AND lEUQIOl^
■fHOMAS WAITON GALLUWAY
/
THE USE OF MOTIVES
THE USE OF MOTIVES
IN TEACHING MORALS
AND RELIGION
THOMAS WALTON GALLOWAY, Ph.D., Litt.D.
\ 1
Professor of Zoology, Beloit College
AUTHOR OF
" Text-Book of Zoology'*
*' Biology of Sex for Parents and Teachers"
" Reproduction," etc.
J J i J i J
THE PILGRIM PRESS
BOSTON CHICAGO
0-3
Copyright 1917
Bt frank M. SHELDON
THE PILGRIM PRESS
BOSTON
To the
REVEREND JAMES WALTON McDONALD
Inspiring pastor of a working church, with a genius for organization;
A preacher, with a sure instinct for fundamentals;
A Christian statesman; a loyal friend; and a modest man;
This study in the methods of the growth of the Spirit
Is affectionately dedicated.
CONTENTS
PAGES
Chapter I. Educational Methods in Religious Education.
1. The meaning of pedagogy. 2. Is pedagogy 1
applicable to religion and the things of the spirit?
3. The two factors in teaching. 4. The proper rela-
tion of these two factors in education. 5. Education
and evangelism. 6. A crying need of better methods.
7. Summary
Chapter II. Some Principles Accepted in General
Education Which Must be Applied in Religious
Education 17
1. Introduction. 2. The unity of human per-
sonality; and its corollaries. 3. Good teaching
always involves getting from the pupil a complete
mental reaction to truth. 4. The self-activity of the
pupil is absolutely essential in moral and religious
education. 5. The pupil's interest is the surest road
to self -activity. 6. The natural instincts, impulses
and motives should render their service. 7. Per-
sonal satisfaction is the potent agency in all educa-
tion. 8. There must be the fullest possible grading of
all that concerns moral and religious instruction.
9. We must recognize that all education, and in
particular moral and religious education, is in a
tentative and experimental stage.
Chapter III. Some Essential Natural Elements in
Education 27
1. Personality and environment. 2. Adaptation,
or the adjustment of personality to the environment.
405444
viii Contents
PAOK
3. The place of personality in life and education.
4. The beginnings of personality. 5. The enrich-
ment of the elements of personality. 6. Structure
of mature personahty. 7. Choice is the critical
thing in personality. 8. Two chief ways of influenc-
ing choice. 9. Training choice by impression. 10.
Training choice through expression. 11. Real moral
teaching involves both impression and expression.
12. Results of impression and expression on the
other internal quaUties
Chapter IV. The Principle of Motivation in Education. 55
1. The impelling nature of desires in life. 2. These
natural impulses and desires are legitimate. 3. The
attitude of the educator toward these desires. 4.
The meaning of motivation. 5. Relation of "motiva-
tion " to some other watchwords of the teacher.
6. The two-fold test of the value of a natural impulse.
7. An enumeration of some of the principal impulses,
instincts and desires that furnish motives in life.
8. Application of motivation in general education
Chapter V. Motivation in Sunday-school Teaching. 71
1. Of what importance to the Sunday schools is this
search for motives? 2. The impulses and religious
education. 3. The applicability of motivation to
moral and religious education. 4. Some practical
reasons why an appeal to the natural motives of the
child is necessary in Sunday schools. 5. The use
of motives is especially necessary because of the
limited opportunity of the Sunday-school teacher.
6. The use of motives is peculiarly necessary in
Sunday school because of the artificiality of much of
our moral and religious teaching
Contents ix
PAOB
Chapter VI. AStudy of the Natural Motives 81
1. Introduction: Shortcomings of our present
inducements. 2. Vague motives; their weakness.
3. Low motives; their weakness. 4. Appeals too
lofty or too remote. 5. Summary of the instinctive
elements to which we may appeal
Chapter VII. Motivation in the Instructional Side of
Sunday-school Work 93
1. The two aspects of education: instruction and
expression. 2. The pupil's part in impression:
attention. 3. Motivation of attention. 4. Peculiar .
value of receptiveness in moral and religious educa-
tion. 5. The religious effect of partial reception of
truth. 6. The effect of proper motivation upon
the degree and quality of reception. 7. Sunday-
school work has been chiefly instructional; but
even this has not been well motivated. 8. Natural
discrepancy between child motives and adult mo-
tives. 9. Our specific task. 10. Some impulses
that may furnish motives for learning
Chapter VIII. Motivating the Expressive Side of Sun-
day-school Work Ill
1. Summary. 2. The greater meaning of ex-
pression in education. 3. Education of choice is
the heart of moral and religious education. 4. More
important to motivate expression then impression.
5. Superior motivation possible in expression. 6.
Essential to find right motives in educating by ex-
pression. 7. Some of the natural impulses which
may serve as motives for expression
X Contents
Chapter IX. Certain Principles to Guide the Teacher
inhis Appeal to Motives 125
1. Review of the natural motives. 2. Selection
of appropriate motives. 3. Egoistic impulses arise
early. 4. Later origin of the unselfish motives.
5. How reconcile these? 6. Legitimate use of the
self-seeking impulses. 7. What we most need to
learn. 8. The Sunday-school dilemma. 9. The
upward-looking impulses. 10. Superiority of natural
over artificial appeals. 11. Summary
Chapter X. Forms of Expressive Work Suitable to
Sunday Schools 137
1. Review of the principle of expressional work.
2. Grades of expressional work in the Sunday school.
3. Forms of hand- work suitable to the Sunday
school. 4. Summary: The service that hand-work
renders
Chapter XI. Forms of Expressive Work: Representa-
tion 149
1. The essential nature of this form of expression.
2. The dramatic and play instincts in the child.
3. The qualities on which these instincts depend
and the states to which they minister. 4. The use
of this in Sunday school. 5. Forms of biblical
representation. 6. Summary of the educational
value of the drama in Sunday-school work. 7. Wor-
ship as an expressive activity . |g
Chapter XII. Forms of Expression: Original Personal
Behavior 163
1. Introduction. 2. Furnishing motives for con-
duct, or practise in righteousness. 3. An illustra-
Contents xi
tion: giving. 4. The task. 5. The possibilities.
6. Some dangers. 7. Some methods. 8. Motiva-
tion of right conduct through sympathy, a desire to
serve, and kindred quaHties — coupled with desire
for approval. 9. Use of the quality of chivalry in
motivating conduct. 10. Appeal to the spirit of
tractability or obedience to authority. 11. Motiva-
tion of life in the home. 12. A suggested program
of graded social expression. 13. Conclusion
THE USE OF MOTIVES
IN TEACHING MORALS AND RELIGION
CHAPTER I
EDUCATIONAL METHODS IN RELIGIOUS
EDUCATION
1. The meaning of pedagogy.
Pedagogy merely means the science of teaching.
The word indicates that teaching human beings may
be reduced to a science. This impHes that results
are produced by definite causes in personality and
character, just as in physics and chemistry and
medicine. The idea is that in education one must
know what results are desired and what elements he
has to work with, before he can go inteUigently about
finding a method of work.
All this means that the structure of human per-
sonality is not lawless, but is definite and can be dis-
covered by study. It means that character grows and
matures in an orderly and natural, rather than in a
haphazard, way. It suggests that we may, if we
learn how personality grows, use the facts we have
discovered about life in such a way as to help insure
that it will be sound and right. Pedagogy says that
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we must not conclude, because the human mind, or
spirit, is complex and difficult to understand, that it
is therefore without order and is to be trained accord-
ing to our impulse and whim.
All of this seems commonplace enough to a modern
student of education, and would not need to be
restated here but for the fact that there is still a good
deal of antagonism in the minds of some religious
people because more and more emphasis is being
placed on the pedagogy of morals and religion. They
feel that in some way this discredits and minimizes
the spiritual and rehgious elements in life. These
higher things and the ancient methods of deahng
with them are thought of as too sacred to be subjected
to scientific examination and improvement. In a
journal of some standing in one of our prominent
denominations this protest was voiced in these
words: "What we need is more faith and less
pedagogy."
Such a point of view as this indicates is clearly
narrow and unwise. There is no matter so important,
none so concerns all right-thinking people, as that of
getting our children firmly grounded in righteousness
and disposed to accept the way of Christ with respect
to life. In our efforts to reach this end we cannot
afford to neglect anything that promises to give light
on this greatest of human enterprises. This book is
an effort to apply some of the principles of modern
education to the whole development of personality,
including morals and rehgion.
Educational Methods 3
2. 7s pedagogy applicable to religion and the things
of the spirit?
This is only another way of asking whether religion
and the highest qualities in our nature are lawless
and without fundamental connection with the rest
of our being, or whether they too are orderly and
natural and have laws that we can discover and follow,
so that we may form rules for culturing them. If the
spiritual part of us and our religious and moral natures
are closely connected with our physical and mental
qualities; if these spiritual qualities grow and reach
their best according to inherent, natural, God-given
laws; if they can be influenced and definitely changed
by forces that may be brought to bear on them from
the outside; and if we may say that certain causes
tend to produce certain effects in morals and religion
and in our spiritual characteristics, — it is at once
clear that we may organize these facts into a common-
sense system by means of which we may consciously
influence the lives of our children toward character
and religious efficiency just as really as toward physical
or mental efficiency.
If it is once agreed that the moral and spiritual
nature is a part of the natural endowment of mankind,
indeed just as natural as the qualities of our body and
mind, it follows that we can get light on the spiritual
qualities by a study of them, just as we can by a
careful study of the bodily and mental characteristics.
Furthermore if we agree that the moral and spiritual
states are closely related to, and determined in great
4 Use of Motives
degree by, the states of body and mind, we must
recognize that the common-sense study of these lower
quahties will also throw light on the pedagogy of the
spirit.
Most modern teachers feel all these propositions to
be true and feel that we have not done as well in our
efforts at moral and religious education as we might
have done, chiefly because we have been slow to give
to it that careful and critical study which we have
given to ordinary education. Such teachers feel that
Jesus was uttering a very profound truth when he
said to Nicodemus that the individual spiritual and
moral nature is '* born," — that is, begins in a small
way, — and therefore must develop just as really as the
intellectual and physical. They feel that we have
made this revelation of Jesus, which he gave us to
enable us to understand and guide the culture of the
growing soul, do service as a kind of pious excuse for
a lazy dependence on mystical and supernatural
processes. We may well believe that the Father has
infinite resources for the inspiration of the human
spirit; but we have no right because of this to ignore
the perfectly manifest and equally divine natural
agencies he has placed in our hands to secure the
soul-culture that he desires.
3. The two factors in teaching.
If, then, teaching may become really scientific, and
if individuals may be educated in respect even to the
deeper moral and religious nature, it becomes essential
that we try to see what results we aim to get through
Educational Methods 5
our teaching and what resources we have with which
to get them. In a study of this kind it is important
that we strip ourselves, for the time, of all traditional
and theological conceptions and try in a common-
sense way to find and to state our problems.
As Christian parents and teachers we are seeking
with all our powers to develop right and completef
which is to say Christlike, character in the individual.
This means that we take the young child and secure
in each individual, by information and inspiration and
training, the development of the disposition and the
power to choose from within in righteous ways. Jesus
himself labeled the child as already the type-member
of the kingdom of heaven, endowed naturally by the
Creator with all its gradually unfolding powers,
including the religious and spiritual.
Choice or decision is the central thing in all character.
It is the human state in which morality and religion
are most fully shown. No Christian can be more
than one who, in all his relations in life, desires the
right things and is able and willing, because of his
internal qualities, to choose and to do the right things.
One who has less than this is not a complete Christian,
no matter what he believes, how much he knows, nor
what upturning emotional or intellectual experiences
he may have had.
In the effort to train the individual in this quest for
right character that will choose the right in practise,
we have just two assets with which to work: (1)
the inherited personality, with all its original, native.
6 Use of Motives
God-given, developing qualities, tendencies, and
powers; and (2) the facts and truths and relations of
the universe as these have been revealed to us. It
is our business so to use these truths as to produce
just the right results in the personality. To do this
we must know and respect truth, whatever its source.
Equally we must know and respect the elements and
laws of the whole of personality that determine these
choices. Our task is to get the best results with the
personalities and the truths at our disposal.
4. The proper relation of these two factors in edu-
cation.
It is our appreciation of these two factors that
determines how we shall proceed. It is the relative
value that we give to these two things that determines
our pedagogy. It is the modern viewpoint that the
personality of the pupil is the central thing, and that
truths and systems and science and institutions exist
for, and are to be adapted to, the child, and not the
child to these. This view has complete support both
in the discoveries of the students of childhood and in
the teachings of Jesus.
In much of our general teaching we teachers have,
in effect, been saying something hke this: "The
subject we are teaching (whether mathematics,
language, or science) is the result of long study by
scholars. It is organized in the best way we know.
The children must come to this subject and take it in
the way it has been organized and interpreted by our
mature thinking. If the child is not interested in it
Educational Methods 7
in this form, or cannot grasp it, so much the worse
for the child. This is only evidence that it is not
normal."
We are not completely away from this sort of thing
in any of our teaching; but we are rapidly getting
away from it. We understand, in theory at least, that
the nature of the child is not to be bent to the logic
of the subject, but that the subject is to be picked to
pieces without any respect to our mature science of it,
and it is to be used in the way which will best arouse,
stimulate, feed, inform, and nourish the child. The
child assimilates suitable portions of truth and grows
by it into truthfulness.
In our religious education particularly we fall into
this error of letting our mature ideas of the subject,
rather than the child, dominate the teaching. We
say: " In the Bible we have the truth of God. This
is the text-book of the religious life. Our theologians
and denominational philosophers have organized
some of it into a system. This commends itself to
our mature minds. This is the doctrine delivered to
the saints. This must be given to our children so
that they too may have our views of divine truth."
There is no more justification for this attitude in
religious matters than in mathematics. Indeed more
danger will come in the former than in the latter case
from this unpedagogic attitude.
The child's religious nature, just as its conception
of numbers, is a native and growing thing. It is not
just the same in any two individuals, nor at any two
8 Use of Motives
periods in the same individual. As its body and mind,
so the spirit of the child must have food suited not
merely to its comprehension but to its interest and
growth. The sacredness of the spiritual nature does
not make it any exception to the principle that the
child is the center of all instruction, and is more sacred
always than the material of instruction. The only
value the Bible or any other body of religious teach-
ing has is that human beings may be taught by it.
Material for religious teaching must be graded and
presented solely with the child's needs in view. This
is religious pedagogy. It is common sense applied
to the proper development of humans, physical,
mental, social, moral, and spiritual. Our sole test
must be so to apply truth as to develop by means of
it the disposition and the power to make right choices
in life.
5. Education and evangelism.
In this task of leading youth into right habits of
choice two methods have been stressed by religious
people. Unfortunately these methods have been
looked upon as antagonistic to one another. One
attitude is illustrated by the more f ormalistic churches,
such as the Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal.
These have emphasized chiefly instruction and the
formation of early habits of right action. All stu-
dents of religion must be impressed with the hold
which these churches have been getting upon their
young people. It may be that much of the matter
that has been included in this teaching has not been
Educational Methods 9
very vital or developing. Nevertheless there can be
no doubt that the nature of the training is such that
the influence of the teaching is long-lived.
On the other hand, and largely as a reaction from
this formal method of bringing the individual into the
church, there has arisen a group of religious leaders
who look on such teaching as of minor importance.
These people look upon an emotional response, made
up largely of hopes and fears, as of the first importance.
This is the idea of the so-called evangelistic churches,
at least in so far as they are to be distinguished from
the others. This idea has had a marked develop-
ment in the last two hundred years.
Both of these ideas and the methods growing out
of them are extreme. There is no question that the
emotions and desires have a large and fundamental
place in determining choice and character in reference
to spiritual things, as elsewhere. In this the evangel-
istic idea and method are sound. On the other hand
it is equally true that information, training, and habits
have very much to do with choice and character.
Training in making right choices prepares for the
great choice of Christ as Savior of life, and for the
after choices which test this great choice. In this
the non-evangelistic churches are equally right. The
weakness of the formalistic churches is that the
choices may lack the emotions that give them power.
The weakness of the evangelistic churches comes from
the fact that they read into the one great choice more
meaning than it can possibly contain, and this tends to
10 Use of Motives
minimize the importance in their minds of the practi-
cal choices that follow, and of the character that
makes them certain.
Real Christianity can only suffer by any such effort
to narrow the basis of religion. Religion includes the
whole of man. Its purpose is to give a sense of pro-
portion, — a sense of values, — to cause one to make
choices in the light of the whole of life rather than by
a portion of it. The evangelist errs in not realizing
that morals and reUgion based on information and
training are just as vital as any that can grow out of
the appeal to the more primitive emotions. The
only thing we are concerned with is right character,
guided from within into right choices. It is absolutely
a matter of indifference how much of it comes through
the emotional side and how much through the in-
tellectual and habit side, — provided always that the
right actions of the individual are the outcome of his own
right states, — and that these are permanent states.
It is further necessary for us to remember that
education is not limited to the training of the intelli-
gence merely. The emotions can be educated and
need education just as much as the intellect. Much
of what has been called '' heart religion " and " ex-
perimental religion '' is an emotional spasm and not
even a permanent and rightly trained emotional
attitude. It too often lacks constancy because the
emotions are not trained and not balanced by cor-
responding training of the other qualities that help
to make choices sound.
Educational Methods 11
The church, when it comes to understand the peda-
gogy of the rehgious nature, will not therefore make an
antithesis between education and evangelism. It
will rather train the emotional life wisely from the
beginning alongside with information and reasoning
and habit, by every teaching device known to us.
And on the basis of all this it will use the evangehstic
appeal as warmly and sanely as possible, — not as
something different from education, but as a part of
education. It will seek to have every choice, from
that which accepts Christ as the Master of life to the
little hourly choices which are so much more difficult
to make, involve the self-activity of the whole of the
personality. This is the only way to get a religious
life that does not involve a continual conflict between
the desires and the reason. We are greatly at fault
that we have undertaken to emphasize either at the
expense of the other.
