THE MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIO RS J.CnRTRUDE BUTTON i''S'^^ BV 2090 .H9 1917 Hutton, Jean Gertrude, 1871- The missionary education of juniors Ui THE MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS A Handbook for Leaders BY ,y J. GERTRUDE HUTTON NEW YORK MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 1917 COPYRIGHT, 191 7, BY MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Preface iv Chapter I. The Goal 1 Chapter II. Knowing One's Pupils. 21 Chapter III. Missionary Education Through Activity 39 Chapter IV. Training in Giving 52 Chapter V. Missionary Education Through Play 67 Chapter VI. The Materials of Mission- ary Education 80 Chapter VII. The Materials of Mission- ary Education {Concluded) 91 Chapter VIII. Telling Missionary Stories 108 Chapter IX. Junior Missionary Reading 116 Reading Books on World Friendship for Junior Boys and Girls 127 Bibliography 133 Appendix 138 111 PREFACE This manual is the first of a series of hand- books on graded missionary education in the church school and home that are now in process of preparation. In a day when we consider missionary service not as an important phase of Christian living, but as the heart of the Christian message and a neces- sary, normal expression of Christian life, it is apparent that the subject of missionary educa- tion for our growing youth is most important. Yet we can no longer consider missionary teach- ing as a single phase of religious instruction; rather, it is the essence of religious education. It furnishes significance and vitalizing energy to every phase of Christian living. The content of this book is the outgrowth of the author's many years of experience in the field of religious education and presents principles and methods tested by use. It should be need- less to add that the principles presented express the developing rather than the finished thought of the author. iv CHAPTER I THE GOAL . The Goal of Education. A man who is about to begin a journey must first decide upon his destination; how else can he plan his route? Surely a teacher who assumes the responsibility of directing, or educating, the lives of boys and girls should display equal foresight and start his work by clearly defining the goal. As a mat- ter of fact, leaders in education have too long been content simply to go somewhere — with only a vague idea as to the end of the journey and a cheerful but indistinct hope that the general direction is forward. The vigorous questioning to which the product of modern secular educa- tion is being subjected reveals unmistakably an ambiguity of purpose. Men or mechanics, soul or substance — which should be the result of edu- cation? The question remains unsettled, and as long as the answer is in doubt, the work of teach- ing must lack precision and unity. Indefinite Aim of Religious Educators. Religious education has been marked by a similar indefi- niteness. What does it mean? What is its aim? 1 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS What part in the w hole scheme should mission- ary education have? These are questions de- manding practical answers from every religious educator who would intelligently carry forward his work. The first Sunday-schools — the "ragged schools'' of Robert Raikes — were not religious at all, but were philanthropic elementary schools. This was never true of the Sunday-school in America, which has always been used for religious instruc- tion and has always been under the control of the church. The subject matter, for the most part, has been taken from the Bible, and the ideal has been a double one — Biblical instruction and con- version. Toward the close of the nineteenth cen- tury the question, "Is the Sunday-school doing its work efficiently?'' was more and more insist- ently asked. The attempt to answer it brought out another question: "What is the work of the Sunday-school?" As a result, religious educa- tion, like secular education, is now in the process of determining its own objective. Inadequacy of Certain Aims. Everywhere, per- haps in every school in the church, can be found earnest, devoted teachers, the effectiveness of whose work would be greatly increased by a sharp formulation of the end which they are supposed to be attaining. How hazy and inade- 2 THE GOAL quate are the objective points of most church school teachers is shown by the answers received to a simple question which I have put to scores of workers: "What is the aim of your Sunday- school?" Many reply: "To interest and hold our pupils ; to bring the pupils into church mem- bership; to acquaint the pupils with the Bible; to give the pupils Christian training." A few say rather indefinitely, "To develop the pupil." It is the exceptional school that sets for its goal the development of Christian character. All of the first four points named in these an- swers must be included m an adequate scheme of religious education, but taken singly or to- gether, they do not form an inspiring ideal. They are but methods, the means by which the great end is gained; each must receive due emphasis and attention, but religious education strives for something beyond the sum of them all. The True Goal of Keligious Education. To begin with the first point, a church school does, indeed, do well in seeking to attract and hold its young people ; but leaders must realize fully the relation of the school to its pupils and direct their work in full understanding of the pupiPs needs. Other- wise the holding power will be neither very permanent nor very valuable. If church schools would turn half the energy now expended in try- 3 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS ing to interest and please young people to finding out their actual needs and meeting them intelli- gently, the question of holding pupils would settle itself, and the schools would be crowded to their utmost capacity. Fine equipment and trained teachers ; programs of activity ; athletics ; oppor- tunities for social life; all these are desirable. They should, however, be chosen not as means of engaging tlie more or less temporary interest of young people, but because of their effectiveness in attaining the great objective of religious edu- cation. This objective must be nothing less than the development of Christian character, in the fullest sense of all that the words imply. A Test of Method. To conceive this aim clearly is to view the entire task of religious education in its right perspective ; it means giving each part its true value in relation to the whole. Equip- ment, curriculum, programs of training and activity — all means for fuller expression of life, all material used in religious education — will be tested by their value in building Christian character; they will be chosen only because they are the most effective means of helping the child to realize himself as a force in the world, and because they supply what he needs for his fullest and most symmetrical development. Instruction and Christian Character. A teacher 4 THE GOAL who holds character development as the end of religious education at once gives knowledge and instruction the proper emphasis. Though these may not be of chief importance, they still have a prominent place, for the ideal Christian is in- telligent, and no school is doing its work well unless it is constantly sending out pupils well equipped with knowledge — knowledge of the Bible, of Christian principles, of the history of • the Christian church and of what it has accom- plished, as well as of the issues it faces. But when the end of instruction is to build charac- ter, not simply to impart knowledge, the whole spirit of the task is lifted from the dull and the commonplace to the ideal. Teaching facts may be, and often is, sheer drudgery ; helping to build life is inspiring and creative. This by no means implies that knowledge is unimportant; but it does mean that facts will not be taught for their own sake, but because of their value in shaping the life of the pupil. Such a view of the place of knowledge in education not only insures its receiving exactly the right emphasis but helps to determine what kind of knowledge is necessary. Training and Christian Character. The work of training pupils in the Christian life likewise re- ceives a new impetus when the ultimate aim is clearly conceived, for training goes further than MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS instruction. To be informed concerning the relig- ious life is not enough; that alone is to be like a workman who has studied the theory of wood- carving without handling the actual wood or tools. The child, too, must gain control of the tools of the religious life; he must be trained in its methods and work; he must learn to adjust himself to his fellows and to the world around him according to Christian principles; he must form the habit of working with others for the spread of the kingdom of God on earth ; he must form habits of public and private devotion ; in a word, he must be trained for Christian living by- long and careful instruction and practise. Since the results of such training are slow in appear- ing, this phase of the work often seems most hope- less and discouraging, but a teacher with under- standing and insight remembers that character grows unseen and is willing to wait for its timely unfolding. Service and Christian Character. Christian charac- ter means more than intelligence, no matter how broad that may be ; it means more than training, no matter how much skill that may have given. The man who knows how to design useful and substantial houses and who can skilfully wield the tools to erect those houses is still of small benefit to the world, if he does not put his gifts 6 THE GOAL to the service of his fellow men. No school should be satisfied to send out its pupils equipped with knowledge and skill; these are useless, if they are not turned to account. The older education, being largely individualistic in its emphasis, looked to salvation from death to come, to a life in the future. We of to-day would save from sin not only for the sake of a future life, but for the sake of what a life of service here may mean to others. The church is seeking to make its pupils good; it is seeking even more zealously to make them good for something. The pupil who comes into church membership has not reached the final goal, though he has taken a forward step ; his new decision, his new position as a fully acknowledged citizen of the Kingdom, places upon him new responsibilities, and his most marked reaction to them should be an in- creased activity, an increased sense of moral con- cern and personal responsibility for the advance- ment of Christian principles. Teaching children the joy of working with God in the task of mak- ing over the world is a part of the mission of the church school. Surely the followers of that Mas- ter who claimed divine sonship because "my Father worketh even until now, and I work,'' must manifest their loyalty to him through their deeds. 7 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS Creative Ideals and Christian Character. Even this is not enough. Knowledge alone is cold; skill may be merely mechanical ; activity may entirely fail to touch the springs of life. If it is to have any real and permanent worth, activity must be kindled by great, glowihg, creative ideals that will give energy and spirit to the present and make the future real. Religious education has no more important work than giving to each generation Christian ideals of love and service and world brotherhood as sons of a common Father — ideals that will determine the purpose of a citizen of the kingdom of God, serve as standards by which he may measure conduct, and inspire him to progress. Such ideals, personally felt, will develop that personal initiative and moral responsibility which Christians must pos- sess, if they are to cooperate in establishing the kingdom of God on earth. The Aim Defined. To sum up, religious educa- tion should seek to make its pupils trained, in- telligent Christians, who, inspired by great ideals, will actively engage in the work of God's kingdom. To state it more briefly, the one aim of religious education should be the development of Christian character. Such an aim includes all the former points, retaining all their value with- out overemphasis of any; it determines the • 8 THE GOAL material to be chosen and the methods to be employed; it gives definiteness and purpose to the teachings of each lesson; and it inspires the teacher with courage and faith and patience. Character a Development. Character building, it must be remembered, is neither a swift nor a simple process. Christian character is not static ; it is not an accretion or a combination of quali- ties — honesty added here, justice there, obedi- ence at some other point. It is a growth, a de- velopment, with constantly changing needs, and only that teaching which is fully cognizant of and intelligently meets these needs is worthy to be called teaching. Temple Building and Character Building. The architect dreams a temple and plans the material to make the structure a reality; there must be so much of each sort — stone, steel, concrete, oak, glass, and carving for wall, with possibly jewels and hangings and tapestries for embellishment. Then, in sure knowledge of what is needed in each part of the structure, he builds with steady hand, placing stone and concrete for a stable foundation, tempered steel and sturdy oak for support, rich stained glass where the gracious light of day must fall, carvings and hangings where their beauty shall delight the eye. The teacher, too, is a dreamer of dreams ; with 9 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS his heart turned to the far-off end, he realizes that life's edifice is built out of life's every-day experiences ; he remembers that "our to-days and yesterdays are the blocks with which we build." He knows, too, that every day, every hour, almost every moment, the child faces a new situation. Though a child's problems may seem very in- significant to the adult of long experience and seasoned judgment, they are not trivial to the child; they are real and vital, and he must meet them. The tremendous importance of his adjust- ments and reactions lies in the fact that they are built into the very fiber of his being; for good or for ill, they have become a part of his struc- ture of life. The teacher who recognizes this fact does not waste any time in telling a boy or a girl how to be good in some far-off future, but bends all his energies to the task of helping his pupils meet their present difflculties, feeling well as- sured that if these are rightly treated to-day, "ascending and secure, shall to-morrow find its place." Meeting the Child's Problems. How often the teaching of the past failed at this point, scores of people can show from personal experience. There was plenty of instruction as to future Christian life, but there was little teaching that would help in overcoming the practical difficul- 10 THE GOAL ties of a child's every-day life. This same weak- ness marks much of our work yet. Some girls were confiding their troubles to a beloved older friend recently and spoke of the Sunday-school teachers. "If they would only talk to us about something in the United States!" said one girl wistfully, her single phrase showing the complete isolation of the teaching from the life she was actually living. "What's the death of Moses got to do with me?" demanded a lively twelve-year-old boy in response to his teacher's plea for attention. The teacher, looking at the restless, alert boy, could only wonder at his own lack of insight in sup- posing for an instant that the death of an aged saint hundreds of years ago could interest any lad whose life was all before him, with its press- ing questions and its crowding interests. Lessons and Conduct. Many a teacher has read the astonishment on the faces of his pupils when he suggested that the lessons learned in Sunday- school should be practised on the playground — or perhaps the child has promptly assented to the idea, only to repudiate it in conduct before he has left the room, not because he has forgotten or because he is insincere, but because the teach- ing made no vital connection between learning and living. Yet such a connection must be estab- 11 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS lished before the best character development can result ; it will be established when teachers recog- nize the real, present problems of individual pupils and offer practical solutions for them. Learning Through Doing. After all, one of the most important principles a teacher can learn is that a child is best taught through experience. Learning comes from doing. No mother would expect her daughter to learn to sew or play the piano merely through being told how to do so or through watching others. No father would expect his son to learn to run a machine or to conduct a business successfully, if he never be- came more than an onlooker or a diligent stu- dent of methods ; the boy must spend days, weeks, even years practising, experimenting, making mistakes, gaining experience and skill. Character Through Experience. The same princi- ple holds good in religious education; the child learns to be a Christian by being one. *This does not mean that a child is a Christian to the same degree that his father or mother is a Christian, any more than he is a citizen of the state in the same manner and degree as are they; it does mean that he knows himself a member of the Father's great family, just as he knows himself a member of the home group, and that, to the full measure of his ability and in accordance with 12 THE GOAL his development, he fills his place in one as in the other. It means that he constantly tries to make his adjustments to life according to the Christian principles which he is progressively acquiring through the teaching that he receives ; it means that his reactions are more and more on the plane of brotherhood, because he thinks of himself as one of the many sons of a common Father ; it means that his habits are formed and his conduct is controlled according to Christian ideals; it means, in short, that he is a growing, developing citizen of the kingdom of God in much the same way as he is a growing citizen of the state. The questions of missionary education — what it is to be, what its aims are, what part it is to have in the whole scheme of religious education — are in a fair way to be answered when teach- ing and living, learning and doing are rightly joined. A One-Sided Conception of Missions. Most of us have need to revise our thinking and to reor- ganize our teaching in regard to missions. For a long time both thinking and teaching have so strongly emphasized a single side, the foreign side, of the enterprise, that it has become quite natural for most people to regard missionary activity as a matter of geographical situation, 13 MISSIONAKY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS of position on the map, rather than as an atti- tude of life. The first suggestion which the word ^'missionary'^ brings is China, India, Africa, or some far-off — or, at the least, difficult and dis- agreeable — field. Very seldom is it connected with the thought of helpful brotherly living wherever one may be; the ideal of a life of co- operation and sharing, of working together for a common goal, is as yet the possession of the few. It is comparatively easy to interest people in long-distance missionary work; to get them to engage in the vital, intimate, close-at-hand work is a different matter, even when this entails no great sacrifice and requires only a considerate sharing of one's possessions. Three young women, all living in their own homes and all members of the church, recently graduated from a great eastern university. Dur- ing their college years each was for a time an in- terested member of a mission study class on China, and each participated, through service or gifts of money, in the work of their church for a Chinese parish abroad. It chanced that among the college classmates of these young women were two or three Chinese girls, of whose scholarly at- tainments the American students often spoke with a curious mixture of pride and admiration. It might have been supposed that these Chinese 14 THE GOAL girls, preparing to go back to work among their own people, would have had more than the usual interest for these young women. Yet not once during the four years did they extend to the foreign students the hospitality of their homes for a week-end, nor did they attempt to establish any closer bond than the cursory acquaintance of the classroom, or make any attempt to lessen the natural loneliness of girls far from home and in strange surroundings. One may smile a little sadly at the gap between principle and practise and feel sure that the American girls suffered the greater loss, but the illustration shows the result of a one-sided and incomplete conception of missions. The Missionary Spirit in Every-day Life. Our pas- tors, our church school superintendents, and our teachers must be helped to gain a new ideal of the missionary spirit, and our church schools must teach that the question of missions is not a question of here or there, of home or foreign field, but an attitude of life, a normal expression of Christian thinking and living. The missionary spirit, when so conceived and so taught, will not be shown by an occasional or even by a regu- lar gift; it will be the spontaneous response of the Christian to the needs of his brothers every- where. 