougall: An Introduction to Social Psychology. 
 
 34. Edith E. Read Mumford: The Dawn of Character. 
 
 35. E. E. R. Mumford: The Dawn of Religion in the Mind of the Child. 
 
 36. C. A. Scott: Social Education. 
 
 37. E. L. Thorndike: The Original Nature of Man. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 Building Strong Bodies 
 
 A strong body is one of the greatest and most 
 fundamental of life's assets. We are beginning to 
 learn the sober, literal truth of the old maxim that 
 " Health is wealth." The experiences of the years 
 of war have helped us to realize the imperative 
 importance of " keeping fit." 
 
 The days are gone, let us hope, forever, when men 
 looked upon matter as inherently evil, and upon the 
 body as the source of temptation and the seat of sin; 
 when devout folk sought to save their souls by abus- 
 ing their bodies, and saintliness was measured in 
 terms of ascetic mortification; when even bodily 
 cleanliness was discouraged, lest, as St. Jerome 
 phrased it in an oddly mixed figure of speech, bath- 
 ing might " add fuel to the sleeping fires." 
 
 A strong body is not an end in itself; but it is an 
 instrument for the attainment of all life's goods, and 
 a means to the realization of its higher values. 
 
 Health brings happiness. It means more than 
 absence of pain, lack of worry and power to resist 
 fatigue. It gives vigor and zest to both work and 
 play. It makes mere living a joy. 
 
 Health begets efficiency. It. makes one more 
 useful. He who would serve either God or his 
 
Building Strong Bodies 51 
 
 fellows owes it to them as well as to himself to bring 
 to that service unjaded powers, sanity, and strength. 
 
 Health promotes goodness. It is no guaranty of 
 habits of industry or virtue; yet shiftlessness and 
 moral delinquency are often the result of physical 
 defects or functional disorders. Each of us has his 
 own frailties, temptations to which he is especially 
 liable. It is harder to resist a temptation, whatever 
 this may be, when overwrought in nervous tension, 
 or when mind and will are dulled by illness or fatigue. 
 A strong body, in the full vigor of health, is a moral 
 safeguard as well as a physical resource. 
 
 The wise parent, therefore, seeks first of all to 
 develop the health of his children and to help them 
 build for themselves strong bodies. The way is 
 simple and plain. It is indicated by the natural 
 desires of children. They want to eat, to play,- and 
 to sleep; and they love to be out in the open air. 
 These four are the great elemental needs of their 
 growing bodies — nourishing food, pure air, happy 
 exercise, and plenty of sleep. 
 
 How Children Grow 
 
 The growth of children has been carefully studied 
 by competent investigators in many lands. In all, 
 measurements have been taken which give exact 
 data concerning the growth of something more than 
 150,000 children of both sexes and various ages. 
 Tables presenting these facts may be found in Hall's 
 Adolescence, Tyler's Growth and Education, Terman's 
 
52 The Training of Children 
 
 The Hygiene of the School Child, and Baldwin's The 
 Physical Growth of Children. We shall here set down 
 only certain of the outstanding results of the studies 
 which are there reported. 
 
 (1) The growth of children is most rapid in 
 infancy, and gradually diminishes in rate. There is 
 a noticeable retardation of growth at about six 
 years of age, due partly to conditions incident to the 
 second dentition, and partly, perhaps, to entrance 
 upon school life. This is followed at about seven 
 or eight by a slight acceleration, which seems to 
 represent simply the resumption of the rate of growth 
 which had been interrupted by the previous retarda- 
 tion. Just before puberty, there is a period of very 
 slow growth, which is followed in the early adolescent 
 years by a rapid acceleration. 
 
 (2) There is a marked difference between the 
 sexes. Girls come to maturity about two years 
 earlier than boys. The year of minimum growth 
 before puberty is for girls the tenth, and for boys the 
 eleventh or twelfth. The years of most rapid 
 adolescent growth for girls are the twelfth and 
 thirteenth, and for boys the fourteenth and fif- 
 teenth. From the twelfth to the fifteenth years, 
 girls are, as a rule, both taller and heavier than boys. 
 
 (3) While it has not been clearly established, most 
 of the studies point to a definite correlation between 
 physical and mental growth. Porter, in particular, 
 who measured 34,500 children of St. Louis, found 
 that at every age the children who were advanced 
 
Building Strong Bodies 53 
 
 in their school grade were taller and heavier than 
 pupils of the same age who were below grade. 
 For example, he found that the average weight of 
 eleven-year-old boys in the sixth grade was 73.34 
 pounds; in the fifth grade, 71.29; in the fourth 
 grade, 69.24; in the third, 68.12; in the second, 
 65.45; and in the first grade, 63.5. 
 
 (4) The growth of children is hindered by condi- 
 tions associated with poverty. Doctor Leslie Mac- 
 kenzie studied the physical condition of the children 
 of Edinburgh and Glasgow, dividing them into four 
 groups according to whether they came from houses 
 having one room only, two rooms, three rooms or 
 four rooms and more. The following table shows 
 the results of his study of 72,800 Glasgow children, 
 from five to eighteen years. 
 
 Average Average 
 
 _ weight _ height 
 
 Housing in pounds in inches 
 
 1 room 52.0 46.5 
 
 2 rooms 55.5 48.9 
 
 3 rooms 60.0 50.4 
 
 4 rooms 64.9 51.5 
 
 We have not sufficient basis as yet for assertions 
 as to what proportion of the retarding effect of 
 poverty upon the growth of children is due to each 
 of the several factors associated with it — malnu- 
 trition, inadequate clothing and shelter, insufficient 
 sleep, child labor, lack of opportunity for play, 
 uncleanliness, etc. 
 
54 The Training of Children 
 
 (5) These studies make it clear that if the pubes- 
 cent acceleration of growth has been delayed by- 
 untoward conditions, it is not likely to be made up 
 in succeeding years. This is contrary to the usual 
 impression. Folk are too ready to say of a child 
 whose growth is slow, " Oh, well, he'll make it up 
 later." 
 
 (6) Growth, like every other aspect of human life, 
 is individual in its detailed character. While 
 children in general conform to these and other laws 
 of growth, the precise rate of growth and the size 
 of a child of any given age seem to be determined 
 by the conditions of his individual development. 
 There may be a great difference between the child's 
 chronological age and his physiological age, that is, 
 the degree of maturity which he has attained. The 
 most significant evidences of this appear, of course, 
 in the pubertal years. That pubescence may begin 
 at any age between twelve and seventeen has been 
 established by Cramp ton's studies of the high- 
 school boys of New York City. He found, more- 
 over, that height, weight, and strength are corre- 
 lated more closely with physiological age than with 
 chronological age. 
 
 Food 
 
 Investigators have revealed an appalling amount 
 of malnutrition among school children. Macmillan 
 found that from 6 per cent to 16 per cent of the 
 school children of Chicago were ill-nourished, and 
 
Building Strong Bodies 55 
 
 records his estimate that at least 5,000 children of 
 Chicago are habitually hungry. Harrington re- 
 ported that 5,043 out of 90,000 school children of 
 Boston were ill-nourished, and that 70 per cent 
 of these came from homes that should be classed as 
 well-to-do. An examination of 2,000 New York 
 children in 1909 revealed the fact that 13, per cent of 
 these were ill-nourished. 
 
 Many of these children doubtless came from homes 
 that did not give them sufficient food. But that is 
 by no means true of all. Malnutrition may result 
 not simply from lack of food, but from faulty diges- 
 tion, or from the wrong choice of food, or from ways 
 of cooking or preparing, it that are improper. 
 
 Parents are often misled by their conviction that 
 " Children are all different; no two of them are 
 alike " ; so that they fail to notice or that they 
 underestimate the evidences of malnutrition. If 
 they see that their child is thin or undersized, they 
 attribute this to a peculiarity of his individual 
 nature and think nothing more of it. We need to 
 get rid of such fatalism and to understand more 
 fully the possibility of full growth and healthy 
 development for every child, in so far as this is 
 dependent upon proper feeding. 
 
 The Child Health Organization, of which we shall 
 have more to say shortly, has found valuable the 
 height and weight tables for boys and girls, which 
 have been prepared, upon the basis of a wide range 
 of measurements, by Doctor Thomas D. Wood. 
 
56 The Training of Children 
 
 These tables are reproduced in these pages. In 
 case a boy or girl is found to be much below the 
 normal weight, as given in these tables, for a child of 
 his or her height, it is presumptive evidence of mal- 
 nutrition. A formula devised by Oppenheimer for 
 the coefficient of nutrition has been widely employed 
 as a test. In case the girth of the arms multiplied 
 by 100 and divided by the girth of the chest renders 
 a quotient of less than 30, it constitutes presumptive 
 evidence of malnutrition. The following is a sug- 
 gestive list of common symptoms which Terman 
 gives with the statement that any child who 
 shows several of these is likely to be ill-nourished, 
 and should be referred to a physician for examina- 
 tion. 1 
 
 Is there pallor of skin ? 
 
 Is the child extremely thin? 
 
 Are there furrows between the ribs? 
 
 Is the flesh soft and flabby? 
 
 Is there puffiness under the eyes ? 
 
 Is the posture slouchy? 
 
 Does the child appear to lack physical energy? 
 
 Does the child prefer quiet games or b/ooks to 
 boisterous play? 
 
 Is the child listless? Is mentality slow? 
 
 Is the appetite freaky (lack of appetite, preference 
 for highly-seasoned foods, etc.) ? 
 
 Are there symptoms of nervousness ? 
 
 Does the child have frequent headaches ? 
 
 Is physical endurance good? 
 
 Does the child take cold easily? 
 
 > Terman: The Hygiene of the School Child, p. 113. 
 
• Building Strong Bodies 57 
 
 Is there shortness of breath ? 
 
 Is sleep disturbed ? 
 
 Are there indications of earlier rickets (bow-legs, 
 knock-knees, pigeon-breast, spinal curvature, badly 
 decayed teeth, etc.) ? 
 
 Are the neck glands enlarged? 
 
 We have not space to discuss the principles of diet 
 for children, which may be found stated briefly and 
 clearly in Miss Bryant's School Feeding, or in Wood 
 Hutchinson's popular Handbook of Health, or in the 
 pamphlet on Diet for the School Child, which is issued 
 by the National Bureau of Education. It is enough 
 here to say that the child's daily diet should contain 
 a balanced variety of foods. He needs proteins for 
 the building of bodily tissue, and carbohydrates and 
 fats to supply heat and energy. Milk contains in 
 itself all three of these great classes of foods. That 
 is why babies live and thrive on it alone for the first 
 six months of their lives. It remains throughout 
 the whole of growing childhood the best and most 
 important of foods, and children ought to drink it 
 regularly. They need plenty of bread and cereals, 
 vegetables and fruits. Good butter is the best form 
 of fat. Meats and sugar are needed; but the 
 temptation of children, as of adults, is to eat too 
 much of these, because of their attractive taste. 
 Coffee and tea and fried foods should not be given 
 them at all. 
 
 Many parents are misled by the popular idea that 
 the child's appetite may be taken as a guide for what 
 
58 The Training of Children 
 
 is good for him. They give their children only what 
 they want to eat — a policy which results almost 
 invariably in a spoiled digestion and malnutrition. 
 It is true that children ought not to be forced to eat 
 when not hungry, or to swallow down doses of food 
 that are positively distasteful; but it is also true 
 that children easily acquire capricious habits of 
 appetite and whimsical notions as to what they like or 
 dislike. They must be taught to like things that are 
 good for them. Parents should be kind and patient, 
 but firm in teaching their children to like new 
 foods. 
 
 Children should be carefully trained, moreover, in 
 right habits of eating. They should be given their 
 meals at regularly appointed times, and should 
 usually not be permitted to eat between meals. 
 If they get hungry a couple of hours before time 
 for the next meal, they should be given bread and 
 butter rather than candy, cookies or fruit. They 
 should be given plenty of time at the table, and 
 encouraged to chew their food carefully. They need 
 water and should drink plenty of it between meals. 
 Contrary to the impression of many, it is a good thing 
 to drink water in connection with one's meals; 
 but great care should be taken to keep children from 
 falling into the habit, which they so easily acquire, 
 of filling their mouths with food which they do not 
 chew properly, then washing it down with gulps of 
 water. That they should come to the table with 
 cje^ri hands and faces is more than a matter of 
 
Building Strong Bodies 59 
 
 aesthetics, for dirt entering the system with food 
 breeds disease. 
 
 Exercise 
 
 The body grows through the assimilation of food, 
 but it is developed through exercise. We acquire 
 healthy and strong muscular tissue only by using it. 
 The impulse of children to play is nature's way of 
 insuring their development. It is one of the unfortu- 
 nate features of modern life that the industrial 
 revolution associated with the development of ma- 
 chinery has made us so largely a sedentary people. 
 We spend most of our time sitting at a desk, by a 
 machine or in a car; and we condemn even our little 
 children to pass the greater part of every school 
 day sitting indoors, working only the tiny muscles 
 of tongue and hand. Then we have so huddled 
 ourselves together in cities that when they are set 
 free from the schoolroom many children have no 
 place other than the crowded streets in which to run 
 and play. 
 
 We have begun in some degree to awake to the 
 dangers involved in this situation. The better 
 schools are granting larger freedom of movement 
 for their pupils and providing more active programs. 
 Playgrounds and parks in most of our cities are 
 making it possible for children to gain the exercise 
 in the open air which they need. Every parent 
 owes it to his children to give them as large an 
 opportunity as possible for free muscular play. 
 
60 The Training of Children 
 
 We shall discuss this more fully in a later 
 chapter. 
 
 Air 
 
 Our ideas concerning air are changing. We have 
 always known that the body needs pure air; but we 
 had not always known how much of it we need. 
 The time was, not so long ago, when people thought 
 that the night air was poisonous; now we sleep 
 with windows wide open, and increasing numbers of 
 us are building sleeping porches. Once tubercular 
 patients were shut in; now air and sunshine are seen 
 to be the only cure for their malady. Once every 
 one feared a draft; now a certain amount of move- 
 ment of the air is seen to be essential to health. 
 
 Children need air pure enough to oxygenate the 
 blood, with sufficient movement to prevent its form- 
 ing an inert, saturated envelope about their bodies; 
 they should be subjected to enough variations of 
 temperature to keep the blood vessels of the skin, 
 which constitute the body's thermostat, healthy and 
 active; they should not be subjected habitually to 
 an atmosphere so warm and dry as to rob their 
 bodily membranes of needed moisture; they should 
 be given opportunity for physical activity enough to 
 stimulate the metabolism of the body, make the 
 tissues hungry for oxygen, and rouse the lungs to 
 perform their full service. The child whose life is 
 so ordered is in little danger of catching cold; the 
 child for whom we must fear is the one who is kept 
 
Building Strong Bodies 61 
 
 close in warm rooms where the air is dry, uniform, 
 and motionless. 
 
 fileep 
 
 That children need more sleep than adults is a 
 matter of common knowledge. Just how much 
 they need, at each age, we do not know precisely. 
 The most widely accepted standard, theoretically, 
 is that of Dr. Clement Duke, who puts it at thirteen 
 and one-half hours for children of five and six, de- 
 creasing one-half hour for each year until the ages of 
 thirteen and fourteen, for both of which he puts it 
 at ten hours. For fifteen-year-olds he sets the 
 norm at nine and one-half hours, for the ages sixteen 
 and seventeen at nine, and for eighteen at eight and 
 one-half. Terman summarizes a number of investi- 
 gations which point to the conclusion that these 
 standards are, in the earlier years especially, too 
 high. Individual children differ, certainly, in the 
 amount of sleep that they require. 
 
 The quality of the child's sleep, probably, is more 
 important than that he get just a certain quantity. 
 The utmost care should be taken to insure the right 
 conditions for sound and uninterrupted sleep. 
 Each child should have a room to himself, if this is 
 possible; if not, no more than two should occupy one 
 room. The bedroom windows should be opened wide 
 enough to insure proper ventilation, and the room 
 should not be too warm. The bed should be clean 
 and comfortable, with ample coverings, but not too 
 
62 The Training of Children 
 
 soft a mattress. Children should go to bed early 
 enough to insure their getting the amount of sleep 
 which they require before the morning hour at which 
 the family should arise together. Improper diet, 
 nervousness, overwork or too much evening study, 
 night fears, obstructed breathing and various physi- 
 cal pains or maladjustments are disturbing factors 
 that should be guarded against and eliminated in 
 so far as it is possible. 
 
 Preventive Medicine 
 
 The work of the medical profession is rapidly 
 changing. Instead of waiting until people get sick 
 and then seeking to cure them, the wisest physicians 
 of our day are concentrating their energies upon the 
 prevention of disease. This, certainly, should be 
 the attitude of the parent. Through such hygienic 
 measures as have been briefly outlined, he should seek 
 to promote the physical development of his children 
 and to prevent them from becoming ill; and he 
 should, from time to time, have them examined by a 
 physician and dentist, in order that incipient ail- 
 ments may be checked,. and physical defects cor- 
 rected. Defects of eye, ear, nose, and throat are 
 common, and easily escape the notice of the parent 
 who does not understand the symptoms of their 
 presence. The decay of teeth may affect the health 
 of the entire body. Disorders of growth, faulty 
 habits of posture, functional nervous disorders, 
 stammering and stuttering, headaches, glandular 
 
Building Strong Bodies 63 
 
 troubles, and tubercular conditions are easily diag- 
 nosed by the experienced physician, and when caught 
 in time are for the most part readily corrected by 
 programs of hygiene, exercise and reeducation! 
 
 Preventive medicine is a work of public service. 
 It is possible that within a generation or two there 
 may take place an almost complete socialization of 
 the work of the physician. We are just at the 
 beginning of the development of adequate depart- 
 ments of public health. Fortunately this move- 
 ment has made great progress in connection with the 
 public schools. The best of these are now rendering, 
 through school physicians and school nurses, with 
 regular medical inspections, free public clinics, and 
 visits to the homes of the children, a type of health 
 service which promises great things for the future 
 manhood and womanhood of America. All of this 
 is in addition to the playgrounds and gymnasiums, 
 the supervision of physical education, the baths and 
 hot lunches, the teaching of physiology and hygiene, 
 and the opportunity for study in open-air schools, 
 which many city systems of public education are now 
 furnishing. 
 
 Enlisting the Interest of the Children 
 
 We cannot build strong bodies for our children; 
 they must build them for themselves. However 
 watchful our care, however wise our prophylactic 
 measures, we will fail ultimately unless we can lead 
 them to acquire right hygienic habits, to appreciate 
 
HEIGHT and WEIGHT TABLE 
 
 foi 
 
 •GIRLS 
 
 Height 
 Inches 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 11 
 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 
 16 
 
 16 
 
 17 
 
 18 
 
 Yrs 
 
 Yra 
 
 Yra 
 
 Yra 
 
 Yra 
 
 Yra 
 
 Yra 
 
 Yra 
 
 Yra 
 
 Yra 
 
 Yra 
 
 •irs 
 
 Yra 
 
 Yra 
 
 39 
 
 34 
 
 35 
 
 36 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 40 
 
 36 
 
 37 
 
 38 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 38 
 
 39 
 
 40 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 42 
 
 40 
 
 41 
 
 42 
 
 f3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^\ 
 
 43 
 
 42 
 
 42 
 
 48 
 
 44 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 K 
 
 44 
 
 44 
 
 45 
 
 45 
 
 4fl 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 45 
 
 46 
 
 47 
 
 47 
 
 48 
 
 49 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 46 
 
 48 
 
 48 
 
 49 
 
 50 
 
 51 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 47 
 
 
 49 
 
 50 
 
 51 
 
 52 
 
 53 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 48 
 
 
 61 
 
 62 
 
 53 
 
 54 
 
 55 
 
 fi« 
 
 
 
 
 
 49 
 
 
 63 
 
 54 
 
 55 
 
 56 
 
 57 
 
 68 
 
 
 
 • fleallh lb Edscatioa 
 
 '60 
 
 
 
 56 
 59 
 62 
 
 57 
 60 
 63 
 66 
 63 
 
 58 
 61 
 64 
 67 
 69 
 
 69 
 62 
 65 
 68 
 70 
 
 60 
 63 
 66 
 68 
 71 
 
 61 
 64 
 67 
 69 
 72 
 
 70 
 73 
 
 iina 
 
 itioa is nulla 
 
 61 
 
 
 
 
 62 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 63 
 
 
 
 
 64 
 
 
 
 
 
 65 
 
 
 
 
 
 72 
 76 
 
 73 
 77 
 81 
 85 
 £9 
 
 74 
 78 
 82 
 86 
 90 
 94 
 99 
 104 
 
 75 
 79 
 83 
 87 
 91 
 95 
 101 
 106 
 
 76- 
 80 
 84 
 88 
 93 
 97 
 102 
 107 
 
 77 
 81 
 85 
 89 
 94 
 99 
 104 
 109 
 
 86 
 90 
 95 
 100 
 106 
 111 
 
 91 
 96 
 102 
 108 
 113 
 
 98 
 104 
 109 
 114 
 
 i 
 
 66 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 67 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 68 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 60 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 108 
 
 61 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 111 
 
 62 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 115 
 
 63 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 109 
 
 111 
 115 
 117 
 119 
 
 112 
 117 
 119 
 121 
 124 
 126 
 129 
 
 113 
 118 
 120 
 122 
 126 
 128 
 131 
 134 
 138 
 
 115 
 119 
 122 
 124 
 127 
 130 
 133 
 136 
 140 
 145 
 
 117 
 120 
 123 
 126 
 128 
 132 
 135 
 138 
 142 
 147 
 
 118 
 121 
 124 
 127 
 129 
 133 
 136 
 139 
 143 
 148 
 
 119 
 
 64 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 122. 
 125 
 
 65 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 66 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 12S 
 
 67 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 130 
 
 68 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 134. 
 137 
 
 69 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 70 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 no 
 
 71 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 144 
 
 72 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 149 
 
 MUPAMO »V D*. THOMAS D. WOOD 
 
 About What a GIRL Should Gain Each Month 
 
 AGE 
 11 to 16 ,....,. 8 OX, 
 
 16 to 18 J 4 ox. 
 
 ABB 
 
 E to 8 • '6 oi. 
 
 8 to 11 8 or. 
 
 11 to 14, ,,,.,,, ,. l2_oxJ*> 
 
 Weights and measures should be taken \rithout shoes and in only 
 
 the usual indoor clothes. 
 
 CHILD HEALTH ORGANIZATION OF AMEEICA 
 
 ) 1918, by Child Health Organization 
 
HEIGHT and WEIGHT TABLE for BOYS 
 
 Height 
 Inches 
 
 5 
 Yre 
 
 6 
 
 Yrs 
 
 7 
 Yre 
 
 8 
 Yrs 
 
 9 
 Yin 
 
 10 
 Yrs 
 
 11 
 
 Yre 
 
 12 
 
 Yrs 
 
 13 
 Yre 
 
 14 1 15 
 Yrs 1 Yre 
 
 16 
 Yrs 
 
 17 I 13 
 
 Yre J Yrs 
 
 39 
 40 
 
 41 
 42 
 43 
 44 
 45 
 46 
 47 
 48 
 49 
 SO 
 
 35 
 37 
 39 
 41 
 43 
 45 
 47 
 43 
 
 36 
 38 
 -40 
 42 
 44 
 4B 
 47 
 49 
 51 
 53 
 55 
 
 37 
 39 
 41 
 43 
 45 
 46 
 48 
 50 
 52 
 54 
 56 
 58 
 60 
 62 
 
 44 
 46 
 47 
 48 
 50 
 52 
 65 
 57 
 59 
 61 
 63 
 66 
 69 
 
 49 
 51 
 53 
 55 
 58 
 60 
 62 
 64 
 67 
 70 
 73 
 77 
 
 54 
 56 
 58 
 60 
 63 
 65 
 68 
 71 
 74 
 78 
 81 
 84 
 87 
 91 
 
 57 
 59 
 61 
 64 
 67 
 69 
 72 
 75 
 79 
 82 
 85 
 88 
 92 
 95 
 100 
 105 
 
 62 
 65 
 68 
 70 
 73 
 76 
 80 
 83 
 86 
 89 
 93 
 97 
 102 
 107 
 113 
 
 71 
 74 
 77 
 81 
 84 
 87 
 90 
 94 
 99 
 104 
 109 
 115 
 120 
 125 
 130 
 134 
 138 
 
 * 1 1 
 
 Hedltb in Edueitioo 
 Education ia Health 
 
 £1 
 
 
 
 
 52 
 
 
 
 78 
 
 82 
 
 85 
 
 88 
 
 92 
 
 97 
 
 102 
 
 106 
 
 111 
 
 117 
 
 122 
 
 126 
 
 131 
 
 135 
 
 139 
 
 142 
 
 147 
 
 152 
 
 157 
 
 162 
 
 
 
 97 
 102 
 108 
 113 
 117 
 120 
 125 
 129 
 134 
 133 
 142 
 146 
 151 
 156 
 161 
 166 
 171 
 176 
 
 
 53 
 
 
 
 86 
 90 
 94 
 99 
 104 
 109 
 114 
 118 
 123 
 127 
 132 
 136 
 140 
 144 
 149 
 154 
 159 
 164 
 169 
 174 
 
 91 
 96 
 101 
 106 
 111 
 115 
 119 
 124 
 128 
 133 
 137 
 141 
 145 
 150 
 155 
 160 
 165 
 170 
 175 
 
 
 54 
 
 
 
 
 
 55 
 
 
 
 
 
 56 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 57 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 68 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 59 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 60 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 61 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 110 
 
 62 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 116 
 
 63 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 119 
 
 64 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 122 
 
 65 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 126 
 
 66 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 130 
 
 67 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 135 
 
 68 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 139 
 
 69 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 143 
 
 70 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 147 
 
 71 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 152 
 
 72 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 157 
 
 73 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 162 
 
 74 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 167 
 
 75 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 172 
 
 76 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 177 
 
 PREPARED BY OR. THOMAS 0. WOOD 
 
 About What a BOY Should Gain Each Month 
 
 5 to 8 6oz. 
 
 8 to 12 8 os. 
 
 AGE 
 
 12toj:6 16 o«. 
 
 16tol8 80s. 
 
 ) 1918, by Child Health Organisation 
 
66 The Training of Children 
 
 good health and to understand the means whereby 
 it is maintained. 
 
 The Child Health Organization is a national 
 philanthropic organization with headquarters in 
 New York City, which has had splendid success in 
 enlisting the interest and cooperation of children in 
 the maintenance of their own health. The plan is to 
 have the children in each school weighed at least 
 once a month, discovering those who are under 
 weight for their height, and to keep record through- 
 out the school year of the children's gains in weight, 
 and award prizes to those who, at the end of the 
 term, have made the best record. The organiza- 
 tion publishes simple leaflets for teachers and parents 
 on children's diet and hygiene, and a " Child Health 
 Alphabet " which puts the matter in jingling 
 rhymes, illustrated with attractive pictures. They 
 employ also a clown, " Cho-Cho," who travels about 
 lecturing to children on health, as only a clown can. 
 Parents and teachers everywhere would find it 
 worth while to inquire into the methods and ma- 
 terials of this organization. 
 
Building Strong Bodies 67 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 1. Look up and report upon the studies of children's growth, as these 
 are summarized in 38, 41, 46 or 47. 
 
 2. Observe instances of the earlier maturing of girls as compared with 
 boys, in the early teens. 
 
 3. Is delayed growth fully made up? Bring instances from your 
 observation. 
 
 4. The difference between chronological age and physiological age. 
 46, 47. 
 
 5. The causes of malnutrition. 40, 46. 
 
 6. Principles of diet for children. 40, 43, 46, 48. 
 
 7. How modern schools are breaking away from their former seden- 
 tary programs, looking after the hygiene of instruction, and promoting 
 the physical education of children. 39, 44, 45. 
 
 8. Modern principles of ventilation. 46. 
 
 9. Get a report for some weeks of the hours, habits, and conditions of 
 sleep of a group of children. Compare 46. 
 
 10. The need and importance of affording to children regular medical 
 and dental examinations. 
 
 11. Learn about some of the common defects of vision to which chil- 
 dren are liable, and their symptoms: defects of hearing; of growth and 
 posture; nervous habits and disorders. See 46. 
 
 12. The work of the school physician and the school nurse. 42, 45. 
 
 13. Methods of enlisting the interest and cooperation of children in 
 the promotion of their own health. 48. 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 38. B. T. Baldwin: The Physical Growth of Children from Birth to 
 Maturity. 
 
 39. J. H. Bancroft: The Posture of School Children. 
 
 40. L. S. Bryant: School Feeding. 
 
 41. G. S. Hall: Adolescence. 
 
 42. E. B. Hoag and L. M. Terman: Health Work in the Schools. 
 
 43. Woods Hutchinson: A Handbook of Health. 
 
 44. R. T. McKenzie: Exercise in Education and Medicine. 
 
 45. L. W. Rapeer: Educational Hygiene. 
 
 46. L. M. Terman: The Hygiene of the School Child. 
 
 47. J. M. Tyler: Growth and Education. 
 
 48. Health Education Bulletins of the U. S. Bureau of Education and 
 Publications of the Child Health Organization. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 Forming Right Habits 
 
 Native Tendencies and Capacities 
 
 The auntie of foolish little Epaminondas, in the 
 diverting tale which is familiar to the children of this 
 generation, laments that he " ain't got the sense he 
 was born with." But just what sort and degree of 
 sense children are born with, is a matter upon which 
 widely differing views have been held. Socrates, 
 in ancient times, and Froebel, in the nineteenth 
 century, believed that they possessed in germ all 
 wisdom, and that education is primarily an unfold- 
 ment from within; Locke and Herbart, on the con- 
 trary, held that their minds, to begin with, are mere 
 blanks, and that education takes place through 
 discipline and instruction from without. Lord 
 Palmerston, echoing Rousseau, maintained that 
 " all babies are born good," and Wordsworth that 
 " heaven lies about us in our infancy; " while most 
 theologians, under the influence of the dogma of 
 original sin, have thought of children as born bad. 
 