6. A crying need of better methods.
It can scarcely be claimed by any student of the
subject that our success in rearing our own children
to the type of character and conduct that can fairly
be called Christian is so great that we need not look
for better methods. It is true even in Christian homes
and churches that a very large proportion of the
children are not safely developed into what we desire
in respect to personality. Instead of comfortably
charging up these failures to supernatural forces of
evil, it would be more sane and honest to seek out
the points where we as religious teachers are most
12 Use of Motives
signally failing, and try by good pedagogy and sound
evangelism to increase the measure of our success.
There is just now a crying need that all the con-
structive forces of society unite in finding better
methods of getting right moral and religious results.
The formal, traditional instruction of the non-evan-r
gelical churches is failing to make real Christians in
any large numbers. The emotional evangelism of the
evangelistic churches is in its turn failing to develop
right character in practise. The homes, the schools,
the Sunday schools, and the churches should find a
way to join in this, the most important enterprise of
human society. The only possible way to correct
the situation is to take what has been found really
valuable in the emotional approach and add to this
the best training and habit-formation we can get;
vitalize all these methods by the best insight we can
get from the scientific study of the child and of its
development. This we must do with minds con-
tinually open to possible improvement in our methods.
For we are, as a matter of fact, just beginning to
experiment on this most complex and difficult phase
of human education. Our efforts at religious education
until very recent years have been much like the
practise of medicine three hundred years ago, — a
mixture of quackery and superstition.
Morals and religion, to have any value, must in-
clude the physical, the intellectual, the emotional,
and the social in relation to the spiritual. It is there-
fore more complex and more difficult than any or
Educational Methods IZ
all of these. But, because it includes these, whatever
we have learned about education in these simpler
fields will help us in the higher and more complex task
of religious education, if we but have the insight to
use it. We cannot afford to ignore it.
7. Summary.
The educational method as applied to religion
merely means that better results will be had if we
study the factors in the religious life of human beings
and undertake to meet and utilize all these factors in
a scientific and complete way. By studying the nature
and content of the religious qualities, by learning
how these are related to our other characteristics and
how they grow, by knowing how truth and situations
may best be used to develop the qualities we desire,
we will increase the chances of bringing our young
people into full use and enjoyment of their moral and
religious capabilities. Many of the natural qualities,
as instincts, desires, emotions, ideas, habits and
the like, have much to do with our choices. Choice
is at the very heart of morals and rehgion. All of
these things may be modified by training.
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. There are two great factors which we, as teachers,
must understand and take into account :
(l) Personality, which is natural and native; con-
tains at the outset the germs of all that can de-
velop later; is central and determines the whole
process; is plastic and capable of development.
14 Use of Motives
(2) The Materials that we may use to stimulate
personahty. What are they?
2. Pedagogy consists merely in trying to find out
so much about both (l) and (2) that we shall get the
best possible results from applying (2) to (l).
3. Religious Education is not an education of a
part of personality. It is the education of all of
personality into a particular attitude. It must include
emotions, desires, reason, ideals, habits, choices,
will.
4. The religious nature is dependent on the nature
of the body and mind. What are the corollaries of
this?
5. Practical possibilities of combining evangelism
and education.
6. The idea of " progressive decisions " in respect
to religion.
Suggestive Questions
Is there yet a real science of education? When
can it become so? Do we use the same degree of
common sense in our training for morals and religion
that we use in training for the various life-professions
and callings? Is pedagogy destructive of faith? Do
we rule God out of life when we say that religion is a
natural human quality? Why must we fail when we
present religion or anything else to youth in our
mature form? Why are we so prone to try to bend
the child to our mature systems? On what internal
elements does right choice depend? How much
Educational Methods 15
emotion is desirable in making choices? How much
knowledge? Do you think that any child can, once
for all, make an acceptance of Christ that is adequate
and complete? What then? What are some of the
corollaries of a " spiritual birth "f Why does undue
magnification of the great decision tend to minimize
religion in practise? What is right in the matter?
Some Practical Problems
1. The practical education of the emotional states.
Must be properly educated, just as other qualities.
Emotions must have practise and expression. How
can we secure practise of the emotions? Education
sometimes means control and restraint rather than
increase. Answer in terms of some of the following
emotions: — sympathy, love, fear, anger, jealousy,
kindliness, joyousness, gratitude, etc.
2. The modification of desires. The formation of
desires. How accomplished? Trace in your own
experience the growth or waning of some desire.
What elements entered into this? Bearing of this
on practical education. Can one desire ever be made
to aid in the development or control of another?
Illustrate.
References
Bagley: The Educative Process. The Macmillan
Co., N. Y. $1.25
Coe: Education in Religion and Morals. Fleming H.
Revell Co., N. Y. $1.35
16 Use of Motives
Galloway: Educational Function of the Sunday
School, in Encyclopedia of Sunday Schools and
Religious Education, Thomas Nelson and Sons,
N. Y.
Home: Psychological Principles of Education. The
Macmillan Co., N. Y. $1.75
James: Talks to Teachers on Psychology. Henry
Holt & Co., N. Y. $1.50
Kirkpatrick: Fundamentals of Child Study. The
Macmillan Co., N. Y. $1.25
CHAPTER II
SOME PRINCIPLES ACCEPTED IN GENERAL
EDUCATION WHICH MUST BE APPLIED
IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
1. Introduction.
There will be no effort in this chapter to discuss at
length the principles of teaching, either in general
or in religious education. The writer feels, however,
that mention should be made of a few of the accepted
beliefs in respect to the general problems of education
which seem most fully to bear on the moral and
religious training. There is no thought that we can
apply directly to religious education all the devices
that have been found helpful in the common schools.
Nevertheless any educational principle which has
been shown to have deep meaning in the education of
youth is more than likely to throw light on these
higher forms of education that depend on the lower.
Some of these fruitful ideas which will help solve our
problems in religious training are enumerated in
this chapter.
2. The unity of human personality; and its corol-
laries.
This principle means that personality is not really
divided up into separate faculties. For convenience
we sometimes speak as though it were. In fact,
17
18 Use of Motives
however, we cannot separate ourselves into bodily,
intellectual, emotional, social, moral, and spiritual
faculties. On the contrary these qualities mutually
influence one another. No one of them can be trained
without all of them being modified by it. None can
be neglected without the suffering of all. When I am
thinking or feeling or willing my whole personality
is involved in the act, and not merely a special
faculty of me. When I am making moral and religious
choices the same is true.
Some of the most important corollaries of this truth
for the teacher of religion and spiritual things are
these: — (1) We must seek to win and hold the whole
of the child's nature and make it all contribute to
and be included in the result; and (2) we have more
handles or starting-points in our task than we have
thought. In other words we may start anywhere in
personality and reach the spiritual if we only have
insight enough to follow the laws of personality in
taking our steps.
3. Good teaching always involves getting from the
pupil a complete mental reaction to truth.
When we appeal to, or instruct, or otherwise stimu-
late a living person we expect a response of some sort.
This is the sign of life. All life has the power and
disposition to respond to stimulus. The nature of the
response is the measure of the life. In our education of
children in this greatest of all tasks of making righteous
choices, it is essential that the pupil respond, and re-
spond correctly in the light of all he knows. Stimulus
Some Principles of General Education 19
without response is deadening to the whole of person-
ahty. To be aroused and not to act tends to destroy
the power and disposition to respond. Furthermore
any response which is produced and determined by only
a part of personality, as by the desires alone or the
habits alone or the reasoning alone, is necessarily
incomplete and false to the total of personality. The
only safe method in early education is to see to it that
every stimulus is allowed to bring the proper response.
In this way the child becomes not merely responsive
but learns to make each response in the light of all
its outlook and resources.
4. The self-activity of the pupil is absolutely essential
in moral and religious education.
It is not enough in morals to get a response from
the pupil involving an adequate reaction of his per-
sonality to the stimulus. This response must he the
pupiVs very own. It is possible to impart information
or to get some forms of attitude and habit with little
internal activity on the part of the child. But in
morals and religion, as well as in most other significant
elements of character, the culture does not come
through responses which are forced from the outside.
To have moral and spiritual significance all attitudes,
choices, and decisions must be the child's own. There
is no place in education where the principle of self-
activity is as important as in religious training.
5. The pupiVs interest is the surest road to self-
activity.
A complete personal reaction is self-activity. A
20 Use of Motives
reaction forced from without does not often insure a
complete response. Activity or response which is the
resultant of the whole of the nature is necessarily-
more educative than enforced or partial responses.
The greatest aid to this kind of response controlled
from within is the active interest of the child in the
thing that is desired. Any time spent in finding the
pupil's interests, or in arousing his interest in some-
thing which will make him an ally rather than an
opponent of the parent or teacher, is most profitably
spent. This principle of interest is one of the most
fruitful in modern education. It is even more im-
portant in moral and religious training than in mental,
since moral choices involve the individual's complete
appreciation of relative values, and his whole-hearted
response to them. Nothing but interest can secure
this.
6. The natural instincts, impulses and motives should
render their service.
All the natural qualities of personality, — as
curiosity, imagination, restlessness, greed, fear, confi-
dence, and the like, — are able, if properly handled, to
make some contribution to personality, including
the religious nature. The task of the teacher is to
call upon these inner tendencies and to use them at the
right time and in the right amount; to develop those
that should grow, but to see that they do not become
over-powerful; to displace by better ones those that
should not become permanent elements in character.
It is by proper treatment of these native desires and
Some Principles of General Education 21
impulses that we arouse interest, get the " point of
contact '* in teaching, and secure motives sufficient
to get self-active responses. We have not really
appreciated the driving power of these instincts.
They furnish the momentum of life.
7. Personal satisfaction is the potent agency in all
education.
All education, including moral and religious, con-
sists in the establishment of connections or associations
between situations and conduct by way of our per-
sonal states. In the lower animals and in lower
human activities these connections are very simple
and direct because the internal states are simple. For
example, a chicken learns to get out of a labyrinth
and join its fellows on the outside by establishing a
connection between this total situation and those of
its own actions by which it gets out. At first it tries
a large number of useless activities; but gradually
it learns which of these are useless and it connects
in its own mind the correct muscular actions with
the desired result. Thus it learns after some trials
to get out in one tenth of the time required at first.
In the higher human stages the connections include
memory, ideas, habits, standards, choices, and the
like. But whether in the education of the lower
animal to perform his tricks or in the human being
to choose righteousness, the satisfaction or the dis-
comfort that accompanies the act has more influence
in stamping in or stamping out the particular response
or action than anything else. If the child experiences
22 Use of Motives
satisfaction as the result of a special action under a
given situation it is very likely to select and repeat
the action under similar circumstances. It is by such
repetition that habitual connections are made. This
is just as true if the satisfaction takes the higher
mental and spiritual form. Personal satisfaction is
thus one of the greatest instruments in the educational
process, from the lowest to the highest. We must
come to know how best to use it for moral and religious
ends. Our work becomes in large measure a matter
of educating the satisfactions.
8. There must he the fullest possible grading of all
that concerns moral and religious instruction.
This is implied in much that has already been said.
It is recognized in some degree even in the crudest of
our teaching. But we have still further to go in this
regard. The simplest form of grading, and the first
to be recognized, is the grading of methods of instruc-
tion. This we have been doing for some years in the
old uniform Sunday-school lessons. Different methods
were devised in an effort to make this one lesson serve
all ages and grades. It is, to be sure, like grading
trigonometry to all classes from the kindergarten to
the high school. It is an effort to compensate for
presenting unsuitable material at all by seeking to
do it in a way suited to the development of pupils.
A more fundamental grading is that of the materials
of instruction. This means that at every step the
material chosen must be suited to the particular stage
of the child's growth and development, to his interests.
Some Principles of General Education 23
to his emotional states, to his favorite modes of self-
expression, and to his satisfactions. In a word our
matter and method of teaching cannot secure a
normal, natural, sound, complete personal reaction
unless it is graded to the whole of personality. It is
more necessary to grade instruction that seeks to
secure right conduct than that which seeks merely
to impart information. So grading is even more
important in Sunday-school work than it is in the
day schools; because here information is merely a
means to an end. We are seeking choice and behavior
through information.
9. We must recognize that all education, and in
particular moral and religious education, is in a tenta-
tive and experimental stage.
The quality and results of our efforts at religious
training have suffered much because of an idea that
the steps in the religious life have, supernaturally, been
made complete, simple, and clear. It is not simple.
On the contrary moral and religious education is as
much more complex than mental as the mental is
than the physical. Moral and rehgious education
includes the mental and the physical and social aside
from its own particular elements. Much of our failure
in the past is due to our failure to recognize this fact.
It has made us careless of our study of the elements in
moral and religious education. Indeed it has made
some good people deny that the teacher of religion
and morals need know anything of psychology or
pedagogy. It has made us feel that the complex
24 Use of Motives
moral and spiritual teaching may safely be put into
the hands of persons less skilled than those who care
for the minds of our children or than the physicians
who care for their bodies.
In reality the human race is just waking up to the
complexity and to the possibilities of systematic
religious education. We have not really penetrated
the outer crust of the subject. We are not in a position
to dogmatize about anything. It is our duty to
recognize that we are experimenting. It is our duty
to experiment sanely, and through systematic study
of our experiments to improve.
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. The relation of the principles of general educa-
tion to those of moral and religious education.
2. Mention some of the corollaries of the fact that
personality is a unity.
3. ^* Faculty " psychology. Meaning of the ex-
pression. The opposite conception.
4. The ability to respond to stimuli is the measure
of life.
5., Develop more fully the meaning and role of
self-activity in growth and education.
6. The strongest reasons for a complete grading of
Sunday-school lessons.
Suggestive Questions
Why is it probable that most of the important dis-
coveries in general education will help in moral and
Some Principles of General Education 25
religious education? Is it possible to train or neglect
one part of our nature and not have some effect on the
rest? Does this mean that all parts are of equal
importance? Why is ^' self -activity " more important
in moral and religious education than in any other?
Why is play so educative to children? Which is more
important, — grading the materials of instruction or
the method of presenting the material? Why? Is it
enough to grade Sunday-school instruction to the
intelligence of the pupil? What then? Why is it
more important to grade instruction that strives to
mold choices and conduct than that which seeks
merely to give information?
Some Practical Problems
1. Self-activity versus external control. Is it
necessary to allow a child to " run. wild ^' in order to
reahze " self-activity "? Must a child be forced
to feel and think and do as we think best in order to
have a sound attitude of obedience and to perform
our full duty by him? What is the sane point of
view? Have you achieved it? If you are convinced
that a child should feel or think or do something which
he is manifestly unwilling to do, what are the wise
and sane steps of procedure?
2. Grading teaching to the whole of life. To be
most successful, teaching must be graded to the
emotional life, to the desires, to the capacity for
interest, to the satisfactions, and to the powers of
expression of the child, as well as to his understanding.
26 Use of Motives
Can you mention some aspects of morals and religion
that a child could not be expected to appreciate?
Mention some instances of teaching that violate the
rule.
3. Complete and partial responses. Suppose a
child desires very much to do a certain thing. If
its judgment and experience prompts it to do the
opposite, how can we best help the child? To get a
full and complete response we need to win over the
desires. Why is this better than issuing an order,
accompanied by a threat?
References
Athearn: Contributions of General Psychology and
Pedagogy to Religious Education, in Encyclo-
pedia of Sunday Schools and Religious Education.
Thomas Nelson and Sons, N. Y.
Burton and Mathews: Principles and Ideals for the
Sunday School. University of Chicago Press.
$1.00
Dewey: Moral Principles in Education. Houghton
Mifflin Co., Boston. .35
Galloway: Principles of Religious Development. The
Macmillan Co., N. Y. $3.00
Starhuck: Psychology of Religion. Chas. Scribner's
Sons, N. Y. $1.50. Also Religious Education,
Vol. 8; Dec, 1913.
(See also references for Chapter I.)
CHAPTER III
SOME ESSENTIAL NATURAL ELEMENTS IN
EDUCATION
L Personality and environment.
A little thinking will make clear to us that what is
within us and what is without us make up all the
elements that enter into our lives. To relate properly
that which is within us to that which is without is
the act of living, and includes all the problems of
living. Personality then, in its entirety, and the
whole of the environment of personality, include all
that we can consider in respect to life and education.
We must not mistake, however. Personality is ex-
tremely complex, and the environment is equally so,
including as it does all the material, the mental, the
social, and the spiritual surroundings. The environ-
ment includes all that may act upon us. It includes
truth and beauty and God no less than it does other
individuals and food and light. Life is the interaction
of the individual and its environment.
2. Adaptation, or the adjustment of personality to
the environment.
The most interesting and distinctive thing about
life is the capacity of the individual to be aroused by,
and the power to respond to, the environment. In
every act of responding to the influence of the en-
2fZ
28 Use of Motives
vironment the individual is changed, and in the long
run the changes are such that the organism becomes
better adjusted to its surroundings as the result of
them. This is found in life of all degrees, and is one
of the most interesting and far-reaching things we
have learned from the study of living objects. Every
act of the living organism is in some way related to
this necessity of adjustment to its environment. All
education, from the most material to the most spiritual,
is conditioned by this principle. All organisms must
in the end become adjusted to all the really im-
portant and influential forces in their environment.
Adaptation to truth and God are as real and neces-
sary, if these are important in influencing life, as
adaptation to water and food, and for the very
same reasons.
It is important for us to realize that this adjust-
ment between the individual and the environment is
almost exclusively the work of the organism. True,
the environment may change from time to time and
might incidentally become more favorable; but the
individual is really the plastic thing. In the long
run it must make the adjustment. It is the organism
and not the environment that is destroyed if the
adjustment is not made. The shorn lamb becomes
adjusted to the wind, rather than the reverse.
Light then is not adjusted to the eye, nor water
to meet our thirst, nor God to our consciousness of
him. The eye has gradually grown into adjustment
to light. The organism is the plastic, growing, adap-
Some Essential Natural Elements 29
tive thing. Thus have human personalities come into
adaptation with the great reahties of the universe
about us. It is because of this power of adjustment
that any education is possible. Education should be
an adjustment to the conditions of life.