15 MISSIONAKY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS Opportunities for the Missionary Spirit. Working out the true spirit of missions into every-day life is not difficult; opportunities abound on all sides. The junior boys and girls of a suburban church passed a Chinese laundryman's shop on their way to Sunday-school and often looked askance at him, if they did not go farther and actually tease him and call him names. One Sunday he ap- peared in the men's Bible class, and the junior superintendent, puzzled over some Chinese pic- ture that was presented on a poster, suggested asking him to come to the room and explain it. He did so willingly, gave one or two personal recollections of places shown on the poster which he had visited, and at once won the respect and liking of the children. At the close of the lesson he confessed that he did not understand the English used in the Bible class very well and asked if he might be permitted to go into the junior department. The children eagerly re- ceived him, and thereafter they claimed him as "our Chinaman;" they looked upon him with friendliness and liking and often stopped at his door to exchange a pleasant greeting. Their attitude toward foreigners was changed, and a bit of real brotherhood was built into their lives. Such teaching may often begin very early in life and be very valuable. A hungry-hearted 16 THE GOAL laundry man making his weekly business call at the back door one day regarded with much in- terest a little three-year-old boy at play on the porch. The baby returned his gaze with interest, and finding something sympathetic in the look bent upon him, selected his choicest picture-card, and running across the floor, thrust it into the hand of the Chinese, who grinned delightedly and broke out into a torrent of appreciative words, whose spirit, at least, the child under- stood perfectly. Thereafter the baby waited weekly for the visit of "my mans," and saved his choicest treasure to bestow on him, a bit of cake or candy, a picture, or a toy. The mother encouraged the friendship, knowing that the child's interest made a bright spot in the life of an exile, and realizing, too, that her son was get- ting an idea of sharing and friendship that, in- significant as it might seem, would never be quite lost in later life. Who can fail to see the value of such teaching or discount the real worth of such contacts in developing that mutual self- respect which must be one of the fundamental factors in the foundation of a genuine world citizenship? Missions Not an Elective. One great weakness in our teaching has come from a misconception of the place missions should hold in the life of 17 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS Christians. Far too often the whole enterprise is looked upon as an optional matter in which the church may or may not participate. This attitude is no doubt due, in part at least, to the position which pastors, superintendents, and teachers have taken in regarding missions as an external subject, good enough in a way, but with- out any vital connection with other material of instruction — something to be added if time and inclination permit. "Another subject to be taught, when there is so much to do and so little time?'' the church school teacher is apt to groan. "No time for it," "one Sunday a quarter,'^ "one Sunday a month for ten minutes,'^ replies the superintendent to the missionary enthusiast who pleads that the matter may have the attention of the school. If, by chance, the superintendent should grant five minutes a Sunday, he would seem to be giving a very generous, perhaps a disproportionate allowance of time to the sub- ject. Is it any wonder, then, that pupils leave the church school with the impression that mis- sions need not have — indeed, are hardly expected to have — any vital interest for them? Missionary Spirit the Genius of Christianity. This deplorable condition must remain till the church advances in its position regarding missions; it cannot be changed until superintendents and 18 THE GOAL teachers realize that missionary enterprise is not an external, not an addendum, not merely a vital principle of Christianity, but Christianity itself. No follower of the Man of Galilee can take upon his lips in sincerity and truth the first word of the Lord's Prayer, much less can he use its other petitions, without a kindling of missionary zeal. No one can carry out to its conclusion the least of the principles of the kingdom of God with- out becoming a missionar}^ in deed and in truth, whether his lot is cast in the Dark Continent or in the humblest rank and the most prosaic daily calling. No one can lift his heart in grateful acknowledgment of the richer life bestowed by the Elder Brother without a quickened sense of the worth of "the least of these'' who have not yet heard of the Way, the Truth, and the Life — a sense of the value of others that will deepen the determination to share largely in the service of mankind. Summary. The church school, then, should hold as its objective the development of Christian character — that is, the growth of children in the religious life till they become mature Christians, intelligent, trained, and actively engaged in the work of bringing the kingdom of God to the earth. That phase of religious education which is commonly called missionary may well be re- 19 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS garded as the animating spirit of the whole, since missionary enterprise is merely the prac- tical working out of the principles of Christian- ity. To suggest some ways in which these prin- ciples may take shape as the normal expression of the lives of boys and girls is the aim of the following chapters. 20 CHAPTEK II KNOWING ONE'S PUPILS The TTnderstanding' of Children. The teacher who accepts the proposition that efficient teaching must meet intelligently the practical, every-day needs of pupils is immediately aware of the neces- sity, first, for an understanding of children in general, and then, for an understanding of his own pupils in particular. The successful farmer knows the characteris- tics of his various soils, and what crop each will best nourish; he chooses the right exposure, the right drainage, the right season for the seed he is to sow; otherwise his harvest will be scanty and inferior. The teacher who is to do worth- while and effective work must have a kindred understanding of children, their characteristics, interests, needs, and functions, at each stage of their development. Book Study and Child Study. Such an under- standing may be acquired in two ways — by the reading and study of books and by the fresh and first-hand knowledge which comes through a study of children themselves. Neither way MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS should be used to the entire exclusion of the other. One may not expect to gain a complete knowledge of children from books alone; chil- dren are individual, and they develop along in- dividual lines — not always according to rules laid down in a book. A teacher may spend months studying child psychology and pedagogy, only to find that the first normal, healthy child he meets will disprove the most plausible theory, but this does not argue the worthlessness of such study. However individuals may differ, there are great underlying principles of growth, great outstanding characteristics that mark each stage of development, with which the teacher must be familiar and by which all the work of education will be guided. Familiarity with such principles may first be gained from books; after that, theory may be verified by experience, and prin- ciples tested by practise. The teacher, then, turns to a course in child study as a guide to the study of his pupils; the chief value of reading and research lies in the fact that principles learned in this way form a foundation for the study of children as individuals. Suggestions for Reading. It is not within the scope of this manual to formulate any principles regarding child study or even to outline a course of reading. Both things have been too fre- 22 KNOWING ONE'S PUPILS qiientlj and too well done to warrant any such attempt here. However, for the sake of the in- experienced teacher who may wish to begin such study, a short list of books is given in the biblio- graphy at the end of this book. When these have been mastered and the suggestions which they contain for reading and study have been fol- lowed, any one will be able to guide his own further work intelligently. The Teacher's Note-book. Valuable and impor- tant as an earnest teacher will find the many books written on subjects pertaining to children, of even more worth to him will be the one which he writes for himself; for no teacher can afford not to keep a note-book recording his findings about his pupils. Preferably this should be a loose-leaf book, and a section — one or more pages — should be reserved for each pupil. At the top of each section should be written the name, ad- dress, and birthday of each child ; then may come, if desired, the names and church connections of the parents; there should follow, with plenty of space under each to allow for new entries from time to time, such headings as may be desired — ^heredity, home surroundings, community sur- roundings, school life, play, interests, sports, hobbies, occupations, reading, all are points that may well be included, and each may have sub- 23 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS heads if thought desirable. Probably no two teachers would entirely agree as to just what are the most important points; any teacher may outline a chart to suit his own ideas. For sug- gestions consult Chart of Childhood^ by E. P. St. John, Syllabus for Child Study, by G. A. Coe (see Appendix), and the scheme in The Juniors: How to Teach and Train Them, by Mrs. M. J. Baldwin. ( See bibliography. ) Whatever plan is chosen should have some flexibility and allow for growth, and the teacher should hold himself rigidly to recording the points as he learns them. If his great desire is to guide his pupils in the right way, surely his greatest requisite is clear and definite knowledge of their lives, and no knowledge is quite so well defined as that which has been expressed and written down. Sympathetic Insight. Teacher-training is receiv- ing much attention to-day, and church schools are increasingly demanding trained and skilful teachers. Knowledge of methods is an impor- tant part of any teacher's equipment, but the only true basis on which this may be built is a genuine understanding and knowledge of chil- dren, and the teacher who devotes a great deal of time to getting a sympathetic insight into the lives of his pupils may feel that he is making the best possible start toward efficient teaching. 24 KNOWING ONE'S PUPILS The Child's Desire for Approval. Perhaps the first great difficulty encountered by every worker with children is in getting at the real boy and girl. Children usually try to be what they are expected to be; except in their most intractable moments, they attempt to behave so as to win approval; as far as they can, they will return the answer which they think the teacher wishes. Now these responses do not arise from insincerity or deceit ; they spring rather from an instinct for approba- tion which has great value during the earlier years, when the child, in the process of becoming a social being, must learn to adjust himself to the world in which he lives. But this desire for approval certainly does increase the adult's difficulty in finding out exactly what his pupil thinks and feels. The words of a child often fail to reveal him, and even his behavior is not an in- fallible indication of his true character. The Child Outside the Church School Room. The difficulty is increased by the briefness of the lesson hour which the class and teacher spend to- gether ; this makes a real acquaintance quite im- possible. Moreover the atmosphere of the church school room is generally somewhat artificial, and a teacher soon realizes that an intelligent un- derstanding of his pupils can come only through an association much more extended and natural 25 MISSIONAKY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS than the schoolroom will ever permit. Before he can adapt his teaching to the needs of his boys and girls, he must know all the conditions of their lives, and what responses they make to those conditions. A child's life at home or at the public school often reveals him in an entirely new light and affords a far truer conception of his character. Even more clearly is he shown at his play; for here he is most natural and most off guard. The teacher who would fully understand a group of pupils must know them on the playground and note there their reactions to each other and to the fortunes of the game; he must watch their interests, cooperation, un- selfishness, consideration for the weaker, spirit of responsibility, leadership, fair play, honesty, and a score of other qualities. Observation of this kind does more than give the teacher an in- sight into the lives of his boys and girls; it furnishes him the best material for teaching valuable and vital lessons and enables him to give his instruction new force, since its princi- ples find application in every-day life. Community Influences. Thinkers are not agreed as to the exact time at which a child's education begins, but whether one puts the starting-point in the Garden of Eden or with the grandparents or at some intermediate position, no one will deny 26 KNOWING ONE'S PUPILS that heredity is an important factor in a child's life and well worth the consideration of the teacher. Perhaps even more important is the question of environment. A child reared in squalid surroundings may reject the evil and spring into a pure and beautiful life, like a lily from a muddy pool; a child from a sheltered home may find the downward path and repudiate the careful teachings of youth, but such results are hardly to be expected in the natural course of events. Children are apt to take their stamp from their surroundings and to reflect to a high degree their native atmosphere. The spirit of "our street," "our town," or "our community" becomes theirs. Many a child's life has been made or marred through a change in his sur- roundings. Home Influences. If mere externals are so im- portant, how much more so are those closer forces which we include under the term "home influences" ! Children almost invariably, though sometimes quite unconsciously, take the attitude of the home; if teaching and practise are at variance here, it is the practise which children follow, often to the distress of their parents. Not long ago, in a cultured Christian home, the parents lamented the fact that their small daugh- ter was not democratic in her attitudes and re- 27 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS fused to play with poorly dressed children or those who came from a certain section of the town. The mother stoutly insisted that every means had been used to make the child sym- pathetic and Christian in her reactions; but the guest could recall three instances in her short visit in which, by shrug of shoulder or sharp comment or unkind judgment, these parents had emphasized the social gulf which lay between them and the families whom their child was now considering beneath her. The parents were quite sincere in their claims, and their own attitude had been so unconscious that they did not dream where the keen little daughter had learned such ideas. Instances of this kind are all too com- mon and serve to show the potency of home influ- ence. No other factor, indeed, has equal power in confirming or canceling the teaching of the church school, and this, too, in spite of the fre- quently deplored fact that children spend less time in their homes to-day than ever before. Cooperation with the Home. The influence of the home is much more continuous and is far stronger than any other, not alone because the child spends more time there than anywhere else, but also because it touches his life at so many more points that are vital and significant. No argument is needed to convince the teacher of the KN0WI:NG ONE'S PUPILS value of allying the home on the side of the school in the work of character building; nor will cooperation be found a difficult thing to ac- complish. The homes which present an active opposition to the church school are in the minor- ity and are not as hard to w^in as those which are indifferent. Even these are not hopeless, for in this century of the child most parents are ready and eager to cooperate with any one who is striving for the betterment of their children; they are only too glad to second the efforts of those teachers in secular school or in church school who seek the richest and fullest develop- ment in the lives of their pupils. Knowledge of Home Conditions. But important and valuable as this home cooperation may prove to be, it is not the chief end in the mind of the teacher when he sets out to know his pupil at home. The child's attitude to his home and its activities, the attitude of the home to the school, to reading, to recreations, to education, to all the questions of life are doors through which the teacher looks in upon the real child, channels through which he gains a sympathetic under- standing of his real needs and problems. Often a single visit will give a teacher a key to a baffling situation and be sufficient to cause an entire change in the treatment of a puzzling pupil. A 29 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS knowledge of home conditions may give a teacher new courage and added zeal, and it must always make his work more intelligent. Public School Influences. Another approach to the real boy or girl too little used by the church school teacher is through his public school life. The advantage of knowing a pupil's equipment in geography, history, reading, writing, map-draw- ing, or English is at once apparent. It is quite as useful to know his standing in the class, his likes and dislikes for his various lessons, his school interests and sports. Cooperation with the Public School. Yet there are surprisingly few church school teachers who have any knowledge of the school life of their pupils. This is partly because the teachers fail to see the advantage such knowledge would give and partly because many of them are busy men and women who can seldom, if ever, pay a visit to the public schools. More potent than either of these reasons is the utter separation of church and state in this country. While the principle is undoubtedly right, its practise has resulted in the rather curious situation of two sets of teachers, the religious and the secular, seeking similar ends without any attempt at cooperation. For, though the public school may not step over into the field of religious education, there is an 30 KNOWING ONE'S PUPILS increasing number of teachers who value charac- ter more highly than knowledge and who realize that teaching children is quite different and vastly more important than teaching books. It would seem, therefore, that church school and public school teachers might gain mutual benefit by working together. Such cooperation should never be official or formal; it should rather con- sist of an interchange of information concern- ing any pupil that would make the work of either teacher more intelligent, and of such adjustment of hours and use of agencies as should be deemed best for the pupils' real advancement. Examples of Cooperation. A certain public school principal had discovered evil tendencies in a pupil and tried in vain to check them. At last he appealed to the boy's rector, and a whole train of influences beyond the teacher's reach was im- mediately set in play. In another instance a church school teacher asked her superintendent for help in getting at a particularly trying pupil. The superintendent chanced to know the boy's public school teacher and principal, and he put them in touch with the church school teacher. Such strong and intelligent cooperation followed that the boy's entire attitude was changed, and he made in both schools what ^^'as for him re- markable progress. 