 The truth is that a child is born neither good nor 
 bad; and that his mind is neither a blank tablet nor 
 a seed-like capsule which contains a preformed 
 pattern of the whole of his future development. 
 He is a little bundle, rather, of instincts, capacities, 
 
Forming Right Habits 69 
 
 and active tendencies. These instincts and capaci- 
 ties determine the child's responses to the situa- 
 tions in which he is placed. They constitute the 
 raw material for his possible development. They 
 form the basis and starting-point for his education. 
 To attempt to list the native human instincts and 
 capacities is too great a task for this chapter. Such 
 lists may be found in the chapter on " Instinct " 
 in James' Psychology, in Kirkpatrick's Fundamen- 
 tals of Child Study, and especially in Thorndike's 
 concrete and thorough discussion of the whole field 
 in his book on The Original Nature of Man. They 
 include tendencies to gross bodily control, such as 
 holding up the head, sitting, standing, walking, run- 
 ning, stooping, jumping, climbing, clinging, pushing, 
 and pulling; tendencies to general activity, such as 
 vocalization, visual exploration, grasping, kicking, 
 throwing, and manipulation of various sorts; food- 
 getting responses, such as sucking, putting in the 
 mouth, and biting, with which may be associated the 
 hunting, collecting, and hoarding instincts; social 
 instincts and emotional responses, such as crying, 
 smiling, fear, anger, fighting, teasing, motherly be- 
 havior, gregariousness, sensitivity to the approval or 
 scorn of others; tendencies to mastering or to sub- 
 missive behavior, to communicate, cooperate and 
 help; sympathy, kindliness, shyness, rivalry, envy, 
 jealousy; the sex instincts; and the great general 
 tendencies which are commonly termed curiosity, 
 imitation, play, and constructiveness. 
 
70 The Training of Children 
 
 These instincts and capacities are not all present 
 at birth; but they appear, each in its time, in the 
 course of the natural growth of mind and body. 
 Each, when it does appear, forms the starting-point 
 for a group of habits. The problem of the parent 
 and teacher is not so much to create activity within 
 children, as to select from and to direct the active 
 responses with which they are already overflowing. 
 The child does not purposely initiate these forms of 
 activity; he simply finds himself, in certain situa- 
 tions, doing these things or stirred by these emo- 
 tions. He must be helped by older folk to under- 
 stand and to control his own instinctive tendencies. 
 
 It needs hardly to be said that children are alike 
 • only in the general sense that each by nature pos- 
 sesses in some degree the various human instincts 
 and capacities. They differ greatly in the degree of 
 strength which each tendency may have, in the 
 character of indefiniteness or detailed precision 
 which each possesses, and in the relative proportion 
 in which the several tendencies and capacities com- 
 bine to produce the individual. 
 
 The Control of Native Tendencies 
 
 Not all of the instinctive tendencies of original 
 human nature are good; and in themselves these 
 tendencies do not suffice to equip one to share in the 
 work and well-being of the world of men today. 
 Thorndike put the matter vividly in the closing 
 pages of the book to which we have referred : 
 
Forming Right Habits 71 
 
 " The imperfections and misleadings of original 
 nature are in fact many and momentous. The 
 common good requires that each child learn count- 
 less new lessons and unlearn a large fraction of his 
 natural birthright. The main reason for this is 
 that original equipment is archaic, adapting the 
 human animal for the life that might be led by a 
 family group of wild men in the woods, amongst the 
 brute forces of land, water, wind, rain, plants, ani- 
 mals, and other groups of wild men. The life to 
 which original nature adapts man is probably far 
 more like the life of the wolf or ape, than like the 
 life that now is, as a result of human art, habit, and 
 reasoning, perpetuating themselves in language, 
 tools, buildings, books, and customs. . . . Illus- 
 trations in abundance can be found of the archaic 
 unreason of original nature, or, more scientifically, 
 of the thoroughgoing transformation which life 
 undergoes in proportion as human reason works 
 back upon the conditions of things and the wants of 
 men. . . . We fear, not the carriers of malaria and 
 yellow fever, but thunder and the dark; we pity, 
 not the gifted youth debarred from education, but 
 the beggar's bloody sore; we are less excited by a 
 great injustice than by a tittle blood; we suffer more 
 from such scorn as untipped waiters, cabmen, and 
 barbers show, than from our own idleness, ignorance, 
 and folly. . . . The original tendencies of man have 
 not been right, are not right, and probably never 
 will be right. By them alone few of the best wants 
 in human life would have been felt, and fewer still 
 satisfied." 
 
 The fundamental problem of education, therefore, 
 is that of the use, control, and redirection of the 
 
72 The Training of Children 
 
 native tendencies and capacities of children. Some 
 instincts we shall seek to get rid of, either by the 
 negative method of so managing the child's environ- 
 ment that they are never called forth, in the hope 
 that through disuse they may in time atrophy or be 
 overlaid by habits which will render them impotent, 
 or by the more active method of rendering them dis- 
 agreeable through punishment. Other instincts we 
 shall seek to confirm and establish by repeated use. 
 Most instincts we shall seek neither to eliminate nor to 
 confirm as they are, but rather to control and redirect 
 toward ends that are profitable. Anger, for example, 
 and pugnacity are instincts that ought not to be 
 eliminated, yet certainly ought not to be confirmed 
 in their natural lawlessness; they need to be con- 
 trolled, directed toward the objects that may fitly 
 arouse righteous anger, and enlisted in the fight 
 against ignorance, disease, and wrong. The impulses 
 of rivalry, left to themselves, breed selfishness, envy 
 and jealousy; yet emulation, properly directed and 
 controlled, is one of the mainsprings of human 
 progress. 
 
 Among some of the lower orders of animals, whose 
 instincts are detailed and precise in their adapta- 
 tion to the particular situations which the animal is 
 likely to meet, so that the animal has little to learn 
 and passes through little or no period of infancy, 
 these instincts suffice for the protection and mainte- 
 nance of such individuals as survive the relatively 
 indifferent treatment which nature thus metes out 
 
Forming Right Habits 73 
 
 to them. It is not so with the instincts of the child. 
 The little human being has much to learn, and he 
 passes through a long period of infancy during which 
 he is dependent upon the care of others. His 
 instincts are vague and indefinite, and are not 
 sufficient in themselves to enable him to survive to 
 maturity. The survival value of instincts does not, 
 in the case of the young of the human species, con- 
 stitute their primary value, as it does in the case of 
 some of the lower orders of animals. 
 
 The primary value of the instincts of children lies 
 in their potential relation to habits, ideas, and ideals. 
 This value is twofold : (1) The instinctive tendency 
 to act serves as the starting-point for the formation 
 of a habit or group of habits. It gives the initial 
 push. It furnishes the raw material, the active 
 responses from among which some will be selected, 
 controlled and directed in order that the right habits 
 may be established. Think of the difficulty of 
 educating a passive, inert child! It is the instinc- 
 tive activity of children that makes their education 
 possible. (2) The instinctive tendency serves, after 
 the habit has been established, and throughout life, 
 to give to the habit rooting and substance, heart and 
 zest. Habits that have grown out of instinctive 
 impulses are not thin bits of veneer, or structures 
 precariously lodged upon sand. They are rooted in 
 nature itself; they are founded upon rock-bottom. 
 Their character as " second nature " is secure be- 
 cause of their connection with original nature. 
 
74 The Training of Children 
 
 What is true of habits in this respect is true also of 
 the ideas and ideals associated with them. 
 
 There are two ways of directing and controlling 
 instinctive tendencies which in general go together — 
 by habits and by ideas. The first time that an 
 instinctive tendency is followed, it is both indetermi- 
 nate and blind — blind in that its result is not pur- 
 posed or even foreseen; indeterminate in that the 
 specific details of its path depend upon the particular 
 circumstances of the situation which chance to call 
 it forth. After it has once been used in action, 
 however, the instinctive tendency has developed by 
 adding to itself both the beginning of a habit and an 
 idea. It has begun to be set in a direction deter- 
 mined by the result of the initial exercise, and the 
 memory of that result remains to guide future action. 
 
 The Law of Habit 
 
 Physically, habit depends upon the fact that nerve 
 cells and their connections are modified through use. 
 A cell that has once functioned is so changed that it 
 is easier for it to function a second time. A func- 
 tional connection that has once been made by the 
 transmission of a nerve impulse from one cell to 
 another, is likely to be made again. And the more 
 often that connection is made, the more definitely 
 established the pathway becomes. 
 
 Next to James in his classic chapter upon " Habit," 
 the best and most concrete expositor of the law of 
 habit is Professor Thorndike, who states it as a com- 
 
Forming Right Habits 75 
 
 pound of two laws — the Law of Exercise and the 
 Law of Effect. 
 
 (1) The Law of Exercise is that, " other things 
 being equal, the oftener or more emphatically a 
 given response is connected with a certain situation, 
 the more likely it is to be made to that situation in 
 the future. . . . This law may be more briefly 
 stated as: Other things being equal, exercise strength- 
 ens the bond between situation and response." 1 
 
 The strength of a given habit, that is, the degree of 
 probability that it will persist and so determine the 
 response when the situation recurs, depends upon 
 three factors : — the frequency, the intensity and the 
 recency with which the pathway has been traversed 
 and the bond confirmed. Frequency, or repetition, 
 is a factor which needs no comment. Other things 
 being equal, a habit established under the focaliza- 
 tion of attention is more likely to persist than one 
 incidentally acquired. Again, if other things are 
 equal, that habit-pathway will be followed in a given 
 situation which is freshest because most recently 
 traversed. Disuse operates, as a rule, to decrease the 
 strength of a habit. 
 
 (2) The Law of Effect is that, " other things being 
 equal, the greater the satisfyingness of the state of 
 affairs which accompanies or follows a given response 
 to a certain situation, the more likely that response 
 is to be made to that situation in the future. . . . 
 This law may be stated more briefly as: Satisfying 
 
 > E. L. Thorndike, Education, pp. 95, 96. 
 
76 The Training of Children 
 
 results strengthen, and discomfort weakens, the bond 
 between situation and response." 1 
 
 This is the principle that operates to select, from 
 among the multitude of active tendencies, those that 
 are to be repeated and confirmed through use. 
 Those which, when tried, give pleasure or satisfac- 
 tion, tend naturally to be tried again; those which 
 bring pain or annoyance one tends, quite as naturally, 
 to avoid. 
 
 The Law of Effect places a powerful instrument in 
 the hands of parents and teachers, as they seek to 
 direct the child's instinctive tendencies into habits of 
 the right sort. Upon this law hang all rewards, 
 on the one hand, and all punishments, on the other; 
 for to bestow a reward is but the effort to annex 
 satisfaction to an action which is desired, and to 
 punish is an effort to render annoying and vexatious 
 an action which ought not to be repeated. Rewards 
 and punishments are too often, however, artificial 
 and external; and the law of habit does not wait for 
 these to be added from without. Every action carries 
 its own sanction, in the form of some degree either 
 of satisfaction or annoyance. By so managing the 
 social and material situation that satisfaction will be 
 enhanced in case of the right actions, and that annoy- 
 ance will be developed and deepened in case of the 
 wrong actions, the development of the child's habits 
 may be guided and controlled by those most inter- 
 ested in his welfare. 
 
 > E. L. Thorndike, Education, pp. 95, 96. 
 
Forming Right Habits 77 
 
 A boy of seven every day brings home from school 
 his papers in arithmetic and spelling, which are 
 marked " 100 " with a regularity monotonous but 
 delightful to his parents' hearts. It is the father's 
 invariable rule, however busy, to look them over 
 quickly and to express approval of his work and pride 
 in his development. A few days ago the boy 
 informed his father that one of his classmates was 
 given a nickel by his father for every day that he 
 could show all of his papers marked " 100." " But 
 it's no wonder," he added, " 'cause Jim hardly ever 
 gets any 100-papers. I guess you couldn't afford to 
 pay me that way." The difference between the work 
 of the two boys is not wholly due to training, of 
 course; but the incident is in some respects a parable 
 of the difference in effectiveness between the external 
 reward of cash payment and the more natural, 
 intrinsic stimulus of social approval. 
 
 The very comfortable doctrine has been pro- 
 pounded by some modern educators that there is in 
 human nature a principle of catharsis whereby a 
 certain amount of exercise in childhood operates to 
 expel, rather than to confirm, wrong tendencies. 
 These educators believe that the development of 
 children naturally recapitulates the stages through 
 which the evolution of the race has passed, that 
 wrong tendencies inevitably manifest themselves at 
 certain stages, and that these tendencies should be 
 indulged as part of a wise regimen. They argue 
 that if these tendencies are repressed in childhood 
 
78 The Training of Children 
 
 they, will remain hidden below the surface, only to 
 break out in more dangerous forms in later life; 
 whereas if they are indulged while relatively harm- 
 less they will operate, vaccination-like, to render 
 the child immune to analogous temptations when he 
 becomes older. To use a more familiar figure, they 
 believe in a mild sort of sowing wild oats as a means 
 of preparing the good ground; or to revert to the 
 figure involved in the statement of their principle, 
 they hold that moderate exercise of these tendencies 
 constitutes a cathartic which rids the child's system 
 of ancestral poisons. 
 
 This principle of catharsis is the direct antithesis 
 of the law of habit. Such exercise is far more likely 
 to fasten wrong tendencies upon the child than to rid 
 him of them. The sensible parent will do better to 
 shape his course in accordance with the laws of habit, 
 which we know and understand, than to rely upon 
 this supposed principle of catharsis, which doubtless 
 exists only in the imaginations of its advocates. 
 
 Functions and Limitations of Habit 
 
 The functions of the law of habit are well known. 
 It renders action easier, through practice begets 
 skill and accuracy, and lessens fatigue. It minimizes 
 the need of conscious control, and sets the mind 
 free from attention to familiar details, so that it may 
 give itself to new and higher things. It makes 
 learning of all sorts possible, and is responsible even 
 for the calling to mind of our ideas and memories. 
 
Forming Right Habits 79 
 
 It enables one to store up capital day after day, and 
 to establish his life upon increasingly sure founda- 
 tions. There is no more indispensable service that 
 we can render to our children than to help them to 
 form right, wholesome, useful habits. 
 
 The principle of habit has its limitations, however. 
 The most obvious is that it works both ways. Bad 
 habits are as easy to acquire as good ones. Habit 
 confirms and establishes disobedience, shiftlessness, 
 bad temper, uncleanliness, and discourteous man- 
 ners quite as readily as obedience, industry, good 
 temper, cleanliness, and courtesy. Even when our 
 intentions are of the best, lapses may take place and 
 modifications creep into our habits, and these may 
 get fastened upon us before we are aware. Habit, 
 moreover, makes it easy for one to get into a rut. 
 It makes us contented with whatever we have be- 
 come used to — which is under some conditions a 
 great blessing, but under other conditions a curse. 
 It tends to blunt the feelings; and it may even dull 
 the intelligence, as it makes it possible for one to go 
 only the familiar paths, indolently following the 
 line of least resistance, without doing any real think- 
 ing or attempting to adapt himself to new circum- 
 stances or to face his developing opportunities and 
 responsibilities. It may result in a life of mechanical 
 performance, without interest or zest. 
 
 If we would avoid these limitations of habit, 
 we must observe two counsels that are fundamental. 
 The first is: Supplement habit with ideas. Develop 
 
80 The Training of Children ' 
 
 within the child a sound practical judgment as well 
 as a body of right habits. Help him to conceive his 
 situations, explain to him the reasons for various 
 courses of conduct, and develop within him the 
 disposition and the power to think for himself and 
 to exercise rational, deliberate choice. Habit is 
 only one method of controlling original tendencies; 
 the other method is through ideas. A boy of six, 
 learning to play parcheesi, had begun through some 
 chance to acquire the habit of picking up the dice 
 as s.oon as he threw them, so that no one else was 
 able to see the result of his throw. Repeated com- 
 mands, warnings, and even punishments, such as 
 compelling him to give up the throw, failed to break 
 the habit; until his father said what should have 
 been said in the very beginning. " You see the 
 reason you ought not to do that is because people 
 could cheat that way. You would not want folk 
 to think that you are cheating, would you?" He 
 replied, " No, of course not; " and never did it 
 again. He understood the idea. Habit and judg- 
 ment must develop together, if character is to be 
 placed on a sound basis. 
 
 The second counsel is : Build habits upon instincts. 
 A habit unsupported by the predispositions of original 
 nature remains insecure. Make nature work with you. 
 Appeal to the child's native interests, build upon his 
 instinctive responses. Two ends will thus be attained : 
 the instincts will be directed and controlled; and the 
 habits will be given motive, body, and substance. 
 
Forming Right Habits 81 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 1. Describe some of the active tendencies of children, which you have 
 observed, which seem to you to be clearly instinctive in character. 
 Why do you think them to be such? What are the characteristics of 
 human instincts as compared with the instincts of lower animals? 32, 
 33, 37, 49, SO, 51. 
 
 2. What are the causes, so far as we know them, of the differences 
 between individual children with respect to their native equipment and 
 capacities? SI, 54. 
 
 3. Cite further evidences of what Thorndike in the passage quoted 
 calls " the imperfections and misleadings of original nature." 
 
 4. Describe and discuss the relative advantages of the various methods 
 of controlling instinctive tendencies; use and disuse, reward and punish- 
 ment, substitution, redirection. 32, 34, 51, 55. 
 
 5. Describe examples which have come under your observation of the 
 working of the Law of Exercise with its variables: frequency, intensity 
 and recency. 
 
 6. Describe examples which have come under your observation of the 
 working of the Law of Effect. 
 
 7. Why should rewards and punishments be as natural, logical and 
 closely connected with the action as possible? 
 
 8. Why are one's first impressions or one's first responses to a given 
 situation of relatively greater importance than those that come 
 afterwards ? 
 
 9. Cite some of the evidences for and against the principle of Cathar- 
 sis. 32, 37. 
 
 10. Why is it important in early life to acquire a store of useful habits? 
 
 11. Describe any cases that have come under your observation where 
 the law of habit has operated disadvantageously, either by establishing 
 one in wrong ways, or by limiting and circumscribing one's life. Why 
 should the forming of habits always be accompanied by the acquiring of 
 sound ideas and the development of practical judgment as well? 
 
 12. Does the law of habit have anything to do with controlling our 
 ideas themselves? Find out what is meant by the principle of the 
 association of ideas and describe the laws of association. 49. 
 
 13. Discuss the principles involved in the following practical maxims 
 of habit-formation. 
 
 a. Bain held that " The two main conditions are an adequate initia- 
 tive and an unbroken persistence." 
 
 b. James' maxims are: (1) Launch yourself with as strong and decided 
 initiative as possible; (2) never suffer an exception to occur; (3) seize 
 the very first opportunity to act; (4) keep the faculty of effort alive by a 
 little gratuitous exercise every day. 49. 
 
 c. Rowe formulates four steps in habit formation: (1) To help the 
 child develop the idea of the habit; (2) to work up his initiative or zest; 
 
82 The Training of Children 
 
 (3) to secure abundant and genuine practice; (4) to guard against excep- 
 tions, lapses, and modifications. 52. 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 32. G. A. Coe: A Social Theory of Religious Education. 
 
 33. William McDougall: An Introduction to Social Psychology. 
 
 34. E. E. R. Mumford: The Dawn of Character. 
 37. E. L. Thorndike: The Original Nature of Man. 
 
 49. William James: Principles of Psychology. 
 
 50. E. A. Kirkpatrick: Fundamentals of Child Study. 
 
 51. Norsworthy and Whitley: Psychology of Childhood. 
 
 52. S. H. Rowe: Habit Formation and the Science of Teaching. 
 
 53. E. L. Thorndike: Education. 
 
 54. E. L. Thorndike: Individuality. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 The Child at Play 
 
 Why do Children Play? 
 
 Because they are sinful, our Puritan forebears 
 would have answered, who viewed their restless 
 activity as evidence of innate depravity. Horace 
 Bushnell disposed of that answer, and set practical 
 theology upon a truer path, when he insisted that the 
 instinct of play is a divine appointment, and even 
 went on to assert the kinship of the spirit of play to 
 that of religion. 
 
 " There is a reason for the play state of childhood 
 which respects the moral and religious well-being of 
 mankind, and makes it important that we should 
 have our first chapter of life in this key. Play is the 
 symbol and interpreter of liberty, that is, Christian 
 liberty; and no one could ever sufficiently conceive 
 the state of free impulse and the joy there is in it, 
 save by means of this unconstrained, always pleasur- 
 able activity that we call the play of children. Play 
 wants no motive but play; and so true goodness, 
 when it is ripe in the soul and is become a complete 
 inspiration there, will ask no motive but to be good. 
 Therefore God has purposely set the beginning of the 
 natural life in a mood that foreshadows the last and 
 highest chapter of immortal character." 1 
 
 What is this but another way of putting what 
 
 > Horace Bu»hn«ll, Christian Nurture, p. 291 (1916 edition). 
 
84 The Training of Children 
 
 Jesus said? "Except ye become as little children, 
 ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 Leaving theology, and turning to psychology, 
 we find almost as much difference between older and 
 newer views concerning the function of play in the 
 life of children. 
 
 (1) The traditional theory, suggested by Schiller 
 and formulated by Herbert Spencer, was that play 
 is due to an overflow of surplus energy. The inferior 
 animals, the theory runs, have neither time nor 
 energy for play. They are unceasingly occupied 
 with activities essential to the maintenance of life — 
 search for food, escape from enemies, etc. But the 
 higher animals, with more efficient faculties, are not 
 so absorbed by the struggle for existence. They 
 satisfy their wants more completely and more 
 quickly; and so they have a certain amount of 
 leisure when no craving appetite seeks some good to 
 be obtained by serious activity, while at the same 
 time superior nutrition has begotten within them an 
 excess of energy. This energy overflows in play, 
 which is, said Spencer, " an artificial exercise of 
 powers which in default of their natural exercise 
 become so ready to discharge that they relieve them- 
 selves by simulated actions in place of real actions." 1 
 Play is, in short, according to this theory, a sort of 
 safety-valve. 
 
 Applied to the life of children, this theory means 
 that they play because they are protected and 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer: Principles of Psychology. } 534. 
 
The Child at Play 85 
 
 provided for by their parents, not subject to eco- 
 nomic pressure, well fed, and abounding in energy. 
 The particular forms of playful activity into which 
 this energy is directed as it overflows, are determined, 
 Spencer held, by their imitation of what he called 
 " real actions." 
 
 Despite the measure of truth involved in it — 
 which is that any one, child or adult, plays better 
 when healthy, rested, and vigorous than when ill 
 or tired, and that imitation is one of the factors 
 determining the forms of play — this theory is now 
 generally regarded as superficial. It accounts for 
 the obvious facts just mentioned, but is far from 
 accounting for all of the facts, and does not get much 
 below the surface. 
 
 It is not only when full of surplus energy that 
 children play; they will play, too, when sick or tired, 
 and will keep at it until they are exhausted. Again, 
 by no means all of the forms of play, either of little 
 animals or of children, can possibly be determined 
 by their imitation of serious activities. There is an 
 order in the development of the forms of play which 
 children enjoy, which seems to be in part determined 
 by inner, rather than by environmental conditions. 
 And there are many play-activities which are clearly 
 rooted, not in the child's imitation of older folk, but 
 in his own maturing instincts and capacities. 
 
 (2) President Stanley Hall believes that play is a 
 form of the child's recapitulation of the antecedent 
 life of the race. He says : 
 
86 The Training of Children 
 
 " I regard play as the motor habits and spirit of 
 the past of the race, persisting in the present, as 
 rudimentary functions sometimes of and always 
 akin to rudimentary organs. The best index and 
 guide to the stated activities of adults in past ages 
 is found in the instinctive, untaught and non- 
 imitative plays of children which are the most 
 spontaneous and exact expressions of their motor 
 needs. The young grow up into the same forms of 
 motor activity, as did generations that have long 
 preceded them, only to a limited extent; and if the 
 form of every human occupation were to change 
 today, play would be unaffected save in some of its 
 superficial imitative forms. It would develop the 
 motor capacities, impulses, and fundamental forms 
 of our past heritage, and the transformation of these 
 into later acquired adult forms is progressively later. 
 In play every mood and movement is instinct with 
 heredity. Thus we rehearse the activities of our 
 ancestors, back we know not how far, and repeat their 
 life work in summative and adumbrated ways." 1 
 
 'This theory, as contrasted with Spencer's, is 
 sound in its insistence that play is instinctive. 
 Children play because there develop within them, 
 each in its time, those natural tendencies to respond 
 to given situations with activities of certain types, 
 which were described in the last chapter of this book 
 as their native human instincts and capacities. 
 
 In three respects, however, President Hall's 
 theory is questionable; and these, unfortunately, 
 are aspects of the theory which he urges strongly: 
 
 i G. S. Hall, Youth, p. 74. 
 
The Child at Play 87 
 
 (a) The evidence for the idea that children, in the 
 development of these native tendencies, recapitulate 
 the life of the race, and pass through play-stages 
 which correspond in order to the culture-epochs of 
 human history, is now seen to be so meager, and the 
 exceptions and counter-evidence loom so large, that 
 the principle of recapitulation is deemed by most 
 psychologists and teachers to possess little practical 
 value, if indeed it must not be given up entirely. 
 
 (b) He is over-trustful of " nature " as he sees it, 
 and too much inclined to linger in the feeding and 
 forming of " atavistic and rudimentary functions," 
 " adumbrations " and " hereditary traits of sava- 
 gery." Professor Thorndike's position, as quoted in 
 the last article of this series, is sounder; and those 
 who care to go into the issue more fully will do well 
 to read his criticism of Hall's theories in The Original 
 Nature of Man, pp. 245-282. (c) President Hall 
 believes that the play of childhood and youth is in 
 part a cathartic, which operates through exercise to 
 rid the system of undesirable tendencies — a dubious 
 principle concerning which we know very little indeed 
 and which runs counter to the law of habit, concern- 
 ing which we know a great deal. 
 
 (3) Most psychologists today accept, in a broad 
 sense, the view of Karl Groos, who sharply criticized 
 Spencer's theory in his books on The Play of Animals 
 and The Play of Man. Groos holds that play is 
 instinctive, and that it constitutes a preparation for 
 life, in that children, as well as young animals, 
 
88 The Training of Children 
 
 practice in play the forms of activity which will later 
 be of actual use to them in the real business of living. 
 This theory is true, if not too narrowly interpreted. 
 Play is more than a preparation by practice for the 
 specific activities of the modern world or for just 
 those occupations which constitute the different 
 businesses of folk in a world where industry is organ- 
 ized upon the present plan, which makes specialists 
 and barterers of us all. Play is a preparation, rather, 
 for complete living. This is the great truth in 
 President Hall's view, despite our dissent from some 
 of the extreme doctrines in which he has clothed it. 
 The point is well put by Seashore : 
 
 " Man has an instinct to do everything that he 
 can do. The possession of capacity carries with it 
 the tendency to use that capacity; with the posses- 
 sion of wings goes the tendency to fly, with the 
 possession of the capacity for reflection goes the 
 tendency to reason. Work and the necessities of 
 life develop but a relatively small part of our instinc- 
 tive resources. Groups of. instinctive capacities 
 would be lost were it not for the liberal education of 
 play. It develops those racial traits which have not 
 been called for by the spur of necessity. It elevates 
 even as it levels. Our artificial life is narrow, spe- 
 cialized, and intensive, and this is indeed a condition 
 for great achievements; but play develops the 
 possible man, rather than the man of choice and 
 condition. . . . The tendency in play is to fall back 
 upon the elemental. Whatever artifices of war may 
 be devised, fighting plays will always gravitate back 
 toward the simple form of direct bodily contact, be it 
 
The Child at Play 89 
 
 with fellow men, beasts, or the forces of nature. 
 It is not plausible to assume that boys climb trees 
 and swim in response to survivals of these specific 
 activities traceable to a distant arboreal or aquatic 
 ancestry. Boys come into this world with limbs 
 fitted for climbing and swimming; trees are common 
 and inviting for climbing, and the water is a great 
 ' temptation ' to the boy. But the tree and the 
 water challenge curiosity, bravery, and excitement." 1 
 
 (4) A point of view much like this of Seashore is 
 set forth by Miss Lilla Appleton, in her Comparative 
 Study of the Play Activities of Adult Savages and 
 Civilized Children. She advances what she calls a 
 " biological theory " of play, which regards it as 
 dependent upon the structure of the body, and holds 
 that the type of play activity at any age is deter- 
 mined by the stage of development which the grow- 
 ing body has reached. " Is it not significant," she 
 asks, " that whatever the type of play may be, it 
 just keeps pace with the type of somatic growth? 
 And does not the impulse to exercise these growing 
 parts furnish all the explanation that is needed for 
 the existence of the play activity? " 
 ' This theory is less one-sided than the rest and may 
 serve as a basis upon which to sum them up. Play 
 is nature's impulse to self-development through 
 exercise. We grant to Spencer that play depends in 
 part upon freedom from economic pressure; we 
 learn from Hall that it is rooted in instinctive tenden- 
 
 'C. E. Seashore: Psychology in Everyday Life, pp. 16-17. 
 