3. The place of personality in life and education.
In all the process of human growth and education
it is the human personality that is being continually
influenced and is becoming adjusted to the real things
in the environment. It must be recognized as cen-
tral in the whole process. The environment, good or
bad, may act and stimulate; but it is the personality
that responds well or ill, and is modified in accordance
with the nature of the response. The individual
cannot again be the same after having been stimu-
lated and having responded. If it responds in the
right way it is preserved and has comfort and will be
more likely to respond in the same way again. Some-
thing has been left in personality by experience. Per-
sonality is thus built up by its responses to its stimuli.
This is development.
In responding to outside influences men and other
organisms have a choice of at least two ways of
acting. For example, organisms that are influenced
by light or gravity may move toward the light or
away from it, with the pull of gravity or in the
opposite direction. Some types of animals and plants
tend to do one of these things; some tend to do the
other. Both are adapted to light, but they have
become adapted in different ways. Their lives be-
30 Use of Motives
come very different in consequence. This is the
beginning of choice in its simplest form. In human
individuals there are many more kinds of choice than
for the lower animals. They become very rich and
varied, and consequently it comes to be more of a
problem always to make right choices. In man,
therefore, the higher choices, those that have to do
with the higher mental, social, moral, and spiritual
problems and adjustments, become increasingly im-
portant and increasingly difficult. And yet choices
are still to be reduced to the right and the wrong, to
the best and the worst.
We saw in the preceding chapter that the great
purpose of religious education is to enable the indi-
vidual to have the disposition and the ability to make
right choices under the various stimuli of his sur-
roundings. This is only another way of saying that
we want individuals to become rightly adapted to the
whole of their environment, or at least to those
great elements in it that are most fundamental to
the abundant life. This is the object of life and of
education for life.
4. The beginnings of personality.
In the beginnings of individual Ufe human per-
sonality consists chiefly of the following things, all
of which have been inherited: (1) the senses through
which the environment acts on the individual; (2)
certain simple but all-important tendencies, instincts,
and appetites; (3) certain capacities which are
wholly latent at first but come into action with
Some Essential Natural Elements 31
development; (4) simple powers of muscular action,
by which responses are made; and (5) a sense of
satisfaction or dissatisfaction growing out of action.
We have seen that the external influences may put
this machinery of personality into motion; as, for
example, when we put our finger into the mouth of the
recently born child its instinct of sucking, aroused by
its sense of touch, produces the muscular response of
sucking, which is much too complex to be '' learned "
so readily. It would require a very long time to learn
to coordinate all the muscles necessary to do this.
The sense of touch merely sets off this complex, well-
formed and inherited instinct. But this does not tell
the whole story of the sucking response. If the child
is left alone for a while certain changes take place
within it which makes the child hungry, as we say.
Then it seeks to get something into its mouth. Its
own finger may be put there, in answer this time to
the internal stimulus of hunger, or it may even go
through the motions of sucking with nothing in the
mouth. In one case something in the child's environ-
ment aroused the sucking instinct, and in the other
an internal appetite aroused it. In our own case the
smell or sight of food may arouse in us the will to eat,
or hunger within may stimulate to exactly similar
actions.
w
o
f=4
Some Essential Natural Elements 33
DISCUSSION OF FIGURE 1
This is a diagram of personality at birth. There are inherited
four main assets: (1) the senses, by which we appreciate the
stimuU of the outside world or of the internal appetites; (2)
the muscular apparatus by which we can act; and (3) internal
nervous connections between these, which determine that a re-
sponse, and what response, shall follow a stimulus. These nervous
connections (3), including the brain, are already endowed at
birth with (4) certain tendencies, or prejudices as we might
call them, which predispose toward certain actions. These
predispositions we call instincts, impulses. The response either
satisfies the tendency or it does not. If so, action stops for the
time; if not, action probably continues. These are purely in-
herited, and are very important in building up the conscious
personality. Choice at this stage is instinctive. The illustration
of the sucking child (p. 31) will suggest the nature of personal
response at this stage. The arrows show the course of events
from a stimulus to a response.
Even in early life, then, we may say that there are
two important stimulating elements producing action :
environment, and the inherited instincts and
tendencies. We are creatures of our instincts and
surroundings. When these two stimuli act together
we get the greatest possible influence on behavior and
on personality. When external stimuli and internal
impulses lead in the same direction choice is practically
determined, and choice and response follow very
directly and naturally upon stimulation. In other
words, to put something in the mouth of the hungry
infant insures the instinctive response of sucking.
This fact has tremendous significance in all education.
34 Use of Motives
The accompanying diagram (Fig. 1) suggests the
make-up of personality in this early stage.
5. The enrichment of the elements of personality.
We have seen that the organism is never the same
after responding to a stimulus. Every time a stimulus
works on through personality to a response, there are
two effects: (1) the response or reaction itself, good
or bad; and (2) the internal modification of personality
due to the stimulus and the reaction. These inner
changes are most intimate and far-reaching, and
make human education possible. Of course the senses
themselves are educated through practise. Similarly
greater skill in responding will come to the organs
of expression in the act of responding. Both of these
enter into education. But very much more important
still, the internal instincts and tendencies involved
in the action will be modified by any such reaction.
They may be strengthened and fixed, or weakened,
depending on the nature of the experience and the
outcome of the response in furnisl^ng comfort or
satisfaction.
For example, let us return to the sucking babe.
If when it is hungry a bottle containing milk is given
it and it gets food as the result of sucking, the child
has had an experience. It has had satisfaction from
the act. If this is repeated the whole reaction is
intensified and made more sure. But even more;
such repetition of stimulus, impulsive response, and
satisfaction results in three most important things
on the inside of personality: (1) the habit of respond-
Some Essential Natural Elements 35
ing in this way when this stimulus is appUed; (2)
the reinforcement of the impulse until it becomes a
positive desire or appetite; and (3) ultimately through
consciousness and memory the formation of knowl-
edge or free ideas about sucking and its rewards. On
the other hand, if something disagreeable or nauseat-
ing were given to the child every time it sucked,
without doubt the whole sucking reflex could be
broken up and a habit of refusing to suck formed, and
an association with the act of ideas of aversion instead
of pleasure. This simple series of events and their
results are at the basis of all education and serve to
build up the more complex elements of personaUty
which we come to have.
While habits are formed, impulses modified, and
ideas developed by repeating such experiences, it is
interesting to notice that formation of habits in early
life takes place faster than the formation of ideas.
The child has builded up many good and bad habits
through its responding, long before it can gain enough
free ideas through experience to enable it to control
its choices thereby. Indeed this is largely the object
of our ordinary instruction, — to furnish to the young
at once the knowledge which the race has accumulated
through its experience, so as to save the child the
necessity of going through all the experience and of
forming all the habits that would supply it with these
ideas.
As habits, desires, and ideas are built up within,
other internal factors besides the mere raw, inherited
36 Use of Motives
instincts thus come to take part in determining what
choices and responses shall be made to the various
stimuli. Personality is growing. The instincts them-
selves are in process of change, and they are producing
still other qualities that will further modify and
control them. It is no longer true that we are wholly
creatures of our instincts or of the surroundings.
Ideas and habits and, later, judgment and ideals and
standards are developed by experience, and play their
part. More and more these newer and higher results
of experience take the act of choosing out of the
almost mechanical, instinctive place it has in early
childhood and in the lower animals; they make it
more complex, more full of meaning, more character-
ful. The choices of the young child have no moral
value whatever. It is because of these newer qualities
that choices come to have moral and religious meaning.
The example of the sucking child will serve us
again. It may be that the child has formed the bad
habit of sucking its thumb, and this has persisted for
some years. Now the sucking impulse and reaction
is normally a rather fleeting one. It ought to serve
its purpose and practically be lost in a few months.
But repetition and habit have strengthened its hold.
It is kept up because it furnishes a certain accustomed
satisfaction. The child will choose and continue this
line of conduct until some other factors counteract
these old forces in control of choice. We may try to
supply these other factors by placing stalls on the
fingers, by putting quinine on them, or other similar
Some Essential Natural Elements 37
device. In such cases we are wanting to substitute a
discomfort for the satisfaction and thus get the usual
action checked or inhibited. Or we may arouse the
child's consciousness to the fact that people in general
disapprove of such conduct and that it is losing the
good opinion of others thereby. If its desire for the
approval of others is sufficiently strong we may get
an inhibition by introducing a stronger and higher
desire. In the same way rewards and punishments or
ideas of right and wrong may set up inhibitions that
will enable the child to modify its choice.
Diagram 2 will illustrate how these various factors
which influence choice arise out of the primitive
instinctive impulses and experiences, and then com-
pete with these same instincts for the control of choice
and conduct, — all for the enrichment and complica-
tion of the steps that lie between stimulus and re-
sponse.
DISCUSSION OF FIGURE 2
This diagram suggests some steps in the development of
personaHty. With the beginnings indicated in Fig. 1, we are
sure to get an instinctive response from certain stimuli. After
such a response the organism is not the same again. It has had
an experience. If the action gave comfort or satisfaction^ it would
be Ukely to be repeated under similar conditions. If not, it
would be less Ukely to be repeated. Action thus reacts in per-
sonality in the form of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. (Follow
the course of the arrows.) Furthermore there are many of these
internal tendencies and impulses. That which is strongest at
the moment will win against the others. Experience and satis-
faction will help determine whether this stronger impulse will
become still stronger and continue to win, or be made less power*
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Some Essential Natural Elements 39
fill and possibly be inhibited next time. Satisfactions reinforcing
the impulses raise these latter into positive desires or appetites.
Consciousness and memory and anticipation give these desires a
powerful place in life and lead to purposes. Satisfying experi-
ences repeated produce habits and ideas. By knowledge, the
power of reason, and the force of habit, standards are erected
within. Standards fused with desires give ideals. All of these
have much to do in determining action through their effects on
choice, decision, and will. Purpose is virtually a general choice,
not yet carried into effect, or delayed, — a kind of attitude or
prejudice in favor of a certain line of action. It is complex in its
origin, made up of many of the steps described above. In turn
it becomes a living medium which strengthens or vetoes the
special appeals that strive within us to influence choice.
The diagram also suggests that, whereas at the outset stimuli
can appeal only to the native impulses, after this personal
development has taken place, appeal may be made directly to
conscious desires and through ideas and thinking.
6. Structure of mature personality.
Broadly speaking, our mature and completed per-
sonality is built up about these three functions which
we have been discussing: (1) the reception and
appreciation of stimuli; (2) the choice of response in
the Hght of the total effect of these stimuli on the
individual; and (3) the response itself. We have
been maintaining that the chief problem in the edu-
cation of personality is so to develop it that it will
desire and be able to make the right choice of responses
under all combinations of stimulation and internal
desires. It is now necessary to examine a little more
closely the factors in us that help to determine choice.
At the outset it is largely the internal desires, and the
40 Use of Motives
immediate appeals to them through the senses, that
settle choices. In mature life determination of choice
becomes much more complex, though the essential
conditions remain the same.
The accompanying diagram (Fig. 3), which must
be thought of merely as a diagram and not a real
picture of anything, attempts to show to the eye
some of the more important factors in this reaction
of the person to the surroundings. On the extreme
left we imagine the environment with all its varied
stimuli. On the right are the activities and behavior
that make up the response. The rectangle itself
portrays the individual. This individual connects
or associates the stimulus and the response. It
furnishes not only the paths for the passage of the
impulses, but reinforcements or inhibitions of them as
well.
DISCUSSION OF FIGURE 3
This diagram shows some points in the structure and operation
of mature personaHty. (Compare with Fig. 2.) Personality has
three main parts: (1) the receiving portion (receptors) that looks
out on stimuli (attention and appreciation are its great functions) ;
(2) a responding side (effectors) that looks toward behavior or
response; and (3) that which lies between stimulus and response
whose function is to correlate and adjust behavior to stimulus.
This third region is where our real personal values lie. This is
where we grow most. We may possibly improve the reception
of stimuli and certainly the skill of our responses; but our greatest
gain is within. We have at the beginning only the instinctive
impulses and desires. We have seen in Fig. 2 how these gradually
give rise to the complex internal conditions of maturity. There
are at maturity three great groups of internal qualities by which
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42 Use of Motives
we can appeal to choice: (1) the impulses, which are what we
inherit, plus whatever change has come to them from our experi-
ences; (2) the desires that we build up as the result of the opera-
tion of increasing consciousness acting upon our impulses, satis-
factions, etc. ; (3) the ideas and the powers of intellect and reason
that come to us through teaching or through experience. These
three things acting singly or together are the chief positive
sponsors and inspirers of choices and actions. While ideas and
the power of using them come from experience, it is possible by
teaching (a form of stimulus) to impart ideas which are not the
outcome of the experience of the individual. There is often a real
conflict between ideas (judgment) and desires, and ideas may
retard or inhibit the natural effect of desires on choice. This is
the point at which life becomes moral. Habits, standardized
modes of thinking, feeling and acting; standards, chiefly a matter
of knowledge and judgment; ideals, made up both of ideas and
desires; and purposes, which are really delayed responses, may
reinforce or inhibit the various appeals to choice. Which they
do depends upon the factors that have made them^ in the history
of the individual. All these various contents of personality are
open to education. We are confining ourselves too largely to the
training of the intellectual (ideas) and to skill in expression.
More attention must be given to the development of right im-
pulses and desires as well, that these may replace the poorer ones.
The arrows in this figure show the general course of the in-
fluence of the various factors, and not their development as in
Fig. 2. It will be noticed that desire and satisfaction are emotions
which influence choice and conduct; but at the same time they
also look out toward the income. For example, hunger and curiosity
are receptive emotions rather than expressive, although they do
lead incidentally to action as a means of realization.
One aspect of the person looks out toward stim-
ulus. It seeks and receives. This includes the senses,
through which the external stimuh reach the person,
Some Essential Natural Elements 43
and the internal desires and appreciations that make
the incoming impressions appeahng or the reverse.
On the other side, looking out toward action and
behavior, is the apparatus of responding. Response
is merely a matter of muscular action for the most
part, though back of it are the great personal acts of
choosing and deciding. These two sides, — the
receiving and the responding, — taken thus simply-
together, are known as the sensori-motor apparatus.
The normal result of a stimulus on the sensory side
is a response on the motor side. Income naturally
expects outgo. Impression should be followed by
expression. This is the normal reaction. But it
makes a great deal of difference just what behavior
shall follow from the stimulus furnished by a par-
ticular situation; from a simple stimulus or from a
complex combination of stimuli. Will it be right or
wrong? good or bad? and what decides the goodness
or badness of a response? The inner core of per-
sonaHty lying between the receiving and the respond-
ing parts is responsible for the real character of the
responses. This demands our careful study.
7. Choice is the critical thing in personality.
In such a personality as we have been describing
it is in choosing how to act that the individual really
expresses himself. Here the sum total of external
influences, of internal desires, of instincts, of knowl-
edge, of habits, and of ideals are balanced, and the
personality expresses its real self by deciding what to
do. This is not a special faculty, but is the whole of
44 Use of Motives
personality at a critical stage in its work. While in
other persons we can see actions only, and can read
choices only by these actions, it is choosing or
willing which really measures the character of the
person. This is the point where the personality shows
the degree of its appreciation of all its own varied
resources to determine its action. It is clear then, as
we have said, that the education in the making of
right choices is the objective point of all moral and
religious training. The morality of any being comes
out in this moment of choosing in the light of all the
resources of the person. If this act is wrong, nothing
else can count for right. It is immoral to make any
other than the best possible choice. Moral efficiency
is really shown by the disposition, the abihty, and the
habit of making right, — that is to say the best, —
choices. How then can we as teachers reach in and
develop this power and disposition toward righteous
choice?
8. Two chief ways of influencing choice.
This crowning power which must be developed is
purely within. We have no power of reaching it
directly from without. Furthermore, it is the essential
mark of choice that, to have any meaning, it must be
one*s own. Hence, if we could force choices directly
from without, the result would have no personal value
to the individual. It is even more true of choosing
than of the other personal powers that they develop
through self -activity; because choosing is, as has been
said, the most distinctive act of the self.
Some Essential Natural Elements 45
In reality there are two objects in view in getting
choices: there is the task of getting the right indi-
vidual, isolated choices, and that of getting the habit
and disposition of right choosing. The latter is of
course the great purpose. There is, however, no
way to get the habit of right choosing other than
through practise in right choosing. This means
repeating the individual choices until the habit is
fixed.
In the task of guiding or influencing choice in such
a way as to insure that the self shall still be the actual
chooser, there are just two ways of proceeding: (1)
by changing the stimuh (that is, by varying the
impressions we bring to bear, — the teaching, ex-
ample, influence, appeals to the various internal
impulses, and the like, — we can so modify the steps
that lead up to choice as to influence its character) ;
or (2) the responses or behavior may be changed in
various external ways, and in this way the habits and
other steps leading up to choices may be educated,
because conduct reacts on all the steps leading up to it.
Choices are educated by action and by the experiences
growing out of action just as really as by impression.
The act of choosing develops the power and disposition
to choose and guides future choices. Both the
process of stimulation or instructing and the guidance
of actions are valuable methods of educating choices.
They are complementary.
9. Training choices by impression.
This is the classic mode of teaching. It implies
46 Use of Motives
bringing information, appeals, and examples, and so
presenting all this that the original desires and in-
stincts may be modified through new desires con-
nected with the development of knowledge, reasoning,
standards and ideals. At the outset some of the
instinctive impulses and desires are strong, and ideas,
are wanting. By giving prematurely these ideas from
the stock of human experience we can change the
nature of the total appeal to personality and modify
choices. Only in this way can we bring the whole of
God's work in history to bear upon the life of today.
It is the way whereby we make the example of pres-
ent-day heroes influence the lives of the young. It
is the method of literature, of poetry, of biography,
of appeal, of exhortation, of instruction. It is of
course essential that all this shall be done suitably
and in a graded way.