31 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIOBS A Plan for Cooperation. Such instances are all too rare, but it ought to be possible to multiply them a thousand fold, to the great advantage of the children. Cooperation between public and church schools must, of course, be based on mutual respect and exist only for the common end for which both are working. Any church school which initiates such an effort will find it a genuine contribution to the welfare of its pupils. The first step could be a form letter ad- dressed to the public school teacher; this should contain the name and address of the pupil, with his grades and his teachers both in public and church school; then should follow questions (so worded as to allow very brief answers) as to the pupil's ability, characteristics, and reactions to situations, with requests for suggestions as to points at which the church school might strengthen its work and cooperate more closely with the day-school. An arrangement for an ex- change of simple and unofficial reports between the two schools could be made with little trouble, and it would be quite feasible in many places to bring parents and teachers of both the church- and day-school together in a yearly or semi-yearly conference that would be productive of a better mutual understanding and efficiency. Knowledge of School Life. But, as in the case of KNOWING ONE'S PUPILS the study of the home life, no church school teacher must forego acquaintance with his pupil's school life, even if he cannot gain the cooperation of the school itself; there are many points in the school life of the pupil which the religious teacher needs to know, and he can hardly get possession of them in any way except by actually visiting the school. The child's attitude to his teachers, his mates on the playground and in the classroom, the pictures he looks at daily, the school atmosphere and spirit, all are worth the teacher's effort to know and understand. Many a religious worker has returned from a visit to the bright, attractive public school rooms that are now fortunately so common to the dark, dingy church school rooms with a new percep- tion of what pupils find — or, rather, fail to find — ^in the church school and a new vision of what is needed. Too often anything is considered good enough for the church school, and upon it are forced conditions no one would tolerate for an instant in the public school. "Why should our boys consider this school of equal importance with their high school?" asked the pastor of a wealthy church recently, as he returned from making an address to the pupils of the high school, where every surrounding had been favor- able and all the exercises had moved with spirit S3 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS and dignity. "These dull and dingy rooms with their poor equipment they naturally take as the measure of the value which we place on the work, and why should they hold it in any higher esti- mation?" When the church sees this fact in all its bearings, there will be a willing consecration of means to make the church school in its outer, material side much more nearly the equal of the public school. The Child and His Occupations. But strong as school influences are in shaping a child's life, they are not all ; the teacher who is charting his pupils finds that a junior boy or girl spends not more than five or six hours daily in the school- room for ten months of the year; what is done with the rest of the time? How does the child occupy himself when out of school? Sometimes his occupations may be imposed upon him by others or by necessity, and when this is true, the teacher may see in them special pitfalls and temptations. The junior boy who has a Sunday morning paper route or whose Italian father finds that day such a busy one in his barber shop that he needs the child's assistance has quite other difficulties in his way than the child of leis- ure who rides comfortably to the church. If, on the other hand, a boy is free to choose his occupations, they then form a pretty sure indica- 34 KNOWING ONE'S PUPILS tion of his interests ; in any case, occupations are a vital part of a child's life, and the teacher must be fully cognizant of them. It is often a very illuminating thing for teacher and parent alike, to make out the child's schedule of time for a week. Day-school, music lesson, motoring, basket-ball, and "movies," fill the days so full that no time is left for reading, for the service of others, for the quiet cultivation of the finer things of true and lasting value. School and play are good and should claim a large part of the child's time, but after all, there are other things even more worth while. A mother rather reluctantly sent her son for one hour weekly to Sunday-school and questioned the teacher closely as to Avhat he was getting from the brief session. But when her cooperation was sought in the home-work, she answered slowly, "I wdll, if I can find the time; there are so many other things to do !" The emphasis on "other" left no room for doubt as to which she considered the really im- portant thing's. There is much need for a change of view and a shifting of perspectives, till mat- ters innocent enough in themselves but of minor worth are relegated to their proper place, and the truly valuable things are allowed to have the first place, if the coming generation is to receive the torch undimmed. 35 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS The Interest in Books. One characteristic of the junior period that merits the most careful study of the teacher is the reading hunger which marks the developing mental life of the boy and girl. The career of many a child has been entirely changed by reading the right book at this time, and no teacher can afford to miss this wonderful opportunity for directing and influencing his pupils. Their demand is for "exciting" stories, stories with thrill and action, and the wise leader supplies this need with tales of splendid adven- ture taken from the lives of the great men and women of the world, who may become the ideals of boys and girls just entering on the hero-wor- shiping age. Hero stories taken from the biogra- phies of many missionaries, reformers, and lead- ers of the world's progress will be read and reread by junior pupils, if once they are made accessible, and they may become potent influences in many a young life. The Acquisitive Instinct. Another indication of junior interests which the teacher should use is the acquisitive instinct; this is strong, and it shows itself in the love of collections and the hoarding of treasures. It is the exceptional child who does not have a collection of coins, stamps, stones, shells, cards, or curios of some sort. 36 KNOWING ONE'S PUPILS Other Characteristics. The interest in solving puzzles is now at its height, and the child loves to test his ingenuity by all sorts of riddles, conun- drums, and guessing games. This the teacher may turn to account; he may often make the gaining and fixing of knowledge pleasant by means of a puzzle. The development of the his- torical sense and the new interest in the sequence of events suggests how Bible and missionary material ought to be taught; the receptive power of the memory indicates that now is the time to store the mind with the great treasures of litera- ture. Direction of Activity. But it is not necessary to recapitulate all the characteristics of the junior period; enough has been said to indicate some of the most outstanding ones and to suggest how the teacher must make use of them. Many may be included under the one term that alone most fully describes a normal junior child's life — activity. How to direct this eager, restless, over- flowing energ;}^ of the child is the teacher's great- est problem. Its answer must come from a veiy close and true understanding of the pupil. Per- haps a teacher may hope to possess this under- standing to a higher degree even than the par- ents, as he stands farther away from the pupil and therefore views him in a different and more 37 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS advantageous perspective. Moreover the teacher is a trained observer; he understands the princi- ples of child study ; presumably he has a love for and a sympathy with children, or he would not be a teacher. All of these may make his obser- vations of children, in many cases, more valuable than those of parents. On the other hand, par- ents have countless opportunities to watch the reactions and responses of their children that teachers never have, and when their observation is intelligent and accurate, the results are most worth while. In any case the student of chil- dren must gain the necessary insight through training, association, genuine love, and sym- pathy. When these are combined with boundless patience, absolute faith in the child's possibili- ties, and a complete reliance on divine guidance, work with children becomes a joy and an inspira- tion. CHAPTER III MISSIONARY EDUCATION THROUGH ACTIVITY The Guidance of Activity. The church school teacher who maps out for himself a definite course of child study and systematically follows it in his work with his own pupils soon acquires a knowledge of his class that lessens his diffi- culties and doubles his effectiveness. More than this, in gaining familiarity with the character- istics of a single group of children he has learned the distinguishing traits of all boys and girls of the same stage of development. He knows the laws that govern their growth ; he is acquainted with their needs and their interests ; he possesses an understanding of their natures which is absolutely essential, if he Avould rightly guide their activities. What these activities are to be and how they are to be guided is one of the educator's most significant questions. Discipline and Activity. Since activity is the most marked characteristic of childhood, it might seem that its very naturalness would have sug- gested its value, but this has not been true. MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS Though educators are now coming to understand more clearly the importance of activity in educa- tion, there are far too many who still cling to the old standard and consider that order nearest to perfection under which the pupils obey most rigidly the rules, "Sit still ! Be quiet !'' This is particularly true of secular schools, but the greater freedom often seen in church schools does not necessarily mean that church school teachers see the relation of activity to education more clearly. The lack of repression too often arises from sheer inability on the part of the teacher to keep order; it even comes sometimes from a fear that strict measures may be so unpopular with the pupils as to drive them away from school. This is an ill-founded notion ; pupils will never have a real respect for a teacher or a school that permits genuine disorder. There can be little question that order gained through stern and repressive measures is better than no order at all and may sometimes be the first essential. It should, however, soon pass over into a happy and productive activity, well directed into defi- nite lines and planned to result in desirable ends. Physical Activity and Mental Development. Body and mind are not two distinct things. Physical activity is not an evil to be frowned upon and kept down; it is a genuine help to the under- 40 EDUCATION THRQUaH ACTIVITY standing. Doing is not a result of learning, it is v.^ a part of the process ; and we are coming to em- phasize activity in education because we see its vital connection with mental development. This principle holds good in religious as well as in secular education, and the church school teacher '^ must strive to make Christian not only the think- *^ ing but the activity of his pupils. The child's eager desire to do something is an opportunity which the teacher must turn to account by pro- viding all sorts of instructional activities, such as pasting pictures, making note-books, charts, "^ maps, and bulletins, and illustrating and illumi- nating hymns. Activities and the Habit of Sharing. There are also many lines of activities which will help the pupil to form the finest ideals of Christian ^ brotherhood. To be sure, the altruistic motive ^ does not appear till adolescence, and the junior ^ child is still self-centered and individualistic ; ^ he knows nothing of the great, glowing ideals of service that will so move him a few years later. The desire to do what the rest of the class is doing or the wish to win the approval of his teacher may be the highest motives operative now. But the teacher must use these, if no higher ones exist, and the child will respond with keen zest to the appeal of the needs of other children 41 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS and work with surprising energy to fill them. Even if the motive is a low one, the habit of working with others for a common cause may bi^ started, and the joy of sharing may be experi- enced. If, at this period, a teacher, without using sufficient pressure to produce antagonism, can induce children to, follow the right course of action for a time, a tendency to choose it volun- tarily will be developed. If working for others is found to be more agreeable and to bring pleas- anter results than selfish activity, the lower, selfish motive will gradually be lost in a higher one. Acts once performed to win approval will come to be motivated by pity, and this in turn will give place to the motive of love. Sharing will then seem better than giving, and service more inspiring than duty or self-sacrifice. All this will come later, but the teacher must start from the child's plane and make use of the high- est motive that will be effective. Activities and the Child's Interests. It is hardly necessary to add that the principle governing the choice of activities will be the interests of the pupils. It was once believed, in the phrase of Mr. Dooley, that "it don't make any difference what ye teach children, provided they don't like if But that conception of education is rele- gated to the past. Perhaps we feel that some- 42 EDUCATION THROUGH ACTIVITY thing of strength and stability has gone with it, but in the long run we hold the new regime to be better than the old. xVdults with trained wills and large powers of concentration may hold themselves to dull and uninteresting tasks, but children cannot. If too much compulsion is used, ' ' there is great danger of fostering a deep dislike for the work and everything connected with it, thus defeating the very end that is sought. If, on the other hand, a child is genuinely interested v" in a thing, he will often display astonishing per- sistence and application. Work so done partakes of the nature of play ; it is vastly easier and is a far finer way of developing character. Clearly, then, a teacher must know what junior boys and girls like to do. What are their interests? The Interest of Curiosity. In the first place, boys and girls from nine to twelve are living in a rapidly enlarging world. They have very re- cently acquired some conception of time and space; at every turn they meet some new thing, are confronted with some new situation. They are eager for these new experiences; they are curious about the things they see and hear ; their importunate questions show their hunger to know; the magnitude of their demands leaves their elders gasping. "Tell me how brass beds and bureaus and carpets and rubber tires and 43 MISSIONAKY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS furniture and everything we use are made!'^ was the modest request of one hungry mind. But the child is by no means satisfied to be a passive receiver of information ; he goes actively in search of it and tries out many a thing to ^'see how it works." With powers of reasoning yet weak and experience yet limited, is it any wonder that a bright boy or girl often sets in motion a train of circumstances whose outcome he did not fore- see? Most of the mischief of a junior child is absolutely without viciousness ; it comes from his eager desire to find out. "Didn't you know you ought not to do that?" demands the annoyed adult, forgetting his own childhood days and fail- ing to realize that, in the very nature of the case, the child could not know. The Teacher's Use of Curiosity. These days of questioning and research are golden ones for the child, and happy is that boy or girl whose par- ents and teachers recognize this and supply his hungry mind with the right food, while setting him to finding out things for himself. All sorts of investigations in connection wdth the school, the church, the community, matters of historical interest, current events, or industry will interest him, and he will carry them out with real profit. A picture of Carey or Paton or Grenfell on the bulletin board with, underneath, the question 44 EDUCATION THROUGH ACTIVITY ^*Wlio was he?'' sets the child hunting through books and magazines till he finds the answer; then the question "What did he do?'' starts him on another search that not only interests but instructs him and gives him facts that can hardly fail to make an impression. The suggestion, "Find out what the sexton of the church does to earn his salary," is likely to send an astonished group back with a long report and may result in an increased respect and consideration for a humble worker which will manifest itself in added care of books, papers, and rooms. ''How many bird baths are there in your town or section? How many drinking fountains for cats and dogs? How many for horses? Is this enough? What can we do about it?" "What can you suggest to make our church lawn more beautiful?" "How many boys and girls liye in our church community? Haye they playgrounds? How many? Is that enough? What can we do about it?" "Find out the best thing Italy (or «Iapan or any other country the teacher may choose) has giyen the world;" "How can our class make Thanksgiying a happy time for a family without food?" "Help me plan a good April Fool Day for some lonely, hungry children, whose mother washes away from home all day ;" "How can we spend our Fourth of July holiday 45 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS so as to help the Hungarian children that came into our Sunday-school last spring to understand what it means to be good Americans ?'' All these are types of questions that will make a junior class or department think, and if the right help and direction is given, the answers, expressed in terms of cooperation and actual service, may grow into real Christian living. The Creative Interest and Its Use. But junior children are not only investigative, they are creative, and in no way do they show their desire for self-expression more truly than in their at- tempts to "make something." Few needs of chil- dren have been more misunderstood and less rightly used than this one, in spite of the em- phasis placed on manual training in modern edu- cation. More particularly is this true in religious education. Few teachers in the Cuurch school use "hand-work'' with any intelligent conception of the part it should have in the development of the child ; they employ it simply because they are required to do so by the superintendent; and it is all too easy to find officers who have put manual work into use in church schools for no better reason than that it has seemed a success- ful method in some other school. Such an unin- telligent use of even the very best method cannot bring the best results. No activity should be 46 EDUCATION THROUGH ACTIVITY chosen because it is interesting and worth while in itself, but because it will help the child in building his character. This must be the great determining motive in the mind of the church school teacher. Manual skill in itself is a very valuable asset, to be sure, and to considerable extent the child who plants a garden or weaves a l)asket or makes any article with tools may enter into a sympathetic understanding of the men and women who toil in similar ways for the good of mankind. Herein lies one of the greatest values of all manual work. Equally important to the religious teacher is the possibility of turning the skill of pupils to ends of service and lifting all work from the narrow, individualistic plane to the higher one of social, Christian living. Since the desire of children to make things is instinctive and can be turned to such good ac- count in their development, it is little short of a crime to deny to a child the joy of creating something that is really good and useful. One afternoon recently I watched a small girl strug- gle for hours to make a doll's table; she had a huge hammer, a few small nails, a box cover, and four hard-wood broomsticks. Circumstances prevented my helping her, but I can yet hear the bitter disappointment in her tone, as she at length pushed her curls out of her eyes, saying, 47 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS "I have such a disgust, because it won't standi'^ The money that had gone into the ribbons she was wearing would have purchased a simple equipment for making real things, and a half hour of the cooperation I had no right to extend would have enabled her to enter, in a measure, at least, into Ruskin's experience, "I know what joy is, for I have done good work." If, in ad- dition, she had been helped to make some simple to3^s for the little paralysis victims, of whom she was hearing much, she would have tasted the joy of sharing, and her whole life would have been deepened and enriched. Emphasis on Service. It is when junior activi- ties are given the emphasis of service and shar- ing that the}^ become of highest educational value in religious work. The boy who, in a public school manual training class, learns to cut a set of jointed animals or to construct a doll's house or to make a copper desk set gains a degree of skill that will always be of use to him. But when he has made a set of toys to brighten the days of a crippled child or to give pleasure to the babies in a hospital or Home, when he gives his best handiwork as a parting remembrance to some missionary departing to his field, he has found one way of sharing the pleasures and privi- leges of his daily life. Moreover he values most 48 EDUCATION THROUGH ACTIVITY that for which he has worked hardest and sacri- ficed most ; his interest follows the gift into which he has put so much of himself, and he feels a certain A\holesome sense of ownership in the enterprise to which he has contributed. Service Activities in the School. The junior child, then, should find many opportunities to turn his abounding energy into channels of service. Naturally his first effort may be for himself, and his second for his school, but even the instruc- tional activities, such as pasting note-books, drawing maps, preparing posters, or making models to illustrate Bible lessons, may become service activities, if the finished product is de- signed for use in the class or department, or is to be sent as a gift to some other school. There are many small services Avhich junior children can perform in any church school ; these may be dignified and become a class honor, if the chil- dren who undertake them are called pages and chosen monthly from the classes having the best record. An arm band of the junior colors, green and white, with a large P, lends