90 The Training of Children 
 
 cies, and from Groos that it prepares one for the 
 serious business of life; but we must understand 
 these theories in terms of the growing powers of the 
 child. There is no such thing, most likely, as a 
 special instinct of play or a special set of play 
 instincts. Play is a general tendency of all the 
 instincts and capacities. As these gradually ripen 
 they seek exercise and through exercise are de- 
 veloped. Play is thus the principal instrument of 
 the child's development; it is the impulse which 
 nature has implanted within the child, to educate 
 himself. 
 
 The Development of Play 
 
 The forms of play change as the child grows older, 
 and new instincts and capacities mature. In general, 
 the development of play may be described as being 
 (a) from plays enlisting the senses and muscles only 
 to those involving the imagination and intellectual 
 powers; (b) from plays that are individual merely 
 to those that are social in the sense both of being 
 competitive and cooperative; (c) from plays that 
 are primarily instinctive in their origin to plays that 
 are imitative and traceable to suggestions of the 
 environment; (d) from plays that are simple, free, 
 and unregulated, to those that are more complex 
 jnd denned by rules. 
 
 There are no clearly separated periods in the 
 development of the child's play interests. Like his 
 physical and mental growth this development is 
 
The Child at Play 91 
 
 continuous; yet in a broad way the following stages 
 may be distinguished. 
 
 (1) The stage of discovery. The child's earliest 
 play is of the senses and muscles simply. He is 
 engaged in discovering the world about him, trying 
 out his powers, and acquiring muscular coordination 
 and ability to handle his little body. 
 
 (2) The imitative stage. Imitative and dramatic 
 play begins in the third year, and continues through- 
 out childhood, reaching its culmination at eight or 
 nine, and after that gradually yielding place to other 
 interests. We never wholly lose our love of make- 
 believe. 
 
 (3) The constructive stage. The constructive stage 
 begins as soon as a child can pile blocks together to 
 make a tower or house. It continues throughout 
 the whole of childhood and youth, taking on new 
 forms as new abilities develop, and as the environ- 
 ment suggests new things to make and affords new 
 material. 
 
 (4) The competitive stage. At about seven the 
 motive of competition begins to determine the child's 
 play. He becomes concerned with the objective 
 results of his activity and wants to make or do things 
 better than some one else. The interest in games 
 develops rapidly. 
 
 (5) The team-play stage. At about ten or eleven 
 children begin to get interested in games that call 
 for team play, where the competition is between 
 groups instead of between individuals, and the bes,t 
 
92 The Training of Children 
 
 player is he who can fit best into a system of team 
 work. Games of this sort predominate throughout 
 adolescence. 
 
 Materials of Play 
 
 To play well is a child's real business in the world. 
 It is his work; it is the thing that he ought to do, to 
 develop himself for complete, happy, useful living. 
 The sensible father and mother will delight therefore 
 to furnish for their children the opportunity and the 
 materials for wholesome, educative play. If they 
 can by any means afford it they will take the children 
 to the country in the summer. Whether they can 
 afford such a vacation or not, they will take frequent 
 excursions with the children into the woods or open 
 fields or city parks. They will set apart a room in 
 the home to be the children's play-room; or if they 
 have not space to do that, they will give over to 
 the children a closet or cupboard in which to store 
 their possessions. And they will furnish such toys 
 and play materials as will enlist the children's 
 interest and exercise their developing powers. 
 
 Children's toys should be play-things in the literal 
 sense of that term, that is, they should be materials 
 for play, rather than for amusement. Play is active, 
 amusement passive. When we play we engage in 
 the activity ourselves. When we are amused we 
 watch somebody else. Children want to play rather 
 than to be amused, and they should be given such 
 toys and play materials as Jend themselves to their 
 
The Child at Play 93 
 
 own activity, rather than elaborate contrivances 
 which they can only watch and wonder at. Many 
 a father has experienced the disappointment of 
 buying some elaborate mechanical contrivance which 
 gave little real enjoyment save to himself as he set it 
 up, for a boy who soon lost interest in it because he 
 could do nothing with it. The simple toys are 
 best, especially for the younger children. Games had 
 better be kept for later childhood. 
 
 Materials that lend themselves to construction 
 are of the highest value from very early childhood 
 up, beginning with the baby's blocks, and continu- 
 ing through sets of " structural steel " to electric 
 motors and home-made wireless outfits. A toy that 
 most children enjoy even at two years is a set of 
 color-cubes, enameled red, white, blue and yellow on 
 four sides respectively, with a combination of red 
 and white on the fifth, and blue and yellow on the 
 sixth. The set lends itself to the making of fascinat- 
 ing color designs, and for two or three years children 
 are eager to play with it, learning, not only color 
 discrimination, but form and symmetry as well. 
 
 In her interesting and sensible book on Self- 
 Reliance, which ought to be read by every city 
 parent, Mrs. Dorothy Canfield Fisher has a chapter 
 on the importance of raw materials. She says : 
 
 " If we are to train our children to self-help, 
 ... we must try steadily, throughout the child's 
 earlier life, to steep him in an atmosphere colored 
 
94 The Training of Children 
 
 throughout with energetic, purposeful action. It is 
 not enough to insist upon a few tasks performed. 
 Nothing is enough which depends upon our presence, 
 upon the presence of any adult. The influence at 
 work must be ever-present; the child must be sur- 
 rounded, not by commands and exhortations to do 
 things for himself, but by irresistible temptations to 
 do things for himself, temptations which even the 
 naturally slothful or sluggish cannot resist. There 
 is no better ally in this campaign than raw materials, 
 and no more insidious foe than the cheap and easily 
 secured finished products of our modern industrial 
 civilization. The presence of raw materials stimu- 
 lates the creative instinct, the noblest and most 
 fertile of all human impulses, and the presence of 
 finished products stimulates the ignoble instinct for 
 personal possession, one of the most futile of human 
 instincts. ... Of course, one bait will not do for 
 all fish, and the parent who goes angling in his 
 children's natures for the instinct to self-help must 
 have as large and varied a set of resources as the 
 most completely equipped fly-fisherman. What will 
 tempt a young child to creating something for him- 
 self will leave an older one untouched; and what will 
 move one temperament to effort will mean nothing to 
 another. Carpenter's tools are excellent things, but 
 one would not go far in offering them to a little girl 
 with a passion for dolls." 1 
 
 Every boy ought to have a work-bench and a set 
 of carpenter's tools, just as every girl ought to have 
 the materials for the making and dressing of dolls. 
 In his study of The Constructive Interests of Children, 
 Dr. E. B. Kent found that fifty-five per cent of the 
 
 » P. C. Fish* r. Self-Stlitntt, pp. 55. 57 
 
The Child at Play 95 
 
 things that the boys of two schools had made during 
 the year previous were from wood, and only six per 
 cent from cloth, while fifty-two per cent of the things 
 the girls had made were of cloth, and three per cent 
 from wood. The interests of the boys ran largely to 
 boats, traps and homes for animals, and mills and 
 other things that would go. The girls made various 
 things connected with dolls, and a number of more or 
 less useful gifts. 
 
 It is well to remember Mrs. Fisher's counsel not 
 to buy " sets " of imitation tools, but to give to the 
 boy rather a few real tools, to keep them sharp, and 
 to help him acquire responsibility for caring for them. 
 It is important, too, to give him good wood to work 
 with, smooth, soft and lending itself easily to his 
 first endeavors to make something worth while. 
 Many a boy is discouraged by having nothing but 
 rough boards, knocked off of boxes, upon which to 
 exercise his budding ambitions as a carpenter. 
 
 We should bear in mind too that children stand in 
 need of ideas, quite as much as of materials. They 
 should, it is true, be left to themselves with opportu- 
 nity to work out their own problems and to exercise 
 their own initiative. But they have had com- 
 paratively little experience, and they need sugges- 
 tions as to possible things to make or do. The toys 
 and tools and raw materials furnished them should 
 be such as lend themselves to the imagination; and 
 the father and mother should have enough imagina- 
 tion of their own to help kindle that of the child. 
 
96 The Training of Children 
 
 Amusements 
 
 We have already seen the difference between 
 amusement and play. Children ought to play. 
 Should they be furnished amusements? The com- 
 mon amusements with regard to which parents 
 sooner or later face this question are such as concerts, 
 plays, moving pictures, athletic games, parties and 
 picnics. Many of these are good. They present 
 to the child new experiences, they lead him out into 
 larger social relations. They present ideals, and 
 rouse within him a glow of appreciation. But at 
 the same time these amusements have certain 
 limitations, even confront him with dangers. They 
 are passive rather than active, and never can develop 
 the life as play does. They take the child away 
 from the home for his pleasure, and create within 
 him an appetite for more amusement. They are 
 almost everywhere commercialized. We buy our 
 amusements from men whose chief concern is to 
 furnish what will sell, and who pander therefore to 
 average tastes or lower. The wise parent will do his 
 best to choose carefully the amusements to which he 
 will take his children. It is best, moreover, not to 
 begin too soon, or to create too early within the child 
 an appetite which in all too many folk, in these days, 
 is becoming insatiable. It is a good rule to stop and 
 ask ourselves when we think of taking a little child 
 to some show or public spectacle, whether it is 
 really his enjoyment that we are seeking, or our own 
 
The Child at Play 97 
 
 enjoyment as we watch his reaction to the novel 
 stimulus. The customary gibe about men hunting a 
 child to take to the circus has all too much truth 
 beneath it. 
 
 The amusement concerning which the parents of 
 today face the most insistent questions is the motion- 
 picture show. It has the virtue of cheapness, of a 
 possibly rich educative value, widening experience, 
 presenting ideals and engaging the natural human 
 interest in life and action. Yet the " movie " 
 possesses in a peculiar degree all the dangers above 
 mentioned. The child who spends his time at the 
 movies is missing either active play or sleep, and is 
 tiring his eyes and fatiguing his body. He is finding 
 his pleasure outside the home, and is developing an 
 appetite which may soon stand in the way of better 
 things. Even when he purposes to see a good film, 
 moreover, he is almost sure to have his little mind 
 stultified, if not actually defiled, by some accompany- 
 ing bad or poor product of an industry highly com- 
 mercialized, and not yet fully in possession of sound 
 ideals. The best counsel is not to let children begin 
 to go to the movies too soon; not to let them go too 
 often; not to let them go alone; and to see to it in 
 so far as we can that they go only to films worth 
 seeing. The agencies are multiplying, fortunately, 
 through which reliable information is available to 
 parents, as to the character of the films that are being 
 offered. 
 
 The child should be afforded some amusements 
 
98 The Training of Children 
 
 as he grows older. But the best rule is to have 
 him get these as a member of the family group. 
 Parents ought to share their children's amusements 
 and let the children share their own; they ought to 
 bring their amusements into the home when pos- 
 sible, and when they must go elsewhere for them, go 
 as a family. The centrifugal tendencies of modern 
 amusements — each member of the family to his 
 own — should be resisted. Parents and children 
 should, so far as it may be possible in a world like 
 ours now is, play together, work together, and be 
 amused together. 
 
The Child at Play 99 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 1. Discuss the theories of play presented in the text. 51, 55, 58, 
 59,61. 
 
 2. What are the evidences for the instinctive character of children's 
 play? 37, 51, 58, 59. 
 
 3. Why may not Groos' theory be too narrowly interpreted? 
 
 4. Give examples of children's play belonging to each of the stages 
 distinguished. 
 
 5. Describe some good toys, play materials and games for children, 
 both boys and girls, at various ages. 24, 56, 61, 63. 
 
 6. Why is it a good thing for children, if possible, to spend their sum- 
 mers in the country? 
 
 7. What are some of the moral values of play? 57, 62. 
 
 8. The relation of work and play. 
 
 9. Why should grown-up folk play? 
 
 10. Describe the educative use of play in the public schools. 57, 61, 
 62, 63. 
 
 11. The play-ground movement in America and its values. 57, 62. 
 
 12. Describe a sensible amusement policy for some family of children 
 whom you know, under the conditions in which they live. When would 
 you begin to take the children to baseball games? To the theater? 
 To the movies? To concerts, etc.? Give reasons for your decisions. 
 
 13. What is the motion-picture situation in your own community? 
 What problems does it present? What are the homes, schools and 
 churches doing with these problems? What ought they do? 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 2. Horace Bushnell: Christian Nurture. 
 24. Dorothy C. Fisher: Self-Reliance. 
 37. E. L. Thorndike: The Original Nature of Man. 
 51. Norsworthy and Whitley: Psychology of Childhood. 
 
 55. Lilla E. Appleton: A Comparative Study of the Play Activities of 
 Adult Savages and Civilized Children. 
 
 56. J. H. Bancroft: Games for the Playground, Home, School and 
 Gymnasium. 
 
 57. H. S- Curtis: Education Through Play. 
 
 58. Karl Groos: The Play of Animals. 
 
 59. Karl Groos: The Play of Man. 
 
 60. E. B. Kent: The Constructive Interests of Children. 
 
 61. G.E.Johnson: Education by Plays and Games. 
 
 62. Joseph, Lee: Play in Education. 
 
 63. Luella A. Palmer: Play Life in the First Eight Years. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 The Child at Work 
 
 There is no precise boundary line between work 
 and play. This is especially true in childhood, but 
 may and should remain true throughout life. In so 
 far as one thoroughly enjoys his work he may bring 
 into it the spirit of play, and play itself is of value, 
 not when one " fools about " at it, but when it is 
 entered into with something of the purposeful zest 
 which is characteristic of work. 
 
 Dr. Richard Cabot, in his sane, inspiring book on 
 What Men Live By, places work as the first of the 
 four things — work, play, love, and worship — that 
 enrich and ennoble life. He describes vividly the 
 differences between play, work, and drudgery: 
 
 " In play you have what you want. In work you 
 know what you want and believe that you are serv- 
 ing or approaching it. In drudgery no desired 
 object is in sight; blind forces push you on. . . . 
 Work differs from play because play is spontaneous 
 and delightful, while work is done soberly and against 
 resistance. Nevertheless we work because we want 
 the fruit of work — not from pure dogged determina- 
 tion. To force ourselves along without any desire 
 for a goal of attainment is drudgery. Work is 
 doing what you don't now enjoy for the sake of a 
 future which you clearly see and desire. Drudgery 
 
The Child at Work 101 
 
 is doing under strain what you don't now enjoy and 
 for no end that you can now appreciate." 1 
 
 The essential characteristic of work is that it has 
 an end in view. It is purposeful activity. We work 
 when we want to make something, to accomplish 
 some result, to bring about some good, and we do 
 what we do, not just because we enjoy doing it, but 
 because it is a necessary step toward the realization 
 of our purpose. " To learn how to work," says Dr. 
 Cabot, " is so to train our imagination that we can 
 feel the stimulus from distant futures." 
 
 But it is plain that one may enjoy the present 
 activity at the same time that he wants to make the 
 object or attain the future end to which that activity 
 is a means. We plant gardens that we may have 
 flowers and vegetables; but it is possible to enjoy 
 doing the necessary work. So work and play may 
 coincide. The same activity may be both. Strictly 
 speaking, one of the sentences quoted above should 
 be revised to read: " Work is doing what you need 
 to do, whether you enjoy it or not, for the sake of a 
 future which you clearly see and desire." 
 
 The more fully one sees and feels the necessary 
 and intrinsic relation that exists between the present 
 activity, which is the means, and the future end, 
 which is the object of desire, the more likely is it that 
 the end will irradiate the activity with somewhat of 
 its own desirability so that the work will be enjoyed, 
 
 » R. C. Cabot What Men Lite By, pages 5, 6. 
 
102 The Training of Children 
 
 and to that extent become play as well as work. 
 When, on the other hand, one forgets or does not see 
 or appreciate this relation, or when the necessity for 
 doing certain things in order to gain one's ends is 
 adventitious or arbitrary rather than intrinsic, 
 work tends to lose its zest and approaches drudgery. 
 
 The Gospel of Work 
 
 This, then, is the first item in the gospel of work. 
 It is the good news which the wisest and happiest 
 men in all generations have known, but which we 
 are strangely prone to forget: Work can be enjoyed; 
 it may be like play; it is itself a source of happiness. 
 The best work of the world, indeed, is that which is 
 done happily. The products of drudgery are seldom 
 high-grade. They bear the marks of the divided, 
 rebellious mind or of sullen lack of thought. The 
 really good jobs are done by men who are whole- 
 minded and energetic because interested and enjoy- 
 ing their work. 
 
 The gospel of work is, again, the good news that 
 work is the instrument of service and the path to fellow- 
 ship, human and divine. The human race seems 
 made for workj" rather than for mere play. We are 
 meant to be producers, not consumers merely, of 
 this world's goods; and in such work we serve one 
 another, and by it enter into that fellowship of 
 workers which gives to life whatever of meaning and 
 dignity it holds. " My Father worketh hitherto," 
 said Jesus, " and I work." " Whosoever would 
 
The Child at Work 103 
 
 become great among you shall be your minister; 
 and whosoever would be first among you shall be 
 your servant." " We are workers together with 
 God." 
 
 Professor T. N. Carver states this principle strik- 
 ingly. He says that the value of a man can be calcu- 
 lated by a simple algebraic formula: V=p — c, 
 when V stands for the man's value to society, p 
 for what he produces, and c for what he consumes. 
 The value of a man equals his production minus his 
 consumption. So measured, some men have plus 
 value: they are society's assets. Others have 
 minus value : they take f rorn the world more than 
 they put into it. Others, doubtless, are nonenti- 
 ties: they use up all that they produce, and their 
 value is zero. 1 
 
 The gospel of work is the good news that in work 
 character is both begotten and expressed — character 
 in the broadest sense of the term, as equivalent to 
 the whole man. It is work that makes real men and 
 women of us, not indulgence, not introspection, not 
 ascetic self-denial. Through work mind and will are 
 trained and developed and the human instincts and 
 feelings expressed, yet given due measure, control 
 and direction. From the point of view of the 
 individual, as well as from that of society, the life 
 worth living is active, objective-minded, and produc- 
 tive — a life of wholesome, useful work. 
 
 That children should be trained to work, therefore, 
 
 1 See Essays on Social Justice, page 173, and The Religion /forth Having. 
 
104 The Training of Children 
 
 is involved in all training or education that fits 
 them for life at its best. It is training them to act 
 purposively and creatively. This does not mean 
 that their development shall be forced or their 
 powers stunted by setting them at tasks that are 
 beyond them or by throwing them too early into 
 wage-earning competition. It does not mean that 
 they shall be deprived of their birthright of educative 
 play. But it does mean that they should be afforded 
 opportunity for such play as shall be really educa- 
 tive, and that their minds and hearts and wills 
 should be trained and developed by purposeful 
 activity. It means that they should share, in the 
 measure of their ability, in the real concerns and 
 enterprises of our common human life. It means 
 that they should be given early and expanding 
 opportunity to experience the zest of creative 
 production and the happiness of cooperative good- 
 will. 
 
 Some Present Difficulties 
 
 It is easy just now to be pessimistic. That these 
 are supremely critical years in the world's history 
 no one can doubt. That they will issue in far-reach- 
 ing social, economic and industrial changes, as well 
 as in political revolutions and realignments is equally 
 certain. Just what these changes will be no one 
 knows, and it is the sober and thoughtful, rather 
 than the careless and superficial among us, who find 
 themselves at times uneasily conscious of the possi- 
 
The Child at Work 105 
 
 bility that civilization itself is in actual danger. 
 Without entering into the considerations which 
 underlie such foreboding, or attempting a canvass 
 of the brighter considerations — for there are such — 
 which offset them, let us set down frankly certain 
 difficulties which stand in the way today of the 
 natural, wholesome education of children in work. 
 These difficulties are results, more or less direct, of 
 the industrial revolution, with its labor-saving 
 machinery, its great factories, and its systems of 
 mass production. 
 
 (1) Many, perhaps most, men no longer love or 
 even enjoy their work. They regard it as a neces- 
 sary evil, to be endured only because of the wages it 
 brings. Their real happiness is in their " time off," 
 rather than in productive activity or in the conscious- 
 ness of a job well done. This is a result of that 
 mechanization and specialization of industry which 
 makes a man a mere tender of a machine that does 
 but a fraction of a job; which deprives him of crea- 
 tive opportunity and the zest of responsible initia- 
 tive, and even undertakes by " scientific manage- 
 ment " to dictate and time his motions; which, in 
 short, turns work into drudgery, endurable only 
 because, like all habit, it becomes more or less sub- 
 conscious. It is a result, moreover, of that com- 
 mercialization of industry and of life itself, which 
 prostitutes standards of workmanship to profits 
 and handles men as though they were materials to 
 be used or discarded at will; which stupidly passes 
 
106 The Training of Children 
 
 over the fundamental human instincts, upon which 
 might be built the lasting structures of great produc- 
 tive enterprises, and appeals to motives of cupidity 
 by bonuses and other flimsy devices which stimulate 
 for a time, then always lose incentive; which so 
 inverts the true values of life as to make the having 
 things, and the buying and selling of things appear 
 to be of more dignity and worth than the making 
 or growing of things; which exalts "business" 
 above production and makes the pathway to indi- 
 vidual success lie not so much in the honest toil 
 which increases the world's goods as in processes of 
 management, distribution, hoarding, even destruc- 
 tion, or whatever else will result, under certain 
 exigencies, in an accumulation of profits. 
 
 Taken as an indictment, these statements are 
 one-sided. Modern systems of industry and com- 
 merce are not wholly bad. But this is not meant 
 to be an indictment. It is a plain recital of certain 
 facts. The point is that we need not wonder, these 
 facts being what they are, that so many men no 
 longer find their fundamental joy in productive 
 work, but in relief from work, in possessing and 
 consuming, in leisure and amusement. We have, 
 as a world, too largely substituted for the gospel of 
 work the specious gospel of comfort. The gospel 
 of comfort can lead nowhere but to ruin. The 
 standards of the twentieth century, however different, 
 are in this respect dangerously like the standards of 
 the later Roman empire. And how shall we edu- 
 
The Child at Work 107 
 
 cate our children in the gospel of work when we 
 live in a world which is so fatuously pursuing the 
 gospel of comfort? 
 
 (2) Formerly children were trained to work by 
 their sharing, as they became able, in the industry 
 of the home. Today no industry goes on in most 
 homes. We considered this change and the reasons 
 for it in the second chapter of this book on " The 
 Modern Home and Its Perplexities." We are 
 concerned now simply to point out how much more 
 difficult the education of children in work is rendered 
 by the fact that they grow up in homes in which 
 little cooperative work, even of the " home-making " 
 type, is done. 
 
 (3) We have come to see that we must make up 
 for this lack of industrial training in the home by 
 furnishing it in the public schools. But the schools 
 of America have not as yet been able to arrive at a 
 clear and consistent policy of industrial education. 
 There is yet danger that we may be induced to 
 emulate German industrial efficiency by adopting 
 something like the German system of education, 
 which practically determines a child's future social 
 and economic position at the age of ten, and com- 
 pels a choice of trade or industry at fourteen. When 
 such narrow specialization in education is added to 
 the specialization that already exists in industry, 
 the corner is turned toward race-decadence. It is 
 one of the fortunate results of the war that it has so 
 torn the mask of fairness from the face of things 
 
108 The Training of Children 
 
 German that this danger is less grave than before* 
 But the problem of devising a system of industrial 
 education that will fit our boys and girls to take their 
 place in the modern social and industrial order, as 
 efficient workmen and free, intelligent, responsible 
 American citizens is urgent and is not yet solved. 
 
 Work in the Home 
 
 What are we going to do about it, we who are 
 parents? Not surrender, surely, to the Moloch of 
 the machine, or to the intoxication of the gospel of 
 comfort. We must do all that we can, in home and 
 school, to help our children acquire right habits and 
 ideals of work. 
 
 Children may be trained to work, first, through 
 their play. This needs no discussion if we remem- 
 ber what was said about the play of children in the 
 preceding chapter of this book, or what was said 
 above concerning the relation between work and 
 play. In so far as play passes beyond the mere 
 indulgence of the whim of the moment, and sets 
 ends to be attained, it becomes work as well, and 
 constitutes training for further work. This may 
 take place at any stage in the development of chil- 
 dren's play instincts; the principle applies espe- 
 cially, of course, to play of the constructive, com- 
 petitive, and cooperative sorts. 
 
 Children may be trained, again, to assume their 
 share of the responsibilities and activities of the 
 household. It is true that our homes are no longer 
 
The Child at Work 109 
 
 centers of industry, but they cannot be maintained 
 without some work. Mrs. Dorothy C. Fisher has 
 a capital chapter in which she depicts the opportu- 
 nity of the mother to train her children by letting 
 each be responsible for a share of her duties. 
 
 " If her six- or seven-year-old boy is always sent 
 out to play while she ' does the work ' and then is 
 called in to a meal miraculously flowering out of the 
 table, she is not helping him to any realizing sense of 
 the great fact that processes do not do themselves. 
 On his grasp of that fact depends the sturdiness of 
 his later mental and moral attitude toward life. 
 If during those formative years of first impressions, 
 the virgin whiteness of his unthinking, baby accept- 
 ance of everything can be covered over and over with 
 reiterated engravings of the maxim that somebody 
 must do everything that is done, he will be headed 
 straight toward an honest acceptance of his share in 
 that never-ending process. But, as a little child's 
 knowledge is strictly limited to his own experience, 
 it is practically impossible to make him believe that 
 maxim unless he sees those he loves and respects 
 openly doing their share of the world's work. He is 
 old enough by this time, if his parents have made a 
 companion of him, to understand a simple explana- 
 tion of the plan and organization of the home. . . . 
 Suppose an explanation running along this line: 
 ' You see, Jackie, dear, there's a certain amount of 
 work to be done to keep the home running and com- 
 fortable for all of us. Father works all day to make 
 the money to buy what we need, but just that 
 wouldn't make a real home. Mother, of course, 
 does the most of the work, because she's the strong- 
 est and the oldest, and before you children came, she 
 
110 The Training of Children 
 
 did it all. But each child makes more work; he 
 sleeps in a bed, and has to have drawers to keep his 
 clean clothes in, and a corner to play in, and he has 
 to have food to eat, and dishes to eat it on. Now, 
 when the child is a little weak baby, mother has to 
 do all her work and all the extra work the baby 
 makes too. But as he gets older he begins to do 
 his own share and to even up for the extra work he 
 makes. Big sister is getting our breakfasts for us 
 now, as well as keeping her own room in order; 
 and big brother sweeps the floor and keeps the bath- 
 room clean. You're too little to do that much; 
 but you can make your own bed every morning, and 
 keep your two bureau drawers in order, just as little 
 sister is too little to make her crib, but she can put 
 her playthings neatly back into the box.' ... If 
 it seems hard on the tot of five to have him begin to 
 do some of the work of the household, let it be 
 remembered that children, even little children, are 
 much like the rest of us and infinitely prefer to have 
 some regular definite task, reasonably related to 
 their own life, than to be pounced upon spasmodically 
 at any hour which suits an adult, to ' run errands ' 
 or to do single, detached, unrelated bits of drudgery 
 whenever it occurs to an adult that they should be 
 done." 1 , 
 
 Let no one say that the simple home duties are 
 good training for girls, but not for boys. We do 
 not wish to bring up our boys to be " sissies," but 
 an elemental training in cooking, dish washing, bed 
 making, sweeping and cleaning, as well as in the 
 more masculine jobs of furnace tending, grass cutting, 
 
 > D. C. Fitber. StlJ-Rilianu, pp. 29-33. 
 
The Child at Work 111 
 
 snow shoveling, and the like, will make better men of 
 them. Many a man would be a better husband if he 
 had done his share of the housework as a boy, and 
 he would be a better man among men, camper, 
 fisherman, hunter, and soldier as well, because not 
 so dependent upon the ministrations of woman. 
 
 Of course if we live in an apartment hotel where 
 everything is done for us, or if we are rich enough to 
 command a corps of servants, the problem is more 
 difficult. If we are not workers ourselves, we cannot 
 train our children to work by associating them with 
 ourselves. But unless we are idle good-for-nothings, 
 indeed, we do some things for ourselves, and we want 
 our children to grow up to be able to do like things 
 for themselves; and out of these things we may 
 construct the program of active responsibility which 
 we want them to share with us. If the servants 
 then get in the way, discharge a few of them. Better 
 that our children be brought up without being 
 ministered to so much in the little things of life than 
 that they fail to be fitted to serve in the greater 
 things. 
 
 It is a mistake to pay children for the performance 
 of home duties. They ought to undertake their 
 share of the responsibilities of home life just because 
 it is their home, and because they have the chance 
 to help. Doctor Hugh T. Kerr has put the truth 
 unforgetably in his story of " What Bradley 
 Owed." 
 