In our Sunday-school work we have for the most
part stopped at this point. We have striven to reach
the emotions and the purposes by making the stimuli
as suitable and as convincing as possible. This is
all very valuable and important, but it is not enough.
We have found that we do not hold to permanent
moral and religious choices fifty per cent of those who
enter our Sunday schools.
10. Training choices through expression.
Choice is built up from instincts, experiences,
habits, ideas and the like, but it also looks out on
conduct. We have found out in secular education
that we '' learn by doing." This is the reason why
Some Essential Natural Elements 47
we teach biology by field and laboratory work rather
than by a text-book merely. This is the meaning of
clinics in medical schools, practise teaching in normal
schools, and shops and laboratories everywhere. The
response which personality makes to conditions does
more to educate it than any amount of instruction can
do without response. While choice is influenced by
the knowledge and desires which lead to it, choice
really looks forward into action and response and
satisfaction, rather than backward. What we do
therefore reacts upon our choices. Choice cannot
escape the consequences of its failure or success as
measured by the results of action. The test of the
rightness and wrongness of the choice is found in the
total experiences and satisfactions connected with the
outcome. If choices give satisfaction, on the whole,
they are likely to be repeated. If they bring dis-
comfort they are not likely to be repeated. Thus it
comes about that the actions growing out of our
choices educate us most profoundly and automa-
tically.
In our Sunday schools definite effort to insure right
choices through expressive work, designed to give
practical exercise in the art of choosing right, is all
but unknown. Practise of right choosing and acting
in response to our teaching is left largely to chance.
There is no question that we must find a way to
secure moral expression of choice in right and fine
actions if we are going to succeed in moral and religious
education.
48 Use of Motives
11. Real moral teaching involves both impression and
expression.
We have seen that the common and classical method
of teaching, both secular and rehgious, has been
largely that of making appeals, giving instruction,
producing impressions, — leaving the practical appli-
cation of this teaching to life largely to unconscious
and haphazard surroundings. We have thought that
our impressions would last, — forgetting that an
impression which works through to a satisfactory
expression much outlasts any other sort. In many
secular types of education we have seen a very strik-
ing revolt toward the more practical method of
teaching by practise, — of learning by doing. The re-
volt against the dead languages and some of the older
subjects and in favor of the sciences and the voca-
tional subjects is not merely because of the direct
utility of the subjects, but in part because the latter
evoke a more complete and practical personal reac-
tion. They provide for expression.
Without doubt both methods of teaching have
great values; but each is full of weakness standing
alone. Perfect teaching involves ' giving the best
possible stimulus in the way of appeals, instruction,
impression, and then finding ways to see that these
new elements of income, if accepted by personality,
are consciously caused to express themselves until
the power of choice is strengthened by the satis-
factions of right behavior. In right teaching there is
thus a complete personal reaction: (1) impression;
Some Essential Natural Elements 49
(2) self -active choice; and (3) the expression of this
choice in action. It is in this way that actual adjust-
ment of the internal nature is made to the external
conditions. Personality is kept appreciative of its
income, able to make right choices, and responsive to
the conditions of life.
12. Results of impression and expression on the
other internal qualities.
This complete mental reaction spoken of in the
preceding paragraph increases through repetition the
strength and certainty of choice, but it also educates
other internal qualities, that help insure the soundness
of later choices. Desires, for example, look out toward
the objects that stimulate and attract, — as clothes,
foods, property. But equally, desires look forward
to choice and action and satisfactions coming from
action. For example, one's desire may look distinctly
toward work or play, or to some other active form of
satisfaction quite as much as to the satisfactions
of the senses. The act of choosing and the pride of
right choice may become a positive desire and source
of comfort. Because of these things the very act of
choosing, in a complete mental reaction, is going to
increase or diminish these original desires that lead
up to choice.
In a quite similar way the experience that comes
from this complete personal reaction is stored, as we
have seen, in the form of habits and ideas. Habit is
a conservative quality and tends to make choices
which at first are difficult and very conscious, auto-
50 Use of Motives
matically sure and certain. That is to say, habits
tend to give to our consciously acquired choices some
of the sureness which our primitive instinctive choices
had at the beginning of hfe. Ideas, knowledge, and
judgment that come from chosen lines of action are
also sure to modify the internal desires, and later
choices. Finally, we cannot be stimulated and re-
spond without having certain modifications of our
standards or ideals of conduct. Gradually our whole
purposes are colored by this process. All these
changes within us, brought about by our chosen lines
of action, in their turn profoundly influence all later
choices. Right choosing followed by satisfaction
not alone educates choice and action, but it educates
all those guiding qualities of personality that lead up
to and influence the choices.
From this concrete, but incomplete, picture of the
action of personality the teacher will readily see that
we are largely neglecting the more important half of
moral and religious education, namely, the expres-
sive side, even in those Sunday schools where the
impressive work is of the best. What we must learn
to do is to couple completely graded instruction with
completely graded expression in moral and religious
matters. Impression without suitable expression in
morals and religion gives a theoretical hold on both
which is liable to be at once hypocritical and snob-
bish; expression without adequate instruction leads
to formalism, literalism, and to behavior unco-
ordinated with the best standards of the race.
Some Essential Natural Elements 51
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. Show how our response to our environment
changes us. Enumerate some of the internal changes
that come from responding to our stimuH. If one is
stimulated to deep anger, illustrate how the choices
and actions we make (responses) modify us for all
time.
2. Some of the important values lie in the fact that
for the most part even humans must adjust their
lives properly to meet their surroundings, rather than
the reverse.
3. What is there for us educationally in the other
side of the truth? Human beings can in some degree
change their surroundings. They can move away
from trouble, poverty, crime, temptation, etc.
4. Define education in terms of adjustment:
to gravity, to food and drink, to other people, to
truth, to right, to duty, to God. Why, in becoming
adjusted, are we disposed to lose adjustability?
5. Evidences that we really inherit impulses, in-
stincts, tendencies, temperament, disposition, mental
and spiritual capacities, and the like.
Suggestive Questions
Why must organisms, including humans, become
adapted to external conditions? In what ways may
we become adapted to cold? To new neighbors?
To bad companions? To trouble? To new truth?
What are the essentials of right choice and of wrong
52 Use of Motives
choice? Why is choice such an important thing?
Why is it such a measure of character? Why is it
even a better index than action? Give evidences,
from your knowledge of young children, that it is
easy to form whole groups of bad (or good) habits
before the child could possibly get from experience
the ideas that would help him prevent (or encourage)
the habits. What are the corollaries of this fact in
human life? Why is it peculiarly essential that
choices shall be determined as much as possible from
the inside f
Some Practical Problems
1. The early formation of habits in babies. Do
you think it possible to control in very large degree
the formation of habits in very young children:
e.g., habits of sleeping; of feeding; of crying or not
crying; of lying quietly or being taken up; of obedi-
ence; of confidence; of consideration for others; of
expression of affection? What are the necessary
steps? Why do we so often fail? Do you believe this
has any relation to morals and religion? Can the
Sunday school be of any help to parents, present and
future, at this point ?
2. When a strong native impulse is appealed to
by an attractive external situation, choice is sure.
Give some concrete illustrations of this. If the situ-
ation is undesirable, how can we overcome it? How
can we use the fact stated above for educational
purposes?
Some Essential Natural Elements 63
3. Let young men ''Sow their wild oats" (?).
Such advice simply means to let youth indulge its
internal impulses, with little or no external help, and
build up the bad habits that flow from such choices;
feeling reasonably sure that ultimately ideas will
grow up from these experiences that will cause the
youth to realize that they do not really satisfy. Then
he will try to break up the bad habits because of his
convictions, and make his choices in the light of his
own results. Analyze this concrete suggestion; show
why it is vicious ; suggest what is the sane procedure
of adults. Apply the principle to the education of
children generally.
References
Bagley: Educational Values. The Macmillan Co.,
N. Y. $1.50
DuBois: The Natural Way. Fleming H. Revell
Co., N. Y. $1.25
Galloway: Biology of Sex for Parents and Teachers.
D. C. Heath & Co., N. Y. .75
Weigh: The Pupil and the Teacher. Lutheran
Publication Society, Philadelphia. .50
CHAPTER IV
THE PRINCIPLE OF MOTIVATION IN EDU-
CATION
1. The impelling nature of desires in life.
We have seen in the preceding chapter that the
natural instincts, impulses, and desires which come
to us through inheritance are the earliest spurs to
conduct in childhood. These desires all point to
satisfactions, and inspire to action by which the self
is builded up. They are essentially selfish therefore.
They include desire for food, desire for comfort,
desire for action, for possession, and the like. These
desires drive us as humans to do what we do.
These impulses, and others which succeed and sup-
plement and replace them through education and
growth, furnish our motive power all through life.
They are close to what we call *^ motives." It is be-
cause of these internal desires and impulses that out-
side influences have any appeal to us and arouse us to
definite choices and actions. Through desires, knowl-
edge and standards become fused into ideals and
purposes.
2. These natural impulses and desires are legitimate.
Even among intelligent people it has been felt that
these initial primitive desires and instincts of man
ss
06 Use of Motives
must be of the devil, and intrinsically evil; that they
must therefore be combated, and changed or eradi-
cated. Their sole value has been thought to lie in
the fact that they furnish the individual something
to struggle against, and thus lead indirectly to charac-
ter. It has been considered that there must be some-
thing wrong therefore in those things which people do
spontaneously and joyously, and some special virtue
in doing things that are disagreeable and distasteful.
On the contrary, it is the view of the modern student
of education that every one of these early impulses
and desires may make sound and valuable contri-
butions to the growing personality; that they are
given us by God and exist for this very purpose.
They represent the best contribution which the
past, through inheritance, has made to us. To be
sure they all look toward personal gratification and
are therefore selfish. But it is because of this very
promise of gratification that they incite us to action.
Thus they contribute directly to the building up of
the self; and the development of self-hood is the first
step in personal growth. It is true that these desires
and impulses may be over-used and run riot and be-
come destructive of sound personality; but this is
in no wise an argument against their proper function-
ing. / ..
3. The attitude of the educator toward these desires.
If this view of the purpose and value of the in-
stinctive impulses is correct, it is quite clear that the
duty of the educator and his method of work will be
The Principle of Motivation 57
very different from what is common under the older
view. It becomes his task to use and appeal to these
desires and tendencies, rather than to repress them, as
they appear and become functional in the individual,
in order that each may make its right contribution to
character. The proper use of them implies several
things. Some of the instincts are rightfully transient,
and ought to be allowed to make their contribution
and then give way to higher ones. This is true of
the sucking impulse. Take for example, also, the
impulse to fight or the instinct of fear. We will all
allow that neither of these in its original crude form
should become a strong permanent state of mind in
a socialized individual; and yet both impulses can
be shown to have certain value in character if allowed
to play only in emergencies and gradually to pass
away through disuse, or be transformed into some-
thing higher and more permanent. To over-use and
over-stress either of these would lead it to a strength
which would be unwholesome.
Other impulses should persist, but naturally should
diminish in strength with the fuller development of
character. Such are the desire for ownership, the
spirit of rivalry, and the like. Still others, equally
natural and instinctive, ought to grow and develop,
though often changed in content, all through life.
Such are curiosity, desire for leadership, the impulse
to share and serve, together with many others. The
genius of all these is that they give impulse and
pleasure and satisfaction to action and thus tend to
58 Use of Motives
secure the repetition of the choices and actions which
they inspire. It is the task of the teacher to try to
understand these various natural motives to action,
know when they should appear in life, know what
contribution we should expect from each, and find
out how to cause them so to weaken or increase as will
be best for right character. Some should be fostered
and coaxed, stressed and enriched by continual
practise; some require only a start and should be
emphasized only during certain very Umited periods
of life; some should be kept dormant or allowed to
go into disuse; some should be smothered or have
more permanent desires substituted for them as
promptly as possible after they have done their
work; some should be repressed by the early culti-
vation of inhibitive tendencies.
6. The meaning of motivation.
All of this convinces the modern educator that we
get more physical, mental, moral, and spiritual growth
and development out of those activities that appeal
to the natural impulses and thus give pleasure and
satisfaction. We deny that there is anything of value
in making activities unattractive and forbidding.
Any subject or situation will contribute to the edu-
cation of the child in proportion to the naturalness
and intensity of the motives driving the child to the
task. Everything we do for people or that they do
for themselves will have its value increased if it
appeals powerfully to some of their strong and natural
desires, instincts, and tendencies.
The Principle of Motivation 69
The reasons for the superiority of these results he
in the fact that, in this way, the child is more com-
pletely enlisted; it has more zest and enthusiasm;
its concentration and control of its whole nature,
both receptive and active, is greater; there is less
likelihood of arousing antagonism against the wishes
of the parent or teacher and thus dissipating power;
better attention means better retention and assimila-
tion and mastery of facts, and more complete skill.
All this implies that the first task of a teacher in any
realm, in order to get best results, is to find what will
arouse, on the part of the child, the greater interest
in, and the most vital motives for undertaking and
mastering, any task. It means first of all to get the
child really to desire to do the thing. It means that
everything shall be planned so that the child shall
have, if it is possible, an immediate, a real, and natural
satisfaction both in the doing and in the result when
it is done. This is what the school men mean by
motivation. It involves self-activity through internal
motives which must be those most real and vital to
the child at his grade of development.
This by no means suggests that the student is
never to do anything difficult or disagreeable, or that
all such tasks are to be made artificially pleasant and
easy. The thing we seek is internal and not external.
It does mean, however, that no real pedagogical end
is ever gained by making a naturally easy or interest-
ing task artificially difficult, since there are enough
such already to serve every purpose. It does mean
60 Use of Motives
that there is great loss in having any task so distaste-
ful that internal motives sufficient for its accomplish-
ment cannot be found. It means that the pupil and
teacher must find for every disagreeable and difficult
task some natural motives in the life of the child
which will make it seem worth while to overcome the
difficulty, and thus make for more total satisfaction
in the doing. Motivation consists not in diminishing
the task but in increasing the motive for performing
the task and the satisfaction in the result. It does
not mean to make tasks more easy, but to make
them more appealing. We must select tasks that
appeal to present motives, and develop motives that
will meet necessary tasks. This is exactly the dif-
ference between play and drudgery. Normally play
is sufficiently motivated. To the young child work
must be motivated or it is drudgery. The object of
motivation is to prevent drudgery, not to eliminate
work. Difficulty properly motivated is very educa-
tive; drudgery is not.
5. Relation of " motivation " to some other watch-
words of the teacher.
It will be seen at once by teachers who have kept
in touch with educational ideas that motivation is
closely related to several fruitful doctrines of recent
times. The " doctrine of interest," the '' point of
contact in teaching," '' making the pupil central,"
and *' gradation " are all akin to the principle of
motivation. The latter, however, means more than
any or all of them as usually understood. It points
The Principle of Motivation 61
to an active, conscious, and systematic use of all the
driving internal motives of childhood and youth to
arouse interest and to furnish contact.
The principles underlying the grading of our lessons
both in school and Sunday school are closely related
to motivation. It is the uniform testimony of those
who have intelligently used the graded Sunday-school
lessons that they are more easily motivated than the
old uniform lessons. Motivation means rather more
than we usually include in gradation. Complete
gradation in education means the gradation of the
matter of instruction, of the method of its presentation,
of the form of the expression resulting from the in-
struction, of the emotional appeals, and of the satis-
factions that flow from the action. Long ago we
recognized that the general method of instruction
must be graded to the state of development of the
child. Even the uniform Sunday-school lessons
recognized this. The recent grading of our Sunday-
school lessons is an effort to grade the matter to the
development of intelligence. As yet we have done
practically nothing in moral and religious education
to find the modes of expression which are thoroughly
suited to the personal internal states of developing
children. Motivation is really an effort to grade the
choices and activities of child life to the states of
emotional development and to the personal satis-
factions of which the child is capable. Some day we
shall understand that it is even more important to
grade our appeals to emotions, to motives, and for
62 Use of Motives
expression than it is to suit matter to the intellectual
capacity of the child.
It is not the purpose to imply that the fundamental
idea in motivation is new, or that we have done
nothing in this regard in the past. All good teachers
have in some degree unconsciously recognized the
need and tried to meet it. What we have recently
come to see is the vital necessity of finding and using
in a deliberate and conscious way all the strong
emotions and impulses that are most dominant and
worth cultivating in the nature of the child at the
various stages of its development. Motivation has
been artificial and half-hearted; it must become
genuine and natural and thoroughgoing.
6. The two-fold test of the value of a natural impulse.
As suggested above, the doctrine of motivation does
not imply that all impulses are of equal value. In
estimating whether we should appeal to certain
youthful motives and desires in getting the whole-
hearted alliance of the child, at least two things must
be taken into account. In the first place, we must
decide upon the efficiency of any particular impulse
in accomplishing the immediate response we seek.
For example, fear might be the most effective possible
motive in securing a particular line of conduct. It
might be that love or desire to serve would not obtain
the proper conduct at all. While present in some
degree they might not be strong enough to insure right
choices. And yet, in spite of this, it does not follow
that fear, although an efficient motive, would be the
The Principle of Motivation 63
best to use. We must consider, in the second place,
what would be the permanent result in the quality
of personality from the use and development of this
particular motive. In other words, while we must
look for immediate outer results in our appeal to
motives, it is even more important that we recognize
the final reaction in personality of the exercise of any
one of the instinctive qualities. Two desires or im-
pulses may be equally efficient for getting immediate
and enthusiastic response in children, but may be
very different in their reaction on the inner springs of
character. It is for this reason that we must have
intelligent and sympathetic and scientific study of
these vital motives, rather than trust to the mere
external and apparent results.
7. An enumeration of some of the principal impulses,
instincts and desires that furnish motives in life.