interest to the service in the child's mind. The pages' regular duties may consist of getting out supplies, put- ting them away at the close of the hour, welcom- ing visitors and conducting them to the proper officer, and many other things that help very 49 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS materially. Other school services would be rais- ing flowers for use in the assembly-room or gath- ering wild flowers for this purpose, earning or saving money to buy pictures for the school, beautifying the church lawn, and acting as mes- sengers for the pastor or superintendent. The Personal Touch in Wider Service. When the interest extends beyond the community, it is often possible to establish a personal touch which is worth much; country and city children, for example, may serve each other with mutual bene- fit. One city school sent yearly an individual gift to each pupil in a Maine mission school, and no Christmas tree was ever quite so tall and stately, no Christmas wreaths were ever quite so fragrant as those sent to the city school by the Maine pupils. The members of a suburban flower mission band became doubly alive to the need of their work when some little waifs from the city were brought out to their town for a day's fun, and they could see for themselves the joy of the children in the flowers and the fresh air. It is more difficult to establish such a rela- tion when the distance between the sharers is great, but this can be done through letters and I)ictures, and perhaps, through the exchange of school reports or samples of school work, cloth- ing, and curios. The bond of sympathy can be 50 EDUCATION THROUGH ACTIVITY created, too, when the home children are helped to make things for others less fortunate than themselves. Most children can make easily and well a great variety of games, toys, puzzles, and other things for the use and pleasure of others. What to make, how to make it, and how such activity is to become a factor in missionary edu- cation I have tried to suggest in Things to Make. (See bibliography.) Chapter VII of this book also contains suggestions for hand- work. The Motive of Service. The more natural and normal sharing becomes, the more integral a part of character has it grown to be. If juniors are taught to share all their pleasures and fun as a matter of course, to divide Avith shut-in chil- dren the flowers gathered on a hike, to pass on to some other child the dainty, useful, or amusing thing they have made, to make all the holidays times of joy for less fortunate people, they will form habits of thoughtfulness, service, and brotherhood, and sharing will grow to be the or- dinary expression of their lives. Such an ideal of service must be the guiding motive of the teacher who would use and direct the activities of his pupils in their religious growth. Only when the work is chosen for this purpose and done in this spirit does it have any real value as material for missionary education. CHAPTER IV TRAINING IN GIVING Character Through Giving. No single phase of religious education presents a finer means of training and developing Christian character than that of giving, and none has received less intelli- gent consideration, especially where junior boys and girls are concerned. This may come from the fact that boys and girls of that age are economi- cally of small value, and in most eases cannot be expected to give much in the way of time, service, or money. Yet, since this is the formative period, there is great danger that the habits of sharing, helpfulness, and cooperation, if not now fixed, will be greatly delayed or perhaps never formed at all. Many a leader who attempts to train children in giving falls into the error of thinking quite as much of furthering the missionary enterprise as of developing the Christian character of his boys and girls. Here again we need a clear realization that the aim of all religious education is Chris- tian character building. It will then be seen that 52 TRAINING IN GIVING the lesser is included in the greater and that a true Christian must be actively engaged in push- ing the limits of the kingdom to the ends of the earth. Viewing the task of missionary education in this light, the teacher sees that training in giving is not a means, more or less futile and temporary, of obtaining money for missions, but it is a matter of real education and of genuine character-forming value. Brotherly Spirit in Giving. The appeal which most surely reaches children is the need of other children. AYith primary pupils, this sho.uld al- ways be concrete; with junior children, generally so. Naturally the first approach is through chil- dren close at hand who lack the food or clothing or toys or pleasures v.hich the more fortunate child should be taught to share in a genuine spirit of brotherhood. Such a spirit is the only true basis of missionary effort, but too often parents and teachers fail to instil it. Mary, a little girl of my acquaintance, was at first de- lighted to pass on her outgrown school dresses to the laundress' little daughter, but when Alice began to get them worn and soiled, Mary begged her mother, "Please do not give Alice any more of my dresses ; she only gets them dirty and torn, and I do hate to see them so I" The child's spii-it had doubtless been wrong from the start ; she had 53 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS not shared, but had given from the position of a Lady Bountiful and wished to see appreciation of her gift shown by its careful use. She was not helped to see that Alice had no sturdy play suit, as Mary had, to save the dainty school dress in its freshness ; she was given no conception of the overworked mother who came home at the end of a long day too tired to do more than to feed her hungry brood before she sought the rest that would fit her for the next day's work. Neither Mary nor her mother realized that the contribu- tion the laundress made to their welfare had not been recompensed fully when she was paid with money, and Alice remained, to Mary's mind, an inhabitant of a distinct and vastly inferior world. Avoiding Condescension. Unfortunately, such a spirit is not uncommon ; children look down upon others whose speech, dress, or behavior is unlike their own and withdraw from the child whose clothes are shabby, or whose home is less pre- tentious than theirs. Situations of this kind need vigorous but tactful handling. Probably the best working principle is to find some real contribution which the supposedly inferior child can make to the common good. This will give him more self-respect and at the same time win for him the respect of the child who thinks him- self superior. The most unpromising child, by 54 TRAINING IN GIVING the law of compensation, has at least one real gift, one point in which he surpasses all others, and this point the teacher must find. The story ^'At the Little Brown House,'' in Everyland, December, 1913, and "What Tony Found Out," in "Immigration Picture Stories'' (see biblio- graphy), are not mere fanciful sketches or pretty stories to tell to children; they are typical ex- amples of what may be found in almost any group and offer the teacher a practical hint. Widening the Child's Responsibility. Since the junior child is rapidly enlarging his world, he should be led to enlarge his interests correspond- ingly and to assume responsibility for the chil- dren Avhom he has never seen. Here, too, the effort must be to establish a true basis of brother- hood and to avoid anything like patronage. To this end, the likeness between children rather than the unlikeness should be emphasized. Non- essentials, such as color of skin, dress, and speech, will not be stressed, for the result will be either an interested curiosity, or, if the dif- ferences are too great, a repugnance ; rarely will it be a friendly, brotherly feeling. If, as a matter of information, it is necessary to give such de- tails, they should be so presented that the child puts himself in the place of the foreigner and knows, in some degree, at least, his impressions 55 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS of the world about him. Telling the story of the Chinese girl who, when pressed to tell what was the strangest thing she saAv in America, said with a merry laugh, ^'Oh, 3^our funny little round eyes," or the story "When Tommy was a For- eigner,'' in "Immigration Picture Stories," are types of material that may be used in helping children to see the stranger's point of view. When a feeling of understanding and sympathy has been established in this way, it will be quite im- possible for the child to give his battered toys or his worn-out clothing in the deplorable spirit of patronage and condescension that is often ap- parent. Worthy Giving. I sat in a pleasant playroom with my friend one morning, A^hen her small son laid a useless toy in her lap, saying, "That's an old one; give it to the poor children.'' Very quietly, but with wonderful skill, the mother led her boy to see how a child would feel whose entire Christmas joy would probably consist of the broken to}^ The little fellow listened very seriously, then chose one of his most cherished playthings, and with his mother's help carefully removed from it every mark of use, packed it safely, tied it Avith the gayest and brightest of Christmas dressings, and took it to his Sunday- school to be sent with other gifts. Later in the 56 TRAINING IN GIVING same winter, when a request was made for cloth- ing, the mother suggested he might give an over- coat he had outgrown; this was freshened, every sign of soil removed, every tiny tear mended, and the boy carried the coat to his teacher with the feeling that he was sharing with a little brother, and not that he was giving "an old one" to an inferior. In this same spirit of sharing, with the feeling that his gift is worthy, a child may well pass on to other children his beloved toys, but these should be put in perfect condition, mended, freshly painted, and daintily wrapped. The one possible exception to absolute freshness would seem to be books; if these are worn and cannot be rebound, the old covers may be hidden under a fresh one of paper or cloth, which may be made attractive by decorating with crayola, water-color, or pasted pictures. A note to ac- company the book might be addressed, "To the one who receives this book," and could read as follows : "We have read this book till it is a little worn, but because we like it so much, we are sending it to you, and we hope you will enjoy it as much as we have. "Your friends, Of quite another type are the gifts of shape- 57 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS less dolls, Teddy bears, and other toys, which possess no value or beauty to any one but the little owner, who offers them in the spirit of truest giving, because they are the dearest treas- ure, and because only the best is good enough to give. It sometimes requires the utmost tact on the part of the parent or teacher to meet this kind of a gift, but the generous impulse must not be checked, and the love that prompted the sacrifice must always be recognized. In order to foster a genuine interest on the part of the children, the leader must always be sure that the giving or the service meets a real necessity. Children are quick to detect the false from the true, and resent an attempt to enlist their sympathies in a thing of fictitious value, but they will respond joyfully and with a whole- some sense of power and responsibility to the call of true need. The Gift of Possessions. Children must give what is their own, if the giving is to have the highest value for them. What does the junior child pos- sess that he can share with others? Nothing, it may be thought at first, but an investigation of a boy's pockets will reveal a collection of balls, tops, marbles, puzzles, pencils, crayons, and erasers; while his corner of the playroom will contain bats, mitts, footballs, and games of vari- 58 TRAINING IN GIVING ous sorts. The girls' treasure box will have dolls and dolls' dishes and furniture, paint-boxes, crayons, pads, ribbons, handkerchiefs, beads, and bags. She will probably have, too, a trunk or a box full of scraps of ribbon, cloth, and lace, from which to clothe her dolls. Both boys and girls will have magazines, children's papers, and books, which are often dearly prized. It is quite evident, then, that the junior child does not lack things to give. Though these may seem to the adult to have little intrinsic value, they are the things in which their owners are in- terested, and so it may be presumed that other children will also value them. No argument is necessary to prove that such giving of one's own things is vastly more important than the giving of things toward which the sense of ownership is less strong. The Lesson of Stewardship. Many children whose lives are pitifully barren of joy could be made blissfully happy with a tithe of the possessions of boys and girls in more favored circumstances. Even from a purely selfish standpoint, parents will find that teaching their children to share with others less fortunate is productive of good; for the multiplicity and the perfection of toys to- day leaves small opportunity for a child to cul- tivate his imagination or to develop his ingenuity 59 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS or initiative, and in many cases, if nine tenths of hig toys were to be removed, he would get more solid enjoyment out of the remaining tenth than the whole had ever yielded. But it is not neces- sary to appeal to such a low motiv^e. Intelligent parents recognize the dawning of the property instinct and foster and develop it by making the child the sole and undisputed possessor of cer- tain things. If, at the same time, the first lessons in stewardship are imparted, and the child is given some sense of his place and his duty as a unit in the great world citizenship, his sense of responsibility grows, and cooperation and shar- ing become the normal and delightful expres- sions of his Christian life. So, in no priggish or patronizing attitude of self-appreciation, but with a genuine feeling of brotherhood and friend- ship, the junior boy or girl sliould come to share his things witli others who have need of them. The Gift of Money. Most junior children have some money which is their own; this may be given them, or it may be a regular allowance, or it may be earned by their own efforts. Whatever the source from which it comes, a very important part of a child's training consists of learning the value of money, and the responsibility which its possession brings. He may be taught very early that some part, at least, of all he has ought to be 60 TRAINING IN GIVINa used for the service of Ms fellows. Perhaps there is no way in which the child can better learn the value of. money or more truly put himself into his gift than by earning the money himself. There are tasks in every home which the child should be taught to perform cheerfully and well with no thought of remuneration, as his contribu- tion to the welfare of the family group. As he grows in years and discretion, these duties may be broadened to take on, first, a local, and then a national and a world-wide aspect. But there are other tasks, not so distinctly belonging to a child, yet not beyond his strength, w^hich he may perform and for which he may receive a money payment. If this be fixed on a proper basis, ^'aluable lessons in economics and in true social living may be given so naturally but so impres- sively that no boy or girl will ever outgrow them. If through instruction and suggestion the child is led to use his money according to Christian principles, he should come naturally to regard it as just one more gift entrusted to him by God to be used for and shared with his fellows. The Gift of Time and Service. Time and service are two more things which children may give to others, and though the service be small, it may be true service while it lasts. It is hard to im- agine a child who cannot find some way of help- 61 MISSIONAEY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS ing. It may be only in keeping his own yard clean and attractive and seeing that the street in front of his own door is free frorg litter, but if he does it with the desire to make the world a better place for God's big family to enjoy, who shall dare to say the deed is not missionary? Most children in country or suburban homes may have a bit of ground for a garden or flower- bed, or, at least, they may be allowed to have a bush, a vine, or a plant for their own. Then they may be taught to bring the best of the produce for the pleasure or service of others, as did the Hebrews of old. The flowers that are sent to cheer a sick friend or to decorate the church or the church schoolrooms, the apples or grapes that go to tempt an invalid's appetite, the vege- tables that fill a hungry little neighbor's mouth will be enjoyed most of all, and the deed of thoughtfulness will knit the bond of brother- hood all the closer. Even the child dwelling in the tiniest city apartment need not be wholly de- prived of such sharing; any one can grow an eggshell farm as described in Things to Make, or a bowl of bulbs, to be taken to a hospital or a shut-in or an old people's home. Encouraging the Humble Giver. In making plans for children's giving, the teacher must be careful that the method chosen permits of no comparison TRAINING IN GIVING between the gifts of the rich and the poor and that pupils do not value a gift by its size. Many a poor child has lost the joy of giving, because he shrank from placing his smaller offering along- side that of his richer classmate. Yet no one can tell what the result of even a very humble gift may be. A junior superintendent, planning with her department the Thanksgiving dinners that were to be sent to a city mission, said, as she displayed a bundle of kindling, "Any boy or girl may bring this, and you know people need kin- dling to start the dinner fire, quite as much as they need food." On the appointed day a shab- bily dressed little boy laid on one of the baskets a bundle of sticks which he had cut from a soap box, secured from the grocery store. She received it smilingly and sent it with the rest of the things. The city pastor, whose people were to distribute the dinners, told the story in his ser- mon, and at the close a Avealthy parishioner, made to think by the humble offering, laid on each of the twenty-four baskets an order for one hundred pounds of coal. The Gift of Sacrifice. It is not the size of the gift that counts ; it is the spirit in which it is given. A junior boy, eager to share in the contribution of his class to a needy school, found it quite im- possible to get any money, but discovered he could 63 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS redeem the coupons in which the laundry soap was wrapped, and no bond-holder ever treasured his wealth more carefully. It required much pondering before he finally decided on a splendid *'hill-climber'' engine, which he carried in tri- umph to his teacher. When she had admired its gorgeous red paint, its size, and its speed, he carefully repacked it, saying with deep convic- tion, as he tied the last knot, ^'Gee! It's a lucky kid that gets that engine !" and the teacher knew that no one had given more truly than this child who had not a penny to spend. In a similar spirit two boys who had been promised a trip to the circus last winter gave it up, in order that the price of the tickets might go to feed the starving Armenians; a little girl who had eagerly looked forward to her eleventh birthday and its party gave what the party was to have cost ; another child, to Avhom parties and circuses were quite impossible, went without sugar on her breakfast cereal for a month, that she too might have a share in helping the little brothers and sisters across the AA^ater. Such sharing is vital and real and blesses him who gives as well as him who takes. The denominational home and foreign mis- sion boards will usually suggest articles which boys and girls can make and will give the ad- 64 TRAINING IN GIVING dress of a mission school where the gifts may be sent. The World's Sunday School Association, 1 Madison Avenue, New York City, through its surplus material department also suggests lists of articles to make and mission stations where they may be sent. The Personal Relation in Sharing. Whenever it is possible, a personal relation should be estab- lished between the two parties to the sharing, as this makes the feeling of brotherhood more genuine. "This can never be done till the germ theory is exploded!'' exclaim teachers who have met with decided refusals from parents to allow their children to go into homes unknown to them. All care and precaution must be exercised in guarding children against any possible harm, and in many cases actual entrance to the homes of families in need might not be desirable. But even the contact possible in the church school is often unwelcome, and children are too frequently taught, or at least encouraged, to keep away from claBsmates of a lower social order. Parents need to remind themselves that dirt is not deadly and that many germs of the soul are more to be feared than germs of the body. Selfishness is quite as insidious and fearsome as many a physi- cal disease, and snobbishness is more blemishing 65 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS and hateful than any blight a child is likely to meet in his endeavors to be a brother. If the kingdom of God is ever to be established, our children must be taught to live the ideals of Christian equality. u CHAPTER V MISSIONARY EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY The Importance of Play. Play, being the most common and characteristic activity in which children engage, has naturally received much thought and study from psychologists and edu- cators. They differ widely in their theories, but agree on the point that play is an important factor in the life of the child and merits deeper research than has yet been given it. Though the last word has not been said on the subject, play is no longer considered a necessary evil, to be tolerated for a time and to be supplanted as soon as possible with some more serious activity; it is seen to be a thing of vital importance in educa- tion. That modern educators are coming more and more to take this position is proved by the increasing number of playgrounds and play centers, even of play schools, as well as hj the ever-growing number of books on the subject. The Play Instinct. A discussion of the theories advanced or a resume of the books written on the different aspects of play does not come within 67 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS the scope of this chapter. Even a list of books on the subject would take too much space. Those who are interested in further study along this line will find in almost any volume on psychology or child study a chapter devoted to play, with references to special studies, books, and maga- zine articles which will furnish a guide to such research as one may wish to take up. For ex- ample, Fundamentals of Childhood, by E. A. Kirkpatrick, contains, on pages 163 and 164, ref- erences to books and articles about play. (See bibliography.) While these books are written from the secular standpoint, they are of value to the religious educator also. The child, it must be remembered, is not an active, normal, growing boy or girl six days in the week, and a little saint on the seventh ; the same laws govern his develop- ment on Sunday as on other days. Religious edu- cation must regard the child as an unfolding whole and not seek to develop one side of his nature without thought of the other sides. It is the aim of this chapter to suggest some ways in which the play instinct can be utilized in that one phase of religious education which we term missionary. The Psychology of Imitation. Whatever theories may be held as to why children play or what results play has upon them, it seems quite evi- 68 EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY dent that the imitative games of childhood come through the child's effort to enlarge his experi- ence. When he imitates the cat curled up before the fire, he is trying to find out Avhat it feels like to be a cat. He runs about waving his arms and says, ^^I'm flying; I'm a bird," because he is trying to understand how it would feel to be a bird. While such plays are markedly present before the age of ten, they by no means cease when that point is reached, and the junior child still tries to enlarge his experience through his imagination — though less openly, since dawning self-consciousness makes him fear the laughter of his elders. Many a grown-up can vividly recall long periods of time in childhood when the outer commonplace life was far less real than the inner dream life, w^hich had not yet faded "into the light of common day." One was, by turns, prince, robber chief, knight, or favorite story- book character, and entered into the joys and sorrows of these unseen friends with a sympathy quite as keen as that aroused for the flesh-and- blood playmates close at hand. Impersonation and Missionary Education. Herein lies a fine opportunity, which the junior teacher must be quick to seize. Impersonation may be- come the most effective kind of missionary teach- ing; for, to the child, the only real world is the 69 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS world of play. He is ever searching for that which, to him, is real, and if the lesson he is to learn can come to him in the form of play, it comes invested with meaning that is bound to call forth a worth-w^hile response. Moreover, in taking the part of another person whom he probably has never seen, he enters, to a far higher degree than adults sometimes think, into the very life and experiences of that person; his un- derstanding of the other's situation is deepened, and his own sympathies quickened ; his interests are widened; his information increased — and so naturally that the process is almost, if not quite, unconscious. A Missionary Demonstration. To illustrate, two little girls, coached by their leader, dressed as Chinese girls and entered a mission band meet- ing one day, just as the members w^ere discussing what they should do wdth their funds. The little guests from the Orient begged that the money might be sent to China to show their sisters "the Jesus way." The simple bit of acting meant far more than acquiring the knowledge neces- sary to answ^er the questions of the band; the girls had entered into the feelings of the Chinese children, and they w^orked harder afterwards to swell the missionary fund. To take another illustration, tw^o girls reared 70 EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY in Christian homes and taking their blessings as a matter of course were trained to give a simple demonstration of Japanese worship. A poor mother leading her sick child by the hand passed along the road and paused before a shrine of Buddha. Kneeling before the stupid-looking brass image, both mother and child bowed their heads three times to the ground, while the mother repeated prayers ; then the mother passed her fin- gers over the god's eyes and repeatedly rubbed the child's eyes. The contrast between the worship of this lifeless image and the worship in their own dear church of the God whom the children had been taught to love was heightened by the entrance of a missionary, who told the poor mother how to find the better way. The close of the demonstration thus left on the minds of the children who witnessed it an iflea of what they might and should do to help, even while it gave them some conception of foreign idol wor- ship. The quiet, almost reverent hush in which it was received showed what an impression the teaching had made. The Spirit of the Performance. Such impersona- tions and demonstrations require little time to give, they are short, simple and easily learned, and they require very little rehearsing and the simplest of accessories and costumes, but when 71 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS they are given in the right spirit, the effect is so strong as to be quite out of proportion to the effort required to produce them. It is the spirit of the performance which is of the greatest impor- tance. Perhaps it would be more correct to say the spirit of the instructor, for children are quick to fall into the mood of the teacher, and to reflect the attitude which they find in him, no matter what it may be. There should never be any attempt to produce anything like a finished theatrical performance; fine acting is not so im- portant as giving the audience the message of the story. When the participants are animated by the desire to give this, they can throw them- selves completely into the spirit of the play and overcome almost any difficulty. With children of the junior age, the right spirit in acting comes all the more easily, as they are not yet too self-conscious to throw themselves heartily into the play. This is one reason why accessories and costumes may be — indeed, should be — very simple. Such simplicity leaves some- thing to the imagination and detracts nothing from the message of the play. Missionary Plays and Pageants. Somewhat more elaborate than the missionary demonstrations already mentioned are the missionary dramas, which are planned on a larger scale and require 72 EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY more time in production and more scenery. A list of such dramas will be found in the bibliog- raphy. Still more elaborate are the pageants, some of which also are listed in the bibliography. The latter generally require a larger number of people as participants and would in many cases be too difficult to be carried out in entirety by a junior department; yet they would serve as a splendid means of bringing a whole church school together on a single piece of work and might be of the greatest missionary and religious educa- tional value. Games of Other Lands. Less formal play than has been described thus far is found in the games of other lands which children may play with genuine interest and liking and — better still — with an increased respect and sympathy for the boys and girls from whom they came. One class of boys, learning to play Chinese games for a local missionary exposition, came to have a de- cidedly greater respect for the Chinese after dis- covering how much strength it required to play "man wheel,'' while the girls delighted in the imaginative element as well as in the fun of "frog in the well," which was henceforth their favorite game. There can be little question that both boys and girls felt as if the Chinese chil- dren wei^e more real, more truly their brothers 73 MISSIOKARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS and sisters, when they had learned to play these games — a result that could not have been reached as easily and surely in any other way. The en- richment of a child's life through the teaching of new games is worth while in itself, but when to this is added a deepened sympathy with other children, a keener feeling of their worth, and a growing feeling of brotherhood, surely the value of learning the world's games strikes far below the visible surface. Childreri At Play in Many Lands (see bibliography), by Katharine Stanley Hall, contains descriptions of games from many countries, well illustrated. Every- land has from time to time contained descriptions of games, and many mission boards publish leaflets on the games and plays of children of other lands. Use of Demonstrations. All of the play material described may be used in various programs, as need may indicate. The shorter demonstrations may find occasional place in the opening exercises of the junior department and greatly strengthen the teaching there. As an illustration, if special attention is being given to Japanese missions, the superintendent may introduce *^a street greeting^' by saying, "Perhaps you would like to know how gentlemen say ^Good morning!' in Japan. Fred and Harry will show us." When the demon- 74 EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY strati on is finished (it requires about three minutes), a reference to our own quick greet- ing and the not unnatural conclusion on the part of the Japanese that we are rude and ill-bred may help the children to see the other side of the matter and make them less apt to laugh at the Japanese. Another help in seeing themselves as others see them may be given the children by using in connection with a study of Chinese missions one of the brief sketches contained in the March, 1914, number of Every land (volume 5, number 2), ^^Which is Topsy-Turvy Land?" or 'HVho is Queer?" The pretty story, "Backs and Fronts" in Everylandj February, 1916, could easily be dramatized and would help to impress the like- ness of mother-love everywhere, even while it showed how ideas are changing in China. Other demonstrations, too long for opening exercises or not entirely suited to the spirit of worship which should characterize such a program, may be used in group meetings or at socials, or they may form part of the program for an evening's entertainment. Such a program could well be the climax of a course of study on a missionary topic. Certainly the larger plays should never be gi\%n except when preceded by such study, in order that the participants may possess the back- 75 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OP JUNIORS ground that will give their work color, atmos- phere^ and spirit. Use of Pageants and Games. Pageants and exposi- tions may be as simple or as elaborate as one may desire and may include the work of several coun- tries or be confined to that of a single land ; they make excellent features to give in connection with a yearly Sunday-school exhibit, a mission- ary rally, or as the culmination of some special effort or study. The games may become an enter- taining as w^ell as an educational feature of an exposition program; they may be played at socials; if the mission band program includes a few minutes for recreation, they may be used then. Perhaps it is well to suggest here that it is not wise to use the word "missionary'' too frequently in connection with juniors, as it often conveys quite the wrong idea to them; let them play the games and enjoy the dramatic side of the work, because "our friends in China like this," or because "our Japanese cousins think this is a great game." Suggestions Concerning Costumes. It has already been suggested that too great stress should not be put on costumes and accessories. This does not mean that such matters should be entirely disregarded. Costumes add color and reality, and help to complete the picture of life in other 76 EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY lands. They can be rented from the Missionary Education Movement, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York ; some of tlie church boards also have them for rent. The expense is sometimes a matter to be considered, and in most cases the participants who make or devise their own costumes gain more benefit from the work than if they rent them ready made. The same thing may be said con- cerning scenery. It is surprising what an in- genious leader and an enthusiastic group of boys and girls can accomplish with very simple materials. A few yards of cheap calico, gingham, unbleached muslin, or cheesecloth, and a few small cans of house paint properly used will pro- duce most effective costumes, while kindergarten beads, so easily obtained, give an Oriental touch to many costumes. If beads are not at hand, macaroni broken in proper lengths and colored may be used instead; or very hot salt may be stirred into a thick paste of cornstarch and water, till a stiff dough is formed. This may be given the desired color with candy dye and then be kneaded and shaped into beads, which are strung on a long hatpin and left to dry. The sariy the common costume of the Hindu woman, is a strip of cloth about six yards in length wound round and round the body. The upper part of the body is covered with a simple waist, and the 77 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS end of the sari is drawn up over the head and pinned, or held with the hand. For this, striped or small-figured calico is all that is needed. Directions for making Chinese costumes are to be found in Everyland, March, 1914, while the issue for September, 1914, gives full directions for Indian costumes. The Japanese costume is too familiar to require description and can usu- ally be improvised by using an ordinary kimono and sash. The South American Paper Dolls in the first six numbers of Everyland for 1917 give valuable hints for costumes of the Indians in that continent. The last chapter in Children At Play in Many Lands gives directions for making many costumes. Finding out what people in other lands wear is a good subject of investigation for the junior boy or girl; once they have learned this from books, pictures, encyclopedias, and other helps in the home or the public library, their ingenuity may be exercised to making them out of the material at hand. In some cases it may be quite possible to get genuine articles of clothing from mission stations by arranging with the teachers there. Whether the costumes are made in the home school or are bought, it is a wise plan to pack them neatly in boxes properly labeled on the outside, and to preserve them for future use. 78 EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY Occasions when they will be needed are con- stantly arising, and lending or renting costumes to another and perhaps weaker school is often a real service, so that it is quite possible to make not only the preparation and the use of the cos- tumes but also their disposition a matter of brotherhood and sharing. 79 CHAPTER VI THE MATERIALS OF MISSIONARY EDUCATION Three Phases of Missionary Education. No ques- tion touching missionary education should re- ceive more thoughtful consideration than that of the material to be employed. ^^Where can I get the books?" is the first query of the teacher who overlooks the fact that missionary education has at least three phases — giving information, guid- ing activities, and developing attitudes — though the three are too closely related to be separated except for convenience in discussion. The Vital Element in Missionary Teaching. Sug- gestions for guiding the various activities of children into paths of service are contained in other chapters of this manual, and two ways of imparting information are given in the chapters on story-telling and children's reading. But such methods, while good as far as they go, are much too informal and incidental to be relied upon for developing a true spirit of world brotherhood that shall manifest itself as the normal expres- sion of every Christian life. The teaching that 80 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION results in such an attitude must be an ingrained and integral part of religious education ; its vital and animating principle must spring from a love for the common Father which recognizes the worth and the needs of all his sons. Adapting Instruction to Life. The importance of suiting the teaching of the church school to the needs of the child must again be emphasized. Lessons that do not help him in his daily living have little worth; religious instruction must guide the growing Christian in his adjustments to his world, which must gradually extend far beyond the immediate circle till it includes the whole world of God's people. The teacher who has taught his pupils to make these adjustments according to right principles has given the best missionary as well as the best religious training. A Christian's missionary attitude means just his whole attitude of personal responsibility and loving service, which, as a son of God, he owes to all men everywhere. The Bible and the Lives of Missionaries. It will not be necessary, then, to go far afield in search of material, since most of the lessons are chosen from the great text-book of missions, the Bible. In it are found the clearest enunciations of the principles of the kingdom which Jesus came to found; in it are set up the ideals of universal 81 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS brotherhood and world-wide helpfulness; from it comes the inspiration and faith and courage which the Christian must have. The fullness of its missionary message has not yet been meas- ured, nor its richness exhausted. It must always be the chief source of missionary material ; yet even while the teacher turns again and again to its boundless treasure, he will remember that the work of the servants of God was not finished with the Book of Acts, and he will frequently draw from the wealth of material found in the lives of all the missionaries since Paul who have labored and sacrificed and triumphed in the ser- vice of their Master. Their deeds will be re- counted again and again, till they become a part of the equipment of all our boys and girls, a challenge and an inspiration to noble effort and unselfish service. The Spirit of the Teacher. But whatever material may be used, a potent factor not to be overlooked is the spirit of the teacher himself; if he holds a deep personal conviction regarding the mis- sionary enterprise, if he actively believes in the brotherhood of man, he is sure to teach missions whether he knows it or not. Between such vital teaching as this and giving a quarterly lesson as an extra or a monthly fifteen-minute talk, or setting aside five minutes a Sunday for a special 82 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION consideration of the subject, there can be no com- parison. Imagine cultivating national loyalty in Ameri- cans by delivering to boys and girls on stated occasions more or less interesting talks on patriotism! How soon children would come to hate the sound of the word ! On the other hand a truly patriotic teacher would fill every lesson, whether in history or civics or literature, with so much national spirit that his pupils could not fail to catch the contagion and go out from his tutelage patriots in the truest sense. In like manner the teacher whose heart glows with zeal and who feels himself a brother to all the world puts into his teaching such a vital and natural missionary quality that his pupils are bound to catch fire from his flaming spirit. Sometimes his teaching will be directly missionary; sometimes the lesson material will be missionary by force of contrast; often the illustrations will be sup- plied from missionary sources; oftener still there may be no direct reference to missions as a sub- ject, but the principle of service will be the very warp and woof of the lesson. When missionary teaching becomes as ingrained as this, when it is a natural, vital, integral part of all religious edu- cation, then we may find otir boys and girls be- coming truly educated along missionary lines. 