112 The Training of Children 
 
 " One morning when Bradley came down to 
 breakfast he put on his mother's plate a little piece 
 of paper neatly folded. His mother opened it. 
 She could hardly believe it, but this is what Bradley 
 had written: 
 
 ' Mother owes Bradley: 
 
 For running errands $0.25 
 
 For being good 10 
 
 For taking music lessons IS 
 
 Extras OS 
 
 Total $0.55 
 
 " His mother smiled, but did not say anything, 
 and when lunch time came she placed the bill on 
 Bradley's plate with fifty-five cents. Bradley's 
 eyes fairly danced when he saw the money and 
 thought his business ability had been quickly re- 
 warded, but with the money there was another little 
 bill, which read like this : 
 
 ' Bradley owes mother: 
 
 Forbeinggood. $0.00 
 
 For nursing him through his long 
 illness with scarlet fever 00 
 
 For clothes, shoes, gloves, and play- 
 things 00 
 
 For all his meals and his beautiful 
 room 00 
 
 Total that Bradley owes mother. $0.00 
 
 " Tears came into Bradley's eyes, and he put his 
 arms around his mother's neck, put his little hand 
 with the fifty-five cents in hers, and said, ' Take 
 
The Child at Work 113 
 
 the money all back, mamma, and let me love you 
 and do things for nothing.' " x 
 
 The statement that children should not be paid 
 for home services does not mean that no money 
 should be given them. That they be trained in the 
 use of money is indeed a most important part of 
 their education in these days when everything must 
 be bought, and when money, therefore, plays so 
 much larger a part in the life of all of us than it did 
 for former generations. But children should be 
 given money as members of the family, who are 
 afforded this as well as other tokens of the love and 
 care of their parents. They should not be hired to 
 do what they ought to do in answering love and good 
 will. The best plan is to grant them a small sum of 
 money as a regular allowance, rather than to bestow 
 money upon them by irregular gifts. They should 
 then be given freedom to save or to spend this as 
 they choose, with such guidance and counsel as the 
 parents' good sense may dictate. As they grow 
 older, more things should be put into their budget, 
 and they should be trained to accept responsibility 
 for increasing areas of that part of the family expendi- 
 tures which concerns themselves. 
 
 As they grow older, children may take the place 
 of workers who had formerly been hired for various 
 services about the home. It is but fair that they 
 should be paid for such service, and this may become 
 
 > Hugh T. Kerr, in Children'} Story Sermons. Used by permission of Fleminj 
 H. Revell. 
 
114 The Training of Children 
 
 both a proper source of income and a means of educa- 
 tion in work and in business. . An excellent plan is 
 to give the adolescent boy the chance to take the 
 contract for shoveling the walks, cleaning the 
 windows, tending the furnace, or the like for a 
 certain period of time. The contract price should 
 be whatever the family accounts show has been the 
 average amount expended during that time for this 
 type of service, and the understanding should be 
 that he may do the work himself or have some one 
 else do it, but that it must be satisfactorily done. 
 Or the adolescent girl may be given a certain sum, 
 again determined by the family accounts, out of which 
 she is to do the buying for the family table for a 
 week, the understanding being that she must keep 
 up its quality, but that any unexpended balance will 
 be her own. 
 
 Children may be trained to work by sharing the 
 avocations of their parents. The father, who works 
 in a factory or office, at tasks which the children 
 can by no possibility share with him, may spend his 
 off time in cultivating a garden, and there is no finer 
 training in the world for the child than that he should 
 have and care for a garden of his own. Or he may 
 love to make things at his work bench, or take 
 pleasure in caring for his own automobile, and the 
 youngsters admitted to his fellowship in these absorb- 
 ing occupations may gain a training in good work- 
 manship which would otherwise be denied them. 
 Many city boys and girls, moreover, have learned 
 
The Child at Work 115 
 
 what work is in summer camps, or better yet, on 
 the farm, when the whole family has moved to the 
 country for the summer. 
 
 It is easier, for many reasons, to train boys and 
 girls to work when they live in the country than 
 when they live in the city. No better evidence of 
 this could be found than the document which follows. 
 It is the account by an eleven-year-old boy of how 
 he brought up two pigs, which won the prize in a 
 pig-feeding contest in which the children of the 
 neighborhood were engaged. His account is so 
 interesting that we quote it at length. The com- 
 munity is Northfield, Minn., and the boy's name is 
 Percy Jack : 
 
 "MY PIG 
 
 " Early in the spring I decided to join the Pig 
 Club. I never had much experience with pigs, so 
 set about to find out what I could with regard to 
 quality, and points of vital importance in the general 
 conformation of pigs. 
 
 " After joining the club the finding of the pigs, 
 according to the ideal which I had pictured to my- 
 self, was no easy matter. I read all the literature I 
 had about the care and methods of feeding pork 
 so they would develop a large frame which was 
 capable of taking on a large per cent of gain during 
 short fattening period. 
 
 " After considerable looking around I found two 
 Duroc Jersey pigs. This was a little late for the pig 
 contest, but on June 1st I was ready to start my 
 record. 
 
116 The Training of Children 
 
 " On this date one weighed 29 pounds, the other 
 34 pounds at the age of 7 weeks. 
 
 " At this time the point of feed came into con- 
 sideration. Corn was not the desired concentrate, 
 as it fattens the pig and does not produce frame. 
 I bought some middlings and mixed this with whey, 
 the by-product of the cheese factory. Then the 
 point of the forage crop which would produce the 
 most rapid and economical gains was considered. 
 
 " Alfalfa, a valuable protein feed, was decided on 
 as the forage crop. A movable pen, 8 by 16 feet, 
 was erected and the pigs were ready for pasture. 
 
 " With this ration I found the pigs were growing 
 at a rapid pace. Then I added corn to the ration, 
 in small quantities at first, then gradually increased 
 it. All through the growing period they did not 
 get fat but were kept in good condition. 
 
 " For two months they gained steadily but slowly, 
 preparing for the more rapid gain the third and 
 fourth months. On August first their weight was 
 92 and 88 pounds, while on the fourteenth of August 
 they had gained 16 pounds each. On the twenty- 
 fifth I took the last weight and found one weighing 
 130, the other 128. 
 
 " They are just about at the stage now that they 
 will make the most rapid and cheapest gains. With 
 the above weights at a cost of $25.80 for feed, care, 
 and original cost of pigs I closed my report for the 
 state contest. The profits were #12.95, but these 
 will be more than doubled. 
 
 " On Saturday morning my pigs left for the State 
 fair. The long ride on the .railroad, the feed and 
 care at State fair and the sight of the many visitors 
 set them back considerable. The last month they 
 have not made the gain they should. The cost of 
 
The Child at Work 117 
 
 the pigs was figured out from my report and found 
 to be 7.7, a very economical gain for this season when 
 everything is so high. I am making my final report 
 feeling as if I had profited greatly by being a member 
 of the Pig Club. 
 
 Report Pig Feeding Contest: 
 
 224 lbs. corn, $1.50 per bushel $6.00 
 
 200 lbs. shorts, 40 cents per ton 4.00 
 
 1,200 lbs. whey, 30 cents per 100 lbs 3.60 
 
 Alfalfa pasture : 10 cents per month 80 
 
 Total $14.40 
 
 Labor, 10 cents per hour, 26 hours 2.60 
 
 Total cost feed and labor $17.00 
 
 Cost of feed, per head 7.30 
 
 Cost of feed and labor per head 8.50 
 
 Pig No. 1. Pig No. 2. 
 
 height, June 1 29 34 
 
 Weight, September 26 147 140 
 
 Gain in weight 128 106 
 
 Cost in feed per lbs. gain 5.9c 7.2c 
 
 Value of pigs at 15 cents per lb $43.05 
 
 Total profits, minus labor and feed 26.05 
 
118 The Training of Children 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 1. Describe the relation between work and play, and show how the 
 child's play may become an education in work. 6, 24, 64. 
 
 2. What do you think of Professor Carver's formula for the value of a 
 man? If possible have some one read and report upon his book, entitled, 
 The Religion Worth Hewing. 65 . 
 
 3. Discuss the gospel of work, as propounded in this chapter. 
 
 4. What are some evidences of the present vogue of the gospel of 
 comfort as opposed to the gospel of work? Why do so many men of our 
 day regard work as a thing to be endured rather than to be enjoyed? 
 
 5. What are the effects of the present industrial system upon the 
 creative impulses of the workers? 67, 70, 73. If you deem these books 
 to be one-sided, state what further facts or evidences you have. 
 
 6. The ideals and the practices of scientific management. 67. 
 
 7. The relations of the present industrial system to the human in- 
 stincts of the workers. 73. 
 
 8. How are the public schools undertaking the task of furnishing to 
 children practical training and discipline and industrial education? 
 What are some of the opposing ideals operating to determine our policies 
 respecting industrial education? 6, 20, 66, 69, 70. 
 
 9. Ways of training children to work in the home. 24, 71, 72. 
 
 10. Educating children in the use of money. 24, 68. 
 
 11. The relative possibilities of city and country with respect to op- 
 portunities for the industrial education of children, 24, 71, 72. 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING * 
 
 6. John Dewey: The School and Society. 
 20. R. S. Bourne: The Gary Schools. 
 24. D. C. Fisher: Self-Reliance. 
 
 64. R. C. Cabot: What Men Live By. 
 
 65. T. N. Carver: The Religion Worth Having. 
 
 66. A. D. Dean: The Worker and the State. 
 
 67. R. F. Hoxie: Scientific Management and Labor. 
 
 68. E. A. Kirkpatrick: The Use of Money. 
 
 69. R. R. Lutz: Wage Earning and Education (Cleveland School 
 Survey). 
 
 70. Helen Marot: The Creative Impulse in Industry. 
 
 71. W. A. McKeever: Training the Boy. 
 
 72. W. A. McKeever: Training the Girl. 
 
 73. Ordway Tead: Instincts in Industry. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 The Child at Study 
 
 Play, Work, and Study 
 
 We have seen that there is no exact boundary 
 line between play and work. Much of human 
 activity is both; it is play in that it is enjoyable, and 
 work in that it is purposeful. There is likewise no 
 boundary line between work and study. All study 
 involves work; and the best work involves study. 
 Like work, moreover, study may be so enjoyable 
 as to feel like play. Especially in childhood, play, 
 work, and study blend with one another; and 
 therein lies the great opportunity of parents and 
 teachers. i 
 
 A boy of eight, convalescing from the measles, 
 received as a gift one of the larger sets of " Meccano." 
 He had a splendid time with it, inventing new models 
 of " structural steel," then drawing and describing 
 them, and setting down on paper full specifications 
 for making them again. His parents felt that he 
 was engaged in educative play of a high type. But 
 one day he expressed his opinion of it to his mother: 
 " This is all right, but it is just play; I want to go 
 back to school and do some thinking." 
 
 Whether or not he was right in his estimate of 
 his convalescent occupation, he was right in his view 
 
120 The Training of Children 
 
 of school. The school ought to be a place where 
 thinking goes on. The distinguishing characteris- 
 tics of study are: (1) That it is mental activity. 
 " It is," says Professor McMurry, " the vigorous 
 application of the mind to a subject for the satisfac- 
 tion of a felt need." (2) That it seeks so to under- 
 stand and master the results of previous experience, 
 whether of self or of others, as to bring these to bear 
 helpfully upon the present problem or need. If 
 play is enjoyable activity, and work purposeful 
 activity, study is -purposeful mental activity. 
 
 It is possible for one's study to move principally 
 within the field of his own personal experience. 
 There are some folk who want, as the saying is, to 
 " study everything out for themselves," and neglect 
 or refuse to profit by the experience of others. A 
 very few of these are geniuses, inventors, discoverers 
 and leaders of men; the rest remain for the most part 
 ignorant and narrow, circumscribed by their own 
 limitations in time and space, and laggers behind the 
 march of human progress. 
 
 Properly, study is not so limited. Nothing human 
 is alien to it. It concerns itself with the whole field 
 of racial experience. It is a social activity. It is 
 rooted in the fact that men can communicate their 
 experiences, and so that we can profit by the experi- 
 ences of others. It is a corollary, especially, of long- 
 range communication, whereby we are enabled to 
 profit by the experiences of those who lived before 
 us as well as of those who live with us, and by the 
 
The Child at Study 121 
 
 experiences of those on the other side of the world 
 as well as of those with whom we are in daily contact. 
 Study concerns itself, very largely, with the records, 
 in one form or another, of human experience. It 
 seeks so to master these records, in whatever form 
 they be, as to recreate within the student like experi- 
 ences or to enable him to bring the results of the 
 original experiences to bear profitably upon his own 
 problems. We want our children to study (a) in 
 order that they may come into possession of their 
 heritage of race experience, and (b) in order that 
 they may learn how to study and so be competent 
 in future to face their problems in the light of the 
 larger resources which an ability to comprehend 
 and profit by the recorded experience of others will 
 make available to them. We want them to learn 
 how to use their minds upon the materials of experi- 
 ence. And because the materials of the race's 
 experience have become so rich and varied that the 
 education of children demands far more of compe- 
 tence and time than the ordinary parent possesses, 
 we send our children to school. 
 
 The Function of the School 
 
 The function of the school, in broad terms, is to 
 facilitate study. If life were more simple, the best 
 way to educate children would be just to associate 
 them with older folk as they live and work, study and 
 communicate. That is what was done by the earlier 
 generations of men, and is done by the more primi- 
 
122 The Training of Children 
 
 tive peoples of today. But with us, life has become 
 so complex, its resources so rich, its purposes so far- 
 reaching and its meanings so little obvious upon the 
 present surface of behavior, that the mere associa- 
 tion of our children with ourselves in the actual 
 business of life would but bewilder them or at best 
 constitute a relatively narrow and short-sighted 
 training. 
 
 The school facilitates study: (a) By seeking to 
 present the resources of race experience to children 
 in forms that they can understand, appreciate and 
 assimilate. As Professor Dewey puts it, " the school 
 undertakes to simplify and interpret, to purify, and 
 to widen and balance the social environment of chil- 
 dren." It selects from the race's resources certain 
 fundamentals, and arranges these in a progressive 
 order which answers to the developing powers and 
 needs of children, (b) By placing children in situa- 
 tions, real and imaginative, which present to them, 
 and awaken within their minds, a developing series of 
 problems which can be met only by their progressive 
 mastery of these resources. 
 
 It has been the vice of much schoolroom procedure 
 in times past, and is the vice of some today, that 
 these two aspects, (a) and (b), of the school's work 
 should be too widely separated. The construction 
 of a curriculum has often been too far sundered from 
 the motivation of the child's study. The con- 
 struction of the curriculum has been deemed to be 
 the function of state, county or district school 
 
The Child at Study 123 
 
 boards or superintendents, or of committees ap- 
 pointed by various learned societies, by philanthropic 
 foundations, chambers of commerce, civic associa- 
 tions, city councils, or state legislatures — in short, 
 one is tempted to say, of anybody except the teachers 
 who are actually engaged with the children them- 
 selves. The function of the teachers has been 
 deemed to be that merely of the application and 
 motivation of the curriculum — that was enough, 
 it seemed, to keep them more than busy. And so 
 indeed it was. For curricula devised in abstrac- 
 tion from the life of children can be enforced upon 
 them only by the use of motives more or less extrin- 
 sic and artificial. To find and keep alive such 
 perpetually dying motives is a sufficient task for 
 anybody's ingenuity. There is no wonder that the 
 problem of " incentives " has bulked so large in 
 most discussions of schoolroom procedure and 
 discipline. 
 
 We are now beginning to see that these difficulties 
 are in large part unnecessary. Put (a) and (b) 
 together as they belong, let teaching-content and 
 pupil's problems move forward in organic dependence 
 upon one another as problem and resource do in all 
 natural human thinking, and the question of finding 
 incentives to study tends to disappear. Not that 
 an educational millennium will dawn, wherein 
 children generally cannot be kept away from study 
 any more than from candy. Study involves think- 
 ing, and thinking is work. \t is enjoyable work^ 
 
124 The Training of Children 
 
 yet there always will be some, children and grown- 
 ups alike, who will prefer to engage in other enjoya- 
 ble forms of activity. But we can make study more 
 natural for children generally, and more full of zest 
 for those who are willing to do some thinking. 
 
 New Methods in the Schools 
 
 Progressive schools everywhere are succeeding 
 in the endeavor so to motivate and direct the study 
 of their pupils. These schools have gained a new 
 spirit and are engaged in the working out of new 
 methods. 
 
 (1) Learning by doing. That we learn best by 
 doing is an old and familiar maxim, the full import 
 of which we are just beginning to realize. In the 
 schools of a generation ago, the only muscles that 
 we who were then children were expected to use, 
 were those of the tongue, to speak, and of the hand, 
 to write. Many of us were taught the natural 
 sciences, even, in high school and college, by lec- 
 tures and textbooks simply, without ourselves per- 
 forming a single experiment. It is not so in the 
 schools of today. They are centers of activity, 
 from the constructive play of the kindergarten and 
 the games and hand-work of the primary grades, 
 through book-making, poster-making, dramatiza- 
 tion, pageantry, sand-table illustrations, map-model- 
 ing, gardening, and projects and constructions of 
 different sorts, to cooking and sewing, carpentering 
 and forging, and the laboratory methods of the 
 
The Child at Study 125 
 
 various sciences. Their pupils learn, not simply 
 from books, but by actual contact with things and 
 handling of things. 
 
 (2) Teaching by projects. Should some one object 
 that this activity is out of place in the schools, 
 which ought to stick to their business of teaching 
 " the three R's," the answer is that the teachers of 
 today have found out that much the best way to 
 teach the three R's, as well as history, geography, 
 and the elementary facts of the sciences, is to interest 
 pupils in a series of concrete, active projects which 
 furnish content and motive to their work. A teacher 
 in the fifth grade, for example, reported that the work 
 of her pupils in language, history and geography was 
 centered, one year, about the following projects: 
 (a) a series of posters, illustrating the story of 
 Columbus; (b) sand-table illustration of the life of 
 Daniel Boone, combined with a study of the geogra- 
 phy of the Mississippi Valley; (c) sand-table 
 illustration showing the life of the Pilgrimsj with 
 cabins, costumes, etc.; (d) sand-table illustration 
 for the Lewis and Clark expedition, showing the 
 physical features of the region and important 
 events of the journey; (e) sand-table illustration 
 of the story of Robinson Crusoe; (f) a series of book- 
 lets on Longfellow; (g) sand-table construction 
 showing the Panama Canal, with locks, steam 
 shovel, and railroad; (h) sand-table illustration of 
 gold mine in California, showing placer method of 
 mining; (i) a series of booklets, made by each pupil, 
 
126 The Training of Children 
 
 on birds of the United States; (j) a series of booklets 
 on South America, made by each pupil. 1 
 
 A sixth-grade teacher, again, reported that the 
 language work assigned to her grade for a certain 
 year was all thoroughly taught through doing thirty- 
 eight pieces of work, which for the most part pre- 
 sented themselves naturally in connection with the 
 pupils' need and desire to communicate with some 
 one or with some other group, upon topics involved 
 in the carrying through of various programs, excur- 
 sions and projects. The list is too long to quote in 
 full, but the following selection will indicate the 
 character of the whole : 
 
 "... (6) letter to the superintendent of schools 
 asking permission to visit a sorghum mill; (7) letter 
 to the owner of the mill asking his permission to 
 inspect the mill and to learn the process of making 
 sorghum, and also one to citizens owning automo- 
 biles asking that they take them to the mill; (8) 
 letters of thanks to the superintendent of schools, 
 the owner of the mill, and the owners of the automo- 
 biles after the visit; (9) a written account of their 
 experiences at the mill to lend to other grades which 
 did not visit the mill; (10) letters inviting parents 
 to attend the school's Thanksgiving exercises and 
 enclosing program; (11) letter of request and later 
 one of thanks to the principal of another school for 
 the loan of a picture needed in a colonial life scene in 
 the Thanksgiving program; (12) letters of request, 
 and later of thanks, to the kindergarten teacher for 
 
 1 This list is taken from the book by Miss Ella V. Dobbs, on Illustrative Hand- 
 work, pp. 117, 118, where many other such lists may be found, as well as an excel? 
 lfn.t description o{ this tjrpe of work iq.tb,e. schools. 
 
The Child at Study 127 
 
 the loan of her small chairs, to a citizen for the loan 
 of his curtain-stretchers, and to the teacher of 
 another grade for the loan of some Indian shields, 
 all for use in presenting the Thanksgiving program. 
 . . . (14) letters at Thanksgiving such as the early 
 colonists might have written to friends in Europe. 
 . . . (29) preparing a February booklet containing 
 papers and programs pertaining to noted men born 
 in February; (30) compiling booklet recording leg- 
 end of Saint Patrick's Day. . . . (35) writing essays 
 in competition for a prize offered by a citizen on 
 'The Attraction and Protection of Song Birds' . . ."* 
 
 Not all projects must be real, in the sense that they 
 involve the pupil's handling of physical material 
 or participation in a present social situation. Pro- 
 jects involving the imagination may serve quite as 
 effectively as motives to thorough study and profita- 
 ble recitation. Examples of such projects in history 
 are writing imaginary letters or diaries of historical 
 personages, making supposed speeches of states- 
 men, dramatizing scenes, events or epochs, arrang- 
 ing pageants, and the like. Imaginary journeys 
 may be a great help to the study of geography. 
 Pupils will become intensely interested in such 
 problems as tracing out the sources of the city's 
 supplies of food or fuel, describing the great trade 
 routes and the reasons for them, and attempting to 
 anticipate and compare the future developments of 
 two cities, harbors or countries, on the basis of the 
 present facts. An interesting example is reported of 
 
 > H.. $. unci G. M. Wilson: Thi Motivation of School. /Tori, pp. 98- 10ft. 
 
128 The Training of Children 
 
 the motivation of the work in arithmetic in an eighth 
 grade by the imaginary project of buying a lot and 
 building and furnishing a house, which involved, 
 besides the more obvious problems, a study of the 
 banking methods involved in borrowing money and 
 an investigation of the various forms of property 
 insurance and life insurance. The pupils in another 
 school carried through the imaginary organization 
 of a stock company to promote a public enterprise 
 much needed in the city in which this school was 
 situated, and from this not only got the practice in 
 arithmetic which they needed, but gained some 
 knowledge of modern business methods and an under- 
 standing of the meaning of stocks and bonds. 1 
 
 The criticism is sometimes made that the project 
 method of teaching involves a surrender of the enter- 
 prise of education to the transitory, short-sighted, 
 and often capricious interests of children. The 
 examples given show how little justified this criticism 
 is. The project method is not so much a way of 
 reducing education to the child's demands, as of so 
 presenting its problems and materials that the child 
 may be moved really to want what he ought to get 
 in the way of training and resource. 
 
 The term " project " stands not simply for the 
 child's own little projects, or even for those devised 
 in the schoolroom; it stands as well for the great 
 projects of human history and of life today. The 
 experience of the past few years has shown to teach- 
 
 'WiUoa: op. cit., pp. 165-173. 
 
The Child at Study 129 
 
 ers how ready children are to enter into, study, 
 appreciate, and understand these projects of the 
 big, real, concrete world. It seems probable, indeed, 
 that we are upon the threshold of a far-reaching 
 reorganization of the curricula and methods of our 
 schools, which will make the education of children 
 center more definitely about carefully selected pro- 
 jects which will serve as large units of instruction 
 bringing into correlation the various subjects of the 
 curriculum. Examples of such projects are some of 
 the great military campaigns of history; explora- 
 tions like the voyage of Columbus, the Lewis and 
 Clark expedition, and the discovery of the North and 
 South Poles; the Mississippi River, the Nile, the 
 Rhine; the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, 
 the Pennsylvania Railroad, the New York Central; 
 Niagara Falls; the Erie Canal, the Panama Canal; 
 the steel industry at Pittsburgh, the growth of Chi- 
 cago, the development of Washington; the Salt River 
 Project, the Keokuk Dam, the Muscle Shoals Project 
 on the Tennessee River, and the like. Studying a 
 few such projects thoroughly, in richness of concrete 
 detail, and following out the various correlations and 
 consequences, children will be better educated than by 
 memorizing the meager, colorless body of facts which is 
 usually found in text-books. These projects may then 
 serve as types of countless other projects, as points 
 of departure for understanding them, and as centers 
 of organization for the various subjects of study. 1 
 
 • On this subject read the splendid book by Prof. C. A. McMurry, entitled Teach- 
 ing by Projects: A Basis for Purposeful Study. 
 
130 The Training of Children 
 
 (3) Socializing the recitation. The old-fashioned 
 recitation was an individualistic affair. But to 
 work together on projects demands cooperation. 
 The class undertaking such work tends increasingly, 
 therefore, to assume the spirit and methods of a 
 cooperative social group ; and the recitation becomes 
 not so much a formal test as a time of bringing to- 
 gether the results of the work and study of the 
 members of the group. An example of a history 
 class where this socialization of the recitation went to 
 the extreme of a formal organization which took 
 complete charge of the work of the hour (an extreme 
 not always, perhaps not often, either possible or 
 desirable) comes from a Massachusetts high school: 
 
 " Here is a brief sketch of the new kind of recita- 
 tion: — (1) The president called the class to order 
 and called the roll. (2) He asked for the secretary's 
 report, which was corrected by the class and for- 
 mally accepted. (3) The president asked if there 
 were any unfinished business. If so, that was taken 
 up first; if not, (4) the lesson of the day was called 
 for. Whoever wished to speak arose, addressed the 
 chair, and began to describe the historical events in 
 the lesson. If he made a mistake or omitted any- 
 thing, another pupil who noticed it arose, and, when 
 recognized by the president, made the corrections he 
 thought necessary. Sometimes these corrections 
 were not correct, or did not go far enough, and 
 several others entered into the discussion. When 
 there were several pupils on the floor at once, the 
 one who was recognized first by the president had 
 the floor and the others had to wait their turn. . . . 
 
The Child at Study 131 
 
 The pupils questioned one another's statements, 
 and when they could not agree, the point was left 
 over as unfinished business until the next day. 
 In the meantime they consulted authorities to be 
 able to prove their points, and they used their rea- 
 soning powers to good advantage. . . . To tell all 
 this sounds as if it must have taken a great deal of 
 time. As a matter of fact, we soon found that we 
 had time to spare. The time which had previously 
 been taken up by the teacher's questions was all 
 saved, and the pupils could easily recite in half an 
 hour what it had taken them an hour to prepare." 1 
 
 (4) Supervising the pupils' study. The real work 
 of education is done when the pupil studies rather 
 than when he recites. That seems obvious. Yet 
 how commonly the traditional practice has been to 
 lay all emphasis upon the recitation. Pupils studied 
 by themselves, generally at home instead of at 
 school, without the presence or guidance of the 
 teacher, then went into the teacher's presence to be 
 tested as to the results of that study. 
 
 In the better schools, the waste involved in this 
 procedure is now recognized. The emphasis in 
 teaching is shifting from merely hearing a lesson to 
 directing the pupils' study of the lesson. That shift 
 of emphasis involves many changes. The teacher 
 becomes a director of study, working with the pupil 
 rather than for him. The class period is lengthened 
 — in many schools doubled, with a brief intermis- 
 
 « Lotta A. Clark: A Good Way to Teach History, School Review, vol. 17, p. 255, 
 quoted in Wilson, op. cit., pp. 117-120, and in King: Education for Social Efficiency, 
 p. 246-251. 
 
132 The Training of Children 
 
 sion — and at least one-half of the time is devoted to 
 study under the direction of the teacher, the other 
 half being divided between recitation and assignment. 
 The assignment of the lesson assumes a place of 
 fundamental importance. Besides being given gen- 
 eral instruction as to the best methods of studying, 
 pupils are given specific questions or problems in 
 connection with each unit of instruction, and are 
 supervised as they undertake to apply the correct 
 methods of study to these problems. They are 
 afforded a degree of individual attention which was 
 not possible under the old system of mass recitation; 
 and those who go at a new lesson wrongly are checked 
 and guided aright. 
 
 The Cooperation of Home and School 
 
 Should pupils study at home? The new methods 
 which have been described have done much to reduce 
 to a minimum the amount of study which children 
 need to do at home, and to show them how to study 
 at home most profitably. There are some who hold 
 that home study should be eliminated entirely. 
 They argue that it makes the children's working day 
 too long and is injurious to their health; that it 
 prevents them from benefiting fully from attendance 
 at church meetings, lectures, concerts, the theater, 
 and other functions of the life of the community in 
 which they ought to share; that home study, being 
 undirected, is likely to be haphazard and to cause 
 them to fall into wrong habits of study; that the 
 
The Child at Study 133 
 
 help which they will solicit from parents and others 
 is generally a hindrance rather than a real help. 
 
 These arguments hold good, as opposed to the old- 
 fashioned practice of schools in which the teacher 
 spent almost the whole of the morning and afternoon 
 sessions in hearing recitations and gave no time to the 
 supervision of study, assigned the lessons for the 
 morrow by merely naming a block of material in the 
 textbook without giving adequate directions as to 
 how to study it or doing anything to engender suffi- 
 cient motives to sustain the pupil's effort, and ex- 
 pected that practically the whole of this work would 
 be done outside of school hours. They do not hold 
 good as against the newer methods, which greatly 
 reduce the amount of home study and at the same 
 time render it more specific and intelligent. It 
 would be most unfortunate indeed, were it to become 
 the rule that the whole of children's study should be 
 done in school, and that the hours which they spend 
 under the supervision of the home should be devoted 
 entirely to something else than study — which 
 would all too often be idleness or mere amusement. 
 