Many efforts have been made by educators to
classify these tendencies in our natures, but none of
them is entirely satisfactory. We shall not undertake
to do anything more than to make a rough grouping
of some of those which are most to be used by us in
our efforts to educate in accordance with the threefold
division of personality we have been using. Instincts
may relate primarily (1) to the receiving side, or to the
income of the individual; or (2) to the states within the
individual; or (3) to the activities or expressions of the
individual. The first have to do with receiving stimuli,
the second with the internal states of mind whereby
we interpret and estimate values and influence choices,
64 Use of Motives
and the third with the response to the stimuli of the
environment. In strict truth most instincts tend to
contribute to all three of these aspects of the indi-
vidual, and all involve action as their normal outcome.
(1) The natural, instinctive qualities that make for
the reception and income. These are desires, not nec-
essarily for action, but also for stimulus and reception.
In this group we would class (a) curiosity or the
desire for knowledge which is the foundation of the
getting of all knowledge, (6) the desire for possessions
or the instinct of ownership (close to this is the
instinct to make collections of various things); (c)
the desire for approbation; and (d) the desire to he en-
tertained; and many others of even more primitive sort.
(2) The instincts and impulses or tendencies that
look chiefly to the internal personal states and atti-
tudes. Among these we may mention (a) fear, which
grows partly out of inexperience and uncertainty and
is related to distrust, aversion and hatred; (6) confi-
dence and trustfulness, leading under proper exercise
to sympathy, love, and kindred attitudes; (c) spirit
of obedience or acceptance of authority; {d) the
opposite impulse of contrariness or self -assertion; (e)
imagination, which is one of the most valuable and
pleasant capabilities of childhood; (/) anger; (g)
feeling of rivalry; (h) the sense of comfort or dis-
comfort, satisfaction or dissatisfaction. They modify
action rather than induce it directly.
(3) The impulses that lead directly toward expres-
sion. In one way or another all the instincts men-
The Principle of Motivation 05
tioned in (1) and (2) may lead toward action, though
not necessarily so. While curiosity may produce
action on our part, the action is only a means to an
end. The real desire is for income, not for action.
This is the goal of most impulses, — either to produce
action or to prevent it. There are, however, numerous
instincts and tendencies that are peculiarly inspiring
to responses. Some of these are: (a) a native restless-
nesSy which is fundamentally physiological and is
seen in most children. It leads to nervous and muscu-
lar activity just as curiosity looks toward information;
(6) the instinct of repetition, which is quite universal
and shows itself in the desire to hear again or to do
again the things that have given satisfaction; (c)
the play instinct, which is very powerful in children
and is being used more and more skilfully by teachers;
(d) the impulse to talk, by the exercise of which the
child makes great intellectual progress in the first
few years of his life; (e) the passion to he doing things,
either destructive or constructive, growing in part out
of restlessness and curiosity; (/) the closely related
combative or fighting impulse ; (g) the instinct of leader-
ship and of mastery, expressed in the child's program
in the desire to "be it," and to overcome obstacles;
(h) the impulse to share with others what one enjoys;
(i) the " gang " or gregarious instinct which drives
children to seek companions; {j) the impulse to
" show off,'' which is related to the desire for appro-
bation; {k) the sex impulses.
These are by no means all the natural instincts and
66 Use of Motives
desires which the child gets by inheritance and which
furnish unreasoned motives for its early life; but they
are enough to enable us as teachers to see something
of the range of qualities to which we may appeal as
we try to build up character. These are found in
some degree in all children, but not in the same
degree in all. They are not of the same relative
strength at different stages in one child. They are
not character; but they are the inherited raw ma-
terials out of which character is built. They are the
chief incentives of childhood; indeed they furnish
the leading motives for all human life and activity.
8. Application of motivation in general education.
In the public schools we are now seeing a very
intelligent effort to use these primitive impulses of
the child to assist in securing the right attitude of the
young toward the work of the school, in order that
they may receive, think, and respond rightly. In very
early life we motivate much of the necessary work by
giving it the form of a game and thus appealing to
the play instinct. Instead of memorizing meaningless
names and positions in geography, the work is given
meaning and just as much and as good information
about the places is gained, through the device of
travel stories. Instead of attacking history as an
organized body of knowledge, with no consideration
for the states of mind of the child, the start is made
with problems that the child himself may wish to
know, and thus his curiosity leads the way. The
logical order is made to give way to the psychological.
The Principle of Motivation 67
It may be necessary again to reassure the reader
who fears that we are merely trying to discover or
make the oft-despaired-of royal road to learning and
to life. There is no such intention. The contention
merely is this: the road is quite difficult enough
at best without making or keeping it unnecessarily
so; a great deal of hard work is necessary to every
traveler who gets on and such hard work has much
value; but we have those impulses within us which
will give zest to the journey and to all the work of it,
if they can only be aroused; that the difficult road
can be more satisfactorily traveled and the wayfarer
may go further on it and most of all may get more
pleasure and profit out of it, if he can have brought
to his attention first these things that most appeal to
him and thus arouse his interest in the things that
originally seemed to have no appeal. It further is
to be understood that the motivation which might
seem most alluring to the mature mind is not that
which serves a life purpose to the child mind. The
doctrine of motivation insures that the road shall be
considered as a pleasant and profitable highway for
the child to get its development, and is not traveled
either for the sake of the road or for the pleasure of
those who have already traveled the road.
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. The age at which some of the important instincts
appear.
68 Use of Motives
2. Other ways of classifying the instincts: e.g.,
Environmental, Individualistic, Social, Sexual and
Parental, Adaptive.
3. Strong and weak points of the " Doctrine of
Interest." Point of contact in teaching.
4. How does motivation add to these ideas?
5. Devices which school teachers have used suc-
cessfully to motivate English, History, Arithmetic,
etc.
6. Relation of motives to morals.
Suggestive Questions
Why is it short-sighted and wrong to assume that
the natural impulses are evil? Is it sound on the
other hand to hold that we should follow them
blindly? What then is the pedagogical attitude?
Are you really ready to practise your own answer in
your work? Mention some instincts that should pass
away with infancy. Mention some that should more
gradually wane. Mention some that should grow
stronger throughout life. How is the attitude and
practise of the teacher modified by his view of the
nature of the instincts? Why is it difficult to classify
the instincts satisfactorily? Is there a single one of
these inner impulses that does not have something
to do with our choices and morals? What is sug-
gested by the fact that such a large proportion of our
instincts look toward activity?
The Principle of Motivation 69
Some Practical Problems
1. The kind of man one becomes at maturity de-
pends very largely upon the native instinctive im-
pulses that have been selected, emphasized, and
developed by his parents, his teachers, and himself.
Suppose two children have the same impulses to
start with. One from the beginning is encouraged to
indulge every physical appetite, to use no restraint
over temper, and cultivates greed, jealousy, rivalry,
and hate. The other from the beginning has the
emotions of sympathy and confidence encouraged, is
allowed to share in the pleasures of unselfishness and
service, is induced for the sake of the approval of
those he loves to forego self-indulgence and find
pleasure in self-mastery. What will be the differences
in the mature character of the men?
2. We can so motivate conduct as to emphasize
and strengthen any of the instincts and attitudes that
we really desire our children to have. How can this
be done in such a way as to develop obedience? The
desire to serve? The impulse to share? Sympathy
for the less fortunate? Extend the list.
3. The coupling of impulses. What practical
value is there in coupling the weaker, desirable im-
pulses with stronger ones? For example, could you
devise ways to strengthen the weaker impulse of
obedience by coupling it with curiosity or desire for
approval, or the instinct of leadership? What motives
could you appeal to in order to increase the satis-
70 Use of Motives
faction of sharing or controlling anger, or being fair
and honest in play?
4. The gradual lessening of the power of certain
instincts. Suggest practical devices to decrease the
impulses of fear, rivalry, anger, fighting, greed, and
the Hke.
References
Athearn: The Church School. The Pilgrim Press,
Boston. $1.00
DeGarmo: Interest and Education. The Macmillan
Co., N. Y. $1.00
DuBois: The Point of Contact in Teaching. Dodd,
Mead & Co., N. Y. .75
Galloway: The Appeal to Motives in Religious Educa-
tion in Encyclopedia of Sunday Schools and Relig-
ious Education. Thomas Nelson & Sons, N. Y.
Meyer: The Graded Sunday School in Principle and
Practise. Methodist Book Concern, N. Y. .75
CHAPTER V
MOTIVATION IN SUNDAY-SCHOOL
TEACHING
1. 0/ what importance to the Sunday schools is this
search for motives?
We have seen that the general educator is coming
to appreciate that any subject contributes to the
development of the child just in proportion to the in-
tensity of the internal motives with which the child
comes to be drawn to the subject. The exercises, in
which children are so interested that they put their
whole natures, educate them more rapidly and pro-
foundly than those in which they take no conscious
satisfaction. This means that the first task in good
teaching is to secure this attitude of complete en-
thusiasm for the needful tasks. To do this we must
go to work by way of the child^s natural instincts,
impulses, desires, and satisfactions. These are
natural, God-given, and for a constructive purpose.
There is no separating of these into animal and hu-
man; physical and spiritual; good and bad. No
one of them can be properly used and developed with-
out ministering to the whole of life. No one of them
can be misused without making more dijKcult that
balanced hold on all of life which is the real meaning
of religion.
71
72 Use of Motives
Because of these things it is clear that we Sunday-
school teachers will find here as much to help in our
work as have the teachers of EngHsh or geography or
history or science. Indeed there are certain reasons
why it is more important for us to get an ally in the
impulses and instincts of the child than it is for the
ordinary teachers. If the public-school teachers, who
can control the time and movements of the pupils
for such a large part of their waking hours, feel the
need of enlisting the aid of these natural motives to
secure the results they seek, how much more do the
Sunday schools need to secure this internal ally in
the personality of the pupil in order to overcome
the handicaps under which we work.
2. The impulses and religious education.
If it is true, as is contended in this book, that the
prime purpose of moral and religious education is
so to equip the individual that he shall have the
power and the disposition to make and execute right
choices, it will be seen at once that these instincts,
impulses, tendencies, desires and appetites, — in a
word, the emotional sides of life — are tremendously
important in religious development. The desires
have a most profound influence on choice; much more
than mere learning has. Unless these desires are
right, the individual is under the necessity of going
into every choice with a powerful internal enemy
making right choice difficult. Knowledge and experi-
ence alone, unless they find an ally in some powerful
desires and instincts, will not serve to insure right
Motivation in Sunday-School Teaching 73
purpose and choice and behavior. More than any-
other realm of personaHty, the rehgious nature is
powerfully supported or thwarted by the desires and
impulses.
3. The applicability of motivation to moral and
religious education.
It follows from what has just been said that one
of our most important tasks in religious education is
to enlist the cooperation of just the right internal
instincts and desires on the side of the right choices.
The genius of religious instruction is not to make
right choices distasteful and hard, but to secure the
help of these internal impulses so that even the
choices that would be difficult will yield more satis-
faction than would result from following the easier
way. Its aim is to develop desires of the higher order:
" My son, give me thy heart." This is necessarily
the course which religion must take in order to be
secure and genuine. We must not trust to a combat
between enlightened intelligence and unsound desires.
If we can get intelligence and desires leading in the
same direction, we insure the single right choices and
thus the habit of right choosing.
Desires and impulses which furnish motives to life
are educated, enlarged, and refined by use; are dis-
placed by others that give or promise better and fuller
satisfactions; or may be lost wholly by disuse.
The teacher who believes that these are at the
bottom of moral and religious education does not
regard any of these impulses as intrinsically bad or
74 Use of Motives
sinful. They are bad only when they outlive their
usefulness, or are overdeveloped and appHed in the
wrong way so that they interfere with the maturing
of the higher impulses in their turn. Curiosity, play-
fulness, the desire to possess, the instinct of self-
protection, self-assertion, the sex impulses and the
like, are not bad. They lead to valuable results;
they introduce fine elements in character; but there
is no one of them which may not become wrong
through over-use or misapplication. These lowly
instincts are the raw materials of our moral and
religious education. In such education it is our task
to use the lower, simpler instincts and thus allow
them to make their proper contribution, and gradually
encourage the higher but equally natural impulses
to take their place. Everything that is worth doing,
— from service to self up to self-sacrifice for others
and for God, — has within us natural impulses that
make the thing appealing and give satisfaction in the
doing. Religious motivation is the finding of the
suitable internal impulses and using them to the full.
It is the natural thing for the more selfish and self-
assertive instincts to come to the center of the stage
first; but these should gradually give way before the
more unselfish and social instincts. The satisfaction
of sacrifice is no less real or less natural than the
satisfaction of self-assertion; but it is not so early
a motive in life.
It is because of these fundamental principles of
human structure that we believe that a sound study
Motivation in Sunday-School Teaching 75
of motivation gives even more promise of regenerating
moral and religious education than it has accom-
plished in general education.
4. Some practical reasons why an appeal to the
natural motives of the child is necessary in Sunday
schools.
There are several classes of reasons why the Sun-
day-school teachers need to give special attention to
the task of arousing the best impulses and motives
for the doing of the work asked for: partly because
the use of motives is basal to all sound education;
partly because moral and religious education is most
important of all and is beset with special difficulties;
partly because of the handicaps which lie in the
looseness of the organization of the Sunday school;
and partly in the mature and remote form in which
most of our religious ideas are couched. Some of
these we shall consider in detail.
5. The use of motives is especially necessary because
of the limited opportunity of the Sunday-school teacher.
As suggested above, the Sunday school is poorly
organized as a school. It is confined to a mere scrap
of time; it cannot presuppose any extended home
preparation of lessons; it cannot command the pupil's
time and attendance for even the half hour, except
through the interest of the pupil. It is not remarkable
under the circumstances that the Sunday school is not
so efficient as we might wish. It is rather a tribute to
the eternal worth and appeal of the thing we are doing
that it is as efiicient as it is.
76 Use of Motives
In spite of these handicaps we expect the Sunday
school to secure the most fundamental educational
results demanded in any part of our whole system of
schools. Ordinarily in our schools we are satisfied
if we can secure efficient knowledge of English or
mathematics or manual training, and the like. Here,
in the Sunday school, we are after efficiency in making
righteous choices, the most difficult thing in life, very
much more difficult than imparting knowledge. It
is only the part of wisdom therefore to get every aid
that modern pedagogy can bring.
The plan of intensifying, and making internal and
natural, the motives for doing the work has revolu-
tionized many a class in English, history or geography;
why may not similar wise use of the normal desires
and motives of the child aid equally in this bigger
task of developing Christlike character?
6. The use of motives is peculiarly necessary in
Sunday school because of the artificiality of much of
our moral and religious teaching.
As adults we have done very much the same thing
in the planning of religious education that we have
been doing in mathematics and grammar. We have
organized the subject matter of all these topics in a
way that seemed logical and suited to make a system
comprehensible and satisfying to the adult mind. For
many years in general education we have sacrificed
our children to these logical and scientific systems of
grammar and mathematics. Recently, however, we
are coming to realize that the child mind does not
Motivation in Sunday-School Teaching 77
need a systematic treatise on language or numbers.
The race didn't have anything of the sort to start
with. They merely worked at numbers and language
in a very simple, concrete way as they needed them
incidentally in relation to whatever interested them
in life. We now understand that this is the natural
way, and we associate the child's numbers and
language with things in which he is specifically inter-
ested.
Now in respect to morals and religion, the tendency
to reduce matters to a system is even more strong
and intolerant than in mathematics or science. The
religious systems and statements are usually formu-
lated from the adult point of view, and hence need
much adjustment to youthful interest. Most of the
religious teaching and incentives of the past have
related to the future life. In the very nature of things
this is not an incentive that bulks large in childhood,
— and it should not. Finally much of religious think-
ing has been couched in philosophical form, and
naturally there has been little in it on which to base
enthusiasm in the life of the immature.
These and other things have made the development
of a reasonable and common-sense pedagogy of religion
almost impossible. There has apparently been
something of the thought that the pious attempt to
impart to children these adult philosophical con-
ceptions would be supplemented by some supernatural
overcoming of the bad pedagogy. Such teachers
should recall the fact that Jesus did not undertake to
78 Use of Motives
teach religion to his childlike disciples in this system-
atic way.
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. The use of natural motives like curiosity,
restlessness, the gang spirit, and the sex impulses, for
religious ends. Is it possible? Is it right? Why?
2. The seeming handicaps under which we, as
Sunday-school teachers, work. Examine whether
they are solely and really handicaps. For example,
is self-activity encouraged?
3. The necessity of both emotions and knowledge
in religious choices. The function of each.
4. Education of emotions. Necessity of. Methods
of.
5. There can be no external temptation except for
some internal impulse which makes it appealing.
This is equally true of our upward aspirations, as
well. No inspiration without appreciation. Can you
illustrate?
Suggestive Questions
Why is it dangerous to try to separate our religious
life from the normal interests and desires? Give
instances in which you are aware of conflict between
desires and judgment. Between desires. What is
the function of a teacher or parent at such a time?
What of psychology is suggested by " My son, give
me thine heart "? How are we to get an alliance
between desires and judgment? What of our impulses
and instincts are most liable to be over-developed?
Motivation in Sunday-School Teaching 79
Illustrate effects of over-development by concrete
cases. What is the only way in which habits of right
choice can be developed? Why are light and music
and companionship encouraged in saloons? What are
the satisfactions of sacrifice? How then can we
encourage sacrifice in proper degree?
Some Practical Problems
1. If you were seeking to get and maintain the
enthusiastic interest and curiosity of a child for
nature and the study of nature, how would you pro-
ceed? Would you use your power to force it from the
outside to work at difficult and uninteresting aspects
of the subject, where maximum effort was necessary
for the child? Or would you follow its present trivial,
and even fickle, interests, where least effort was de-
manded, and thus gradually lead the child to become
so interested in what was formerly uninteresting and
difficult that no conscious effort will be demanded?
2. If you sought to develop the power and attitude
of attention in a child, would you insist that it force
its attention consciously, whether interested or not,
in order to get mastery over the power of attending?
Or would you begin with things in which it is already
interested and thus enable it to acquire the habit
and attitude of attention to interesting things; and
develop its interest to take in things more and more
difficult? Reasons for your answer.
3. Apply your conclusions to the problem of edu-
cating tastes, desires, likes, and dislikes.