83 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS Forming Attitudes. But the formation of a child's attitudes is also a most important part of his education, and it must not be supposed that attitudes can be gained entirely through informa- tion or by study. How, for example, does a child learn to be polite? Not, it will be agreed, by becoming familiar with a book of etiquette ; good manners so learned are the veneer that, under stress and strain, is bound to crack and peel and show the cheaper stuff beneath. It is by constant adjustments to actual situations that a child learns politeness, and how often the necessity arises for making these adjustments any parent or teacher is w^ell aware. Every incident of daily life demands some response from the child; in making it he comes to assume a given attitude to a given situation. Association and imitation, suggestion and instruction, and the spirit in which these are given help to determine what the response shall be, but they become a part of the child and enter into his life only as he actually makes the response himself. Thus, little by little, taught through daily experience, the child ac- quires a habit of polite behavior, and courteous reactions become instinctive, until after a time he not only acts politely but feels polite; he has become a social being. Forming the Missionary Attitude. The mission- 84 MATEKIALS OF EDUCATION ary attitude must be learned in the same way. In fact, it is not a fanciful exaggeration to say that it is really an extension of good manners, for, in the last analysis, politeness is based on good-will. It arises from a recognition of an- other's worth; it is the result of loving one's brother as oneself; it is enlarging the house of friendship to take in all the members of the Father's family as brothers. Teaching children to assume this attitude is missionary education of the finest sort ; but it must be remembered that an attitude is a response to a situation. Most of the situations in a child's life arise from his human contacts, but there are few children who do not also have some contact with the animal world, and even a city child does not entirely lack contacts with the world of nature. All of these contacts are included in the term ^^ situa- tions/^ and it is evident that w^hen the normal response to these has become democratic, right. Christian, the end of religious and missionary education is won. Parents and teachers alike have failed to realize the responsibility and the opportunity for guiding and controlling these re- sponses. No adequate consideration has yet been given the subject, but much valuable work in this direction will doubtless be accomplished in the near future. Only a few hints are here given, 85 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS in the hope that teachers may see the possibility of such study and undertake it seriously. Contacts of Juniors with the World. The begin- ning must be made by listing the situations of junior children, and then must follow a careful study of these to determine how all the contacts of daily life may be socialized and made Chris- tian. The situations of city and country chil- dren and of boys and girls will vary somewhat, but the educational value is about the same. How rich are the opportunities for teaching Christian response may be seen by referring to the following list, incomplete and hasty as it is. It gives the ordinary contacts of a boy or a girl of junior age living in the country one hundred miles from a city : In the home; Father Mother Brother Sister The farm hand Occasional guests In the community ; Church school and day-school teachers and pupils Friends Townsmen "Summer people" and students home for vacation Tramps 86 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION With the civic order ; Rural free mail carrier Fire warden Game and fish warden Road supervisor School trustee With the economic order; The cream gatherer The men in the section gang, who keep the railway in repair and who secure their drinking water from the farmhouse Buyers of farm products, who make yearly visits The threshing gang Wood-cutters With the animal world; Pets Domestic animals Wild birds in great numbers Small wild animals such as rabbits, foxes, and squirrels Fish and snakes With the world of nature ; Lake, mountains, streams, and forests Wild flowers in great profusion ; other growing things The phenomena of nature, such as storms, rainbows, and stars The city child's contacts are quite different in some respects, although those in the home will not show much variation. The following list gives some of the contacts 87 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS of a junior boy living in a poor home in a sub- urban town: With the civic order ; Postman Policeman Fireman Health officer Truant officer, possibly With the industrial order ; Factory hands Construction gang at work near his home Street laborers With the econoudc order ; Butcher Grocer Milkman Carmen With the animal world; One or two pets Delivery man's horse Fire horses A few wild birds Other children, living in the same town but in more comfortable homes, have much more varied contacts through frequent guests, through tele- phone calls, and thl^oug"h household servants. The child who lives in the large city will have many other contacts not noted here, and the 88 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION situations will vary according to the circum- stances in which each may be placed, but it is evident that the world of the child is not the narrow restricted sphere that it is sometimes sup- posed to be ; his contacts are numerous and reach to the end of the earth. The Attitude of Service. If, then, every boy and girl could be taught to react to all the situations in a truly Christian spirit, would not the work of religious education be completed? The child has two ways of adapting himself — through ex- perience and through instruction. If, by means of these, he comes to respond with gratitude and appreciation to those who serve him and with service and helpfulness to those who need, would this not be manifesting the spirit of brotherhood and cooperation and love to all men? Before this can become the ruling spirit in a child's life, he must be helped to see his dependence upon the street cleaner and the laundress, the teacher and the preacher, the policeman and the day laborer, the inventor and the postman. He must realize that each in his own way and ac- cording to his ability is serving the good of all, and that to the extent that all are working to- gether consciously for the common welfare, the kingdom of God has begun. The child must feel that he, too, has his share in bringing this about 89 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS by making Christian his own sphere, and as he comes to feel that its numerous contacts unite him with living bonds to many other spheres, he should gradually grow to a realization that there is "But one great fellowship of Love Throughout the whole wide earth. Who serves my Father as a son Is surely kin to me." 90 CHAPTER VII THE MATERIALS OF MISSIONARY EDU- CATION (concluded) Incidental Material in Missionary Teaching. Strong emphasis has just been laid on the use of that valuable missionar}^ mater-ial which is naturally found in the every-day life of the child and in the subject matter of the Sunday-school lesson, but this does not indicate that the vast amount of what may be called incidental material is to be disregarded. Music, the Scripture readings used in the opening worship of the school, mission- ary occasions, pictures, maps, bulletins, curios, mottoes, posters, letters from the field, the very atmosphere of the room, the experiences and ob- servations of the teacher, when rightly used, form an important and valuable element in mis- sionary education. The task of the secular school is training citi- zens of the world. Patriotism is taught through the more formal study of history, civics, and kin- dred subjects, but no one will doubt that loyalty is stimulated by singing the national hymns and by telling the stories of their origin, by the 91 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS salute to the flag, and by the use of pictures of the great national leaders and heroes. The task of the church school is training citi- zens of the Kingdom, and loyalty to it and its principles should be inculcated by means of methods similar to those of the secular school. Stories About Hymns. There is no doubt that ^'The Star-spangled Banner" means more to the child when he knows under what circumstances it was written, and possibly, some great occa- sions on which it was sung. In like manner the great church hymns can come to have far more meaning and richness for the child, if there is built up for him a similar background of relig- ious and missionary history. Any good work of hymnology will give stories of the origin and use of many of the hymns and hymn tunes ; these can be told frequently, as the hymns are an- nounced. Now and then a song service, with a printed program containing stories or incidents connected with the hymns, may be used as dig- nified and effective teaching. Stories about Scripture Passages. Similarly, many Scripture passages may be connected with mis- sionary incidents. To illustrate. Psalm 121 should, in the child's mind, be linked with Liv- ingstone ; it was the passage read by the mission- ary on the morning he started for Africa. Genesis 92 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION 1 : 1 and John 3 : IG, verses slowly spelled out by Joseph Hardy Neesima, won hioi to the Chris- tian faith ; they lose none of their intrinsic value and gain greatly in missionary content when they are connected with Neesima's story. Many stories to be used thus can be found in the biogra- phies of missionaries. A number can also be found in Five Missionary Minutes, by George H. Trull. (See bibliography.) It is an excellent plan to record such material as this in an indexed loose-leaf note-book or in a card file, for ready reference. Birthdays of Missionaries. The celebration of the birthdays of great missionaries is an opportunity to build missionary ideals into the consciousness of boys and girls, just as we build into their lives the history of our country in celebrating Wash- ington's and Lincoln's birthdays. Every denomi- nation has its own men and women to be thus remembered, but the beginning may well be with some of the heroes whose work was so big that it belongs to the world — such men as Carey or Livingstone or Judson or Morrison. To illustrate by a single case, on the Sunday falling nearest the nineteenth of March hang on the walls of the church school room a w^ell-framed picture of Livingstone; it may be veiled with the English and United States or with the church and United 93 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS States flags. A simple program dealing with Livingstone's life and works may have as one number the unveiling and presentation of the pic- ture. Thereafter no year should be allowed to pass without some celebration of his birthday. This may be very simple and informal. The flags may be draped about the picture; some of the hero's striking words, typed or illuminated by the school artist, may be placed under it; or Psalm 121 may form a part of the Scripture for opening worship. A reference to the date or a brief word of explanation from the leader should complete an effective bit of teaching which gets its value not from its elaborateness but from its naturalness and its regularity. Photographs of Missionaries. If a church school is privileged to have one or more sons or daugh- ters in active service on the mission field, the photographs of these servants of the King should surely find an honored place in the assembly- room of the school. If these are framed in a group frame with a vacant opening left to be filled, the silent but persistent question which must continually meet the pupils, "Who next?" ' will be an influence that cannot be measured. The Use of Pictures. Many missionary pictures are worthy, both from the artistic and from the educational standpoint, of a permanent place 94 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION on the schoolroom walls. No one can estimate the educational value of such pictures. The set of a child's mind may be determined quite unconsciously but none the less surely by asso- ciating some fine and inspiring picture with the lessons taught in the church school. Many less intrinsically valuable pictures appear from time to time in the missionary publications. These have a passing interest and may be used to ad- vantage. Some of them can be fastened to the bulletin board and frequently renewed. Others deserve a little more dignified treatment and may be temporarily framed. It is surprising how well magazine and other inexpensive pictures look, when put behind glass and surrounded with a good frame of a color and finish to harmonize with the surroundings. A large frame with a hinged back and several mats having different sizes of openings will be found most convenient. Missionary and secular magazines and tourists' guides are good sources from which to obtain fine pictures. These often make far more valu- able teaching material if accompanied by brief, telling captions, which should be very clearly written or typed. The picture displayed in such a frame should be well chosen, artistically ar- ranged, and frequently changed. The frame should be hung low enough to be within easy 95 MISSIONAEY EDUCATION OF JUNIOKS reach of the children. The interested groups that gather about it before and after sessions will soon prove what an important force may be exerted through attractive and significant pic- tures. The Missionary Bulletin Board. The bulletin board, which should be a part of the much-used equipment of every church school room, will often contain the best missionary message of the day ; this may take the form of a newspaper clip- ping, a photograph, a letter, a striking story re- duced to the fewest possible pithy words, a ques- tion, a book review — any one of a score of things which a bright leader will think of as effective and catchy ways of attracting attention and carrying a message. A publicity worker may be enlisted to take entire charge of the bulletins. A class may be assigned the work of providing the material for a month, the exhibit being kept for a year and the school voting at the end as to which was the most interesting or effective. Dif- ferent topics may be assigned to different classes, each class to be responsible for keeping the school informed on that topic for a given period. Any device that will enlist the interest of the children and start them thinking and working is worth while. Missionary Posters. Somewhat similar are the 96 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION missionary posters which classes or groups may prepare at stated times — once a month or of tener, as may seem best. Some background, uniform in size and color, should be decided upon. Window shading, green paper muslin, or bristol-board may be used, but a medium weight cardboard mount is probably best of all. A stock size easily obtainable is 22 x 24 inches. On these cardboards are arranged pictures, clippings, charts, or small curios, relating to any given topic. The posters are hung about the room. Interest is added when the class presenting one explains it and tells something of the needs and the progress of the work in the field portrayed. There is room for much originality and variation in arranging the material. For example, a class illustrating Persia used a small Persian rug as a background; another class presenting Alaska made a wooden canoe — a model brought from Alaska — the cen- tral point of interest; still another class placed a large map of Africa in the center and grouped the pictures around it ; a class illustrating Japan used tea matting for the background. Posters like these should be allowed to hang on the walls as long as they have any interest for the pupils; the alert teacher knows whether they are interesting or not from the size of the groups that gather to discuss them, and should 97 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS see that they are fresh and varied enough to keep the children interested. The task of gathering the material and the responsibility of arranging it, needless to say, should be thrown upon the children as far as possible, as this is in itself a splendid means of inculcating missionary interest and information. A ten-year-old girl was recently told to write to the foreign board for some pictures for the class poster. She did so a little reluctantly. The next Sunday she arrived at the school an hour before time, demanding excitedly, "Where is my teacher? I must show her this letter!" The board secretary had replied in happy vein to her inquiry, using stationery on which appeared a map of the country the child was studying and telling her just what she wished to know. As a result the girl was thrilled to such an extent that the whole class caught something of her enthusiasm. The teacher might have talked and worked twice as much and failed entirely to get such response. Missionary Maps and Charts. Maps and charts are yet other forms of material that are very useful. Most boards and the Missionary Educa- tion Movement publish them either ready for use or in outline or suggestion. Purchasing them in this way saves time, but the teacher who sends MATERIALS OF EDUCATION a check to a board for a finished product loses one of the best opportunities for teaching. The map or the chart which the class has made has infinitely more value in the eyes of the pupils than the finest one that could be bought ready for use, and the meaning of it has gone far deeper into their souls. Since map drawing is not an essential part of religious education, it will doubtless be well to save time and trouble by buying the outline maps, but let no teacher, through inertia or indifference, deny a class the fun and the education that comes from coloring the map or designing and lettering the chart. Mottoes and the sayings of great missionaries may be used in the same way, and almost every school has at least one member who prints readily and artistically. If the charts and mottoes can be done in outline by a member of the school and colored with crayon or water-color by all the children or by a few of them, several most desir- able results are obtained: first, the child in doing the work has learned the words or the message of the motto or chart ; second, he has put himself into a piece of work for the school or class and feels that he has made a real contribu- tion to the need of his group ; third, the pleasure of the children in using a thing that "our school" did is a healthy manifestation of the other side 99 MISSIONAKY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS of cooperation; fourth, the teacher, in directing such worlv, becomes better acquainted with her pupils. School-made Material and "Atmosphere." The use of material made or developed in the school has, of course, a strong educational value; some of it will be done largely as a means of instruction. But much of it, when finished, is quite too good not to be hung where all can see it; the result is that intangible but very desirable thing we call "atmosphere' ' in the school room. Just be- cause atmosphere is so indefinable and is breathed in like the air, naturally and almost uncon- sciously, it is a potent factor in education. Every church school has its own atmosphere. If they will take the necessary thought and effort, teach- ers may see that this is helpful, cooperative. Christian — in other words, missionary — and so they may build these qualities into the very life- structure of their pupils. Missionary Curios. Missionary curios, like pos- ters and charts, help in giving atmosphere; they are instructional ; they may form a service activ- ity, if made by the children for the school. Curios can be cared for in the growing museum, which ought to be a part of the equipment of every church school. Curios may be rented or, in some cases, purchased outright from the Missionary 100 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION Education Movement, as well as from most of the boards. Others may be obtained through mis- sionaries; many quite as useful and suggestive may be made by the children themselves. No better way of making the lives of other children real to our boys and girls can be found than preparing models of the villages and homes, the utensils, and the surroundings of children in dif- ferent parts of the world. Junior children en- joy making all these under direction, and if they consider them sometimes a little too childish to engage their full attention for their own sakes, there is a real joy in making them for use, it may be, in the primary department. A teacher famil- iar with the handwork done in the public schools will find little difficulty in setting up a village made of paper, cardboard, or plasticine, and peopled with dolls of china, cloth, or paper, dressed in native style. The secular school maga- zines are rich in suggestions for such hand-work, and the files may be found in most public libra- ries. Those teachers who have not access to such helps are advised to secure from denominational headquarters or from the Missionary Education Movement one of the boxes of curios — either that on Africa or the one on Japan — and use it first. "How to Make an African Village" con- tains directions and patterns for making African 101 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS curios and a hut; some directions for South American homes are given in The Land of the Golden Man. (See bibliography.) After work- ing these out as a beginning, it is quite easy to make a good representation of any type of home from the descriptions and pictures to be found in almost every missionary magazine. Nearly every school will have at least one member who has artistic ability sufflcient to prepare on rough paper, with colored chalk or crayons, a sketchy