 It is in the higher grades and the high school, of 
 course, that a certain amount of home study is most 
 necessary. Some interesting investigations have 
 been made of the study habits of high-school pupils. 
 One of these, by F. M. Giles, 1 describes the methods 
 and habits of study of 258 pupils. It shows that 
 three-fourths of these had a definite time for study 
 
 1 School Review, 22: 478-484 (September, 1914). 
 
134 The Training of Children 
 
 at home in the evenings, and that in general they 
 chose for study at this time their hardest rather than 
 their easiest lessons. Yet one-half of these pupils 
 had no separate room for study at home, but were 
 compelled to study in a room where other people 
 were talking. Most of them said that this did not 
 bother them, but it is significant that 161 out of the 
 258 pupils stated that they would rather study at 
 school than at home. The average amount of time 
 spent on each lesson was a little less than forty 
 minutes; and the most helpful methods were stated 
 to be writing notes, underscoring, outlining, and 
 closing the book and attempting to recall what was 
 read. 
 
 Irving King * made a study of 1,431 pupils of four 
 high schools in Iowa. He found that over half of 
 these reported from five to eight hours a week of 
 home study, and that fifty-nine per cent reported 
 that they spent only four evenings a week or less 
 at home. The boys most commonly reported three 
 and four evenings out of the week at home, and the 
 girls four and five. Forty-eight per cent of these 
 pupils attended one or two parties in each month, 
 and twenty-six per cent more than two parties a 
 month. 418 attended one to three motion picture 
 shows per month; 382, from four to six shows; 
 120, from seven to nine shows; 135, from ten to 
 fifteen shows; and 96, sixteen shows or more in each 
 month. The most common report concerning attend- 
 
 » Irving King: The High School Age, Chapter XI. 
 
The Child at Study 135 
 
 ance at theaters was two per month; but 46 pupils 
 reported that they attended eight or more in each 
 month. We may well question, in the light of these 
 figures, whether it is so much home study which is 
 injurious to the health of the ordinary boy or girl in 
 the teens, as the multiplicity of outside interests 
 and amusements. 
 
 Parents owe it to their children to provide them a 
 home life that is happy and that breathes the spirit 
 of the higher concerns and real interests of human 
 life. The child's study is naturally one among these 
 interests. That our children should study well is 
 quite as important a part of the family's life as that 
 father should be a good provider and that mother 
 should know how to cook. We should do all that 
 we can to help them acquire sound, intelligent habits 
 of study, affording to each a place and materials of 
 his own, encouraging them to regularity in times of 
 study, and securing them from interruption. 
 
 We owe it to our children, moreover, to get some 
 real acquaintance with the aims, materials and 
 methods of the schools to which we send them, in 
 order that we may cooperate with these schools 
 more effectively. Most of us do not realize what 
 " back-numbers " we ourselves become in educa- 
 tional matters. We mature in other respects, but 
 retain the conceptions of school work that we picked 
 up in our own life at school as children, forgetting 
 that the schools, like everything else, are advancing. 
 Parent-teacher associations are doing much, in 
 
136 The Training of Children 
 
 many communities, to bring parents and teachers 
 together in mutual understanding and cooperation. 
 Many of us would do well to read a book or two 
 on the work of modern schools. Any of those quoted 
 in this chapter will amply repay whatever time is 
 devoted to it. 
 
The Child at Study 137 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 1. What do you understand by study? Why do we wish our children 
 to study? 6, 22. 
 
 2. The functions of the school with respect to children's study. 36, 
 76,78,80,81. 
 
 3. The growth of manual and laboratory methods in public schools. 
 74, 75, 85. 
 
 4. The use of dramatization as a teaching method. 77, 82. 
 
 5. What do you understand by the project method of teaching? 
 Investigate and report upon the use of the project method in some school 
 which is open to your observation. 22, 74, 75, 80, 85. 
 
 6. Show how the curriculum itself may be organized about some of the 
 greater human projects. 80, 85. 
 
 7. What is meant by the socialization of the recitation? Describe 
 any socialized recitations that may come under your observation. 
 22,36,85. _ 
 
 8. Describe the methods whereby the school undertakes to supervise 
 the study of its pupils. 78. 
 
 9. What are some of the principles of effective studying? 76, 81, 83, 
 84. 
 
 10. Should pupils study at home? Show how your answer to this 
 question depends upon the methods used in the school. 
 
 11. If possible, make a study of a group of pupils in the 7th and 8th 
 grades, or in the high school, finding just how they use their time out of 
 school hours for a given period. Compare with the observations in 79. 
 
 12. What can parents do to encourage a proper amount and kind of 
 study on the part of their children in the home? 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 6. John Dewey: The School and Society. 
 20. R. S. Bourne: The Gary Schools. 
 22. J. and E. Dewey: Schools of Tomorrow. 
 24. Dorothy C. Fisher: Self-Reliance. 
 36. C. A. Scott: Social Education. 
 
 74. Ella V. Dobbs: Illustrative Handwork. 
 
 75. Ella V. Dobbs: Primary Handwork. 
 
 76. Lida B. Earhart: Teaching Children to Study. 
 
 77. Harriett Finlay-Johnson: The Dramatic Method in Teaching. 
 
 78. Alfred L. Hall-Quest: Supervised Study. 
 
 79. Irving King: The High School Age. 
 
 80. Charles A. McMurry: Teaching by Projects. 
 
 81. F. M. McMurry: How to Study and Teaching How to Study. 
 
 82. Elizabeth E. Miller: The Dramatization of Bible Stories. 
 
 83. Henry J. Watt: The Economy and Training of Memory. 
 
 84. Guy Montrose Whipple: How to Study Effectively. 
 
 85. H. B. and G. M. Wilson: The Motivation of School Work. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Developing a Taste for Good Reading 
 
 That a child should learn to read — and to read 
 rapidly, easily and well — is so important as to 
 admit of no debate. It is even more important for 
 the children of our day than it was for those of former 
 generations. The development of specialization in 
 industry and of rapid transportation and quick 
 communication has made the world of men economi- 
 cally interdependent. The processes of distribu- 
 tion and exchange and systems of commercial credit 
 extend to every portion of the globe. Science is 
 being diligently applied in every avenue of human 
 occupation, and to every aspect of human welfare; 
 new inventions are constantly being devised to 
 improve methods of production in various fields and 
 to alter the balance of competition. All of this 
 means that records and communications of various 
 sorts play a larger, more immediate and urgent part 
 in the life of most men today than in the life of a 
 century or a half century ago. We have become a 
 people of letters and telegrams, newspapers and 
 magazines, pamphlets, bulletins, and books; of bills, 
 notes and bank cheques, contracts and legal instru- 
 ments ; of records, filing cases, indices, catalogues, and 
 mailing lists; of advertising and of propaganda. 
 
Developing a Taste for Good Reading 139 
 
 Under these conditions, the ability to read is a 
 practical tool of so obvious value that in all 
 ordinary affairs we presuppose it as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 But is it more than a practical tool? Some men 
 do little reading other than what they must do. 
 They read their letters and telegrams, reports and 
 balance sheets, newspapers and current periodicals, 
 and beyond that their reading is confined to menus 
 in restaurants, signs and road directions, the batting 
 list at the ball game, the printed lines that are thrown 
 upon the screen at a motion-picture show, and the 
 like. When not of directly practical bearing, their 
 reading is opportunist and casual. They live in the 
 here and now — and upon its surface, at that ! 
 
 Yet all the while they possess in the ability to 
 read — if they only knew what to read and had the 
 inclination for it — a means of emancipation from 
 the narrow round of sordid and petty things, and of 
 entrance into their spiritual heritage as members of 
 the human race. Lowell put it truly: 
 
 " Have you ever rightly considered what the 
 mere ability to read means? That it is the key 
 which admits us to the whole world of thought and 
 fancy and imagination? To the company of saint 
 and sage, of the wisest and wittiest at their wisest 
 and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with 
 the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen 
 to the sweetest voices of all time? " x 
 
 'J.R.Lowell: Books and Liirarits. 
 
140 The Training of Children 
 
 Nearer to our own day a great librarian put the 
 same truth vividly in his reply to those who affect 
 to despise mere " book knowledge " in favor of 
 contact with men and things — as though one could 
 not have both. Though it is long, the passage 
 deserves quotation in full; and the book which 
 contains it ought to be better known. 
 
 " ' We,' they say, ' find more for our instruction 
 in life than in books. The reality of things interests 
 us more and teaches us more than the report and 
 description of them by others. We study men among 
 men and God's work in the midst of them. We 
 prefer to take knowledge at first hand, from nature 
 and from society, rather than second-handedly, 
 out of a printed page. Your book wisdom is from 
 the closet and for closet use. It is not the kind 
 needed in a busy and breezy world.' 
 
 " Well, there is a half truth in this which must 
 not be ignored. To make everything of books in the 
 development of men and women is a greater mistake, 
 perhaps, than to make nothing of them. For life 
 has teachings, and nature out of doors has teachings, 
 for which no man, if he misses them, can find com- 
 pensation in books. We can say that frankly to the 
 contemner of books, and we yield no ground in doing 
 so, for then we turn upon him and say: 
 
 " ' Your life, sir, to which you look for all the 
 enlightenment of soul and mind that you receive, 
 is a brief span of a few tens of years; the circle of 
 human acquaintances in which you are satisfied to 
 make your whole study of mankind is a little com- 
 pany of a few hundred men and women, at the most; 
 the natural world from which you think to take 
 
Developing a Taste for Good Reading 141 
 
 sufficient lessons with your unassisted eyes is made 
 up of some few bits of city streets and country lanes 
 and seaside sands. What can you, sir, know of 
 life, compared with the man who has had equal years 
 of breath and consciousness with you, and who puts 
 with that experience some large, wide knowledge of 
 seventy centuries of human history in the whole 
 round world besides ? What can you know of man- 
 kind and human nature compared with the man who 
 meets and talks with as many of his neighbors in the 
 flesh as yourself, and who, beyond that, has com- 
 panionship and communion of mind with the kingly 
 and queenly ones of all the generations that are dead ? 
 What can you learn from nature compared with him 
 who has Darwin and Dana and Huxley and Tyndall 
 and Gray for his tutors when he walks abroad, and 
 who, besides the home-rambling which he shares with 
 you, can go bird watching with John Burroughs, 
 up and down the Atlantic States, or roaming with 
 Thoreau in Maine woods, or strolling with Richard 
 JefFeries in English lanes and fields ? ' 
 
 " Truth is, the bookless man does not understand 
 his own loss. He does not know the leanness in 
 which his mind is kept by want of the food which he 
 rejects. He does not know what starving of imagina- 
 tion and of thought he has inflicted upon himself. 
 He has suffered his interest in the things which make 
 up God's knowable universe to shrink until it reaches 
 no farther than his eyes can see and his ears can hear. 
 The books which he scorns are the telescopes and 
 reflectors and reverberators of our intellectual life, 
 holding in themselves a hundred magical powers for 
 the overcoming of space and time, and for giving the 
 range of knowledge which belongs to a really culti- 
 vated mind. There is no equal substitute for them. 
 
142 The Training of Children 
 
 There is nothing else which will so break for us the 
 poor hobble of everyday sights and sounds and habits 
 and tasks by which our thinking and feeling are prone 
 to be tethered to a little worn round." 1 
 
 We want our children, surely, not simply to learn 
 to read, but to become readers. We covet for them 
 their full heritage and possibility. We are anxious 
 that they should gain that range of knowledge, 
 breadth of sympathy and sanity of outlook that are 
 characteristic of the man who lives in and for his 
 generation, yet is not wholly of it. We would have 
 them know the cloud of witnesses which compasses 
 them about, whose lives are not to be made perfect 
 save in them. We desire that they be men and 
 women of action, but of action intelligent and wise 
 because of their mastery of the resources which the 
 accumulated experience of the race puts at their dis- 
 posal. We must help them, therefore, to acquire 
 not only the ability but the inclination to read, and 
 a taste for the books that are of real worth. 
 
 What is Good Reading? 
 
 It is perilous to try to define good reading. One 
 could hardly put it more truly than to say that good 
 reading is that which lasts throughout the genera- 
 tions. The lists of present " best sellers " are not 
 to be trusted. They are too much affected by 
 ephemeral tastes and passing circumstances. But 
 in the long run the judgment of the reading public is 
 sound. Those books are good which not only are 
 
 » J. N. Lamed : Books, Culture and Character, pp. 99-103. 
 
Developing a Taste for Good Reading 143 
 
 preserved, but continue to be read in generation 
 after generation. 
 
 But that, it may be answered, gives no criterion 
 for the books of today. We cannot wait until 
 time's verdict has been rendered. How shall we 
 know good reading ? These are some of the marks of 
 good literature: 
 
 (1) That the book is true, either in the sense that 
 it records actual facts or principles that belong to the 
 structure of knowledge, or in the sense that it is true 
 to life. In the case of a book in history or science, 
 this characteristic is obviously to be insisted upon. 
 But it is no less true that even fiction, if it is great, 
 has the character of verisimilitude. It must be true 
 to the fundamental laws of life. It selects its ma- 
 terials, of course; it casts this or that into bold 
 relief; it may even exaggerate: but let its selection 
 or disproportion become such that it loses this 
 quality, and it almost certainly loses as well its 
 chance of a permanent place in literature. 
 
 " Shakespeare, the great idealist, is at the same 
 time the greatest realist. On the one hand, his 
 leading characters, even the immoral ones, are 
 striking personalities; they are placed in situations 
 which are significant — the crises of human life. 
 On the other hand, their words, their actions, their 
 failure to act, follow strictly, in every instance, from 
 their inner nature when taken in relation to the 
 circumstances in which they are placed; the workings 
 of their minds follow laws which the psychology of 
 
144 The Training of Children 
 
 today is, in many cases, just beginning to formu- 
 late." 1 
 
 (2) That the book contains sound, accurate 
 thinking, clearly expressed. There is possible no 
 such separation between content and form as teach- 
 ers of rhetoric have sometimes led us to imagine. 
 Good " style " consists in having something to say, 
 and saying it in the clearest, most direct way that 
 one can. If a writer's style is involved, it is in 
 general either because his thought was not fully 
 clear, or because he lacked the vocabulary to express 
 it. Great books are not always simple; but they 
 are clear. 
 
 Words are instruments of thinking, as well as the 
 means of its expression. We do not always think in 
 words; much, indeed, of our every-day thinking 
 goes on in terms of mental pictures which pass, 
 as we say, before the mind's eye, the meanings and 
 relationships of which are immediately discerned 
 without being translated, even mentally, into words. 
 Yet the development of thought is largely dependent 
 upon one's mastery of language. When one has 
 words as well as mental pictures to serve as symbols 
 of the things and qualities about which he thinks, 
 thinking takes less time and energy and is more 
 definite and accurate. The acquiring of an adequate 
 vocabulary, in any field of knowledge, is a great aid 
 both to the memory and to observation and reasoning 
 within that field. 
 
 > F. C. Sharp: Education [or Character, p. 221. 
 
Developing a Taste for Good Reading 145 
 
 The surest way to acquire a good vocabulary and 
 correlative ideals and habits of fruitful, accurate 
 thinking, is to read the best books in the fields in 
 which one seeks to develop these abilities. We ac- 
 quire language only by repeated use; we learn to 
 think only by thinking. The child who hears only 
 the slouchy vernacular of every-day speech and reads 
 only newspapers and popular magazines, stories of 
 the " Uncle Wiggly " or " Oz " type, or books that 
 are cast in the same careless vernacular or have been 
 unduly simplified to the supposed level of his com- 
 prehension, is missing one of the essential elements 
 of a good education. Children need books of sound 
 thought-content, clearly expressed in good English. 
 They are quite as much interested in such books as 
 in reading matter of the more shallow, ephemeral 
 sort; and from these books, without effort, they 
 will learn both to think accurately and to express 
 their thoughts clearly. The perfect English of 
 Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech was begotten 
 in the books which the boy Abe read by the fire- 
 light in his father's cabin home. 
 
 (3) A book might possess these characteristics, 
 however — of truth, sound logic, and accurate, clear 
 diction — without being good literature. De Quincey 
 classified books as of two sorts : books of knowledge 
 and books of power. The former convey informa- 
 tion; the latter stir the imagination to see, and the 
 heart to feel what they portray. This is the primary 
 difference between those books which possess genuine 
 
146 The Training of Children 
 
 literary quality and those which do not. Good 
 literature is enjoyable; it captures the imagination 
 and appeals to the emotions. It takes us out of our 
 surroundings and causes us to dwell for the time in 
 the situation it describes so that we " come back to 
 earth," when we have finished reading, with somewhat 
 of a sense of loss. It has warmth and color and life. 
 
 Like painting and sculpture, literature is an art. 
 Not all literature, moreover, is fiction and poetry. 
 In other fields of human thought, the difference is 
 manifest between literature and mere dull, colorless 
 records. It is possible to describe anything — 
 whether in history or fiction, science, or invention — 
 in form of a mechanical recital of facts, dry, prosy, 
 unenlightening and uninspiring; and it is possible 
 to describe the same things, perhaps not quite as 
 exactly, but with power. 
 
 (4) Good literature exerts this power to worthy 
 ends. It presents life's great ideal values. It 
 portrays universal truths, as these are embodied in 
 concrete and particular situations. It exhibits 
 the fundamental laws of nature and of human life; 
 it reveals the potentialities of human nature and the 
 great trends of human conduct; it fills the mind with 
 desirable mental images, and sets the affections upon 
 the higher things; it equips one to face life's tempta- 
 tions with more of strength because he has seen and 
 loves the ideal. " Literature," Barrett Wendell has 
 said, " is the lasting expression in words of the mean- 
 ing of life." 
 
Developing a Taste for Good Reading 147 
 
 " Whether the book is alive with genius or dead 
 with the lack of it — whether it is brilliant or com- 
 monplace — whether clumsiness or skill is in the 
 construction of it — are not the first questions to be 
 asked. The prior question, as I conceive, is this: 
 Does the book leave any kind of wholesome and fine 
 feeling in the mind of one who reads it? That is not 
 a question concerning the mere morality of the book, 
 in the conventional meaning of the term. It touches 
 the whole quality of the work as one of true litera- 
 ture. . . . There is no mistaking a feeling of that 
 nature, though it may never seem twice the same in 
 our experience of it. . . . Some books that we 
 read will make us feel that we are lifted as on wings ; 
 some will make music within us; some will give us 
 visions; some will just fill us with a happy content. 
 In such feeling there is a refining potency that seems 
 to be equaled in nothing else. . . . The poem, the 
 romance, the play, the music, or the picture, which 
 has nothing of the sort to give us, but only a moment 
 of sensation and then blankness, does us no kind of 
 good, however innocent of positive evil it may be. 
 
 " If the wholesome feeling which all true art 
 produces, in literature or elsewhere, is unmistakable, 
 so, too, are those feelings of the other nature which 
 works of an opposite character give rise to. Our 
 minds are as sensitive to a moral force of gravitation 
 as our bodies are sensitive to the physical force, and 
 we are as conscious of the downward pull upon us of 
 a vulgar tale or a vicious play as we are conscious of 
 the buoyant lift of one that is nobly written." 1 
 
 1 J. N. Lamed: Books, Culture and Character, pp. 43-45. 
 
148 The Training of Children 
 
 Reading in the Schools 
 
 Reading has always occupied a large place in the 
 curriculum of the elementary' schools; yet much of 
 their teaching of reading has been ineffective. I 
 attended the schools of a good city system of public 
 education a generation ago; but I am confident that 
 if I had not learned to read at home before entering 
 school, and if I had not acquired an eager taste for 
 reading by browsing freely in my father's library, 
 I would never have gained the same ability to read 
 rapidly and easily, or the same desire to read, 
 from the work of the schools. This was meager in 
 content, concerned itself too exclusively with oral 
 reading, and did not connect up with the pupil's 
 desire for enjoyable reading outside of school hours. 
 
 Better methods are being developed in the schools 
 of today. Reading is taught in close association with 
 language, oral and written. The primary emphasis 
 is laid upon the thought-content which language, 
 in whatever form, conveys; and children learn to 
 read and write, not so much by formal exercises, as 
 because they come naturally to need these ways of 
 understanding and communicating thought. In- 
 stead of beginning with single letters, or with phonic 
 exercises upon separate syllables, or even with the 
 learning to pronounce one word at a time, the sen- 
 tence, which is the natural unit of thought, is taken 
 as the natural unit with which the child's education 
 in reading begins. This does not mean, be it re- 
 
Developing a Taste for Good Reading 149 
 
 marked, that the children of today do not learn the 
 alphabet, as critics of present methods sometimes 
 absurdly charge; it means simply that these methods 
 recognize the psychological fact that children will 
 most easily acquire a reading vocabulary in the same 
 way that they acquire a speaking vocabulary, by 
 using words in sentences which express thoughts. 
 There is no more reason why they should begin to 
 read by one letter at a time than there is for their 
 beginning to speak by uttering one vowel or conso- 
 nant at a time. 
 
 " New words are best learned by hearing or seeing 
 them used in a context that suggests their meaning, 
 and not by focusing attention upon their isolated 
 form or sound of meaning. It should constantly be 
 remembered that words are functional, and that their 
 main function is to help express a total meaning 
 which always requires or implies their association 
 together with other words. ... If the child grasps, 
 approximately, the total meaning of the sentence in 
 which the new word stands, he has read the sentence. 
 Usually this total meaning will suggest what to call 
 the new word, and the word's correct articula- 
 tion will usually have been learned in conversation 
 if the proper amount of oral practice shall have 
 preceded reading. And even if the child substitutes 
 words of his own for some that are on the page, 
 provided that these express the meaning, it is an 
 encouraging sign that the reading has been real, and 
 recognition of details will come as it is needed. The 
 shock that such a statement will give to many a 
 practical teacher of reading is but an accurate 
 measure of the hold that a false ideal has taken of us, 
 
ISO The Training of Children 
 
 namely, that to read is to say just what is upon the 
 page, instead of to think, each in his own way, the 
 meaning that the page suggests." 1 
 
 These methods involve the child's doing much 
 rather than little reading, in order that he may secure 
 enough practice. They emphasize practice in silent 
 reading, in contrast to the exclusive emphasis upon 
 oral reading, which was characteristic of older 
 methods. They train the child in rapid reading, 
 though without hurry, and test his ability quickly 
 to master and to report upon the thought-content of 
 a given passage. 
 
 President Eliot found, in a typical Massachusetts 
 school of a generation ago, that thirty-seven per 
 cent of all the school-time for the first six years of the 
 course was devoted to reading, spelling, grammar, 
 and other aids to the learning of the English language. 
 Yet, by actual test, he found that an ordinary high- ' 
 school graduate could read aloud, at a moderate rate, 
 in just forty-six hours, everything that the children 
 of that school were supposed to read in these six 
 years. " These children had, therefore," he says, 
 " been more than two solid years of school time in 
 going thrbugh what an ordinary high-school graduate 
 can read aloud in forty-six hours." 2 In the school 
 which I attended we read only Appleton's Readers, 
 except that the principal kept in his office, as a special 
 treat, to be doled out on occasion, a few copies of 
 two supplementary readers, one in American history 
 
 1 E. B. Huey: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, pp. 348-349. 
 s C. W. Eliot: Educational Reform, p. 185. 
 
Developing a Taste for Good Reading 151 
 
 and one in geography. We never read " to our- 
 selves " in school. 
 
 The schools of today furnish, in every grade, a 
 number and variety of books which the children 
 are encouraged to read, and they are given many 
 opportunities for silent reading. These books for 
 children, moreover, contain more and more of really 
 good literature, as contrasted with hack-writing or 
 mere information. The schools are making increas- 
 ing use of the public libraries, also, and seeking to 
 develop within their pupils the ability and inclina- 
 tion to use the resources of these libraries intelli- 
 gently. 
 
 Further reason for encouragement is to be found 
 in the fact that the schools of today are beginning to 
 develop methods of teaching that aim at awaking 
 attitudes of appreciation of good literature, rather 
 than set children to work to analyze and dissect 
 it. We may hope that the day is passing when the 
 gibe is pertinent which is contained in a school 
 man's answer to the query how boys might be cured 
 of reading dime novels. " Teach them dime novels," 
 he said, " in the same way that we have been teach- 
 ing English classics in the high schools. They will 
 never want to read them again." 
 
 Reading in the Home 
 
 It is by the home, even more than by the school, 
 that the reading habits of most children are de- 
 termined. Many children learn to read before they 
 
152 The Training of Children 
 
 enter school, picking it up in connection with the 
 stories that are read to them and the picture books 
 with which they play in their homes. 
 
 The child's education in reading begins with his 
 first lessons in oral language, and these begin far 
 back when he is a tiny baby. Parents should make 
 it a practice to talk much to their baby, even long 
 before they can be sure that he understands what 
 they say; and they should use good words, rightly 
 pronounced, and correct forms, instead of baby- 
 talk. It is only through this repeated hearing of 
 language that the child will begin to understand the 
 meanings of words and to acquire the ability to speak. 
 A mother came, complaining that her baby of two 
 showed no signs of learning to talk. " Have you 
 talked a good deal to him?" queried her friend. 
 " Why, no, I can't say that I have. It didn't seem 
 to be of any use when he couldn't understand or 
 answer." A more flagrant case of wanting to put 
 the cart before the horse could hardly be found. 
 
 Very early, too, the father and mother should 
 begin the practice of telling stories to the child — 
 not just commonplace accounts of what happened 
 "when I was a youngster," or made-up yarns, but 
 stories from the world's rich treasury of folk-lore, 
 myth, and child literature. It takes time and intelli- 
 gence and the willingness to learn how to tell stories; 
 but it is wonderfully rewarding, not only in its ulti- 
 mate results, but in its immediate satisfactions. 
 There should be a regular time, a story hour, which 
 
Developing a Taste for Good Reading 153 
 
 will come naturally just before putting the children 
 to bed for the night. It will soon come to be one of 
 the most precious times of the day, for the parents 
 as well as for the children. 
 
 Before long this will lead to the parent's reading 
 to the children, for there will be stories which he 
 has not well enough in mind to tell without the book. 
 This practice of reading to the children should be 
 maintained, even into the years of later childhood. 
 When the children become able to read for them- 
 selves, it will naturally change into reading with the 
 children rather than to them. Blessed is the family 
 group that never wholly loses the happy habit of 
 reading aloud, and sharing together the good things 
 of literature. 
 
 Each child should have books of his own, and a 
 shelf of his own upon which to put them. It is 
 wise to subscribe to one or two children's periodicals ; 
 but let these be only the best, and not too many. 
 Our temptation in these days, for our children as 
 well as for ourselves, is to do too much reading in 
 periodicals, and not enough reading of books. In 
 my own home we find The Youth's Companion and 
 the weekly Sunday-school papers enough. It ' is 
 good, again, to get books for the children from 
 libraries: public school, Sunday school or public. 
 But no amount of books borrowed from libraries 
 can take the place of the books which the child 
 should own, and read and re-read until he makes 
 them his own in spirit as well as in property. 
 
154 The Training of Children 
 
 Above all, the parents should possess as good a 
 library of their own as they can, and the children 
 should have free access to these books. There is 
 nothing that so moves children to love good books 
 as to have parents that know and love books, and 
 to be left free to read what they may choose from the 
 riches offered by the parents' bookshelves. They 
 will read many books, in part or whole, that are 
 supposedly beyond them, but in so doing they will 
 educate themselves. 
 
 The parents should talk over the child's reading 
 with him, not by way of formal examination or 
 inquisition, but in the free exchange of conversation. 
 This is especially wise in the years of the " reading 
 craze " in later childhood and early adolescence, 
 which offers a wonderful opportunity to introduce 
 the child to the really great things, treasures of 
 literature. Many families would raise the whole 
 tone of their life together if more conversation about 
 books and reading took the place of some of the 
 trivial gossip, teasing, petulance, and self-absorption 
 which take up too large a proportion of their table 
 talk. 
 
 In a later chapter we shall discuss the place of the 
 Bible in the life of the child. Enough now to say 
 that it holds a preeminent place, not only for its 
 spiritual message and its devotional value, but for 
 its quality as literature and for its relation to the 
 cultural life of the race. One cannot understand 
 the greatest things in English literature who does 
 
Developing a Taste for Good Reading 155 
 
 not know the Bible. Good books of Bible stories 
 should be among the most prized of the child's 
 literary possessions; and in later childhood he should 
 learn to read the Bible itself, and to use it intelli- 
 gently in his devotional life. 
 
156 The Training of Children 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 1. Do you think that we are in danger, in this country, of over- 
 reliance upon ephemeral, casual reading, as contrasted with interest in 
 more permanent literature? Give reasons for your answer. 
 
 2. The place of books in education. The relative value of books and 
 of observation and personal experience. 95. 
 
 3. Name some books that you consider to be good reading, and tell 
 why you deem them to be such. 
 
 4. Show how one's reading helps to determine his ability to think 
 accurately and to express himself clearly. What are the relative values 
 of thinking in mental pictures and thinking in words ? 
 