80 Use of Motives
References
Galloway: Prizes, in Encyclopedia of Sunday
Schools and Religious Education. Thomas Nelson
& Sons, N. Y.
Weigle: The Pupil and the Teacher; Ch. VIII,
Instinct. Hodder and Stoughton, N. Y. .50
CHAPTER VI
A STUDY OF THE NATURAL MOTIVES
1. Introduction: shortcomings of our present in-
ducements.
If it is true, as many educators feel, that the Sunday-
schools get less complete results than they should get
partly because proper efforts are not made to take
advantage of the natural desires and interests and
motives of young people, then it at once becomes the
duty of the students of Sunday-school problems to
make some study of this matter of motives. It is the
feeling of many that the inducements offered in the
average Sunday school are either (1) too vague and
broad, or (2) too low and trivial, to be of permanent
value, or (3) too high and remote from the conscious
longing of the child to allow him to find in them strong
incentives to action.
2. Vague motives; their weakness.
As illustration of the vague efforts to motivate
Sunday-school work we might cite the general idea
that the boys and girls who go to Sunday school are
in some way *' better " than those who do not, coupled
with the general exhortation to ''be good." Such
general points of view have their value, as a kind of
background, if they are not made too emphatic; and
they are not to be eliminated from use. They must
81
82 Use of Motives
be reinforced, however, by appeals much more definite
and concrete. Furthermore it must become true that
they are actually " better " in practical life.
Somewhat more definite, but much too broad and
vague for the use of young children, is the exhortation
to be like Christ or to guide their lives by his example.
If the child could do this he wouldn't need our teach-
ing. We must rather, after the first attractive,
inspiring, revealing of the Master, give the pupil
motives to do particular tasks that are Christlike, and
suited to his emotional and intellectual stage, even if
we have to appeal to impulses nearer home. The
distant objective is good for guidance, but hardly for
motivation.
3. Low motives; their weakness.
Among those devices which are frequently employed
and are to be looked upon as pedagogically poor, to
be used only in emergencies, if at all — are such arti-
ficial stimulants as material prizes, forced and ex-
aggerated competitions, progressive medals, and other
similar recognitions. Fear, whether of parental or
future punishment, falls in the same category. These
stimuli all produce intensive motives and actions;
but usually they are so far removed in reality from the
moral and spiritual results we are after, and their use
is so generally followed by unwholesome reactions,
that they do not minister to the sustained growth we
want to get.
4. Appeals too lofty or too remote.
In the third class of appeals, which cannot take
A Study of the Natural Motives 83
deep effect because of the immaturity of children,
we must include the high spiritual states and expecta-
tions, both in respect to this life and the life to come,
which may be regarded as normal to the aged or
mature Christian of the meditative type. The ideas
thus associated with rest, peace, and heaven do not,
and ought not to, have a very large place with the
child. To insist on them in early Hfe is sure to breed
hypocrisy or revolt in normal children.
5. Summary of the instinctive elements to which we
may appeal:
It will help our study of motivation to make some
display of the qualities of personality in children to
which appeal can be made; and of the general results
of such appeals upon the states of mind and the atti-
tude of life that go to make up character. It is no
part of the thought of the present writer that this
outline of the personal qualities back of the motives
which may be reached in our effort to influence life,
is complete or final. The only contention is that all
the results of modern pedagogy show that it is suicidal
not to reinforce teaching by every proper appeal to
the strong, native, effective motives; and that it is
not good education nor good religion to use inferior
or ill-adapted motives when it is possible to invoke
better.
We may remark again that all motives get their
strength from the fact that it brings satisfaction to us
to allow them to express themselves in their normal
way. This is just as true of the high motives as of the
84 Use of Motives
low. It is the actual or prospective satisfaction that
gives the zest. We may call this selfishness if we wish;
but it is not wise, in our efforts to improve children
and adults, including ourselves, to forget that our
progress consists largely in sacrificing lower satis-
factions to higher, more refined ones.
It is said of Jesus himself that he " endured the
cross for the jo^/ that was set before him." The highest
point we ever reach is to get pleasure out of self-
sacrifice. It is to the credit of our natures that we
may pass from satisfaction of self-indulgence to find
satisfaction in self-sacrifice.
In the following table an effort has been made to
display some of these native impulses, to show in a
concrete way how parents and teachers may appeal
to them in securing internal motives for conduct, and
to indicate some of the results in personality which
may come from the use and development of them.
The teacher will be able to extend the list of these
qualities and their values. They are merely the raw
material, very differently mixed in different children,
on which and by means of which we must work in our
efforts to equip the children in our Sunday schools
with the disposition, the power, and the habit of
making right choices.
A Study of the Natural Motives
85
A. Native Quali-
ties and Instincts to
which appeal may be
made.
B. Method of Ap-
peal to these Motives
in order to get sound
Results.
C. Results in Per-
sonality which may
come from their Use,
— both good and
bad. (Dangers from
wrong or over-em-
phasis.)
1. Curiosity.
2. Desire
Ownership.
for
Start with the
Child's desire t o
know, satisfy it with
real knowledge, con-
nect this with what
needs to be imparted
in such a way as to
get " contact " and
enlarged curiosity.
Usually needs to be
checked and guided
rather than urged.
To be coupled with
next.
3. Desire to Share.
Make clear to child
cases of need; induce
him to share with
those he is most fond
of, gradually extend
the field; be sure
the child sees the
happiness it has pro-
duced.
Knowledge.
Thirst for higher
kinds of knowledge.
(May become low
and morbid, if al-
lowed to dwell on
little things exclu-
sively.)
Material posses-
sions. Ought to di-
minish with higher
development. (May
degenerate into ava-
rice, theft, dis-
honesty.)
Liberahty, benev-
olence, generosity.
Habit of unselfish-
ness.
(Indiscriminate
giving.)
86
Use of Motives
4. Imitation.
8. Contraxiness.
6. Emulation
Rivalry.
o r
7. Restlessness.
r 8. F a i t h
Trustfulness.
a n
Give proper scope
to it, by furnishing
suitable, attractive
examples both of per-
sonahties and of
actions.
Guided and won
over by superior rea-
son and patience,
rather than by su-
perior force.
Sparingly used
and then stripped
as nearly as possible
of the " personal "
feeling.
Supply varied,
suitable, wholesome,
attractive outlets.
Constant truth;
fair treatment. Ap-
peal in such a way as
to extend it from
known persons into a
love and confidence
in Universe.
Good or bad ac-
tions, customs,
habits, attitudes, de-
pending on the hero.
(Lack of originality.)
Originality;
strength of purpose.
(Disagreeable ego-
tism and antago-
nism.)
Vigor and ef-
ficiency.
Intensification of
action.
(Offensive egotism
and envy or jeal-
ousy.)
Experimentation
and activity.
Discovery and utili-
zation of expressive
powers.
(Nervousness and
ineffective changes.)
Constructive e n -
thusiasm. C o n -
tinuity of purpose
and effort.
Sympathy: opti-
mism.
(Credulity; open-
ness to imposition.)
A Study of the Natural Motives
87
9. Obedience.
10. Fear.
11. Imagination.
Based originally on
the inexperience of
the child, it should be
appealed to wisely
and sanely; should
be reinforced by ab-
solute justice and
truth; should not be
overworked.
Only to be ap-
pealed to if at all, in
extreme emergencies
and crises; and then
by perfectly true,
convincing, unex-
aggerated statement
of danger.
To be used i n a
broad, n o n -critical
way, relating it to
higher rather than
lower tendencies and
possibiUties o f t h e
nature.
Habits and atti-
tudes of obedience to
conventions and
laws.
Harmonious and
cooperative relations
with others.
Assimilation o f
what the race has
gained.
(Lack of originality
and independence,
and of personal
growth and c o n -
victions.)
Intensity of action
(or paralysis of ac-
tion), but usually
through n e g a t ive
motives, — (usually
reacting harmfully on
personality).
Larger, rounder
views, sympathies,
and insights than
mere matter-of-fact
statements of truths
will give or allow.
(Unreality and lack
of harmony with
facts.)
88
Use of Motives
12. I n s t i n c t of
Repetition.
13. Play Instinct.
14. Talking
stinct.
In
15. Instinct for
" Doing Things."
Furnish o p p o r -
tunity to repeat the
good attitudes,
speeches, acts, deci-
sions, etc.,rather than
the bad.
No appeal neces-
sary. Guide and
make serve construc-
tive ends. Play is the
moral arena and
clinic of childhood
Use to secure moral
habits.
Cultivate as a
means of exact ex
pression, and of the
development and
crystallization of in-
ner ideals and
ideas. Helps reveal
to teachers just
where pupil is.
Encourage; guide,
furnish wholesome
channels. There is
no way of eq^ual
value for developing
personality, and pre-
venting demoraUza-
tion, at critical times.
Facility in the
thing repeated; skill,
habits, — good o r
bad.
(Lack of origi-
nality.)
Enthusiastic ac-
tion; complete en-
gagement of the
whole personality,
and the habit of this;
practise in control of
self. (Lack of seri-
ousness; desire to be
amused.)
Facility of self-
expression.
(Hypocrisyra
means of covering
real thoughts.)
Practise; s e 1 f -
discovery and self-
control; skill; habits
of effective industry.
(Neglect of the
ideal, meditative side
of life.)
A Study of the Natural Motives
89
16. Instinct
Leading.
for
Find special capa-
bilities, and offer op-
portunity to exercise
them in most whole-
some degree and
manner. Power i n
leadership depends
on practise in lead-
ing.
Ability to lead;
habits of leading.
(Egoism; rivalry.
Unwillingness to fol-
low.)
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. An examination of the state of your own Sunday
school to determine what motives are actually ap-
pealed to in order :
(1) To secure attendance,
(2) To secure order,
(3) To induce worship and reverence,
(4) To get class work done.
Estimate at what points improvement could be made.
2. The motivating power of a satisfaction is in
proportion to its nearness. Corollaries of this.
3. The possibility of an upward development and
refinement of satisfactions, — from selfish gratifica-
tions to sacrifice for others.
4. The rewards (satisfactions) which we use in
motivating pupils should be just as natural to the
total situation as possible.
Suggestive Questions
Is a child better off at Sunday school than at home?
Examine both sides of the question. Suppose the
90 Use of Motives
Sunday school is not orderly; suppose its teaching is
superficial and unconvincing; suppose its worship is
flippant and irreverent; suppose it ignores the real
present capacities of the child emotionally, intellec-
tually, and in its impulses and powers of expression?
Did you ever know a Sunday school in which some of
these shortcomings existed? What is involved in
the idea of '' appropriate " motives?
Some Practical Problems
1. Some motives used in our Sunday schools:
(1) Fear, cupidity, rivalry: too low, but
strong.
(2) Heaven, spiritual life, etc.: fine, but too
lofty and remote.
What is there between? And how can we use all
of these things in order to get the best results in
practise?
2. Make a table continuing the one of section 5
using the following youthful instincts and impulses:
the " gang " instinct with its appeal to loyalty; the
collecting impulse; the destructive tendencies;
the fighting instinct; the sex impulses.
References
Abbott: Gentle Measures in Management and Train-
ing of the Young. Harper Bros., N. Y. $1.25
A Study of the Natural Motives 91
Bagley: Educative Values. The Macmillan Co.,
N. Y. $1.25
Galloway: Biology of Sex for Parents and Teachers.
(Chapter VII.) D. C. Heath. .75
Weigle: The Pupil and the Teacher. Lutheran
Publication Society, Philadelphia. .50
CHAPTER VII
MOTIVATION IN THE INSTRUCTIONAL SIDE
OF SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK
1. The two aspects of education: instruction and
expression.
In earlier chapters it has been suggested that there
are two ways by which we may influence the growth
and development of the character of the pupils. In
the first place we may give information or instruct,
inspire, impress or stimulate the individual. This is
what we usually mean by teaching. This is the im-
pressive side of education. It is the method whereby
we influence the individual by what has happened in
the past. We are stimulating personality from the
receiving side. This is very important; and we need
to learn continually how to do this better and better.
This, however, is not all. We may, in the second place,
educate by securing or allowing activity on the part
of the pupil. He may develop character by doing
things and by taking the satisfaction or discomfort
that comes from the doing. This is learning by
expression. There are many who insist that this is
the best possible way to learn, — that one learns
much more surely by practise than by instruction.
In reality, as we have seen, genuine teaching
93
04 Use of Motives
properly includes both. The best results come from
right instruction, given in the most appealing possible
way, meeting the internal needs and impulses of the
pupil, going on into right choices and action, and
followed by the full satisfaction that comes from
doing the right thing. This is a complete personal
reaction, — ^the most educative thing in the world.
An illustration from the early life of the child may
make this clearer. In learning to talk the child hears
words of others. These make a distinct impression.
The sound may come to carry definite meaning to
the child. On the other hand the child has the
power of making noises, and does so. Possibly these
may have some meaning to the child. These two
things, however, do not constitute talking; they must
become related before much of education can follow.
In really learning to talk, the child must hear and be
impressed with the sounds, and must then imitate
them by its own muscular actions. It is the coupling
up of expression to impression that proves so full of
educational value.
2. The pupiVs part in impression : attention.
A large part of education must always be made
up of instruction, of impression. Life is too short for
each individual to be taught solely by his own actions
and experiences. Indeed education as a human
enterprise consists essentially in enabling the youth
to get some of the experience of the race without
having to go through it all himself. It is a short cut
and, while it saves time, it has the shortcomings that
Motivation in Instruction 95
belong to all short cuts. It is never quite as vital as
that which one gets by practise.
It is very clear that openness and receptiveness on
the part of the pupil is a most important quality in
determining the results of instruction. His attitude
must be one of attention, of receptiveness, of apprecia-
tion in order that instruction shall really reach the
springs of personality. This is the reason that edu-
cators put so much emphasis on attention. The
power and willingness to give attention is not only
necessary to get a particular piece of information;
it is the very foundation of all character. Attention
is to personality what cement is to artificial granite.
Without it there would be no coherence in either case.
No real impression can be made on pupils without
this attitude of openness or attention.
3. Motivation of attention.
Without attention and openness a teacher can do
nothing. All instruction must be such, and of such
method, as first of all to win the attention of the pupil.
This openness, to be most effective, must be from
within. Openness that is forced from without is not
likely to have any permanence or much usefulness.
The pupil himself then must have internal motives
for giving attention, — for opening up. If he has
this, the attention becomes involuntary. More
results can be had when attention comes thus spon-
taneously, and the energy of the pupil does not need
to be given to the mere act of attending. All of this
means that what we teach should appeal strongly to
96 Use of Motives
some of the interests already within the child. We
must arouse his curiosity and desire for knowledge,
or connect closely what we are presenting with some-
thing that he already knows and enjoys, or that
appeals strongly to his imagination or tastes; or we
must furnish him a sense of pleasure in anticipation
of something we have for him. There must be reasons
for giving attention that are convincing to the inner
nature of the child and at the same time are as natural
and related to the thing to be taught as is possible.
There are those who would insist that a part of the
task of education is to teach the child to give his
attention, by voluntary act, whether he thinks it
worth his while or not. It is sufficient to observe that
attention as an end in itself is worthless. It is a
great means. It is much better so to motivate un-
interesting or disagreeable problems by way of some
form of self-interest and satisfaction that this will
insure the necessary spontaneous attention.
4, Peculiar value of receptiveness in moral and
religious education.
If it is true that the child must really be open and
receptive in order to get the practical, common-place
knowledges of every-day life, it is doubly true in
respect to the higher moral and religious instruction
and inspirations. Instruction here must go deeper
than mere knowledge. It must reach through into
purposes, choices, and action. For this reason it is
necessary that all the emotional states, impulses,
desires, appetites, and the like shall be enlisted. It
Motivation in Instruction 97
must be more than mere theory. Otherwise knowl-
edge of moral and religious things would be divorced
from conduct, — and this is fatal to both morals and
rehgion. This openness to truth, this receptiveness
of the essential things that make for right purposes
and choices, this attitude of confidence in and sym-
pathy with all the incoming stimuli, is essentially
what religious teachers have always meant by faith;
It is lack of this which prevents the individual profit-
ing as he might by the experiences and influence of
others. The normal child has this capacity in a
marked degree. It is criminal not to find the right
way to bring it into play and utilize it fully.
5. The religious effect of partial reception of truth.
The reception of truth, to have moral value, must
be complete and convincing to the personality. It
must be sufficient not merely to win a vague and
momentary assent but to dominate the purposes
and the will continuously. In order to get such com-
plete reception for our truths we must win both the
intellectual and the emotional avenues to choice.
Partial reception, — either with the desires respected
and the judgment unsatisfied, or the reason convinced
and the impulses and desires unmet, — necessarily
means internal conflict and personal inefficiency.
Such an internal conflict is sure to involve an uncer-
tainty of purpose and a vacillation of choices which is
far from that sure, definite, complete carrying of
stimulus through into conduct that we have been
seeking. This situation encourages to a profession of
98 Use of Motives
beliefs which are not allowed to influence conduct.
It is not true merely that " faith without works is
dead "; beliefs and emotions that do not find a free
flow through choices into actions are deadening to
all moral qualities. This is death.
6. The effect of proper motivation upon the degree
and quality of reception.
If impression is to have that thoroughness and
completeness which will make it possible for it to
issue in right conduct there must be the fewest barriers
within. Not merely so; we must seek the active
alliance of the child through active preliminary
appeal to, and use of, the great moving impulses
already having a place in its Ufe. This is having a
friend within the fortress. This helps insure the
spontaneous openness and attention referred to above.
Half the battle is won if we can utilize some strong
natural desire that tends in the direction that we
wish the character to grow. If there are such in-
stincts and impulses, and our appeals properly respect
them, the reception of the truth we present will not
be partial, but total; not indifferent or reluctant, but
with enthusiasm; not with internal combat between
impulses and judgment, but with wholeness of per-
sonality. Furthermore such completeness of reception
more nearly promises issue in conduct, which is after
all the test of the impression.