background which will give perspective. The village should be set up on a sand tray or on a table covered with paper or a rug to represent grass, earth, or sand. It is a good plan to have such a village in sight most of the time, and to tell a story about it after the children have be- come a little familiar with the scene ; the villages may be changed once in a month or six weeks, and when they have been removed, they may be stored for future use. Letters from the Field. Letters from the field, when well written, may be a means of keeping the home school in touch with actual missionary service. Missionaries are such very busy people and are so far away from the home children that they sometimes quite unconsciously overlook their interests and needs. Moreover the home workers do not always rightly use the letters 102 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION that are sent back. If the letters are read in the school, it is seldom wise to use them in their entirety; short extracts that go straight to the point will be longer remembered ; they should be bright and vital. The leader who presents the letters must know the pupils to whom they are being giving. He will sometimes do far better to translate the letters into the terms which will reach the pupils than to read them in their more sober and less interesting wording. Reports of some kind must be used, if the interest of the pupils is to be kept up, but discretion must be exercised in choosing and presenting them, whether they are culled from printed reports or letters. The Christian Flag Salute. One other method of stimulating missionary loyalty and enthusiasm must be mentioned — the flag salute. This should form a part of all missionary programs and may well be used frequently in the ordinary program of opening worship. The ceremony is described in a leaflet published by the Missionary Educa- tion Movement, which is here quoted : The Christian Flag Meaning The Christian flag is the banner of the Prince of Peace. It stands for no creed or denomination. It contains no 103 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS symbol of warfare. The ground is white, representing peace and purity. In the upper corner is a blue field, the color of the unclouded sky, the symbol of fidelity and truth. Its chief device, the cross of red, is the emblem of Christian sacrifice. The Christian patriot pledges fidelity to the kingdom of God when he salutes this flag. Use The following simple ceremony has been found ef- fective in Sunday-schools and other assemblies. Two pupils, one carrying a United States flag, the other a Christian flag, march to the platform. School stands. United States flag is held aloft. School salutes United States flag by extending right hands toward it and repeating: I pledge allegiance to my -flag, and to the republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Christian flag is held aloft. United States flag is grounded by lowering, and touch- ing the tip to the ground: School salutes Christian flag by extending right hands toward it and repeating: I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Savior for whose Kingdom it stands; one brotherhood, uniting all mankind in service and love. School sings: Fling out the banner! Let it float. Skyward and seaward, high and wide; The sun that lights its shining folds. The cross on which the Savior died. 104 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION Fling out the banner ! Heathen lands Shall see from far the glorious sight. And nations, crowding to be born. Baptize their spirits in its light. This ceremony should be carried out without announce- ment or explanation. The appearance of the flags is the signal for the school to stand. A single chord on piano or organ is the signal for the salute, and for the singing of the hymn. Value Such a ceremony stimulates Christian patriotism. If the spread of Christ's kingdom on earth is the chief concern of the church, it is well that the children and youth should regard the missionary enterprise with feel- ings of enthusiasm and loyalty. The flag ceremony may be used for the opening of the Sunday-school session, or it may be a special feature of missionary programs. In any case it is an effective method of creating a missionary atmosphere in the church school. The Christian and United States flags may be obtained from the educational department of your board or the Missionary Education Movement, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York. Experiences and Observations of the Teacher. Fin- ally, the experiences and observations of the teacher himself are an important part of mis- sionary material. At first thought these may seem to be too commonplace and too simple to possess much value, but any teacher must be aware of the fact that no illustrations he uses in 105 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS his teaching produce more certain and desirable results than those he draws from his own experi- ence ; these have a reality and a naturalness that make them doubly effective. The observant in- structor who keeps his eyes open and his mind alert is constantly discovering teaching material in every-day life; if he is wise, he records the incidents as they come to him, keeping a carefully indexed note-book or a card file. "Where do you find such clever ideas for mis- sionary teaching?" was asked of one young leader, who had met with success in her work. "I am not original,'' she replied, "so I have learned to make everything that comes to my mill missionary grist,'' and she showed how public school devices, newspaper ideas, even the adver- tising pages of magazines had been turned to mis- sionary account. "I'd like to make a poster showing South America's gifts to us," said a teacher, "but my children are too poor to buy the pictures for it." In reply, a friend turned to a pile of discarded magazines and in five minutes had selected from them a score of pictures, which, with the proper caption, showed graphically how South America sends us coffee, beef, leather for shoes, for bags, and for book bindings, sugar, silver, rubber for rain-coats, for tennis balls, and for tires, pepper 106 MATERIALS OF EDUCATION for seasoning, quinin and cocain for hospitals and dentistry, cocoa for food and candy, nitrates for lawns, and asphalt for paving. The value of such teaching is apparent; the emphasis here is rather on the ease with which material may be found, if one is only alert to see it and use it. It does not require originality or cleverness to discover it ; interest and adaptability are all that is necessary; and the swift and joyous response of children to such attractive teaching is at once a reward and an inspiration. The teacher who enters whole-heartedly into the work is soon re- paid, not tenfold, nor thirtyfold, but a hundred- fold. 107 CHAPTEK VIII TELLING MISSIONARY STORIES The Art of Story-telling. Story-telling, one of the most beautiful of arts, is also one of the old- est ; to recall the long list of story-tellers and the tales they told is to read the history of the race. When, in the course of time, story-telling ceased to be a profession, mothers continued to tell stories to the children at their knees, and teachers have always taught their best lessons in the same way. The art has never been really lost, but our own day is seeing a revival of interest in it, because the educational value of the story is being recognized afresh. Story-telling leagues and classes are plentiful, and books on the selec- tion and use of stories and on the technique of story-telling are being constantly produced. For it is generally agreed that story-telling, being based on definite ]3rinciples and worked out by rules, can be mastered by any one who is will- ing to pay the price of effort and study. Even those who seem to be "born story-tellers" follow certain well-tested laws, though by long practise they have acquired such skill that the machinery 108 TELLING MISSIONARY STORIES does not show. Indeed, it is just in practise that the secret of success lies, and of this no one can have too much. Learning to Tell Stories. The ideal way to begin is by joining a story- telling class or league, but if this is not possible, a good start may be made by diligent use of the best book to be found on the subject; in this way familiarity with the theory of story-telling may be acquired, and tech- nique and ease in telling will come with train- ing and experience. Undoubtedly the best book for the beginner is Stories and Story Telling^ by Edward Porter St. John. (See bibliogra- phy.) It contains chapters on the educational value of story-telling, the vital characteristics of a good story, the use of different types of stories, and the story-interests of childhood and adolescence. Each chapter closes with an out- line and suggestions for the study of the topic, and the final chapter contains a carefully classi- fied bibliography. By a careful study of this book even the most inexperienced teacher may hope to gain power and skill as a story-teller. The Essential Product of a Story. A story, like a poem, a painting, or a musical composition, should produce pleasure; this is the chief essen- tial, the sine qua non, of all story-telling, and 109 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS perhaps more especially of missionary story-tell- ing. It is quite true that the story-teller may, and generally does, have an additional end in mind, such as giving information or teaching a moral truth. But if the telling gives little or no pleasure to the hearer, there is a failure to establish that happy relation between the nar- rator and the listener which is one of the delight- ful accompaniments of good story-telling. The lack of pleasure results in a corresponding lack of assent to the teaching which the hearer, under happier circumstances, might have gladly re- ceived. The good story-teller gives pleasure to his hearers, quickens their powers of perception, and stimulates their imaginations, and the teach- ing of the story, being so closely associated with the sense of pleasure, makes a deep and perma- nent impression. No story-teller, then, will be- grudge any effort to perfect the rendering of a tale; and the unity of the story, its beginning, action, climax, and end, will be studied and worked over with the greatest care. The Unity of the Story. It is at the first point, the unity of a story, that beginners are most likely to err. The danger is that the story will include far too much and cover too long a period of time. For example, Livingstone's fight with the lion or John G. Paton's digging of the well 110 TELLING MISSIONARY STORIES at Aniwa are complete stories in themselves and need only enough reference to the biographies of the heroes to form a proper background ; any at- tempt to give a sketch of the entire life of the hero would destroy all unity and result in con- fusion. The scope of a story should be narrowed to take in only a single striking incident, and this the teacher must see and feel vividly himself. It is excellent practise, in preparing the story, to eliminate everything but the very heart of it; this may sometimes be brought within the com- pass of a single sentence. Then exactly the re- verse process must be followed, and the story must be expanded and clothed with life and color and movement; in doing this, the narrator mas- ters it and needs then only to repeat it again and again. The Beginning and the End. The beginning of a story is often troublesome. Sometimes it reminds one of the counsel of whom Marie L. Shedlock speaks in the introduction to The Art of the Story-teller. He began his defence with "Be- fore the creation of the world — '^ but was inter- rupted by the judge with "Let us pass on to the deluge !'' The amateur, inclined to begin too far back, needs to pass on to and over the deluge and start with the founding of the kingdom ; in other words, his beginning should be just so far away 111 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS from his actual story as is necessary to establish a point of contact between his auditors and his characters ; then the story should move with rapid action toward the climax. "Your story petered out and ran down like an Ingersoll watch !'' was the drastic comment of one critic, and this is often true of stories which start out well. The difficulty may be avoided by selecting a single striking point, the climax, toward which the whole action moves. The climax is sometimes the end of the story, but more frequently it needs to be rounded off with a sentence or more. To end a story dramatically and forcefully requires some skill and practise ; study of good models is a great help here. The Story and Its Moral. It is hardly necessary to add that the truth to be taught is so woven in, if the tale be skilfully told, that it becomes an integral and inseparable part of the story; if not, it is worse than useless to try to add it at the end in the style of old-fashioned stories which ended with, "Moral: This tale teaches — y If the truth is imbedded in the story, it will reach the mark in most cases ; if it is not so ingrained, the story is a failure. The Use of Stories. The missionary instructor uses the story as one very happy way of impart- ing information, or he may choose it as a vehicle 112 TELLING MISSIONARY STORIES for teaching a moral truth. Again, just as the primitive tribes transmitted their legends and sacred formulas by handing down from genera- tion to generation the traditions of the group, so the significant stories of church history and of the missionary enterprise may be told again and again to our boys and girls and form a rich part of their inheritance. Yet again the teacher may use stories as one means of creating an environ- ment that will stimulate the right response. The child's experience may be enlarged through his imagination, and his reactions directed, till the Christian response will be entirely natural to actual situations when they arise. So, too, the feeling of kinship and brotherhood with boys and girls all over the world may be cultivated by telling the fairy and folk-lore tales of other lands. These are now becoming avail- able in increasing numbers. They are enjoyable stories in themselves, and they have a distinct missionary value when told as the tales which children in Africa or India or South America enjoy, just as we love our own tales of childhood. So used, stories like "How the Fog Came,'' Every- land, March, 1915, "Why the Banana Belongs to the Monkey," Everyland, November, 1916, and "How the Tiger Got His Stripes," Everyland, January, 1917, make good missionary material. 113 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS Stories True or True-to-fact. Most missionary stories ought to be true ; that is, though they may not have actually happened, they should be true to the life and conditions of the time and place. In any case they should contain a great truth, such as is conveyed in the best fairy tales, fables, and allegories. Stories absolutely true to fact, so popular with junior boys and girls, may be found in the lives and deeds of many missiona- ries. If well told, they are sure to be received with great interest and often have far-reaching results. Sources of Stories. The sources of good mission- ary stories are numerous and accessible, and the number of stories written for children from their point of view is happily increasing, though not yet adequate. Most of the mission boards pub- lish a number of missionary biographies and stories for children, while lives of missionaries written for adults contain much material which the patient and earnest teacher will dig out for his pupils and work over to suit their require- ments. An alert teacher will find in many an unexpected place incidents and hints which he can develop into excellent missionary stories. Here again a loose-leaf note-book or a card file is an invaluable aid. The current missionary publications for chil- 114 TELLING MISSIONARY STORIES dren give fresh material prepared for them. Notable among- such magazines is Everyland. Secular magazines often contain much that is of missionary value, and their pictures or stories frequently afford the teacher a good starting- point. A leaflet entitled, "World Friendship for Boys and Girls," published by the Missionary Educa- tion Movement and sent free on request, contains lists and sources of missionary stories to tell. 115 CHAPTEE IX JUNIOR MISSIONARY READING The Reading Hunger of Juniors. At some point between the ages of nine and twelve the child learns to read easily and naturally; the exact age varies with circumstances and ability. Pro- fessor L. A. Weigle, in The Pupil and the Teacher, uses this point to mark the transition from middle to later childhood. The new ac- complishment is a key by which the child unlocks the door of a new world. With insatiable ap- petite his mind seizes the feast offered it in the pages of books. Everything printed seems to have a real worth, merely because it is printed, and the child reads with little discrimination everything on which he can lay hands. The story of the youthful Edison starting to read all the books in a public library and actually finishing ten feet of shelves before circumstances took him from the town could doubtless be duplicated by that of many other boys and girls. At this time children will resort to almost any means to satisfy the craving for reading; the story-book 116 JUNIOR MISSIONARY READING will be hidden under the pillow at night, ready for the first beam of daylight; it will be slipped among the schoolbooks and receive more than passing attention during the day, when chance of detection makes the stolen joy all the sweeter. No punishment thought out in cold-blooded de- liberation by a stony-hearted parent or an un- sympathetic teacher can equal that of depriving a child of his book before the end is reached. It is as useless and as harmful to try to repress this hunger for reading as it would be to destroy the growing child's hunger for food ; both are normal, healthy manifestations of growth, and both should be supplied with proper and nourishing fare. Reading Tastes of Juniors. Now boys and girls have very decided ideas as to the kind of reading they wish, and just as in the matter of food for the physical body, so here a wise choice must be made by the home and the school. The "goody- goody" book and the tale with the moral plainly labeled and tacked on, the modern child will not accept ; he demands books that are "exciting" and that have "plenty of thrill." The junior child, even if literal-minded, may delight in fairy tales, though he sometimes puts them in a class by themselves and only half believes in them, even while he revels in their poetry and imagination. 