 5. Give examples from various fields — science, history, etc. — of 
 books that do and books that do not possess good literary quality. 
 Give reasons for your judgments in each case. 
 
 6. Idealism and realism in literature. Can a book be good literature, 
 or good art, which has a bad point morally? Give reasons for your 
 answer. 88, 95. 
 
 7. Observe and report upon the methods of teaching reading in the 
 public schools. Compare with the methods used when you went to 
 school. 93, 94. 
 
 8. Educational uses of the public library. The public school in rela- 
 tion to the children's room of the public library. 91, 101. 
 
 9. Aims and uses of the Sunday-school library. 91. 
 
 10. Find out from the public library in your city what the children of 
 various ages like to read, as evidenced by the books they draw. Is 
 the quality of their outside reading a fair test of the effectiveness of the 
 work of the public school in teaching literature? Give reasons for your 
 answer. 
 
 11. How to tell stories. 87, 89, 90. 
 
 12. Lists of stories for children. 89, 94. 
 
 13. The choice of books for children. 86, 91, 96, 97, 99. 
 
 14. What sort of Bible story book do you want — one that uses the 
 words of the Bible only, or one that uses other words? Compare Miss 
 Olcott's, which does the former, with those of Hodges, which do the 
 latter. 92, 98. 
 
 15. Reading the Bible as literature. 100. 
 
Developing a Taste for Good Reading 157 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 86. Arnold, Gertrude: A Mother's List of Books. 
 
 87. Bryant, Sara C: How to Tell Stories to Children. 
 
 88. Carpenter, Baker and Scott: The Teaching of English. 
 
 89. Cather, K. D.: Educating by Story-Telling. 
 
 90. Eggleston, M. W.: The Use of the Story in Religious Education. 
 
 91. Field, W. T.: Finger-Posts to Children's Reading. 
 
 92. Hodges, George: The Garden of Eden, The Castle of Zion, When the 
 King Came. 
 
 93. Huey, E. B.: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading. 
 
 94. Hosic, J. F. : The Elementary Course in English. 
 
 95. Lamed, J. N.: Books, Culture and Character. 
 
 96. Lowe, Orton: Literature for Children. 
 
 97. Macy, J. H.: A Child's Guide to Reading. 
 
 98. Olcott, F. J.: Bible Stories to Read and Tell. 
 
 99. Olcott, F. J.: Children's Reading. 
 
 100. Phelps, W. L.: Reading the Bible. 
 
 101. Powell, S. H.: The Children's Library a Dynamic Factor in Edu- 
 cation. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 The Child and His Friends 
 
 The Social Instincts 
 
 That the child will have friends is a matter of 
 course. Such is the social nature of all human 
 beings. The creation of friendships is a natural 
 result of the instincts with which they are endowed. 
 
 Dudley Kidd, in his fascinating study of Kafir 
 children, entitled Savage Childhood, reports that there 
 is much in their life " that looks like sheer animal 
 love for gregarious fellowship. . . . The black child 
 is sociable from infancy, and it is very rare to find a 
 boy or girl who loves to sit alone and to brood in 
 silence, or to wander off in solitude. Occasionally a 
 child seems devoid of social tendencies, and in that 
 case a witch-doctor is sent for to cure the child." 
 
 In our more sophisticated life the same social 
 instincts are present, however different the forms in 
 which they are given opportunity to develop. 
 They are revealed in the tiny baby's manifest pleas- 
 ure in the presence of others and his gurgling re- 
 sponses to the attention which folk give to him; 
 in the group games and gang adventures of boys and 
 in the picnics and parties of girls ; in the fraternities 
 of college youth; and in the clubs, lodges and unions, 
 the business and recreation of grown men and women, 
 
The Child and His Friends 159 
 
 as well as in what is ordinarily termed their " social 
 life." 
 
 The best descriptions of the social instincts are by 
 James, in his Principles of Psychology, McDougall, 
 in his Introduction to Social Psychology, and Thorn- 
 dike, in The Original Nature of Man. We have 
 space here but to name certain of the native tenden- 
 cies which are of fundamental importance in the 
 creation and maintenance of friendships and in the 
 determination, generally, of the child's relations to 
 his fellows. These are: 
 
 (1) Gregariousness, or satisfaction in the presence 
 of other human beings and discomfort or loneliness 
 in their absence. 
 
 (2) Special interest in the behavior of other 
 persons, as distinguished from other objects in the 
 environment; and, conversely, the desire, conscious 
 or unconscious, to be noticed by other persons. 
 
 (3) Satisfaction in the approval of other persons, 
 and discomfort from their disapproval, scorn or 
 derision; with which may be grouped, for our 
 present purpose, the active tendencies to bestow 
 approval or disapproval and to manifest admiration 
 or scorn and disgust. 
 
 (4) The tendency to try to master others, in one 
 way or another, and to find satisfaction in their 
 submission; with the converse tendency to submit 
 to others who are stronger or more self-assertive. 
 These tendencies manifest themselves in many forms 
 of behavior other than physical combat. Thorndike 
 
160 The Training of Children 
 
 classes instinctive display, or " showing off," for 
 example, as a partial manifestation of the instinct of 
 mastery, and shyness as a partial manifestation of 
 the instinct of submission. 
 
 (5) Rivalry, envy and jealousy. 
 
 (6) Anger and pugnacity. 
 
 (7) Helpfulness, sharing, and cooperative and 
 altruistic behavior. There is a native tendency to 
 satisfaction in being one of a team of persons working 
 together, which is more than simple gregariousness. 
 And there is a satisfaction in promoting the satisfac- 
 tions of others, which is more than can be accounted 
 for in terms of one's pleasure in their approval of 
 himself. 
 
 (8) Kindliness and pity; and satisfaction in wit- 
 nessing the welfare of others. 
 
 (9) Sex attraction and sex behavior generally. 
 
 (10) Parental attitudes and behavior. These are 
 not confined to mothers, though motherly behavior 
 is the most characteristic and obvious form of the 
 parental instinct; nor even to adults. Children, 
 long before the physiological capacity for parent- 
 hood has developed, manifest attitudes toward 
 dolls, pets and smaller children that seem to be 
 nothing less than parental. 
 
 (11) The general innate tendencies of imitation, 
 play, sympathy (in the sense of the tendency to feel 
 as others feel) and suggestion. These have been 
 described in earlier chapters of this book. 
 
 When thus barely named, the list seems needlessly 
 
The Child and His Friends 161 
 
 complex and mixed. Yet in this it is true to human 
 nature. The child is not a simple, passive being, 
 so much wax to be molded. He enters into the life 
 of the home, and into social relations with his fellows 
 in the world beyond the home, as an eager bundle of 
 these and other active tendencies and attitudes, 
 combined in some proportion which constitutes his 
 individual native endowment. And each of the 
 fellows with whom he comes into relation is another 
 eager bundle of these same active tendencies and 
 attitudes, combined in like or unlike proportions. 
 It is no wonder that many parents look forward with 
 a certain dread to the day when they shall send their 
 child to school, for it will mean taking him out of the 
 relatively simple and consistent atmosphere of the 
 home into the conflicting influences and contacts 
 of a wider and more complex social environment, 
 the ultimate effect of which upon the life and charac- 
 ter of the child they can but conjecture. If only 
 they could be sure what sort of friends he will make, 
 it would not be so hard; but the only thing of which 
 they can be sure is that he will make friends of some 
 sort, and that these will have much to do with shap- 
 ing his behavior and determining his character. 
 
 Dangers to be Feared 
 
 The most obvious danger is that the child will 
 absorb the unlovely as well as the better characteris- 
 tics of this wider social environment. This danger is 
 manifest upon every level of behavior. It appears in 
 
162 The Training of Children 
 
 speech. The child who has been brought up in a 
 home where he hears only good English, may pick 
 up not only ungrammatical colloquialisms but even 
 the slang of the gutter. It appears in manners. 
 The child whose manners have been shaped by the 
 refinement and courtesy of a home motived by gentle- 
 ness and consideration, may acquire the rougher 
 ways of children whose home life has been less 
 fortunate. It appears in morals. The child whose 
 mind has been kept pure may be led by smutty 
 stories and evil suggestions, to perverted habits and 
 a wrong outlook upon life. We run real risks when 
 our children go forth to make friends. These friends 
 may hurt them irreparably. 
 
 The relative independence of home which is 
 involved in the making of outside friendships may 
 itself become a danger. For boys in what has been 
 called the gang age, especially, life acquires a center- 
 ing which is definitely outside of the home circle. 
 But this may be quite as true of girls, whose interests 
 may be so fully engaged by the manifold activities of 
 the social whirl that they have neither time nor 
 energy to share in the common life of the family, 
 and they come to look upon mother's ways as old- 
 fashioned and out-of-date. 
 
 There is danger, again, that the child's friendships 
 may make of him a mere follower of the crowd, with- 
 out independence of mind or initiative of will, always 
 doing what others do, and so devoid of inner resources 
 of his own that he is ever dependent upon the pres- 
 
The Child and His Friends 163 
 
 ence and leadership of others for his happiness and 
 welfare. This danger is more real than we are apt 
 to think. There are far too many people of this 
 sort in the world today. They constitute the 
 greatest menace of democracy. 
 
 Benefits to be Gained 
 
 Despite these and other dangers, the benefits to 
 be gained by the wider friendships of life beyond the 
 home circle are so great that no one of us would wish 
 to keep our children just to ourselves. We want 
 them to make friends, and to enter wholesomely into 
 the active life of their fellows. 
 
 Children need the social discipline which is afforded 
 by life with other children. One of the greatest 
 things in the world is to know how to live and work 
 with other people happily, helpfully, with independ- 
 ence and self-reliance yet with consideration, kindli- 
 ness, and the disposition to give and to serve. And 
 the only way to learn how so to live is to begin living 
 in that way. The social virtues can be acquired only 
 by practice; and one cannot begin that practice too 
 soon. 
 
 It has often been remarked that the only child of a 
 family is likely to be odd in some respect or other — 
 quaintly precocious, perhaps, in many things, be- 
 cause of his larger measure of association with grown- 
 up folk', yet every now and then revealing some queer 
 angle of disposition and character which would 
 likely have been knocked off had he been brought up 
 
164 The' Training of Children 
 
 in constant association with brothers and sisters who 
 were near his own age. Bohannon, some years ago, 
 as a result of his study of reports sent to him concern- 
 ing 381 only children, concluded that 
 
 " These children appear to enter school later than 
 other children, and to be less regular in their attend- 
 ance. Their success in school work is below the 
 average. . . . They do not join in games so readily 
 or often as do other children of corresponding ages. 
 . . . Many of them have imaginary companions. 
 ... A large number of them do not have as good 
 command of themselves socially as does the average 
 child. Their social relations are therefore more 
 frequently characterized by friction. Peculiarities 
 in these children seem to be more pronounced than 
 in others. ... As a rule, the home treatment had 
 been that of unthinking indulgence, which generally 
 develops in a child the habit of expecting concessions 
 on all sides, and a corresponding unwillingness on his 
 part to make them to others. A right appreciation 
 of the conditions with which the child must be con- 
 cerned outside the family life requires that he be 
 given ample opportunity for companionship with 
 children of corresponding age." 1 
 
 These results do not always follow, of course. 
 Yet the conclusion to which they point is sound. 
 Other things aside, blessed is the child in a large 
 family. It is one of the curses of the modern 
 economic and industrial situation, with its urban 
 congestion, its specialization and commercialization, 
 and the consequent high cost of living, that people 
 
 • E. W. Bohannou: "The Only Child in a Family," Pidagogkal Seminary, vol. 5, 
 
The Child and His Friends 165 
 
 can no longer afford to have large families — or 
 rather that people should feel that they cannot 
 afford them, which amounts to the same thing. 
 
 Even the children of a large family, however, 
 who receive no small degree of social discipline in 
 the course of their relations to one another, need the 
 further discipline of life in the larger groups of school 
 and neighborhood. For a family, however large, is 
 yet a small social group, and its appraisal of its own 
 members is biased by affection. It is good for chil- 
 dren to share in the wider life of groups determined 
 by other ties than those of blood-kinship, and to be 
 subject to their more impersonal standards of judg- 
 ment. Many a child who had begun to be spoiled 
 in his own home owes his salvation to the authority 
 of a good teacher or to the public opinion of his 
 fellows. 
 
 This point is well put in quotations which we may 
 take from two widely different books. The first is 
 by Dean Hodges, who was writing about the child's 
 need of school life: 
 
 " The child who is taught only by his parents may 
 be better informed, but he lacks the institutional 
 and social spirit which is imparted in a good school. 
 He is in peril of individualism, whose intellectual 
 defect is narrowness, and whose religious defect is 
 selfishness. ... He may be like a soldier who has 
 learned war by correspondence, and has never kept 
 step with a file of men, nor obeyed the impersonal 
 orders of a captain." 1 
 
 » George Hodges: The Training of Children in Religion, pp. 219, 220. 
 
166 The Training of Children 
 
 The other is from Puffer's somewhat extreme book 
 on The Boy and His Gang: 
 
 " In the gang we find the natural time and place 
 for the somewhat sudden birth and development of 
 that spirit of loyalty which is the foundation of most 
 of our social relations. We must, in short, look upon 
 the gang as nature's special training-school for the 
 social virtues. Only by associating himself with 
 other boys can any youth learn the knack of getting 
 on with his fellow men; acquire and practice co- 
 operation, self-sacrifice, loyalty, fidelity, team play; 
 and in general prepare himself to become the efficient 
 citizen of a democracy. Nature, we must believe, 
 has given the boy the gang instincts for the sake of 
 making easy for him the practice of the gang 
 virtues." 1 
 
 We have discussed, in former chapters, the 
 education of children through work and through 
 play. Let us recall, here, that both work and play 
 may be socially motived. The child will work with 
 more of zest and play more happily when he works 
 or plays with others than when he must be alone. 
 Study, too, we have seen, is socially motived in the 
 best of our schools, which enlist the interest of groups 
 of children in various concrete, active projects which 
 call for their cooperative effort. So work and play 
 and study and friends are all bound up together in the 
 life of any normal child. 
 
 » J. A. Puffer: The Boy and His Gang, pp. 147, 148. 
 
The Child and His Friends 167 
 
 The Parents' Problem 
 
 The problem of parents is to do what they can to 
 insure that their children shall choose friends of the 
 right sort — friends worth having and keeping, 
 friends who will with them seek the really good things 
 that life offers as they grow up together, and avoid 
 the bad. Let it be granted at once that parents 
 cannot hope to select their child's friends for him, 
 or even to lay down rules for his selection with any 
 assurance that he will follow them. The dawning of 
 friendship is a matter almost as uncertain as falling 
 in love. It may depend upon any of the social 
 instincts named above. Bonser, who studied over 
 two thousand themes which high-school pupils 
 wrote about their chums, concluded that the selec- 
 tion of a chum depends very largely upon chance 
 association and momentary caprice. Nearly one- 
 third of the pupils who wrote these themes gave as the 
 only reason for their intimate friendship with their 
 chums the fact that they lived near to one another. 1 
 
 Once the friendship has been established, however 
 haphazard its beginning, it is hard to break it up by 
 any method of direct suggestion. Indeed, to oppose 
 such a friendship seems often to be one of the surest 
 ways of strengthening it. Mrs. Gruenberg has well 
 expressed the way in which the child's mind works in 
 such a case: 
 
 " The child of normal sentiments will resent 
 
 » F. G. Bonser: "Chum«," Pedagogical Seminary, vol. 9, pp. 221, 236. 
 
168 The Training of Children 
 
 bitterly any aspersions on those he likes. . . . He is 
 not concerned with the truthfulness of your criti- 
 cism; nor with your good intention in telling him. 
 Every attack upon those he likes is a challenge to 
 his loyalty. And the more you rail against his chum 
 the closer grows the attachment. 
 
 " A four-year-old boy recently moved into a new 
 neighborhood, and made the acquaintance of a lad 
 of his own age but of a very different set of manners. 
 The mother of the first boy seriously warned him 
 not to associate with Bob because he would be sure 
 to spoil his speech and his manners. Bob used such 
 language; and from time to time he would even spit! 
 Hector listened reflectively, very much impressed. 
 At last he caught the idea. " Well, mother," he 
 said, " that will be all right. I won't let him make 
 me bad, and I'll make him good instead." 1 
 
 This point is worth dwelling upon, for it is exceed- 
 ingly important. Direct opposition seldom suc- 
 ceeds in breaking up a friendship, whether it be that 
 6f childish chums, college youths, or infatuated 
 lovers. It but serves to arouse, on the one hand, 
 one's loyalty to the friend whose real worth, he feels, 
 is misunderstood and slandered, and, on the other 
 hand, one's pride in himself and in his own ability 
 to determine the ultimate issue of the friendship. 
 The girl who runs away from home to marry a dissi- 
 pated rake, in the belief that she will reform him, is 
 moved, in this respect, by the same motive as the 
 four-year-old who proposed to make his neighbor lad 
 good instead of being made bad by him. 
 
 Sidonie M. Gruenberg, Sons and Daughters, pp. 298-299. 
 
The Child and His Friends 169 
 
 Parents can do much, however, to equip the child 
 or youth to select for himself desirable friends and 
 to determine the happy issue of his friendships. 
 The whole of the child's moral and religious educa- 
 tion has bearing here. All growth in right habits, 
 high ideals and sound character constitutes a pro- 
 phylaxis against temptation and an assurance of 
 likes and choices that are worthy. 
 
 Wise parents will bring their children's friends into 
 the home, and will seek to make the home a head- 
 quarters for the gang, crowd or set of young people 
 to which their children belong. It may sometimes 
 cause more or less of annoyance; but that is far 
 better than to make the home so formal and precise 
 that your children are driven from it, to center their 
 social life somewhere else. " I don't see why all the 
 children in the neighborhood should play in our 
 yard," complained a young mother one day. But 
 after a moment's thought she added: " Still I'd far 
 rather have them all play here than to have my chil- 
 dren playing somewhere else." 
 
 Parents should seek to maintain the precious 
 relationships and intimacies of the family unimpaired 
 as their children grow up and enter into new rela- 
 tions and friendships. The father and mother 
 should always be their boy's and girl's best friends. 
 This does not mean, be it clearly stated, that 
 they should try to enter into the life of the gang, 
 try to be one of the boys with the boys and one of the 
 girls with the girls, or in any way seek to reduce 
 
170 The Training of Children 
 
 themselves to the dimensions of their children's 
 friends. That would be but to make themselves 
 ridiculous, even to the eyes of those who love them 
 and honor their good intentions. They should 
 rather maintain their place of honor and authority 
 as father and mother, continually justifying them- 
 selves in this position by their wider experience and 
 better judgment, yet placing this experience and 
 judgment at the disposal of their children in friendly 
 affection and good understanding, rather than by 
 way of arbitrary command. 
 
 Horace Bushnell had a great phrase: "the 
 emancipation of the child." That, he held, was 
 the end of all education, moral and intellectual. We 
 quote one passage : 
 
 " A wise parent understands that his government 
 is to be crowned by an act of emancipation; and it is 
 a great problem, to accomplish that emancipation 
 gracefully. Pure authority, up to the last limit of 
 minority, then a total, instantaneous self-possession, 
 makes an awkward transition. . . . The emancipa- 
 ting process, in order to be well finished, should begin 
 early, and should pass imperceptibly, even as age 
 increases imperceptibly. Thus the child, after being 
 ruled for a time by pure authority, should begin, 
 as the understanding is develpped, to have some of 
 the reasons given why it is required to abstain, or do, 
 or practice, in this or that way instead of some other. 
 The tastes of the child, too, should begin to be a little 
 consulted, in respect to his school, his studies, his 
 future engagements in life. When he is old enough 
 to go on errands, and to labor in various employ- 
 
The Child and His Friends 171 
 
 ments for the benefit of the family, he should be 
 let into the condition of the family far enough to be 
 identified with it, and have the family cause, and 
 property, and hope, for his own. Built into the' 
 family fortunes and sympathies in this manner, 
 he will begin, at a very early day, to command him- 
 self for it, and so will get ready to command himself 
 for himself, in a way that will be just as if the paren- 
 tal authority were still running on, after it has quite 
 run by." 1 
 
 ■Horace Bushnell: Christian Nurture, pp. 281-282 (1916 Edition). 
 
172 The Training of Children 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 1. If possible, have some one read and report upon Dudley Kidd's 
 description of Kafir children in " Savage Childhood." 
 
 2. Discuss, as fully as the time will permit, the character and the 
 bearing upon the child's friendships of any or each of the eleven native 
 tendencies and groups of tendencies which are named in the chapter. 
 If possible, read the descriptions of these in any one of the books referred 
 to. 32, 33, 37. 
 
 3. Describe the spontaneous social organizations of children and youth, 
 as these have come under your observation. Compare with the descrip- 
 tions in 102, 105, 106. 
 
 4. The possibilities of the modern home as a social center for the life of 
 a group of young people. 
 
 5. The possibilities of the church as a social center for the life of groups 
 of young people. 
 
 6. Is the only child in a family likely to be different from children 
 brought up among brothers and sisters ? Give cases, if you know of any. 
 
 7. The relative merits of private and public schools. 
 
 8. Recall any experiences or observations concerning chums and the 
 ties that brought them together. What later broke the relation? 
 
 9. What can parents do to guide the friendships of their children? 
 
 10. What did Horace Bushnell mean by " the emancipation of the 
 child "? Discuss the value of the phrase. 
 
 11. What would you have done in the following situation: A boy of 
 eighteen, out with a comrade and two girls in his father's automobile, 
 drove so far that he did not return until two a.m. His mother, waiting 
 up to receive him, after reproaching him .for the worry he had caused in 
 four homes, told him that he ought to remember that it was not generous 
 to the girls to keep them out so late, unchaperoned. He drew up 
 angrily: " Mother, do you realize what you are saying? You are accus- 
 ing your son of being no gentleman." 
 
 12. What, within your experience, have been the effects of the automo- 
 bile upon the social life of children and young people? Of the motion 
 picture shows? 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 32. G. A. Coe: A Social Theory of Religious Education. 
 
 33. William McDougall: An Introduction to Social Psychology. 
 37. E. L. Thorndike: The Original Nature of Man. 
 
 102. W. B. Forbush: The Boy Problem. 
 
 103. H. F. Cope: The Parent and the Child. 
 
 104. S. M. Gruenberg: Sons and Daughters. 
 
 105. T. A. Puffer: The Boy and His Gang. 
 
 106. H. D. Sheldon: The Institutional Activities of American Children, 
 American Journal of Psychology, vol. 9, pp. 425-448. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Doing for Others 
 
 Are Children Naturally Selfish? 
 
 It has been the fashion, among certain writers on 
 the psychology of childhood, to describe children as 
 naturally selfish and egoistic. In this they have 
 followed the lead of President G. Stanley Hall, 
 whose theory has been that the development of the 
 individual child recapitulates the stages through 
 which the evolution of the race has passed. The 
 following quotation from an article by two of his 
 pupils is typical: 
 
 " Do we believe that the child recapitulates the 
 history of the race? If so we may not be surprised 
 to find the passion for property-getting a natural 
 one, nor that the child lies, cheats, and steals to 
 acquire it, or that selfishness rules the child's actions. 
 Selfishness is the corner-stone of the struggle for 
 existence, deception is at its very foundation, while 
 the acquiring of property has been the most dominant 
 factor in the history of men and nations. These 
 passions of the child are but the pent-up forces of 
 the greed of thousands of years. They must find 
 expression and exercise, if not in childhood, later. 
 Who knows but what our misers are not those 
 children grown up whom fond mothers and fathers 
 forced into giving away their playthings, into the 
 doing of unselfish acts, in acting out a generosity 
 
174 The Training of Children 
 
 which was neither felt nor understood ? Not to let 
 these activities have their play in childhood is to 
 run a great risk. It does no good to make the child 
 perform moral acts when it does not appreciate what 
 right and wrong mean, and to punish a child for 
 performing acts which his very nature compels him 
 to do, is doing that child positive injury. During 
 the period of adolescence generosity and altruism 
 spring up naturally. Then why try to force the 
 budding plant into blossom? Instruct them by all 
 means, teach them the right; but if this fails, do not 
 punish, but let the child be selfish, let him lie and 
 cheat, until these forces spend themselves. Do not 
 these experiences of the child give to man in later 
 life a moral virility? " J 
 
 Few paragraphs of equal length contain more 
 propositions that are questionable than this. It 
 affords but a one-sided view of the evolution of the 
 race when it asserts that selfishness and deception 
 are at the very foundation of that process; and its 
 assumption that the child recapitulates the history 
 of the race is either ignored or called into question 
 by most psychologists of the present day. While it 
 is true that children cannot be made unselfish by 
 punishment, the recommendation that they be 
 permitted to be selfish, to lie and cheat as they 
 please, is strange counsel indeed. And the reasons 
 given for this counsel are stranger yet and more than 
 dubious: that otherwise the child's selfish impulses 
 will remain pefat up, to break out in later life; and 
 
 > Kline and Frances: "The Psychology of Ownership," Pedagogical Seminary, 
 vol. 6, page 455. 
 
Doing for Others 175 
 
 that to let these impulses have free play in childhood 
 will not only cause them to expend themselves 
 harmlessly, according to what these writers are 
 accustomed to call " the principle of catharsis," 
 but will give to later life " a moral virility." 
 
 To discuss these dubious matters is not now our 
 business. We are concerned, however, with two 
 other assumptions which are made in the paragraph 
 quoted: that pre-adolescent children are naturally 
 selfish, greedy, and dishonest; and that during the 
 period of adolescence generosity and altruism spring 
 up inevitably and quite as naturally. Are these 
 assumptions true? 
 
 It may be granted that much of the behavior of 
 children seems to be self-centered, and that this 
 behavior may easily be thought to constitute evi- 
 dence of a naturally selfish trend of disposition or 
 character. It is not really such, however. The 
 seeming self-centeredness of children's behavior, 
 from time to time, is attributable to factors which 
 are by no means the result of natural selfishness. 
 Among these factors are: 
 
 (1) The fact that children, like all human beings, 
 possess native instincts and tendencies to action 
 which are self-preservative, self-protective, and self- 
 regarding. These include the food-getting tenden- 
 cies, hunting, grasping, collecting, hoarding, anger, 
 fear, fighting, rivalry, envy, jealousy, the tendency 
 to " show off " or in some way to assert one's mastery 
 or superiority, and the like. These native tenden- 
 
176 The Training of Children 
 
 cies, be it remembered, are really for the good of the 
 species as well as for that of the individual; it is 
 only in their primary reference that they are self- 
 regarding. 
 
 (2) The child is naive, open, and frank in his 
 expression of his impulses and desires. He has not 
 yet acquired the conventions which overlay and 
 conceal the native impulses of older folk. He re- 
 veals himself without reserve; he expresses freely 
 what he wants and tries at once to get it. He is 
 perfectly natural and direct in his reactions to the 
 situations in which he finds himself, whether these 
 reactions be self-regarding or altruistic. 
 
 (3) The child is dependent upon the care of older 
 folk. He begins life as a recipient, rather than as a 
 giver, of good gifts. He has nothing to give to 
 others, at first, except his own affection; there is 
 nothing much that he can do for others, except to be 
 his own happy self and to grow as children should. 
 This is not to say that he may not begin very early 
 in life to return the affection which is lavished upon 
 him, to be kind, to give and to share of the little that 
 is his, and to help in the common life of the home. 
 The point is simply that his position is one of depend- 
 ence, so that in the nature of the case he receives 
 much more than he can give. 
 
 (4) The child's relative lack of experience makes 
 it harder for him than for older folk to realize in 
 imagination and feeling the needs and desires of 
 others. More important than the power to see our- 
 
) Doing for Others 177 
 
 selves as others see us is the power to realize how 
 others feel. William James once said that the great 
 difficulty of any race of men with superior power in 
 dealing with races which seem to them to be inferior 
 lies in their failure to realize that the people of these 
 races " have insides of their own." The same funda- 
 mental difficulty is manifest in the relations of 
 individuals. Few of us would choose to act tact- 
 lessly or wrongly if we could feel the ill results of 
 our action as the persons who are hurt by the action 
 feel these results. As we grow in experience, are 
 brought into varying contacts with other folk, and 
 come to know what disappointment and suffering 
 are, as well as success and happiness, we become able 
 to understand more fully and to realize in sympa- 
 thetic imagination the points of view, the feelings 
 and desires of others. The child's relative lack of 
 experience makes it harder for him to do this. His 
 behavior may be more self-centered, not because he 
 is more selfish, but because he lacks data. He does 
 not understand the life of others; he is unable to 
 put himself by imagination in their places and to 
 feel as they feel. 
 
 These are some of the reasons why children seem 
 to be more self-centered than older folk. Over 
 against them must be set the fact which recapitula- 
 tionists are prone to forget; that children possess also 
 native instincts and tendencies to action which are 
 unselfish and other-regarding. If it be granted that 
 the child's ability to sympathize with the feelings of 
 
178 The Training of Children 
 
 others is limited by his lack of experience, it is 
 yet true that he possesses the original impulses of 
 kindliness, pity, and the tendency to find pleasure in 
 witnessing the happiness and welfare of others, which 
 are characteristic of human nature. The social 
 instincts do not wait to manifest themselves until 
 the approach of the adolescent years. They are 
 present and powerful in childhood, in the form not 
 simply of gregariousness and special interest in the 
 behavior of others, but in the form of native tenden- 
 cies to find satisfaction in helping, communicating, 
 sharing, giving, promoting the satisfaction of others, 
 cooperating in social groups, and caring for dolls, 
 pets, smaller children, even aged or ill adults. 
 