We have called this work of the teacher in giving
the child legitimate satisfaction in its learning proc-
esses through appeal to its natural instincts and
Motivation in Instruction 99
impulses, motivation. It has been shown to give
valuable results in secular learning. It heightens
every element of its effectiveness. It is believed that
this principle has even more value in the instruction
side of moral and religious education than in general
education, — if there is any difference between them.
This is true because of the fact stated above that
information whose purpose is the molding of choice
and conduct must necessarily be more convincing to
personahty than that whose end is knowledge and
culture. The real self is more completely enlisted
and measured by choice and conduct than by accep-
tance of truth. Hence calls to conduct, if they are to
be successful, must be more completely in accordance
with the inner springs of our life than is necessary in
any other form of teaching.
7. Sunday-school work has been chiefly instructional;
hut even this has not been well motivated.
Our Sunday-school work has been for a long time
directed to impression and instruction. We have
taught our classes. We have tried to instruct them in
the Bible and in catechism. We have given them
" line upon line and precept upon precept." We have
sought to make permanent impressions upon them.
How poorly we have succeeded is suggested by the
fact that our children know so much more of the
Greek myths taught in the schools than of the Hebrew
stories taught in our Sunday schools. There are
probably several reasons for this. Much of our
religious instruction has been untimely, has been
100 Use of Motives
unsuited to the state of development of the child,
and hence has failed to utilize the natural tendencies
and interests of the child which would reinforce and
make the teaching vital. It is not intended to create
the impression that the work the Sunday school is
doing by way of instruction is not valuable. It is.
Indeed it is the best that is being done by society at
present for moral and religious education of youth.
Yet its effectiveness can be greatly increased by
finding and utilizing the motives which will more
fully ally the child with the work.
8. Natural discrepancy between child motives and
adult motives.
If an enthusiastic, zest-inspiring motive is needed
to secure better work and more lasting results mentally
and religiously, we must realize at once that the child
cannot have the internal interests and motives that
would properly influence the mature mind. His
experiences, his outlook, his natural desires and
expressions are not attuned to the moral and religious
standards and purposes and hopes which may natu-
rally and properly move the mature person who is
his teacher. He cannot appreciate yet what will
appeal to him greatly later. Consequently he will
not open his life to just the stimuli which an adult
would choose. There is nothing wrong with him if
his attention is not readily given to what we find
most interesting. Because of this older people are
likely to deny the rightness of these youthful states;
but we have very good authority for believing that
Motivation in Instruction 10 1
these fundamental qualities of childhood are close
to the Divine order of things. On account of this it
frequently happens that very young and immature
teachers, in spite of poor equipment otherwise, can
secure much greater interest and better results than
older teachers do. They are closer to the child's real
impulses.
Motivation is the natural complement of grading
the instruction to the child's intelligence. It is
grading the purposes and the whole approach to meet
the development of his instincts and emotions. Both
are essential in any religious education. Now that
we are beginning to get rationally graded Sunday-
school instruction, our next step is proper grading of
our appeals to the progressing motives of youth.
9. Our specific task.
If these things are true and if the naturalness and
intensity of the motive enhance the educational
results, the great problem of the Sunday-school teacher
is to find a way to make the pupil want to do that for
which the Sunday school stands. How poor we are
in this respect can be gathered by any thoughtful
person who has had experience with the average type
of Sunday school. What have we done deliberately
to make the Sunday school a place where a healthy
boy really wants to go and work? The fact that this
is not his state of mind with respect to the Sunday
school is more the fault of the school than of the boy.
What motives in the personality of the boy do we
depend on to secure attendance at the class, to induce
' ■ * , < <
102 Use of Motives
him to do his work on the lessons, to secure real,
cordial liking for the Sunday school, and any en-
thusiastic doing of the things taught in his class?
Are any of these motives natural, internal, spon-
taneous, zestful likings of the boy which lead him into
right attitudes and living; or are they chiefly some-
thing forced on him from without, or so artificial
that they are only such stimulants as a whip to a
jaded horse?
10. Some impulses that may furnish motives for
learning.
We shall see in the next chapter that most of our
motives look toward expression rather than learning,
and that one of the most effective ways to motivate
instruction is to do so indirectly through the instincts
that lead to action, thus allowing instruction to
become incidental to the problems aroused by action.
For example, it often happens that the need of
arithmetic in order to do something like building a
boat will make a boy much more open to instruction.
There are, however, a few powerful instincts directly
serving instruction.
(l) Curiosity. This is a universal impulse, — this
desire to know, — and is at the foundation of all
getting of knowledge. It is shown in the young child
by the perpetual asking of questions. It leads directly
to knowledge. It may be handled in such a way as
to impart knowledge and yet be left unsatisfied.
This indeed is our task. Starting simply with the
child's desire to know, — it makes very little differ-
Motivation in Instruction 103
ence what, — a teacher of insight will impart real
knowledge about it and so connect it with what the
child needs to know as to get complete " contact "
and an enlarged curiosity. Curiosity is merely the
beginning name for the scientific and philosophic
spirit of later years. Curiosity sets the problems
which motivate learning.
How poorly we, as parents and teachers, use this
impulse is shown by the fact that our children have
lost most of their interest in nature by the time they
reach the high school. This is not because they have
learned all that might interest them. The child
starts out with the utmost appetite for the things of
nature. We, in the course of his growth, kill this
interest by our unpedagogical method of meeting
his curiosity. We should keep it alive and increase
it. Instead we deaden it or direct it toward less
worthy objects.
In our Sunday schools we do not make the use of
this natural quality of children with the insight and
perseverance we should have. There are few satis-
factions so keen to the human mind as this thrill of
learning something we wish to know. In Sunday
schools, as elsewhere, we must get the child to feel
that there is something ahead that he wants to learn.
We must then redeem our promise. The Bible is
fuller of such things than any history we know. The
Hves of righteous people are as full of such things as
those of the wrong-doers. The problems of life are
rich with revelations for which the child mind can
104 Use of Motives
be made eager. To be sure it requires good teaching
to use these materials in this way. It requires what
we call in school the " problem raising " attitude.
When we get a pupil to the place where he is con-
tinually raising problems, and where he is sure he
can come to us and be put on the road to an answer
in such a way as will leave him still more anxious to
know something else, we are sure of his interest and
his progress. This is our biggest and most natural
way to motivate instruction.
(2) Trustfulness and confidence. This is a marked
quality of early childhood, and may be made by any
teacher or parent of discretion a great ally to instruc-
tion, and an inspiration to learning. It helps to get
attention and to insure the open gateway into the
child's personality for whatever the trusted teacher
says. Young children are disposed to accept truth on
the authority of their elders. This tendency must be
used wisely and discreetly. It should be strengthened
and rewarded by absolute justice and truth on the
part of the parent and teacher. It should be used to
get many vital ideas accepted by the child, before he
can learn them by experience. It should not be abused
by making appear to be true and vital things which
the child may later learn are mere speculations,
neither should it be so used as to displace the tendency
to get truth for oneself. The place of such authority
in teaching ought to decrease as the child's own
powers of investigation increase.
(3) Imagination. We have talked a good deal of
Motivation in Instruction 105
imagination in childhood and the part it plays in the
child's own mental activities. We have also thought
of it as a means of interpreting the love for stories
and the like, which is a characteristic of childhood.
But it has a function much more to our purpose than
these. It is one of the great means of opening this
gateway into the life. The child is not merely imagi-
native inside, so to speak. It sees and hears and feels
and tastes imaginatively. It gets more than is actually
told to it. The whole appreciative and receptive side
is tinged with it and heightened in efficiency by it.
This merely means that our appeals to the child
should respect the imagination and should not become
too matter-of-fact. The imagination will often hold
in solution and precipitate more truth inside than
pure understanding will.
(4) Advancing the self in the estimation of others.
This is a quite legitimate motive, provided too much
use is not made of it. It may be used early in life.
It is often seen to work in classes where the teacher
has secured a strong hold on the affections and
imagination of the pupils. It should not stop with
the desire to win the approval of the teacher. It
should extend to the other members of the class, to
the parents, and to all who are interested. Aside
from its immediate value in motivating the receiving
of instruction, when properly developed it helps lead
to an appreciation of public opinion, which is a big
part of all education in social morals.
(5) Promoting self-advancement. Later in the child^s
106 Use of Motives
life there are some other motives that may open the
way to instruction and learning. A feeling of interest
in one's own growth and advancement will often make
a youth keen for teaching. For example, the purpose
of fitting the life for a particular career acts in this
way. The pleasure in mastering and conquering may
often be appealed to as a motive for learning as well
as for doing. A sense of need of information in general
or in particular, no matter how it originates, has great
value here. In all these kinds of appeals it is the
privilege of the teacher to help secure the feeling and
then supply the satisfaction.
(6) Artificial motivation. In what has been said
there has been an effort to keep the motives just as
close as possible to the nature of the work, — namely,
to open the life of the child from within to receive
instruction. The closer the motive is to the thing
desired the more the personality really assimilates the
income. We often use in our Sunday schools a series
of artificial stimuli which are of questionable value.
Such are competitions, prizes, medals, emblems,
picnics, Christmas trees, and possibly punishments.
These appeal to greed, rivalry, fear and other forms
of selfishness which furnish powerful motives, but
they lead us directly away from the moral and religious
states of mind which we desire to have become
habitual. These might be justified if we were seeking
information alone, but we are seeking right character
by way of information. It is important to remember
that we do two things in appealing to human impulses
Motivation in Instruction 107
as we have been suggesting: (a) we get a response by
way of this motive, and (6) we cultivate the motive.
We cannot afford to exalt unduly a permanent motive
like greed, in order to secure a temporary right
response. The response cannot be more than tempo-
rary with an artificial or unrelated motive. The
form of the response cannot fail to be permanent if
we fix permanently in character a natural motive for
it.
What we do now in a superficial, haphazard and
artificial way we want to do naturally, thoroughly,
and after a complete study of all the possibilities,
with a full understanding of its importance and
meaning.
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. Strong and weak points of learning by instruc-
tion? By experience?
2. Attention as a necessary factor in learning. As
a foundational element in character.
3. Relation between the following ideas : Attention,
appreciation, receptivity, faith. Are these ends in
themselves? What is the real end?
4. Redefine motivation in terms of the receiving
side of personality.
5. Analyze the motives to which you have been
trying to appeal as a Sunday-school teacher.
6. Imagination as an aid to reception.
108 Use of Motives
Suggestive Questions
How would you illustrate that attention is necessary
to learning? Why is it necessary? In what various
ways may the attention of the child be secured? What
do you think is the best of these? Why is " faith
without works dead "? Give illustrations of conflict
between desires and judgment. How does such a
state affect decision? What is the proper work of
parent and teacher at such a time? Give illustrations
of desires and judgment coinciding. Effect. Give
reasons why natural incentives are better than
artificial ones. What do you mean by natural?
Some Practical Problems
1. Should the teacher try to look at the thing
taught from the standpoint of the pupil, or try to
get the pupil to see it from the mature standpoint?
Select concrete instances and show the practical
bearing of your answer on the manner of teaching.
2. Can you suggest any practical means by which
the teacher may be enabled to '^ be converted and
become as a little child *' ?
3. The problem of answering children's questions
to best advantage. What do we want to get? Should
we refuse to answer? Why? Should we evade?
Why? Should we answer with complete finaUty?
Why? What then?
4. Draw up a sound scheme to motivate: (1)
attendance at Sunday school; (2) study of the
Motivation in Instruction 109
assigned work; (3) carrying the teachings into
practise. Is your scheme better than the prizes,
competitions, and rivalries, usually employed?
References
Athearn: The Church School. The Pilgrim Press,
Boston. $1.00
Galloway: The Appeal to Motives in Religious Edu-
cation, in Encyclopedia of Sunday Schools and
Religious Education, Thomas Nelson & Sons,
N. Y.
CHAPTER VIII
MOTIVATING THE EXPRESSIVE SIDE OF
SUNDAY SCHOOL WORK
1. Summary.
We have seen that all instruction is much more
effective if the pupil really desires to know the thing
we are trying to teach, and that he is much more open
and receptive if he has motives of his own for wanting
to know. We have seen that it is even more important
in moral and religious teaching than in any other to
have the complete enthusiasm of the pupil. The
Sunday school has yet very much to learn in bringing
the natural internal impulses to the aid of the instruc-
tion. We must find ways to make our moral and
religious instruction appeal to all the natural instincts
that make the child willing and anxious to receive
information. The appeals of the street are very
closely adjusted to the child's desires. Ours must
be made equally so.
2. The greater meaning of expression in education.
Instruction is a great source of ideas, but action or
expression is even more important in some respects.
We learn by doing. Even the truths that we receive
by impression become more really ours when we put
them into practise. Information merely gives ideas.
Ill
112 Use of Motives
Conduct or expression both gives and fixes ideas,
develops skill, and forms habits. There is a real
possession through expression that mere impression
never gives. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
It is more blessed to do than to be told. This is even
more true in moral and religious matters than in
ordinary education, as we have seen. There can be
no great moral or religious value in any mental states
that do not find some way of expressing themselves.
Indeed moral and religious knowledges and states are
not really our own until they have been used, — put
into practise.
Sunday schools have not done as well as they might
even in teaching; they are still less efficient in getting
expression of what they teach. We really have no
adequate way to insure that our pupil will put his
best impressions into use. This is a fatal weakness.
One of the most urgent tasks of the Sunday school
is to find ways to help the pupil express his good teach-
ings and good resolutions.
3. Education of choice is the heart of moral and
religious education.
It has been held throughout this discussion that
the real character of the individual is expressed in
choice or decision. This is the point at which the in-
dividual, in the light of all his instincts, his desires, his
experiences, his ideas, his habits, and his ideals, decides
his course. If this is wrong his whole personality has
failed. This is the supreme point where moral value
attaches. If we can insure right choice we are sue-
Motivating Expression 113
ceeding in our education. Impression and instruction
have a large part in determining choice, but conduct
and action are the only real tests of it. We can only
educate choice by choosing, and expression is merely
carrying choice into effect. Expression is therefore
closer to choice and educates it more directly than
impression alone does. Of course the normal way and
the best way to educate choice is by impression or
instruction or stimulus going on through choice and
will, into expression. It is by coupling impression
and expression that we really educate personality.
This, as we have seen, is the complete and normal
personal reaction.
4. More important to motivate expression than im-
pression.
In proportion as the expressive side of life is im-
portant in the development of life, is it necessary to
find adequate and right motives to determine expres-
sion. Because action is a better measure of character
than learning is, and is at the same time more edu-
cative of character, it becomes very important that the
motives called on to secure conduct shall be sound. A
person may be taught a lie and not become a liar;
one cannot choose and practise a lie without becoming
untrue. Appeal to false and artificial motives for
learning may be merely futile and unfortunate;
using false motives in securing conduct is to vitiate
the very machinery of choice. There is more self-
activity in expression than in impression. In just the
same degree is right motivation more profitable and
114 Use of Motives
essential in respect to conduct. The motives must be
one's own in order that choice shall have any value.
5. Superior motivation possible in expression.
The natural curiosity of the child furnishes our
most effective way to arouse enthusiasm for the proc-
ess of learning, or receiving impressions. We must
make the utmost use of it in all good teaching. There
are some other natural motives that look toward the
reception of knowledge; but there are not very
many. On the other hand, there are a number of
strong native impulses that push toward behavior.
There are more strong instincts leading to expression
than toward reception. This is only another way of
saying that the really important adjustments of life
are made by our behavior rather than by knowledge
alone; or in other words impression or learning that
does not pass over into choices and conduct has no
practical value in life. The fitness of a life is deter-
mined more by what comes out than by what goes in.
Ideas, knowledge, desires, habits are valuable in
practical life only as they make choices and responses
more sound and righteous. To insure that we shall
express ourselves both vigorously and rightly, many
of our most powerful impulses and most valued satis-
factions cluster about doing things. Most people in
full health get more pleasure out of expression than
our of mere impression and states of mind. Indeed
the word emotion, which we have come to think of
rather as a state of mind, is in reality a term demand-
ing action, — expression. The reader will recall that
Motivating Expression 115
what we have called motivation just means the using
of the natural impulses to get enthusiasm for our
educational processes. If such powerful motives are
back of our expression, and if expression really gives
us indirectly more accurate knowledge than in-
struction alone and, in addition, gives skill and
habits, then we surely must try to find how best to
motivate it. It is more easy to motivate action than
to motivate learning. And yet in our Sunday schools
we have almost ignored this aspect of our oppor-
tunities. We instruct, but we do not do very much
to reinforce the instruction by using and gratifying
the impulses to do. We neglect our most favorable
means of motivating right choices in a field in which
motivation is most important and effective in molding
life, — the field of expression.
6. Essential to find the right motives in educating by
expression.
The greater appeal of the impulses to action and
their profound effect on the whole machinery of
choice make it even more essential that we get the
right motives in expressive work than in impressive
work. It is not enough merely to get response. We
must get it in the right way. In other words we must
pick and develop and appeal to those expressive
instincts and impulses that are suited to the stage
of development of the child ; those which will produce
the most normal and appropriate expression for the
pupil. Grading of expression then is even more
important than grading of information. There is
116 Use of Motives
nothing more demoralizing to character than to suc-
ceed in inspiring modes of personal expression that
are false to the real nature of the child. The thoughts
of a person of fifty are not as much out of place in a
child as the expression and conduct would be. Hypoc-
risy is the certain outcome of trying to get expression
through motives which should not normally control
the child.
7. Some of the natural impulses which may serve as
motives for expression.