117 MISSIONAEY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS At the same time lie may present the curious con- tradiction of insisting that all the other stories be "true," and refusing any that do not bear this label. To most children of this age the world of books is more real than the commonplace sphere of actual life; the daily round of tasks, school, and lessons, dressing and meals, and the thousand and one things on which elders lay so much stress are scarcely ripples on the surface of the deeps in which children live. Their active fancy makes real the characters of the books they read, and these become their friends in such a real sense that to learn they are only the creation of the author's mind is like hearing of the death of a beloved comrade. How many of us remem- ber the black day of disillusionment and bitter disappointment that brought the realization that one's story-book friends had never actually lived ! Stories of Real Heroes and Heroines. Of course all children are not so matter-of-fact, but the dis- appointment and disenchantment of even the literal-minded child may be avoided at the same time that his longing for excitement and adven- ture is met, by giving him stories that are true and at the same time thrilling. The biographies of scores of men and women who spent their lives on the mission field, in social work for the better- ment of mankind, in scientific research, in 118 JUNIOR MISSIONARY READING efforts of any kind to advance man's welfare and happiness afford the very best of material for the mind of the junior to feed upon. Unfortu- nately, up till now much of this material has been prepared only for adults, or, at the best, from an adult point of view, but there is a con- stantly increasing amount of literature for chil- dren which fills all these demands. It also meets another need in supplying the knowledge of men and women whom the children may ideal- ize and worship as heroes and heroines. At first, at least, these must be the people who do some- thing, who succeed in their undertakings! If children at the right time make the acquaint- ance of a Grenfell, a Livingstone, a Clara Barton, or a Frances Willard, such characters will be quickly chosen as ideals and leave no room for the worship of a boxing hero or a moving-picture actress. Stories with Emphasis on Universal Traits. Another type of missionary story for children is fortu- nately becoming more common. In the older view of the missionary enterprise, it was thought wise to emphasize to children the difference be- tween themselves and the children for whom sym- pathy was sought, on the ground that interest could thus be aroused more surely and quickly. Two things have changed this point of view. The 119 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS first is the realization that what is very greatly different from oneself arouses curiosity, perhaps, but seldom sympathy; the feeling is more likely to be dislike and repugnance. The second con- sideration arises from the new conception of the missionary enterprise. Less is said about the "heathen'' and more about brotherhood; less emphasis is put on giving and more on coopera- tion. A child's sympathy is more readily elicited for his brother in another land when he thinks of him as a boy like himself, facing many of the same problems of adjustment, meeting the same daily temptations to do wrong, and fighting the same battles for right, though his skin is brown or black, and the southern cross blazes in his sky. So there is coming into existence a class of stories that show boys and girls the world over as being much alike in all essential characteris- tics; they make it possible for Christian boys and girls to admire the fine inherent qualities of their brothers and sisters around the world and to be eager to share with them — a much more wholesome attitude than the patronizing position of stooping from a fortunate place to give to those in far humbler condition. Notable among such stories may be mentioned African Adven- turerSj by Jean K. Mackenzie, and the South American stories by Anita B. Ferris, published 120 JUNIOR MISSIONARY READING in the first six numbers of Everyland for 1917. Stimulating the Love of Good Reading. Occa- sionally a child Avill be found who has no interest in reading. Such a case needs tactful treatment, but no mother or teacher need fear that the love of reading may not be implanted. Indifference may arise from the fact that the child reads too slowly to enjoy it, or because he has not had his appetite stimulated. Telling stories till a desire for more is created or telling a story up to the crucial situation and then giving it to the child to finish are ways of starting the habit of reading. Much can be done by the simple process of ex- posing children to the influences of good books. If parents and teachers see that good reading is constantly in reach of children and that they live in an atmosphere of books, the cases in which children do not respond will be rare. The wise guide will not forbid even the objectionable books, unless this becomes absolutely necessary; such a course often tends to arouse the curiosity of the child to know what the book contains and may make it seem all the more desirable, because unobtainable. The better way is to keep the supply of good reading so plentiful that the poor has no chance. The Prejudice Against Missionary Books. A teacher sometimes finds pupils greatly prejudiced against 121 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS missionary books and stories. This may arise from the fact that such reading has not been well chosen, or because the children have been urged toward it too strongly and therefore view it in the light of a disagreeable duty. In such cases some scheme must be devised that will pleasantly introduce children to the really delightful mis- sionary literature that exists for them, and a taste for it must be fostered. One way of ac- complishing this is to bind and box attractively, short stories taken from magazines or papers, the boxes being circulated as books. Care should be taken that only the best and most interesting stories are chosen. It is by no means necessary that each should be plainly labeled missionary; the word is coming rapidly to have a broader meaning than formerly for adults, and if it con- veys to children a wrong impression, it is as well to omit it till it can receive its proper content. "Climbing the Ladder." Another device that is often useful is "Climbing the Ladder.-' A genu- ine ladder may be used, but it is probably better for the junior boys to make an imitation one of straight pieces of wood, using broomsticks sawed the proper length for the rungs, which should be eight or ten in number. The ladder should be placed conspicuously in the junior room, and each rung should bear a card having plainly 122 JUNIOR MISSIONARY READING printed on it the name of a book. As the pupils read the books, they climb the ladder. If the number of books available is limited, it may be necessary to allow the children to read them in any order, so that all the pupils may have an equal chance; in this case a second card on each rung might be used to record the names of the pupils who have read the book of that rung. The children who complete the list first should have the feat recognized in some simple but public way. To insure against hasty and superficial reading, the pupils may be asked to answer ques- tions, to dramatize a scene, or to relate their favorite incident in the book. The Story-book Trip. Another device attractive to children is the story-book trip. At the dis- cretion of the leader this may include a single country or a continent, or it may be a trip around the w^orld. Very simple accessories may be made to serve the purpose, or they may be elaborate and include folders, time-tables, maps, and other paraphernalia of the traveler. To each pupil should be issued a ticket, printed on colored paper, to resemble a genuine railway ticket. In a large department these w^ould be more easily obtained if printed; for smaller classes they could be typewritten. The following suggests a possible form: 123 MISSIONAEY EDUCATION OF JUNIOKS S. B. R. R. via E. C. and H. F. Line ( Story-book Reading Route via the Easy Chair and Home Fireside Line. ) Good till Stop-overs at all points Conductors please punch at: South America — Tlie Land of the Golden Man* Japan — When I Was a Boy in Japan* The titles of the books may be varied to suit individual needs; an optional list may be called Side Trips. Maps and posters advertising the trip, folders giving attractive reviews of the books, ^'time-tables" stating the time when re- ports must be given on the books and when the reading band will give a program or hold a meet- ing, all may be used to add interest. A large out- line map of the world may be colored and filled in, as the class travels from place to place by reading, and the spots so visited may be indicated 124 JUNIOR MISSIONARY READING by pinniui>- a tiny Hag- seal to the luap. Book re- views iu the form of fifty-word telegrams giving the most interesting things seen or found in any place may be sent to be read in the department. As each book is read, the "conductor" punches the ticket, and this forms the record of the read- ing. Short Stories and Pamphlets. For children in the earlier period of the junior department, to whom a whole book may seem so long that they hesi- tate to undertake reading it, collections of short stories and pamphlets may be prepared. These, as well as all the books oifered for junior read- ing, should be assembled as attractively as pos- sible. The print should be clear, the illustrations good, the stories natural and full of action, the binding bright, clean, and pretty. The pamphlets or leaflets may be put in envelopes which are decorated with pictures, post-cards, or sketches indicative of the contents. The outside of the envelopes or of the books should make a child's fingers fairly ache to get at the contents, and the reading matter should be so well selected that he comes again and again for more. The Search for Missionary Material. In the fourth junior year, and in some cases in the third year, the pupils are old enough to be greatly interested in watching the secular press for comment that 125 MISSIONARY EDUCATION OF JUNIORS will have a missionary import. Such comment may be culled and sorted by subject and made into scrap-books or filed for future reference. Valuable material will be gathered in this way, but the chief advantage will be the quickened in- terest of the pupils and the broader outlook they gain on the life of the world. Books of Missionary Influence. It is hardly neces- sary to add that any books which give children ideals of brotherhood, sharing, and service, or which tend to increase their knowledge of and respect for the children of other lands are truly missionary in their influence, whether or not they were written with a missionary basis. The^num- ber of missionary books that are well written and that are at the same time suited to junior children is fortunately increasing, though the supply is not yet adequate. Yet any teacher should be able to find in the appended list books of genuine character-building value for junior pupils, however their tastes and needs may vary. Many of them are in the public libraries ; others are used in the public schools; many more are worthy of a place in the church school mission- ary library. 126 READING BOOKS ON WORLD FRIEND- SHIP FOR JUNIOR BOYS AND GIRLS (Prices subject to change) Amicis. Cuore, an Italian school-boy's journal. Henry Holt & Co. $1.00. Ballard. Fairy Tales from Far Japun. Fleming H. Revell Co. $1.00. Bicknell. How a Little Girl Went to Africa. 1904. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. $1.00. Bowman. South America: A Geography Reader. 1915. Rand, McNally & Co. 75 cents. Brain. Adventures with Four-footed Folk. 1908. Flem- ing H. Eevell Co. $1.00. Brain. All About Japan. 1905. Fleming H. Revell Co. $1.00. Bunker. Soo Thah. 1902. Fleming H. Eevell Co. $1.00. Chamberlain. Home and World Series. The Macmillan Co. 40 cents each. How We are Clothed. 1904. How We are Fed. 1903. How We are Sheltered: 1906. How We Travel. 1908. Chamberlain. The Continents and Their People. The Macmillan Co. 55 cents each. Africa. 1914. Asia. 1913. Europe. 1912. North America. 1911. South Ainerica. 1913. Oceania (in preparation). Children's Hero Series, The. E. P. Button & Co. 50 cents each. 127 EEADING BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS Golding. The Story of David Livingstone. 1906. Golding. The Story of Stanley. 1906. Kelman. Chalmers of New Guinea. 1906. Lang. The Story of Gener^al Gordon. 1906. Paget. The Story of Bishop Patteson. Children's Missionary Series (thirteen volumes). Fleming H. Kevell Co. 75 cents each. Baird. Children of Asia. Brown. Children of China. Crowther. Children of Egypt. Dwight. Children of Labrador. Gomes. Children of Borneo. Hodge. Children of South America. Kelman. Children of India. Kelman. Children of Japan. Maclean. Children of Jamaica. Malcolm. Children of Persia. Moscrop. Children of Ceylon. Pitts. Children of Wild Australia. Young. Children of Arabia. Children of Other Lands Series. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 75 cents each. Ambrosi. When I was a Girl in Italy. Demetrios. When I was a Boy in Greece. Joncklieere. When I was a Boy in Belgium. Kaleel. When I was a Boy in Palestine. Lee. When I was a Boy in China. Shioya. When I was a Boy in Japan. Collodi. Pinocchio. E. P. Button & Co. 35 and 70 cents. Cotes. The Story of Sonny Sahib. 1894. D. Appleton & Co. $1.00. Crowell. Coming Americans. Woman's Board of Home 128 READING BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 20 and 40 cents. De Bhimenthal. Folh Tales from the Russian. 1917. Rand, McNally & Co. 40 cents. Uodge. Hans Brinher. 1865. Charles Scribner's Sons. 60 cents. Eastman. Indian Boyhood. 1902. Doiibleday, Page & Co. $1.76. Fahs. Uganda's White Man of Worh. 1907. Missionary Education Movement. 60 cents. Faris. The Alashan Pathfinder. 1913. Fleming H. Revell Co. $1.00. Faris. Wi7ining the Oregon Country. 1911. Missionary Education Movement. 60 cents. Ferris. The Land of the Golden Man. 1916. Mission- ary Education Movement. 50 cents. Ferris. Giovanni. 1917. Missionary Education Move- ment. 50 cents. Grenfell. Adrift on an Ice Pan. Houghton Mifflin Co. 75 cents. Griffis. The Unmannerly Tiger and Other Korean Tales. 1911. Thomas Y. Crowell Co. 50 cents. Hall. Children at Play in Many Lands. 1912. Mission- ary Education Movement. 75 cents. Headland. The Chinese Boy and Girl. 1901. Fleming H. Revell Co. $1.00. Humphreys. The Boy's Catlin. 1909. Charles Scrib- ner's Sons. $1.50. Huntington. Asia: A Geography Eeader. 1912. Rand, McNally & Co. 75 cents. Hutton. Things to Make. 1916. Missionary Education Movement. 50 cents. Judd. Wigwam Stories. 1913. Ginn & Co. 75 cents. 129 EEADING BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS Keith. The Blach-hearded Barbarian. 1912. Missionary Education Movement. 60 cents. Kipling. The Jungle Booh. The Century Co. $1.50. Kipling. Second Jungle Boole. The Century Co. $1.50. Kipling. Just So Stories. Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.20. Lambert. Romunce of Missionary Heroism. 1907. J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.50. Little Cousin Series, The (fifty volumes). The Page Co. 60 cents each. McDonald and Dalrymple. Little People Everywhere Series. Little, Brown & Co. 50 cents each. Manuel in Mexico. Time San in Japan. Rafael in Italy. Kathleen in Ireland. Fritz in Germany. Gerda in Sweden. Boris in Russia. Betty in Canada. Hassan in Egypt. Maria in Holland. Donald in Scotland. Josef a in Spain. Colette in France. Chandra in India. Little Schoolmate Series. E. P. Button & Co. $1.25 each. Bayes. In Sunny Spain. Colum. A Boy in Eirinn. Dragoumin. Under Greek Shies. Green. The Laird of Glentyre. Haskell. Adventures of Katrinha. Muller. Elsheth. Porter. Genevieve. 130 READING BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS Mackenzie. African Adventurers. The Central Com- mittee on the United Study of Foreign Missions. 50 cents. Morris. Home Life in All Lands Series. 1909. J. B. Lippincott Co. 60 cents each. Book I. How the World Lives. Book II. Manners and Customs of Uncivilized Peoples. Book III. Animal Friends and Helpers. 1911. Nida. Panama and Its Bridge of Water. 1916. Rand, McNally & Co. 50 cents. Paine. The Dragon and the Cross. 1912. Charles Scrib- ner's Sons. $1.00. Baton. The Story of John G. Paton. 1892. George H. Doran Co. $1.00. Pitman. Chinese Fairy Stories. 1910. Thomas Y. Crowell Co. $1.00. Pitman. A Chinese Christmas Tree. 1914. Fleming H. Revell Co. 50 cents. Peeps at Many Lands Series (fifty-five volumes). The Macmillan Co. 55 cents each. Seebach. Martin of Mansfeld. 1916. Missionary Educa- tion Movement. 60 cents. Skinner. Heart-of -the- Jungle Tales. 1917. Missionary Education Movement. 50 cents. Stewart. Tell Me a Hero Story. 1909. Fleming H. Revell Co. $1.25. Van Bergen. The Story of China. 1902. American Book Co. 60 cents. Wade. Pilgrims of To-day. 1916. Little, Brown & Co. $1.00. "Wilson. Good Bird, the Indian. 1914. Fleming H. Revell Co. 40 cents. 131 BEADING BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS Wilson. Myths of the Red Children. 1907. Ginii «& Co. 45 cents. Young. Algonquin Indian Tales. 1903. Methodist Book Concern. 50 cents. Young. My Dogs in the North Land. 1902. Eleniing H. Revell Co. $1.25. Zwemer. Topsy-Turvy Land. 1902. Fleming H. Eevell Co. 75 cents. Zwemer. Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country. 1911. Fleming H. Revell Co. $1.00. 132 BIBLIOGRAPHY (Prices Subject to Change) Chapter I Athearn, Walter S. The Church School. 1914. The Pilgrim Press. $1.00. Beard, Frederica. Graded Missionary Education in the Church School. 1917. Griffith and Rowland Press. 75 cents. Diffendorfer, R. E. Missionary Education in the Home and School. 1917. Methodist Book Concern. $1.50. Chapter II Baldwin, Mrs. M. J. The Juniors: How to Teach and Train Them. 1916. The Westminster Press, New York. 45 cents. Coe, George A. Education in Religion and Morals. 1904. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. $1.35. Dawson, G. E. The Child and His Religion. 1909. Uni- versity of Chicago Press, Chicago. 75 cents. Du Bois, Patterson. The Point of Contact in Teaching. 1907. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. 75 cents. Du Bois, Patterson. Bechonings from Little Hands. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. 75 cents. Foster, E. A. The Boy and the Church. 1909. The Sun- day School Times Co., Philadelphia. 75 cents. Harrison, Elizabeth. Study of Child Nature. 1909. Chicago Kindergarten College, Chicago. $1.00. 133 EEADING BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS Home, H. H. Psychological Principles of Education. 1906. The Macmillan Co., New York. $1.75. James, William. Talks to Teachers. 1899. Henry Holt & Co., New York. $1.50. Kirkpatrick, E. A. Fundamentals of Child Study. 1907. The Macmillan Co., New York. $1.25. Lamoreaux, Mrs. A. A. The Unfolding Life. 1907. Flem- ing H. Kevell Co., New York. 75 cents. McMurry, C. A. and F. M. The Method of the Recitation. 1903. The Macmillan Co., New York. 90 cents. McMurry, C. A. How to Study. 1909. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. $1.25. Robinson, E. M. The Junior Worker and His Work. Eaton & Mains, New York. 50 cents. St. John, Edward P. Charts of Adolescence and of Child- hood. The Pilgrim Press, Boston. Each, 25 cents. St. John, Edward P. Child Nature and Child Nurture. 1911. The Pilgrim Press, Boston. 50 and 75 cents. Weigle, Luther A. The Pupil and the Teacher. 1911. George H. Doran Co., New York. 35 and 50 cents. Chapter III Hutton, J. Gertrude. Things to Make. 1916. Missionary Education Movement, New York. 50 cents. Pabst, Alwin. Hand-work Instruction for Boys. (Trans- lated from the German). 1900. Manual Arts Press, Peoria, HI. $1.00. Wardle, Addie G. Hand-work in Religious Education. 1916. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. $1.00. MAGAZINES Everyland, a monthly magazine of world friendship and 134 BIBLIOGRAPHY Christian service for girls and boys. Everyland, New York. $1.00 a year. Normal Instructor, an educational magazine ; ten issues a year. Normal Instructor, Dansville, N. Y. $1.50 a year. School Arts Magazine, an illustrated monthly publication for teachers interested in illustrative art. School Arts Publishing Co., Boston. $2.00 a year. Something to Do, sl monthly magazine for boys and girls. Bennett Publishing Co., New York. $1.00 a year. Primary Education; ten issues a year. Primary Educa- tion Publishing Co., New York. $2.00 a year. Chapter IV Hutchins, Norman. Graded Social Service in the Sunday School. 1916. Baker & Taylor, New York. 75 cents. Kollock, P. L. Immigration Picture Stories. Mission- ary Education Movement, New York. 30 cents. Note — For "Egg- Shell Farms," see under Chapter III, Hutton, J. Gertrude. Chapter V Ferris, Anita B. Children of the Christmas Spirit. 1914. Missionary Education Movement, New York. 25 cents. A Christmas entertainment for boys and girls. Four- teen or more participants. Ferris, Anita B. The Pageant of the Land of the Golden Man. 1916. Missionary Education Movement, New York. 15 cents. A dramatic exercise for boys and girls, based on the book The Land of the Golden Man. From eight to forty participants. 135 BIBLIOGRAPHY Ferris, Anita B. Santa's Allies. 1917. Missionary Edu- cation Movement, New York. 15 cents. A charming summer-time play for out-door as well as indoor presentation. Twenty-two or more par- ticipants. Ferris, Anita B. Visitors from the Colonial Period. 1916. Missionary Education Movement, New York. 15 cents. A Washington's Birthday entertainment. Ten par- ticipants. Ferris, Anita B. Why Didn't You Tell? 1916. Mis- sionary Education Movement, New York. 15 cents. An Easter entertainment for children from five to ten years of age. Twenty-seven or more participants. Prentiss, Janet. Jtist Plain Peter. 1913. Missionary Education Movement, New York. 25 cents. A dramatic entertainment with suggestions for play- ing the games of foreign children. Ten or more par- ticipants, seven of whom take minor parts. Hall, Katherine S. Children at Play in Many Lands. 1912. Missionary Education Movement, New York. 75 cents. A book describing the games of children in foreign lands, with a chapter on costumes. Chapters VI and VII Breed, David K. Hymnology. 1913. Fleming H. Kevell Co., New York. $1.50. Brain, Belle M. Holding the Ropes. 1904. Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York. $1.00. Brown, T., and Butterworth, H. The Story of the Hymns and Tunes. 1906. American Tract Society, New York. $1.50. 136 BIBLIOGRAPHY Ferris, Anita B. The Land of the Golden Man. 1916. Missionary Education Movement, New York. 30 and 50 cents. Ferris, Anita B. Missionary Program Material. 1916. Missionary Education Movement, New York. 50 cents. Hixson, Martha B, Missions in the Sunday -School. 1906. Missionary Education Movement, New York. 50 cents. Sutherland, Allan. Famous Hymns of the World. 1906. Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York. $1.35. Trull, G. H. Five Missionary Minutes. 1912. Mission- ary Education Movement, New York. 50 cents. See also magazines listed under Chapter III. Note — For further suggestions regarding missionary educational material, write for the general catalog of publications and the leaflet, "World Friendship for Girls and Boys," which will be sent free on request. Address, Missionary Education Movement, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Chapter YIII Bryant, Sara C. TIoiu to Tell Stories to Children. 1905. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. $1.00. Houghton, Louise S. Telling Bihle Stories. 1908. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.25. St. John, Edward P. Stories and Story -Telling. 1910. Pilgrim Press, Boston. 60 cents. Shedlock, Marie L. The Art of the Story-Teller. 1916. D. Appleton & Co., New York. $1.75. Chapter IX See list of reading books at end of Chapter IX. 137 (-1 OS r g ^' g <3 ^ ffl w w rt^ Wh ot^ ^S oo Q t>^ 8 W 2 >^2 o §« n? Q mw QO ;z; | oo C^H O 1^ gs H w D Q O CO Q "^ ^ ^ < A tf Oh tM H ^ W k-4 ^ w ^ p u^ ;< W;3 c5 S G^ ft o i-i O 13S o o 'T3 « 2*0 •^ t. ^ .« o § a Is o t-2 a'34 H >H 6 o Z W H ^ t^ aj y} :z; H t3 f-; o tf 2 i f4 2 > 2^. w J Q ^ J ^^ m > .a -2^ c9 03 ^J^a ^.S g^ •§ id ^ a § ^ 1 ^^ 1^ fH ^ ^ H O'^ WW >H r/3 ^§i ^i§ ii 140 Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01234 6476 Date Due tfr 5v ... ll L^ »2- 4 ■r^Q\^l\'t r ' • --I ' M^. rmmmmmm [' §>