 Children possess both the self-regarding and the 
 other-regarding impulses, then — the raw material 
 which may be shaped into selfishness on the one hand 
 or into unselfishness on the other. The direction in 
 which the development of the child's character will 
 move depends for the most part upon his experience, 
 that is, upon the environment in which he grows up, 
 the instruction and training afforded him, and the 
 motives which are appealed to by those about him 
 and by the conditions in which his life is cast. 
 
 The dogma that generosity and altruism spring 
 up naturally during the adolescent years fails to 
 give due recognition to the other-regarding instincts 
 of pre-adolescen't childhood and overstates the 
 difference, in this regard, between childhood and 
 youth. It overloads the sex instincts, attributing 
 
Doing for Others 179 
 
 to them the springs of all unselfishness in life. It 
 makes " conversion " necessary, for according to 
 this theory there must be a face-about from the 
 egocentric basis of the child's behavior to the altro- 
 centric basis of that of youth; and it conceives this 
 conversion in purely " natural " terms, as the moral 
 correlate of a physiological process, which takes 
 place inevitably. It supports itself by painting a 
 too roseate picture of youth's unselfishness, ignoring 
 the self-centeredness and self-satisfaction which are 
 quite as characteristic of young folk in the 'teens. 
 
 The Christian Way 
 
 The Christian way of life is the way of unselfish 
 cooperation, of mutual regard, of love and service. 
 " Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, 
 do ye even so unto them." " Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself." " The Son of man came not 
 to be ministered unto, but to minister." " Whoso- 
 ever would become great among you, shall be your 
 minister; and whosoever would be first among you, 
 shall be servant of all." 
 
 . The Christian way of life is the only way of ulti- 
 mate success for human society, the only way in 
 which human welfare can be effectively promoted 
 and the prosperity of the world assured. This 
 should need no saying after the experiences of the 
 past few years, were it not so obvious that we have 
 not, after all, learned their lesson. 
 
 In a world where men are as interdependent as 
 
180 The Training of Children 
 
 we have come to be in this twentieth century, the 
 only choice is between the Christian way and ruin. 
 Can business be organized upon a Christian basis? 
 Will the Golden Rule work? Can nations cooperate 
 for the welfare of the world? If these questions 
 cannot be answered in the affirmative, we are headed 
 straight toward a breaking-up of civilization beside 
 which the overthrow of the Roman Empire will 
 seem to have been a matter of minor consequence. 
 
 The Christian way is not a way of weakness, of 
 self-abnegation, of the incompetent and servile 
 virtues, as Nietzsche would have had us think. It 
 is the way of productive efficiency, of self-develop- 
 ment sound and wholesome because objective-minded 
 and socially motived. It is the way of fairness and 
 mutual good-will, of gratitude and self-respect, of 
 loyalty and cooperation, of good workmanship, of 
 democracy when democracy is at its best. 
 
 Training Children in Unselfishness 
 
 How shall we train children in this way? How 
 shall we foster and develop the unselfish, loving, 
 productive impulses which they all by nature possess, 
 and how redirect and shape toward worthy ends 
 those which are self-regarding? How shall we help 
 them to grow into men and women who will live and 
 do for others rather than merely for self? 
 
 To do this is clearly not something separate and 
 distinct from the rest of their education and train- 
 ing. The fact is that every aspect of the child's 
 
Doing for Others 181 
 
 life has its selfish or unselfish side, and that every- 
 thing that parents can do to contribute to the whole- 
 some up-bringing of their children has its bearing 
 upon their training in ideals and habits of unselfish- 
 ness and service. All that has been said in the 
 earlier chapters of this book, therefore, about the 
 child's play, work, study, books, and friends, about 
 the home atmosphere and the forming of right 
 habits, even about physical health and strength, 
 constitutes part of the answer to these questions. 
 The whole of the child's education should be motived 
 by the Christian spirit and should contribute to his 
 service in the Christian way. 
 
 More specifically, we shall train our children in 
 unselfishness, (1) by associating them with our- 
 selves in the life of a society which is so motived. 
 The surest way to develop the spirit of love and 
 service within a child is to bring him up in a home 
 where love, kindliness, and mutual good-will are 
 the constant motives of the every-day life of the 
 family. And the greatest obstacle to such education 
 lies in the fact that, as they grow, children come into 
 contact with so many other social groups which are 
 not so motived. 
 
 (2) Children should be treated as persons within 
 the social group, whether this be the family or the 
 larger, less intimate groupings of society at large. 
 It should be recognized that they have both rights 
 and duties ; and their rights should be respected and 
 the full performance of their duties required. They 
 
182 ' The Training of Children 
 
 have ideas and feelings of their own, too; they begin 
 to reason things out for themselves at an earlier age 
 than we are wont to think, and their judgments are 
 often surprisingly sound, considering the limited 
 data at their command. We can ' hardly expect 
 them to develop a sound regard for the ideas and 
 feelings of others if their own are continually ignored 
 and even outraged; to respect the rights of others 
 when respect is not paid to their rights; or to develop 
 a sense of duty when no real responsibilities are 
 committed to them, and they have no reason to 
 feel that any part of the common welfare and happi- 
 ness is actually dependent upon them. 
 
 (3) Children may be trained to understand the 
 relations in which they live and the reasons for 
 mutual helpfulness; and they may be helped to 
 imaginative realization of the feelings and desires of 
 other persons, and to the idealization of the causes 
 which call upon them for loyalty and devotion. 
 This, which is the more intellectual element of the 
 child's education in unselfishness, is fundamental. 
 If one understands the reasons for social conventions 
 and courtesies, he is more likely to observe them than 
 if they are presented to him as merely arbitrary 
 habits upon which older folk have agreed. To know 
 " how the other half lives " is necessary before one 
 can throw his energies whole-heartedly into the 
 effort to secure for them better conditions. To 
 understand the part played in our common welfare 
 by policeman, postman, dairyman, grocer, miner, 
 
Doing for Others 183 
 
 or railway engineer will not only beget in the child a 
 more unselfish attitude toward them as persons, but 
 serve to awaken within him the ideal of service in 
 every vocation of life. Every story of loyalty and 
 devotion, every narrative of great deeds, every 
 portrayal of the heroes of human history, will help 
 him to appreciate and to idealize the causes which 
 are worth living for and dying for. 
 
 (4) Children should be afforded such opportuni- 
 ties for cooperation, for giving and for service as will 
 appeal to the higher, more unselfish motives within 
 them; and parents and teachers should place their 
 main reliance upon these higher motives rather than 
 upon those that are lower and more self-regarding. 
 When one considers the motives to which appeal is 
 so often made in the education of children — fear, 
 pain, personal rivalry, material reward, and the like 
 — the wonder is that so many of them ever grow up 
 to be wholesomely unselfish folk. The spirit of the 
 schools has greatly changed in this respect. The 
 introduction of project methods, group cooperation 
 in study and recitation, and pupil self-government 
 has done much to socialize the life of progressive 
 schools and to bring about a higher and more effec- 
 tive type of motivation. There are homes that could 
 well profit from the examples of the schools in this 
 respect. Pestalozzi wanted to make his school 
 embody the spirit of the home. Some homes, 
 today, might learn the spirit of the school. It is 
 pathetic when a mother says, as one did recently: 
 
184 The Training of Children 
 
 " I wish I could handle John as well as his teacher 
 does. He will do anything for her, but he won't 
 for me." 
 
 Social Service and Missionary Education in the 
 Church School 
 
 The church exists to promote the Christian way of 
 life. It seeks, through the church school, to educate 
 its children in that way. The curriculum of the 
 church school, therefore, must include more than 
 instruction in the Bible, indispensable as that is; 
 there must be training in Christian worship and 
 Christian service. Every class should be not only a 
 study group but a service unit as well. 
 
 Progressive church schools are bringing into their 
 life and work the same spirit of social cooperation 
 and service which we have seen to be characteristic 
 of the better schools generally; and the church 
 schools add to this a directness of motive and a 
 loyalty to Christ which are not open to the public 
 schools because they may not teach religion. The 
 church school needs to make no reservation. It 
 can, directly and whole-heartedly, embody in its 
 life the spirit of Jesus Christ. That, indeed, is the 
 central purpose for which it exists. And it best 
 embodies that spirit, not merely by telling children 
 about it, but by helping them to live it. 
 
 The church school should afford to its pupils, 
 therefore, opportunities to do things for others in 
 actual service for Christ's sake. That will mean 
 
Doing for Others 185 
 
 sometimes the giving of money, sometimes the mak- 
 ing of gifts, sometimes the sharing of privileges in 
 personal fellowship. In any case, the children 
 themselves, after learning definitely of various needs 
 and opportunities, should choose the object to which 
 they wish to devote their service and their gifts. 
 Simply to have a schedule of benevolences made out 
 for them by teachers or church boards, even though 
 it be carefully explained to them from time to time, 
 has little educative value. The children them- 
 selves should decide for whom they want to do some- 
 thing, and what they want to do; they ought to see 
 the results of their service, and if possible come into 
 personal association with those for whom they do it. 
 If they give money, it ought to be their own, 
 earned or taken out of their allowance, instead of 
 a sum which is merely transferred at their request 
 from their fathers' pockets. A boy of six was so 
 impressed by a set of Chinese children's clothes sent 
 straight from China to his Sunday school by the 
 missionary pastor whom his church supported, that 
 he gave his whole capital, $1.60, slowly accumulated 
 from an income of ten cents a week, to help buy a 
 saxophone which the missionary requested. 
 
 The missionary education of children is a natural, 
 inevitable part of this training in unselfishness and 
 social service. For the world has become so inter- 
 dependent that there is no longer any clear dividing 
 line between near and far, between social service and 
 missions, and between home missions and foreign 
 
186 The Training of Children 
 
 missions. Missionary education may no longer be a 
 thing apart, a sort of extra, added to the ordinary 
 life and curriculum of the church school. It is 
 taking its place, naturally and normally, as ah 
 integral part of the whole program. 
 
 No child is fitted to be a citizen of the world today 
 and tomorrow who is not growing into the spirit of 
 unselfish service, and whose education in such service 
 is not carrying him into ever wider fields — family, 
 school, community, nation, the world. That chil- 
 dren should be so educated in the Christian way is the 
 primary business of the Christian church. 
 
Doing for Others 187 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 1. Are pre-adolescent children more selfish or more self-centered than 
 adolescents? Give reasons for your answer. 32, 34. 
 
 2. Give some evidences of the self-centeredness of childhood, or of the 
 existence in children of the self-regarding instincts. 
 
 3. Give evidences of the unselfishness of children or of the existence in 
 children of the other-regarding instincts. 
 
 4. In what sense is conversion natural in the adolescent years? If 
 possible, look up and evaluate the view of Stanley Hall and his pupils. 
 Be sure to make clear just what you mean by conversion. 32. 
 
 5. Will the Golden Rule work in business? In politics? In interna- 
 tional relations ? Give reasons for your answers, and cases if you know 
 of any. 
 
 6. How may children be trained to be unselfish? 32> 34, 109, 112, 113. 
 
 7. Can one be too unselfish? How would you set limits beyond which 
 unselfishness should not go? Is there such a thing as a rational egoism? 
 What would you' understand by it? 
 
 8. How can the imagination be broadened and developed so as to 
 realize more fully and concretely the purposes, desires, and feelings of 
 others? 112, 113. 
 
 9. What are the functions of children in society? Name some of their 
 rights and some of their possible responsibilities. 32, 109. 
 
 10. The motives to which appeal may be made in the education of 
 children, and the bearing of these motives upon the moral education of 
 children. 32, 34, 109, 113. 
 
 11. The possibility of graded curricula of social service in the church 
 school. 110. 
 
 12. The missionary education of children. 107, 108, 111. 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 32. G. A. Coe: A Social Theory of Religious Education. 
 34. E. E. R. Mumford: The Dawn of Character. 
 103. H. F. Cope: The Parent and the Child. 
 
 107. Frederica Beard: Graded Missionary Education in the Church 
 School. 
 
 108. R. E. Diffendorfer: Missionary Education in the Home and School. 
 
 109. Hugh Hartshorne: Childhood and Character. 
 
 110. W. N. Hutchins: Graded Social Service in the Sunday School. 
 
 111. Gertrude Hutton: Missionary Education of Juniors. 
 
 112. F. C. Sharp: Education for Character. 
 
 113. Sneath and Hodges: Moral Training in the School and Home. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Training the Devotional Life 
 
 What is it to be a Christian? 
 
 In the early days of the Christian Church, before 
 Christianity became the religion of the Roman 
 empire, admission to its membership was not as 
 simple a matter as it usually is now. Candidates 
 for membership were enrolled as catechumens, 
 placed on probation, and given a systematic course 
 of instruction in the doctrines and practices of the 
 church, for a period which varied from a few weeks 
 or months to several years. This period culminated, 
 during Lent, in forty days of fasting, prayer, initia- 
 tory rites, and instruction, which ended at Easter 
 with the baptism of the candidates and their admis- 
 sion to the Lord's Supper. Just before baptism, - 
 a ceremony was enacted which symbolized the mean- 
 ing of the step which they were about to take, with 
 a dramatic vividness which must have made a last- 
 ing impression upon all who went through it. The 
 candidate was led, alone and clothed in white, to the 
 eastern porch of the church; there he stood with his 
 face toward the west, which was supposed to be 
 the abode of the powers of darkness, made a gesture 
 of abhorrence, and said, " I renounce thee, Satan, 
 and all thy works and ways, and all the vain pomp 
 
Training the Devotional Life 189 
 
 and glory of the world," which he followed by spit- 
 ting at Satan in token of utter disgust and renuncia- 
 tion; then he faced squarely about toward the east, 
 and lifting his arms up toward heaven, pledged his 
 life-long loyalty in the words, " And I enlist with 
 thee, O Christ." 
 
 To be a Christian is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. 
 Nominally, that is easy in a world which owes so 
 much of what it calls civilization to his influence. 
 Really, it is not easy, for it involves one's commit- 
 ment to principles of life which the world does not 
 yet fully understand or accept. Today, quite as 
 really as in the earlier centuries, it means enlist- 
 ment and service with him. 
 
 Those only are Christians who choose Jesus' way 
 of living rather than the way of self-indulgence; 
 who follow him in the way of love, good-will and 
 service; who come, not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister. There is deep significance in the term 
 which is applied to the followers of Jesus in the Acts 
 of the Apostles, where they are repeatedly referred 
 to as those who are of that " Way." Christianity 
 is essentially a way of living — the way that Jesus 
 taught and practised. 
 
 But that is not all. It is a way of living that is 
 sustained and strengthened by a way of thinking 
 about God, an attitude toward God, and an experi- 
 ence of the love and grace of God, which the followers 
 of Jesus may share with him who was their Master. 
 Just as he lived his earthly life in open and constant 
 
190 The Training of Children 
 
 fellowship with the God whom he conceived to be an 
 ever-present, loving Father, we who follow him may 
 live. We, too, are the children of God. And if we 
 fail to keep in contact with our Father, we fail at 
 the point where lay Jesus' source of strength and 
 courage. It will be hard to live in Jesus' way be- 
 cause we lack his dynamic. 
 
 The Christian life includes both work and worship, 
 then; the service of God and communion with him. 
 It is more than morality, more than a program of 
 deeds, however generous, loving and noble these may 
 be. It is morality motived by an attitude toward 
 God, and made possible by his presence and help. 
 
 The Christian Education of Children 
 
 That we wish our children to be Christians follows 
 as a matter of course if we are ourselves followers of 
 the Master. We have learned from him the secret 
 of life itself — life more abundant, the life that is 
 life indeed, of real and eternal worth. 
 
 We cannot begin too early the education of our 
 children in Jesus' way. It is possible, as Horace 
 Bushnell put it, so to bring up children that they 
 shall never know themselves to be anything other 
 than children of God. It is a mistake to wait until 
 adolescent years, and then to hope for some cata- 
 clysmic experience that will turn to him hearts and 
 lives which have not been trained to know him. 
 
 The Christian education of children is not some- 
 thing apart from the rest of their education; it 
 
Training the Devotional Life 191 
 
 consists rather in the Christian motive and spirit 
 which animates the whole of their upbringing. 
 There is no phase of the life and training of children 
 which we have discussed together in the present 
 course, which has not its direct bearing upon the 
 development within them of Christian character. 
 Even sound physical nurture, to quote Bushnell 
 again, is a means of grace. The forming of right 
 habits, the expansion of life through play, work, and 
 study, the companionship of good books and friends, 
 growth in unselfishness and in the capacity and dispo- 
 sition to serve, all are important elements in their 
 training for Christ. Enlistment with him involves 
 the whole of life. It demands all that we are and 
 can be when at our best. And it makes the best 
 possible for us. 
 
 The training of the devotional life of children is but 
 a part of their Christian education, therefore. It is 
 that part which brings them consciously into com- 
 munion with God through Christ. It aims to de- 
 velop within them the power to know God for them- 
 selves, to love him and worship him, and to live in the 
 happy realization of his presence and sustaining power. 
 
 The Principle of Personal Association 
 
 There are two principles, in a sense opposite yet 
 really complementary, which are fundamental in 
 the training of the devotional life of children. They 
 may be termed the principle of personal association 
 and the principle of adaptation. 
 
192 The Training of Children 
 
 The principle of association follows from the fact 
 that education is a social process. Teaching takes 
 place wherever there is a fellowship of old and young, 
 or of those who are relatively mature and those who 
 are relatively immature — a fellowship which involves 
 some body of common interests and communication 
 of various sorts, whereby those who are more experi- 
 enced are enabled to render some degree of aid and 
 guidance to the less experienced. In the lack of 
 such fellowship, the attempt to teach becomes a 
 formal and ineffective procedure. 
 
 Applied to the devotional training of children, this 
 means that they are best taught to worship God by 
 their natural association with ourselves, who are 
 their parents and teachers, as we worship him. That 
 seems so obvious as to need no statement. Yet 
 we often transgress this principle. We do so when 
 we simply teach our children to " say their prayers " 
 by themselves when they go to bed at night, but fail 
 to associate them with ourselves in worship as a 
 family group or in giving thanks to God for our daily 
 bread when we sit at table. We transgress this; 
 principle, again, when we send our children to Sun- 
 day school and church because we deem it to be a 
 good thing for them to get something in the way of 
 religious training, but do not go with them ourselves. 
 We transgress it when we undertake, within the 
 church, to beget in them the church-going habit and 
 to train them in worship by setting them apart from 
 the rest of us in a " Junior Congregation " with 
 
Training the Devotional Life 193 
 
 separate services of their own, instead of giving them 
 a place and a share in the regular church service, 
 expecting them to attend with the rest of the family 
 and to sit with the rest in the family pew. Our 
 teaching is likely to fail in these cases because there 
 is lacking the influence and example of the elders, the 
 zest of common interests and the bonds of personal 
 association which are needed if it is to be vital and 
 real. 
 
 The Principle of Adaptation 
 
 The second principle is that of adaptation. The 
 child's share in our common life and enterprises 
 must be such as lies within his powers. We must 
 take pains, moreover, to insure that he understands, 
 in so far as he can, the motives and issues of the 
 life in which he finds himself associated with 
 others. 
 
 Applied to the training of the devotional life of 
 children this means that they should not only be 
 associated with ourselves in life and worship, but 
 that they should be afforded definite instruction in 
 explanation of the Christian beliefs and motives, 
 and training in the cultivation of these motives and 
 in their expression in service and worship. It is the 
 recognition of this principle that has led, in late 
 years, to the movement for graded lessons, graded 
 missionary education, graded social service, and 
 graded worship in our church schools. 
 
194 The Training of Children 
 
 Teaching Children to Pray 
 
 The central act of worship is prayer, which is, as 
 Clement of Alexandria long ago phrased it, " con- 
 versation with God."' For Jesus, the possibility and 
 the value of prayer was a corollary of his belief in 
 the Fatherliness of God. He came to God, and 
 encouraged us to come in the same natural, loving, 
 trustful way which is characteristic always of the 
 child's approach to father and mother. 
 
 Teaching the children to pray is in general the 
 last thing to be given up in homes which have begun 
 to lose the vital spirit of religion. Even in homes 
 where the family never gathers in common worship, 
 where thanks is never given to God at table, where 
 the parents do not go to church and where there is 
 no evidence that they maintain individual habits of 
 devotion, the children will be taught to " say their 
 prayers " at night. Just in itself, this amounts to 
 little. But it is something; and it indicates the 
 vague presence of a conscience with respect to the 
 matter which is sound. 
 
 The devotional training of a child rightly begins 
 with the mother's teaching him to pray. And that 
 should be as soon as he is able to speak well enough 
 to address to God even so tiny a prayer as " God 
 bless us all. Amen." So she will begin to establish 
 within him the habit of prayer. Be it granted that 
 he cannot yet understand just what it means; in 
 this, as in most other respects, the education of 
 
Training the Devotional Life 195 
 
 children should begin with the formation of habits 
 rather than with understanding. 
 
 In this beginning, of course, the mother will tell 
 the child what to say; she furnishes him with a brief 
 form of prayer. Throughout childhood, parents do 
 well to continue this practice, furnishing their chil- 
 dren with desirable forms of prayer, which may serve 
 both to express their present needs and to awaken 
 them to new and higher aspirations. When Jesus' 
 disciples asked him to teach them to pray, he gave 
 them a form — " After this manner pray ye." And 
 the Christian Church, throughout the centuries, 
 has amassed a rich treasure of forms of prayer, of 
 which no Christian can afford to be ignorant. They 
 are among the most precious of the church's resources 
 for the development of the spiritual life of its 
 members. 
 
 The dangers in the use of forms of prayer are 
 obvious. They may become mere forms, made 
 mechanical through repetition, and almost wholly 
 lacking in meaning and vitality. They may prison 
 the child's spirit instead of setting it free; they 
 may even foster insincerity. If these dangers are to 
 be avoided, and the full value of such forms realized, 
 the following counsels should be observed : 
 
 1. There should be a revision, from time to time, 
 of the child's forms of prayer. He should be fur- 
 nished new forms, helped to revise the old forms, and 
 encouraged to devise forms of his own. " I wish my 
 parents had never taught me to say ' Now I lay me 
 
196 The Training of Children 
 
 down to sleep,' " said a college student; " it has 
 simply been the line of least resistance for me in 
 prayer, and I feel that it has greatly hindered my 
 spiritual growth." The trouble was not, however, 
 that her parents had taught her the old familiar form 
 from the New England primer; it was rather in the 
 fact that they had taught her nothing else. 
 
 2. The parents should concern themselves with 
 the child's preparation for prayer as well as with the 
 act of prayer itself. As fast as he becomes able to 
 understand, they should tell him about God and his 
 ways, not so much in formal instruction, but as an 
 explanation of the deeper motives of their own life, 
 in which the child finds himself associated. And at 
 the close of the day, just before bedtime, there 
 should be a period, however brief, of happy fellow- 
 ship of parents and children, which may or may not 
 include a few moments of family worship, but in any 
 case constitutes a preparation for the prayers with 
 which the children end the day. The mother 
 attempts the impossible who suddenly looks at the 
 clock, hurries the children off to bed in spite of their 
 protests, then commands them to pray. Most of us 
 do not take enough time with our children; surely 
 the hour between the evening meal and their bed- 
 time should, whenever possible, be devoted to them. 
 
 3. The child should be encouraged to spontaneous 
 prayer. His desire to express himself to God will 
 soon outrun the forms which have been furnished 
 him. He will have things of his own which he wishes 
 
Training the Devotional Life 197 
 
 to say to God. He should be encouraged to say 
 them as he himself may choose, in all reverence but 
 in the natural freedom of his childlike trust. 
 
 " The child's spontaneous prayers should at first 
 be in addition to, rather than a substitute for, the 
 forms of prayer which have become his daily habit. 
 . . . Increasingly, as he grows older, his spontaneous 
 prayers will furnish the material for his education 
 in prayer. It is all too easy, of course, for the child to 
 lapse into mere habits of spontaneous petition, and 
 thus to acquire ill-considered and inadequate forms of 
 prayer, whose only virtue is that they rose in the 
 first place from within the child himself. The 
 parents will do all that they can to guard against 
 this, as they guide the child's preparation for wor- 
 ship, and as they talk to him about God and about 
 the meaning of prayer. And they will encourage 
 him to construct forms of prayer for himself which 
 express the really dominant thoughts and desires of 
 his life, rather than the chance aspirations of an hour 
 or a day." 1 
 
 4. The child should be taught the meaning of 
 prayer. His ideas concerning its meaning and value 
 should not be left to be formed by practice alone; 
 but his parents should talk with him about it, as 
 occasion arises, and help him to form right ideas 
 concerning it. The misconceptions of prayer to 
 which we are most liable are doubtless to regard it 
 as mere petition, ignoring its worth as communion 
 or fellowship with God; to expect immediate answers, 
 
 Weigle and Tweedy, Training the Devotional Lite, p. 21. 
 
198 The Training of Children 
 
 granting our requests in just the way we proffer them; 
 to regard it as a sort of magic spell insuring our wel- 
 fare, or as a kind of price that we pay to God for his 
 protection. 
 
 The apperceptive basis for a true understanding of 
 prayer, happily, lies well within the experience of 
 even a little child. Let us not forget that when Jesus 
 sought to make clear to his disciples the meaning of 
 prayer, he explained it in terms of the father-child 
 relation. Every child who is brought up in the right 
 sort of home knows what it is to seek the presence of 
 father and mother, not because he is always seeking 
 some gift, but just because he wants to be with 
 them; knows what it is to receive good gifts, protec- 
 tion and care, not because he asks for these, or casts 
 a spell, or pays a price, but just because he is the 
 child of parents who love him; and knows what it is 
 to have his wishes denied and requests refused, not 
 because his father and mother do not love him, but 
 because they do love him and know best what is 
 good for him — or think they do. With the excep- 
 tion of the last clause, all this is true of our relation 
 to our heavenly Father. The child's experiences of 
 parental care constitute the basis upon which he may 
 understand the character and disposition of God and 
 the meaning of prayer. 
 
 The training of the child's devotional life thus 
 depends, ultimately, upon the degree to which his 
 parents incarnate within themselves and exhibit in 
 their lives the Spirit of God. " The fundamental 
 
Training the Devotional Life 199 
 
 question to every parent is this: Are you so living 
 that your children may take your love and care and 
 reasonable wisdom as the basis for their beginning to 
 understand their heavenly Father, and that their 
 love for you and confidence in you may not un- 
 worthily serve as the type for their love of God and 
 trust in him? "* 
 
 At a Student Conference of the Y. M. C. A. at 
 Lake Geneva, one summer, great stress was laid upon 
 the thought that one ought to seek to know and 
 follow the will of God in the choice of his life-work. 
 One evening a young man of twenty-two, who had 
 just graduated from college, asked one of his old 
 teachers to walk off in the woods with him. ".I 
 want to do this thing they are talking about," he 
 said; " I want to find out God's will for me, and do 
 it, unless he wants me to be a doctor, or a preacher, 
 or a missionary. Do you think that is all right? " 
 The teacher felt fairly sure that God did not want 
 him to be any one of the three. He knew that the 
 boy was planning to go into business with his father, 
 and it seemed to be just the thing that he was cut 
 out for, and, so far as the teacher could tell, what 
 God wanted him to do. But the teacher felt that 
 that was not for him to decide, so answered quietly: 
 " One might as well not pray at all about his life- 
 work as to pray with reservations like that." They 
 talked the thing through; and the boy surrendered 
 his will to God in prayer — " O God, show me what 
 
 'Weigle and Tweedy, op. cii. p. 22. 
 
200 The Training of Children 
 
 you mean me for and want me to do; and I'll do it, 
 no matter what it is." 
 
 It was late when they went back to their tents to 
 sleep, for they talked over many things. The 
 next morning early the boy was back for one more 
 word. " I wanted to tell you, sir, what happened 
 last night. I couldn't go to sleep for a long while, 
 for I kept worrying about what I had done, and 
 wondering what God wants me to do; when all at 
 once I thought of something. I said to myself: 
 Here, Bob, you've been planning to go into business 
 next month, not because you know that you will 
 succeed in it, for you don't know a thing about it, 
 but because your father is a good business man and 
 a good dad, and you're just following his judgment. 
 And then it occurred to me that that is just what I 
 am doing now with God. I'm only trusting my 
 heavenly Father's judgment. Then I turned over 
 and went to sleep." 
 
 The boy had caught the secret of real religion. 
 And it had come, as it so often does, through his 
 appreciation of earthly fatherhood. If his dad had 
 not been a man of sound judgment, that way to the 
 understanding of God would have been closed. 
 
 The Child and the Bible 
 
 God speaks to us, as well as we to him. He speaks 
 in countless ways in the world about us and in the 
 still, small voice within. Rightly, we attribute 
 preeminent value to his Word as it is contained in the 
 
Training the Devotional Life 201 
 
 Bible, which is the record of his revelation of himself 
 in the life of the Hebrew people, culminating in the 
 life and teaching of Jesus Christ, in whom dwelt the 
 fullness of the Godhead bodily. 
 
 It is a great loss that many children of today fail 
 to get the acquaintance with the Bible that was 
 afforded to children of former generations. We are 
 so much better equipped in these days to understand 
 the Bible that there is no excuse for this failure. 
 
 Bible stories should have their place, with other 
 stories, early in the life of the child. As he grows 
 to own books of his own, he should be given some of 
 the admirable books of Bible stories which are now 
 available. Those by Dean George Hodges are good 
 examples of books which use other than Biblical 
 language; those by Frances J. Olcott use the words 
 of the Bible itself, selected and arranged in modern 
 literary fashion. 
 
 When he has learned to read easily, the child 
 should be given a copy of the Bible itself, preferably 
 in the American Revised Version. He should learn 
 to use it in his daily study of his Sunday-school 
 lesson, and to take his part in the family worship. 
 Best of all, he should begin the practice of reading it 
 daily, in connection with his stated habit of prayer. 
 
 With~ this in view, parents should guide their 
 children to the passages which will be of highest 
 devotional value to them. It is foolish to ask a child 
 to read his Bible, without helping him to some plan 
 for its use in his devotions. Many grown folk use 
 
202 The Training of Children 
 
 it unintelligently; how much more will children if 
 they are not given the guidance which they need. 
 Many of the passages, of highest devotional value, 
 should be memorized — this, indeed, is the principle 
 upon which should be based the selection of biblical 
 material for memorization. 
 
 A word of protest should be added against the 
 statement, so often made, that the Old Testament is 
 the proper material for childhood, and the New 
 Testament for adolescence. It is part of the exag- 
 gerated antithesis between childhood and adoles- 
 cence that we owe to the misleading of the recapitula- 
 tion theory. We have detained children too long, 
 often, in the more primitive portions of the Bible. 
 We need not wait until adolescence for the basis to be 
 laid in the social instincts for their interest in the 
 events and teachings of the New Testament. 
 
 Family Worship 
 
 This chapter must not close without a repetition 
 of the principle with which it began — the most 
 effective means for the training of the devotional life 
 of children is their personal association with older 
 folk in worship. It matters little how careful we are 
 to instil within them sound habits of private prayer, 
 or how much we do to help them understand their 
 Bible; unless they find the Bible to be revered and 
 read by those whom they most admire, and prayer 
 to be their established custom, they will in time come 
 to look upon these as childish things, to be outgrown 
 
Training the Devotional Life 203 
 
 with the advancing years. And it is not simply for the 
 sake of the children; it is for the maintenance of our 
 own spiritual lives that we stand sorely in need, in 
 this twentieth century, for a reinstitution, in count- 
 less homes, of the good old custom of family worship. 
 
204 The Training of Children 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 1. The relation of work and worship, service and prayer, in the 
 Christian life. 
 
 2. The possibility of bringing children up so that they shall never know 
 themselves to be anything other than children of God. 
 
 3. The influence upon Christian character ©f the factors hitherto 
 studied, in earlier chapters of this course. 
 
 4. Ways, other than those named, in which we transgress the principle 
 of personal association in the upbringing of our children. 
 
 5. How can we retain the values of personal association, yet have 
 graded religious education for our children? 
 
 6. What is your conception of the meaning and value of prayer? Give 
 reasons for your answer. 
 
 7. Advantages and limitations of forms of prayer. 
 
 8. Possibilities of the children's bedtime story hour. 
 
 9. Examples of the way in which a child's faith in God depends upon 
 the character of his experience with his earthly parents. 
 
 10. Compare some typical volumes of Bible stories, evaluating the 
 strong and weak points of each. 
 
 11. Study and criticize the list of suggested passages from the Bible for 
 memorization which is given in Weigle and Tweedy's book on Training 
 the Devotional Life, chapter 6. Compare with some other lists. Make 
 out a list of your own, and a plan for using it in the devotional training 
 of a child. 
 
 12. Find the New Testament books or passages which are clearly 
 adapted to use with children. 
 
 13. Family worship: the need, and the practical problems involved in 
 its reinstitution. 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 35. E. E. R. Mumford : The Damn of Religion in the Mind of a Child. 
 103. H. F. Cope: The Parent and the Child. 
 109. Hugh Hartshorne: Childhood and Character. 
 
 114. Frederica Beard: Prayers for Home and School. 
 
 115. H. F. Cope: Religious Education in the Family. 
 
 116. Ozora Davis: At Mother's Knee. 
 
 117. W. and M. Gannett: The Little Child at the Briakfast Table. 
 
 118. George Hodges: The Training of Children in Religion. 
 
 119. Meyer and Kennedy: The Training of the Devotional Life. 
 
 120. T. C. Richards: Young Men and Prayer. 
 
 121. Margaret Slattery: A Girls' Booh of Prayer. 
 
 122. William Watson: Prayers for School Boys and School Girls. 
 
 123. Weigle and Tweedy: Training the Devotional Life. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 The Child and the Church 
 
 No one phrase, perhaps, better describes the church 
 than that which Paul used : it is the body of Christ. 
 That is, it is the embodiment in the world of his 
 spirit; it seeks to do his work, throughout the genera- 
 tions, as he would have it done; it undertakes to be 
 the channel and instrument of his expression of 
 himself in and to the world. 
 
 Whole-hearted Christians cannot rest content 
 with a religion or a morality that is merely individual. 
 The spirit of Christ is essentially social. He came 
 to minister, to give himself for others. His gospel 
 is one of good-will and mutual service. The Chris- 
 tian Church is the fellowship of those who believe 
 in Christ and endeavor to live in his way; it asso- 
 ciates God's children in the worship of their common 
 Father; and it organizes them in order that they may 
 render more effective service in Christ's name, both 
 to God and to their fellow men. 
 
 Just so surely, therefore, as we desire that our 
 children shall become followers of Jesus Christ, we 
 will bring them under the influences of the Christian 
 Church and desire that they become its members. 
 Throughout the whole of their Christian education, 
 the church may have a part which is second only, in 
 
206 The Training of Children 
 
 fundamental importance, to that of the family and 
 the home. Through the church Christian influences 
 will be brought to bear upon them and Christian 
 instruction afforded them; and they will find in it 
 natural avenues for the expression of their growing 
 Christian impulses and motives as they associate 
 themselves, in its fellowship and varied activities, 
 with older folk and with others of their own age. 
 
 The Dedication of the Child to God 
 
 The child's connection with the church begins in 
 early infancy, when his parents dedicate him to God, 
 claim for him God's covenant of grace, and promise 
 on their part to bring him up in God's way — as 
 Paul puts it, " in the nurture and admonition of the 
 Lord." Since early in the life of the church, this 
 has been deemed the appropriate time for Christian 
 baptism, the parents taking the vows on behalf 
 of the child. He is thus constituted, even in infancy, 
 a member of the church; and his parents undertake 
 so to bring him up that he shall fulfill that member- 
 ship, and in due time be prepared to take upon his 
 own shoulders the engagements that they then make 
 for him. 
 
 Those branches of the Christian Church which 
 refuse to baptize infants believe none the less in 
 such an early dedication of the child to God; and 
 many have appropriate forms for that purpose. 
 Their dissent from the practice of infant baptism 
 is because they believe that the rite of baptism, with 
 
The Child and the Church 207 
 
 its rich symbolic meaning, belongs to a stage of 
 Christian experience which is impossible for little 
 children, and that no one, even a parent, can take 
 its vows on behalf of another. 
 
 Whether it take the form of baptism or not, the 
 importance of such a dedicatory service is clear. 
 In it the parents bind themselves to bring up their 
 child as in God's sight and for his service; and the 
 church acknowledges this child, born to parents 
 who are its members, as a member also, though a 
 member in tutelage, dependent in this as in other 
 respects upon the loving care and wise teaching of 
 his parents. The parents ( are thus brought into 
 conscious relation with God and with the church, as 
 they undertake to foster and to guide the precious 
 new life which has been entrusted to them. 
 
 The Church Membership of Children 
 
 Churches differ in their practice with respect to 
 the church membership of children. It is obvious 
 that some distinction must be drawn between chil- 
 dren, whose covenant rests upon vows made in their 
 behalf by their parents, and those who, having 
 reached an age of discretion and responsibility, have 
 assumed these vows for themselves. The former 
 are in a status of dependence; they are members of 
 the church in much the same sense that they are 
 citizens of the republic, born to this heritage, but 
 not yet grown into full and responsible possession of 
 their birthright. Some churches recognize baptized 
 
208 The Training of Children 
 
 9 
 
 members and confirmed members, the rite of con- 
 firmation being that by which children baptized in 
 infancy take upon themselves — " with their own 
 mouth and consent ratify and confirm," as the Book 
 of Common Prayer has it — the vows made in their 
 behalf. Others distinguish baptized members from 
 communicant members, admission to the Lord's 
 Supper being granted only to those who have taken 
 the vows of discipleship for themselves. Others, 
 which admit children to the Lord's Supper at an 
 early age, distinguish between child members and 
 voting members, the latter class including those 
 only who have made their own profession of faith. 
 
 In whatever form this distinction is drawn, it is 
 important that the church should make of some 
 practical effect the membership of little children who 
 have not yet reached the age when they may shoulder 
 their own Christian responsibilities and so be admit- 
 ted into full, voting membership. They should be 
 made to feel that they belong to the church, and 
 that it belongs to them; that they are growing up 
 within the church, not that they are outside of it, 
 waiting until the call comes to enter. 
 
 With this in view, the list of baptized members 
 should be published from time to time, whenever 
 the list of communicant or voting members is pub- 
 lished, as in the year-book of the local church, for 
 example. In any reports of the number of mem- 
 bers, as for inclusion in the year-book of the denomi- 
 nation at large, figures should be given for members 
 
The Child and the Church 209 
 
 of both classes. It may be said that such lists or 
 figures can mean little to the children; but they will 
 mean much to the grown-ups by way of recalling 
 them to a truer view of the relation of their children 
 to the church. It is all too easy even for those who 
 practice it to take ah absurd view of infant baptism, 
 regarding it merely as a sort of magic rite which 
 insures the child's salvation in case he should die 
 before coming to the age when he can choose for 
 himself, and forgetting entirely its significance as 
 the covenant whereby the child is admitted, in the 
 name of his parents, into the fellowship of the Chris- 
 tian Church. And too many churches have made 
 it easy to forget this significance, for they have 
 simply baptized children, made a record of the fact, 
 and then, to all appearances, promptly forgotten 
 it. 
 
 There may be from time to time a public service 
 for the baptized members of the church, when these 
 children may be made to feel their membership and 
 place within the Christian fellowship. Many 
 churches are finding that Children's Day may be 
 given a new significance if, instead of jingling through 
 a ready-made program of songs and recitations about 
 the birds and flowers, set to dance-music, they re- 
 gard it as the church's day with her children — a 
 day when the church renders due recognition to its 
 child members, when they are given opportunity to 
 exhibit their loyalty to their church and to render 
 account of their service, and when other little 
 
210 The Training of Children 
 
 children are brought to the church to be received by- 
 baptism into its membership. 
 
 Child members may share in the activities and 
 benevolences of the church, in the measure of their 
 desire and ability, just as children shared in the 
 various win-the-war activities of this country during 
 the war with Germany, such as food-conservation 
 and the buying of War Saving Stamps. 
 
 Some churches have organized their child members 
 into a junior congregation with deacons and other 
 officers analogous to those of the church itself. 
 Though the plan has succeeded well in some places, 
 its value is in general doubtful. The junior organi- 
 zation easily degenerates into a parody of the 
 senior; and besides, what is needed is to beget within 
 the minds of the children a sense of their member- 
 ship in the real church, rather than to gather them 
 apart in an imitation of it. The plan is much like 
 that of the School City in the public schools, which 
 undertakes both to teach civics and to maintain 
 school discipline by organizing the children after 
 the fashion of a city, with mayor, council, magis- 
 trates, policemen, etc., chosen by themselves from 
 their own number. In spite of some undoubted 
 values both as a dramatic method of instruction 
 and as a means of pupil self-government, teachers 
 generally agree that it is better to get the pupils 
 interested in the purposes, needs and enterprises of 
 the real community in which they live. 
 
 For convenience, we have spoken in this section of 
 
The Child and the Church 211 
 
 the church membership of children in terms which 
 imply the practice of infant baptism. It should not 
 be forgotten that what has been said applies as 
 well to the membership of children in churches 
 which choose some other form of dedication on the 
 part of the parents, reserving baptism to mark the 
 entrance of the individual upon full, responsible, 
 voting membership. 
 
 The Church School 
 
 The church should maintain a school for the relig- 
 ious education of its child members and of other 
 children who may come under its influence. It has 
 become clear in our day that the churches, in any 
 American community, have an educational responsi- 
 bility. It devolves upon them to provide that part 
 of the education of children which the public schools 
 cannot provide, that is, their education in religion. 
 
 We are committed in America to the principle of 
 free, tax-supported schools, publicly controlled and 
 directed, to promote the common welfare of society 
 and to serve as the instrument of democracy. The 
 opposed policies, of parochial schools on the one hand 
 and of private schools on the other, involve not only 
 waste and inefficiency, but a fostering of sectarian 
 divisions and class distinctions which is contrary to 
 the spirit of this country. The development of the 
 public schools of America is one of the most essential 
 and significant achievements of our history as a 
 people. 
 
212 The Training of Children 
 
 It is impossible, however, for these schools to 
 teach religion. That is because of the great diversity 
 of religious beliefs among us, and because of the 
 determination, grounded in the principles of our 
 fathers, that this shall be a land of religious tolera- 
 tion and of individual freedom to worship God 
 according to the dictates of conscience. 
 
 The lack of religious teaching in the public schools 
 is a serious limitation. Education without religion 
 will become in time a menace to the future of 
 America. The way out lies with the churches. 
 It is their duty to maintain church schools for the 
 teaching of religion as competent in this field as the 
 public schools are competent in the rest of education, 
 which may thus supplement the work of the public 
 schools and render complete the education of our 
 children. 
 
 The traditional Sunday schools could not fulfill 
 this educational function, for these among other 
 reasons : 
 
 (a) Their ungraded, " uniform " lesson prevented 
 correlation with the rest of the pupil's education 
 and, worse yet, limited instruction largely to the 
 narrative portions of the Bible. 
 
 (b) They devoted only from twenty minutes to 
 half an hour in each week to the lesson; and their 
 teachers were for the most part untrained and 
 incompetent. 
 
 (c) Their program was one of instruction merely, 
 which did not meet the desire and need of children 
 and young people for activity. There sprang up 
 
The Child and the Church 213 
 
 within the churches, therefore, many other organiza- 
 tions for training in wholesome social living and in 
 various forms of Christian service, such as mission 
 bands, boys' clubs and girls' clubs, junior, interme- 
 diate and senior societies of Christian Endeavor, 
 Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Knights of King Arthur, etc. 
 (d) They too generally lacked organic connection 
 with the church and failed to beget in their pupils 
 a sound sense of membership in the church, loyalty 
 to the church, and growth in grace within the church. 
 
 The traditional Sunday school, however, is fast 
 becoming transformed. Making the Old Sunday 
 School New is the apt title of a recent book on the 
 subject. The past twenty years have witnessed the 
 beginning of a great movement in the churches of 
 America toward better religious education. Much 
 has been done, but much yet remains to be done; 
 we are only beginning to realize the opportunity and 
 responsibility of the church for the teaching of 
 religion. 
 
 The new Sunday school has lessons graded to meet 
 the needs and abilities of its pupils, and a graded 
 departmental organization. It tries to select and 
 to train competent teachers. It is acquiring better 
 methods of teaching religion, and out of experience is 
 developing a sound religious pedagogy. New build- 
 ings are being erected for their schools by many 
 churches, designed with a view to educational utility, 
 and furnished with adequate material equipment. 
 These schools undertake to supervise the study of 
 their pupils, and to correlate their education in 
 
214 The Training of Children 
 
 religion with the education which they are gaining 
 in the public schools. They provide, in many 
 communities, week-day instruction in religion and 
 week-day activities, as well as instruction at the 
 Sunday hour. Their curriculum includes instruction 
 in Christian doctrine and in the problems of applied 
 Christianity as well as in Biblical history and litera- 
 ture, and training in Christian worship and in active 
 Christian service as well as instruction in Christian 
 truth. 
 
 The term " church school " is becoming widely 
 used as a name for the whole educational organiza- 
 tion whereby a local church seeks to promote the 
 religious life and growth of its children and young 
 people and to train its adult members for more 
 effective service. The name is appropriate in view 
 of the facts that this work is not confined to Sunday, 
 but extends to week-day hours as well; that it in- 
 cludes in one consistent, comprehensive educational 
 program all the various organizations for children 
 and young people as well as the Sunday school; 
 and that the church itself is responsible for the con- 
 ception and administration of this program. 
 
 It is our duty as parents not simply to send our 
 children regularly to the church school, but to get 
 acquainted with its ideals and methods, to know what 
 it is teaching them, and what is expected of them in 
 the way of work and study, and to find out in what 
 ways we can cooperate with their teachers to pro- 
 mote their religious education. This was easier 
 
The Child and the Church 215 
 
 in the days of the old-fashioned Sunday school, 
 with its uniform lesson, which was the same for all, 
 old and young; but it is quite as possible now that 
 the children's lessons are graded, and it is more 
 interesting and profitable. 
 
 It is our duty, again, to attend the church school 
 ourselves, both for the sake of influence upon our 
 children and association with them, and for the sake 
 of our own better education as Christians. It would 
 mean much to the Christian Church could it enlist 
 the greater body of its adult members in classes for 
 the study and discussion of the principles and practi- 
 cal problems of religious faith. 
 
 More parents ought, further, to undertake service 
 as teachers in the church school. Here is an op- 
 portunity for work in Christ's name which is directly 
 religious in character, and of fundamental impor- 
 tance. It is work, moreover, for which their experi- 
 ence as parents constitutes a splendid qualification, 
 if they will add to this the training and study which 
 preparation for teaching requires. 
 
 Church Attendance 
 
 It is desirable that children should early acquire 
 the habit of attendance at the church's public service 
 of worship; and it is important that this service 
 should so take cognizance of the presence of the 
 children, and meet their needs as well as those of 
 grown-ups, that they will feel themselves to have a 
 real part and place in it. 
 
216 The Training of Children 
 
 While it may be desirable, for sake of a training in 
 worship more exactly adapted to children's abilities 
 and needs, to have them meet apart from their elders 
 in a junior congregation, this should by no means 
 become a substitute for their attendance, with their 
 parents, at the regular services of the church itself. 
 This more carefully adapted training and education 
 in worship may best be carried on, at all events, as a 
 part of the work of the church school. 
 
 It is the practice of many churches to have the 
 children of eight years old and under, who are in the 
 beginners' and primary departments of the church 
 school, attend the church service together, under the 
 care of their teachers. They sit in a place reserved 
 for them in the front of the auditorium, and share in 
 the opening service, with its familiar chants and 
 hymn, and the recital of the Lord's Prayer, the 
 Twenty-third Psalm or some other, and perhaps the 
 Creed. The pastor preaches a five-minute sermon 
 addressed to them and to the older children who are 
 in the congregation; then these younger children 
 withdraw to their classrooms, and are taught the 
 Sunday-school lesson by their teachers or directed 
 in handwork or educative play. At the close of the 
 church service they are ready to go home with their 
 parents. This plan has worked splendidly in most 
 churches where it has been tried. Its chief draw- 
 back is that it necessitates the absence from the 
 remainder of the church service of the teachers in 
 these departments; but that difficulty can be met in 
 
The Child and the Church 217 
 
 part by affording to each, once in every few Sundays, 
 the services of a substitute. 
 
 Children of nine years old and over should remain 
 throughout the whole of the church service, and 
 should be expected to attend regularly and to sit 
 with their parents in the family pew. They should 
 not be left to congregate by themselves in the rear 
 of the church; nor should their teachers be expected 
 to care for them by classes. The family should be 
 the normal unit of church attendance, and the 
 family should sit together. The passing of the 
 " family pew" is one of the unfortunate incidental 
 results of the passing of the pew-rent system. It 
 should be in principle reinstated. The family need not 
 rent a pew, nor even sit in the same pew Sunday after 
 Sunday; but the whole family, parents and children, 
 should attend church together and sit together. 
 
 Graded Social Service and Missionary Education 
 
 The central aim of religious education is the de- 
 velopment within the children of Christian motives. 
 Motives develop through successful, happy exercise. 
 The surest way, therefore, to strengthen within a 
 child the Christian motives is to give these the 
 opportunity to express themselves in deeds of 
 active service. Such activity, moreover, as activity 
 will do in schools everywhere, if given a chance, 
 constitutes a vital, motivating center for the whole 
 curriculum. The child is glad to learn because he 
 wants to do. 
 
218 The Training of Children 
 
 The church, therefore, through the church school, 
 will give to its children opportunities to share in its 
 own benevolent enterprises and to express their 
 good-will to others in deeds and gifts. It will thus 
 not only help them to grow in thoughtfulness and 
 unselfishness, but will attach them to itself by the 
 ties of common interests. It will become natural 
 for them, throughout life, to find in the enterprises 
 and activities of the church a channel for the expres- 
 sion of the Christian motives that impel them to 
 give and to serve for the good of all. 
 
 Increasingly, the church schools of today are 
 giving to Christian activity, to social service and 
 missionary education, a fundamental place. Their 
 programs for this purpose are graded to the children's 
 growing abilities to understand and appreciate the 
 objects for which they are encouraged to work and 
 to give. They aim primarily, not at the accomplish- 
 ment of large objective results or the collection of set 
 amounts of money, but at the education of the 
 children themselves. The children are given the 
 opportunity for initiative and responsibility and are 
 permitted to choose for themselves the objects for 
 which they will work. They are encouraged to give 
 their own labor and their own money, earned or 
 taken from their allowances, rather than to serve 
 merely as the bearers of contributions made through 
 t hem by their parents. They are trained in system- 
 atic giving, and helped to understand the principle 
 of stewardship. Many schools and classes adopt a 
 
The Child and the Church 219 
 
 system of weekly envelopes for benevolence, such 
 as the grown-ups use for their church offering. The 
 children's gifts, moreover, are used wholly for 
 benevolent purposes, subject to the children's own 
 choice, instead of being expended by their elders to 
 meet the expenses of the school itself — for the 
 school is regarded as the church's school, which it 
 gives to its children as freely as they are afforded the 
 privileges and equipment of the public schools. 
 The objects of benevolence in which the church itself 
 is interested are set before the children, and the 
 work of the great church societies and boards is 
 explained to them, so that they may, if they choose, 
 feel the zest of their participation with their elders 
 in 'common enterprises, and be trained for loyal 
 service in those fields of philanthropic and mis- 
 sionary endeavor for which they will ultimately, 
 as members of the church, be responsible. 
 
 Admission to Full Membership 
 
 It is to be expected that a child who has been so 
 nurtured within the life of the church will desire, at 
 some time in the adolescent years, publicly to confess 
 Christ as his Lord and Master, and to take upon 
 himself the vows of discipleship which constitute 
 him a member, on his own responsibility, of the 
 Christian Church. A good deal has been said and 
 written, in late years, about the need of evangelism 
 in the Sunday school. The need is real; but it is 
 not for more intense sporadic revival efforts or for 
 
220 The Training of Children 
 
 mass-enlisting " decision days." It is rather for 
 such constant educative effort on the part of the 
 church as has been here described, enfolding its 
 children from infancy in the atmosphere of the 
 gospel and enlisting their interest and activity, at 
 every stage of their growth, in those ways of 
 living and serving which show forth the spirit of 
 Jesus. 
 
 The church's requirements for the admission of 
 its children to full and responsible membership 
 should be simple. The presence of the desire 
 indicates that certain changes have taken place 
 within them — that they have grown in understand- 
 ing and in will, and that they have been moved by 
 the quickening Spirit of God. But they are neither 
 fully conscious of the character of these changes, 
 nor able to describe them. Their desire is forward- 
 looking, rather than backward; their vision of 
 things beyond themselves, more than introspective. 
 It is a mistake, therefore, for the church to insist 
 that its children be able to relate a spiritual " experi- 
 ence " or give proof of conversion, as a condition of 
 admission to its adult fellowship. The simple 
 confession of Jesus Christ and the desire to serve 
 him in and through his church should be enough. 
 
 The church's entrance vows, moreover, should be 
 simpler than its creed, in the sense that they do not 
 demand full understanding of and assent to all its 
 dogmas. They should be such as can in all sin- 
 cerity be taken by young people in the early teens, 
 
The Child and the Church 221 
 
 or even at eleven or twelve years of age, should they 
 then desire to do so. 
 
 This last statement must not be understood, 
 however, as a decrying of creeds or of doctrinal 
 teaching in the church school. Quite the contrary. 
 The church's creed constitutes the platform or 
 body of convictions that underlies the whole of its 
 work in religious education. We stand in need of 
 more clear and thorough, rather than less, teach- 
 ing of the great fundamental doctrines of the 
 Christian faith. This teaching should not be 
 dogmatic and arbitrary, but reasonable; it should 
 appeal to the understanding rather than merely to 
 the memory. The minister is directly responsible 
 for this aspect of the church's educational work, 
 since he is presumably better trained in theology than 
 the lay members of his congregation. He should 
 personally undertake the training in Christian doc- 
 trine of the teachers of the church school; and he 
 should maintain a pastor's class, wherein children 
 and young people who are looking forward to taking 
 the vows which admit them to full church member- 
 ship may be taught to understand and appreciate 
 the significance of the step they contemplate. 
 
 The Church as a Social Center 
 
 We have limited our discussion to the more 
 directly, consciously religious aspects of the relation 
 of the church to its children. But religion fulfills 
 itself in the whole of life, and there is no wholesome 
 
222 The Training of Children 
 
 human interest, no worthy phase of community life, 
 which may not properly concern the church. In 
 most of our communities we would do well to make 
 the churches serve, far better than they now do, 
 as centers for the social life of children and young 
 people, as well as older folk. The time has come 
 when the church has to compete with commer- 
 cialized amusements, public dance-halls, and the 
 like, for the souls of its young folk. In simpler 
 days the church was the natural social center because 
 there was almost nowhere else to go, no other group 
 than church folk to associate with. Now we tend 
 to go almost anywhere else than to the church for 
 social life, recreation and play. The church that 
 can in some measure counteract this tendency, that 
 can provide so well for the social and play impulses 
 of|its young people as to win them from the lure of 
 things less worthy, is rendering to its community 
 a service that is of genuine and far-reaching value, 
 and is making religion apply to human life at a point 
 where it is sorely needed. 
 
The Child and the Church 223 
 
 FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 
 
 _ 1. What is the function of religion in human life? What is the func- 
 tion of the church? Could the Christian religion maintain itself, and 
 render its service to humanity, without the church? Give reasons for 
 your answer. 32, 127. 
 
 2. What is the meaning of Christian baptism? Discuss the propriety 
 of administering baptism to infant children. Do you know of forms of 
 dedication of infant children which are used by churches which do not 
 practice infant baptism? 
 
 3. Are children to be regarded as members of the church, provided 
 their parents so dedicate them? What is the advantage of regarding 
 them as such? What distinctions should be drawn between the privi- 
 leges of child members and adult members? 2, 32, 132, 134. 
 
 4. The meaning of Children's Day in the life of the church. 
 
 5. The value of the junior congregation plan. Of sermons to children. 
 Of the Church Attendance League and similar plans. 129, 132. 
 
 6. Why do not the public schools of America teach religion? What are 
 the probable effects of their policy in this respect? 130. 
 
 7. Arguments for and against the parochial-school policy. 32, 130. _ 
 
 8. What is meant by the church school as recommended in this 
 chapter? What is its relation to the Sunday school? 32, 124, 126, 127. 
 
 9. Tell something of the various plans and experiments with respect to 
 week-day religious education. 128. 
 
 10. Graded social service in the curriculum of the church school. 
 32, 110. 
 
 11. Methods of missionary education, 32, 107, 108. 
 
 12. Plans for, and the value of, the pastor's class in preparation for 
 admission to full church membership. 132, 133, 134. 
 
 13. The relation of the church to the play and social life of the com- 
 munity. 125, 131. 
 
224 The Training of Children 
 
 FOR REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING 
 
 2. Horace Bushnell: Christian Nurture. 
 32. G. A. Coe: A Social Theory of Religious Education. 
 
 107. Frederica Beard: Graded Missionary Education in the Church 
 School. 
 
 108. R. E. Diffendorfer: Missionary Education in Home, School and 
 Church. 
 
 110. W. N. Hutchins: Graded Social Service in the Sunday School. 
 
 124. W. S. Athearn: The Church School. 
 
 125. H. A. Atkinson: The Church and the People's Play. 
 
 126. H. F. Cope: The School in the Modern Church. 
 
 127. H. F. Cope: Religious Education in the Church. 
 
 128. H. F. Cope: The Week-day Church School. 
 
 129. W. F. Crossland: The Junior Church in Action. 
 
 130. E. P. Cubberley: Public Education in the United States. 
 
 131. H. W. Gates: Recreation and the Church. 
 
 132. H. W. Hulbert: The Church and Her Children. 
 
 133. C. E. McKinley: Educational Evangelism. 
 
 134. W. A. Wright: The Moral Condition and Development of the Child,