Roughly there are two broad classes of expressive
activities that give satisfaction to us and thus serve
to induce us to act. One class is clearly personal and
selfish; the other looks rather toward social service,
the service of others. Both sets of motives play a
large part in impelling us to action. By means of
them we may educate our children. Among the more
personal and selfish expressive instincts are those of
getting possessions, of rivalry, of making things, of
fighting, and of mastering difficulties. Among those
which look somewhat more toward others are the
impulses of leading, sharing, entertaining, and obey-
ing. Somewhat mixed are play, imitation, etc. These
impulses are very unequal in their strength; but the
point which it is desired to make is this: These are
real, natural impulses of youth; they urge the child
to action of one kind or another. We too want the
child to act and do things, because by doing things he
learns and grows. By coupling what we desire him
to do with some appropriate one of these natural
Motivating Expression 117
yearnings we can more certainly get the child to do
what we think is best for it, and because the result
accords with these internal impulses the child will get
more growth out of the doing. It is not possible to
discuss each of these. A few examples must serve:
(l) The play instinct. We are coming to recognize
that this is one of the most powerful of the childish
instincts and one of the most educative. Already
we have learned that we can get the average child to
do enthusiastically a great deal that we desire it to
do by making a " game " of it. The movement for
supervised play is merely an effort to use this most
educative form of expression in building habits of
fairness, consideration, honesty, truthfulness, and
cooperation in the child. The child that can, in his
games, carry out the teachings that he has received
about these things is getting the kind of practise he
needs in order to be an honest business man and a
moral citizen. Play is sure to have a still larger place
than it now has as a means of giving expression to
moral and religious teaching. This is a large part of
the meaning of the physical work in the Y. M. C. A.
It is much more than a way to secure healthy bodies.
It is to motivate right choices by means of sports and
the play instinct.
Because of what has been said about the permanent
educative value of play it is essential that the early
games shall insure honesty, consideration, fairness,
self-control and the like just as much as enthusiasm,
self-activity and pleasure. Indeed all these must be
118 Use of Motives
bound up into the child's conception of play, so as to
become a habit. It is for this reason that early play
in the home and on the street, and about the school
should be supervised and guided both in its methods
and purposes by parents and teachers who under-
stand its value.
(2) The instinct of imitation. This is a quite power-
ful impulse in young children. It may be conscious
or unconscious, but it surely determines much of the
conduct of young people. It is clear that this spirit
may be made a great ally for securing right conduct.
Reinforced by the instinct of repetition which is also
characteristic of children, right habits may be formed
with very little formal impression or teaching.
Clearly then the parent and teacher should do
nothing in the presence of the child which he would
not be willing to have the child reproduce. We
cannot have wrong impressions striking his senses and
hope to keep his inner springs of action pure.
(3) The desire for ownership. This impulse secures
much of the activity of mankind. It is operative in
children. It can be used to motivate industry,
frugality, and other habits that are valuable. The
fact that it may lead to stealing on the one hand or
to miserliness on the other is no argument against
legitimate appeals to it. Many parents would find
what is drudgery to their children wonderfully trans-
formed if the children were assured a share of the
returns from what they do.
While this motive is useful and worthy there is no
Motivating Expression 119
question that the artificial emphasis placed on it by
modern society makes it dangerous. There is scarcely
an impulse more abused in our modern civilization.
Its use in childhood should be accompanied by the
sanest sort of emphasis upon social sharing and
service that develop right attitudes in the use of
possessions.
(4) The impulse to he " doing things '' or making
something. This is somewhat indefinite, and yet
every parent will recognize that it is real for strong,
healthy children. It leads of course, straight to
behavior, or, as we are too prone to feel, to mis-
behavior. We may presume on the fact that the
average child is happier at some activity. Motiva-
tion of this merely means to couple what we think the
child should do with this impulse and skilfully to pilot
the child into the doing, seeing that an adequate
satisfaction comes because of it. We may class what
the child does as play, work, and drudgery. Play is
motivated by large natural impulses; drudgery is
work that is not properly motivated. As soon as
anything has sufficient rewards ahead of it to dominate
the interests it ceases to be drudgery. Drudgery is
not educative. Any work may be so motivated as
to make it educative.
(5) The impulse to he^^ it/' — the instinct of leader-
ship. This is a splendid means of giving motive to
expression. Most of the qualities about which we
teach our pupils may be developed in connection with
this. Most pupils have ability to lead in something.
120 Use of Motives
If we can devise ways in which the pupil may express
this instinct we can couple with it the attitudes which
right leaders and followers must possess. The prac-
tise of leadership is the only way to develop leaders
and to give them good and successful qualities.
(6) The impulse of fighting. Possibly most of us
regard this as an evil and archaic tendency. We must
recognize, however, that it has had a rather important
place in human development. We are often puzzled
to know how to control it. Perhaps it seems wholly
impossible to think of using this spirit directly to
furnish motive and momentum to something worth
while. Nevertheless it is quite possible. Usually
fighting in children comes as the primal response to
something unfair, aggravating, overbearing, and the
like. However, it expresses itself in the concrete
against persons. It is quite possible to idealize and
abstract this and turn the fighting spirit against the
unfairness, wrong, or other difficulties that threaten
destruction of personality instead of against per-
sonality itself. Our object in trying to use these
natural impulses to motivate conduct is both to
strengthen conduct and to redirect the primal im-
pulses.
(7) The impulse to share. This impulse is just as
native and primal and satisfaction-giving as fighting
or gaining possessions. It leads, through sympathy
and understanding, toward social service. Much
more enthusiasm can be aroused in a class of boys for
some suitable form of social service than for any
Motivating Expression 121
amount of instruction or information, and much
more work can be had by way of it. It is needless
to say that the satisfaction that comes from actually
doing something for other people is much more keen
than can come from being taught the duty of helping
others. This satisfaction is the thing that determines
the desire to have the experience repeated. It is the
really impelling thing.
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. Why is it that doing things has more fixing power
in education than learning things? Make a careful
study of the factors on which it depends.
2. Activity is more satisfying than impressions.
Why? Corollaries of?
3. What connections with other social agencies
must the Sunday schools make if they really aspire
to help guide the expressive activities of their boys
and girls? Why? Do you see any way to accomplish
this?
4. The grading of Expressive work. Why desirable?
5. The movement for supervised play? Is it
sound? Why?
Suggestive Questions
Why is false conduct a more vital matter than false
teachings and impressions? If belief and knowledge
are not allowed to influence conduct, do they have any
value? Why is it more easy to motivate expression
than learning? What is the result of encouraging
122 Use of Motives
expressions which are not normal to the state of
development of the child? Why is it desirable to
change back and forth from one to another form of
expression? Is it possible to overemphasize and
overindulge the play and amusement impulse?
What can we do to avoid the danger?
Some Practical Problems
1. Suppose the teacher desires to help the child
become more obedient in the home, thoughtful of
the mother, or cheerful, how can the Sunday school
assist in practise?
(1) The parent should know what the teacher has
in mind and be brought to sympathize with it.
(2) In impressing the child the teacher must make
his statement of the values and satisfactions in obedi-
ence and thoughtfulness as concrete and appealing
as possible. The child must be convinced through
the warmest, most impelling motives. (What?)
(3) The teacher should not stop short of a firm
resolution in the child's mind to make a real trial
during a limited time.
(4) The parent should see that the effort of the
child is recognized, is made easy, and gets the full
reward in the form of increased appreciation and
satisfaction.
(5) Some sort of a report should be made by the
child to the teacher, and conference held on the results.
(6) Renewed resolution by the child, and continued
support by parents and teachers.
Motivating Expression 123
2. Intermittent emphasis. It is not best to keep
preaching on one form of expression until the child
is weary of it. Get your response; and then pass to
something else. Later return and build to a still
higher level. Let the child understand that the whole
thing is progressive; and teach it to demand and
watch for and recognize growth in its own qualities.
3. Cigaret smoking. What are the impulses that
press the boy to this and similar things? Analyze
carefully. To what impulses and motives is it possible
to appeal to meet and overcome these? Which of
them are most valuable and reliable? Why?
4. The discovery to parents of their obligations and
opportunities to study and use the expressive impulses
suggested in Section 7 of this chapter.
5. How can we Sunday-school teachers assist in
securing an increase in respect for authority and law
and the rights of others on the part of children?
References
Athearn: The Church School. The Pilgrim Press,
Boston. $L00
McMurry: Use of Biography in Religious Instruc-
tion. Chapter VIII in Principles of Religious
Education. Longman's, Green, and Co., N. Y.
$1.25
CHAPTER IX
CERTAIN PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE THE
TEACHER IN HIS APPEAL TO MOTIVES
1. Review of the natural motives.
In our partial analysis of personality and of the
various types of motives that are strong in youth and
should be respected and used by the religious educator,
we have found three series which may be considered
separately, although they are so completely inter-
twined that they cannot possibly be separated in our
use of them.
There is, in the first place, the powerful series of
native impulses that appear early in life and furnish
a very large part of the internal stimulus to conduct.
Among these are curiosity, tendency to imitate, desire
for possession, rivalry, and restlessness. In the main
these are quite strong enough by nature, and need
only to be recognized, respected, utilized, and directed.
On the whole they should tend to diminish and take
a subordinate place as age develops and refines the
personality.
In a second group are some capacities and ten-
dencies, such as those of confiding, loving, obeying,
fearing, hating, and imagining. They are very much
subject to education by external influences, — more
125
126 Use of Motives
so even than the impulses mentioned above, — and
they color character quite as profoundly. It is a
large part of education to develop them properly and
to enable the individual to focus them on the right
objects.
A third group, important in all education, comprises
certain expressive instincts whereby the natural
outflow of youthful energy is guided. Since we really
grow by what we do quite as much as by what enters
into us, and since all children seek to express them-
selves in one way or another, it is very important that
their expression be connected with the best possible
impulses on the inside and take the most wholesome
forms outwardly. Chief among these forms of expres-
sion are play, certain more serious types of activity
which are often destructive, the effort to lead and to
accomplish results, and the tendency to repeat
actions that have given pleasure.
2. Selection of appropriate motives.
Out of these, and doubtless many other dominant
motives and impulses of childhood, which are never
of equal strength in any two children, we as parents
and teachers must select from time to time the proper
ones for use. We must find the proper order and
degree of emphasis to enable us to help the child
develop so that his impulses shall ultimately be rightly
guided and controlled and balanced from within,
under the force of his total character, rather than
respond riotously to external circumstances solely.
In an outHne discussion of this brevity it is not possible
Certain Principles to Guide the Teacher 127
to indicate all the important principles by which the
teachers of children should be guided in motivating
the moral and rehgious work undertaken by them,
even if we knew them all, which we by no means
do. Systematic work of this kind is really just begin-
ning. Years of careful experimenting and careful
testing of the results will be necessary to give us a
scientific foundation for the work we are trying to
do. In the statements which follow are incorporated
merely some of the conclusions which seem most
reasonable from the general study of education. While
put positively and briefly, there is no wish to be
dogmatic.
3. Egoistic impulses arise early.
In general, the self-seeking impulses appear in
personality first, and early get headway and tend to
dominate. The average religious teacher finds it
hard to believe that these are not wholly of the
devil. They do in very many of us come to run
riot and are the basis of much that is low and
unworthy. They are, however, apparently perfectly
normal and have the definite function of building
up and emphasizing the selfhood. Here belong such
forms of self-assertion as contrariness, rivalry, fight-
ing, desire to possess, striving for leadership, and
so forth.
4. Later origin of the unselfish motives.
Ordinarily, the unselfish and social qualities of
personality, which are equally normal and natural
with the former, come later in life and should function
128 Use of Motives
in controlling, guiding and chastening the more selfish.
Here come such impulses as confidence, sympathy,
love, obedience, imitation and hero-worship, self-
sacrifice for others, and their like.
5. How reconcile these?
The general task of the educator is so to stimulate,
exercise, and guide the expression of these natural
impulses, both selfish and unselfish, as they show
themselves, that each shall make the permanent
y contribution to personality which the Creator in-
tended it should make, and at the proper time retire
into a place subordinate to the higher qualities as
they come into view. The so-called lower impulses
are not in themselves unholy; they only become so
when they are abnormally developed, or are not sub-
ordinated properly to the better.
6. Legitimate use of the self-seeking impulses.
It is believed that the self-seeking impulses will
dominate the later life least if they are allowed their
legitimate place in early life, being neither unduly
suppressed nor overemphasized. Take, as an example,
the very general desire to possess things. In early
life, before the somewhat advanced idea of private
property is fully realized, many children, who by
proper handhng later develop into perfectly normal,
well-behaved, self-controlled people, are disposed
to take things which are not theirs. This is not at
all uncommon among children. The future of these
children is largely in the hands of their teachers. If
this tendency and impulse to possess is recognized
Certain Principles to Guide the Teacher 129
as normal and having a place in life, and yet subject
to control from within through other and higher
tendencies, equally normal, — well. If it is unduly
stimulated and exercised early in life it may readily
take control of the life, as avarice. If, on the contrary,
it is denied, derided, abused, arbitrarily suppressed,
it is likely to result in thievery, coupled with avarice
or with a reckless indifference to property both of
self and others. Other of these deeply ingrained
selfish motives obey similar laws.
7. What we most need to learn.
It follows, therefore, that the most serious tasks of
parents and teachers of children are: first, to find the
time and order of development of the dominant traits
and qualities of our natures and the contribution
they ought to make to character; and, second, to
learn the degree of emphasis necessary to enable them
to do this work and make their contribution to the
higher qualities which cannot yet be appealed to
directly, without giving them undue prominence
in the permanent motives of the life. While we are
getting some idea as to the answers to be given to
these questions, no one at present would undertake
to make a definite schedule; and, further, while we
all follow somewhat similar courses in our develop-
ment, no two individuals are exactly alike. This
makes the task, in very large measure, one of indi-
vidual study of individuals. This is where insight on
the part of the parent and teacher is essential to
success.
130 Use of Motives
8. The Sunday-school dilemma.
Pedagogically, the dilemma of the Sunday school
has been this: (1) Shall we motivate work which
we feel to be worth while, though apparently not very
attractive in itself, by concrete appeals to dubious
motives, such as greed, rivalry, etc., that have no
direct relation to the thing to be done but are big in
the child and which may be unduly and even hurtfuUy
stimulated by the appeal? Or (2) shall we try, with
a very large risk of failure, to motivate the work
merely by those larger appeals to the higher motives
of duty and righteousness, which in the nature of the
case cannot thus early have a big place in the child's
character? Each alternative has certain strength and
weakness in a practical way.
9. The upward-looking impulses.
In this uncertainty (pictured in Section 8), the
Sunday school has almost completely overlooked
important means of motivation which have all the
advantages of the more selfish appeals without their
pedagogical and moral shortcomings. Of almost, if
not quite, equal intensity with the more crass forms
of selfish impulse, — as rivalry, gain, pride, etc., —
are the impulses of curiosity, imitation, play, repeti-
tion, and the expression of one's leadership. At the
beginning, possibly these motives are just as selfish
as the others in that they originally minister to
low forms of satisfaction; hut they are more subject
to refinement and are directly connected with the higher
intellectual and spiritual capabilities and tendencies.
Certain Principles to Guide the Teacher 131
For example, curiosity is as powerful a motive as
greed; but it leads directly to information, knowl-
edge, breadth of vision. Greed cannot. Greed
rather increases by what it feeds on, and lowers the
resources of personality. The impulse to play and
to do things, which is the other side of restlessness,
is just as prevalent and strong as the feeling of rivalry;
but it leads directly to activity, work, output, and
skill, and only needs to be guided to be the most
educative thing possible. It is not, like rivalry, in
danger of degenerating into ugly and harmful per-
sonal states. Finally, the impulse toward repetition
is as strong and early an impulse as stubbornness;
but it leads directly to habits and skill, through doing
over and over attractive things. This formation of
right habits is by all means the most helpful thing
we can contribute to youth by our educational proc-
esses. This, indeed, sums up the balanced result
of all our purposes: right habits of thinking and
speaking; right habits of choosing; right habits of
action.
10. Superiority of natural over artificial appeals.
In conclusion, it seems that we should strive, as
sponsors for the Sunday school, to make a more
vigorous appeal to those impulses of childhood which
are at once strong and prevalent, themselves capable
of proper development and permanent refinement,
and connect naturally with the higher qualities of
wisdom, rightness, and self-control which we seek to
gain. Concretely, should we not improve our peda-
132 Use of Motives
gogical position if we drop our dependence (for motiva-
tion) on our picnics, our Christmas trees, our indi-
vidual prizes and badges and medals, our stimulation
of individual and class rivalries, and the like, mingled
with some attempt at exciting fear for the hereafter;
and substitute for these the biggest, sanest use we can
make of the native curiosity of childhood, its impulse
to imitate, its natural trustfulness and sympathy in
and for all, its legitimate play instincts, its desire to be
doing something and to be producing results, and its
liking for leadership? It is surely true that there is
enough in the lives of God's children since the race
began, if properly handled, to appeal to his curiosity
and lead it on; there is enough that is true and good
in life now and in the past to win his sympathy and
confidence and have them ripen into Christian faith
and optimism; there is certainly enough to be done
in his own life and relations to challenge and give
scope [to his full expressive powers, no matter how
much of a boy he may be, nor how much of a saint.
11. Summary.
To sum up, we may make great strides forward in
getting our young people in accord with what we are
trying to do for them by a conscious, wise, and per-
sistent use of their natural, homely qualities. We
desire them to have the disposition, the knowledge,
the power, and the habit of making the righteous
choice under all conditions. Through curiosity we
motivate for knowledge; through restlessness and the
instincts of play and leadership we motivate for
Certain Principles to Guide the Teacher 133
activity and work; through trustfulness and confi-
dence and the impulses to share and serve we motivate
the attitudes that elevate the emotions and desires
and bring faith and optimism and love; and through
the impulses to imitate and to repeat satisfying and
pleasurable experiences we motivate for habit and
skill. And in it all we see to it that the child experi-
ences the satisfaction which a right choice should
have, and the dissatisfaction which wrong choices
bring.
Topics fob Further Study and Discussion
1. The inevitable limitations of a character con-
trolled solely by the external conditions: limitations
in respect to happiness; in respect to the quality of
the personality.
2. The limitations of a personality controlled by
impulse merely.
3. Make a list of all the instincts which you recog-
nize, arranged somewhat in the order in which you
think they become important in influencing life.
4. The natural impulses most liable to be neglected
and undeveloped.
5. Those most likely to be used and strengthened
unduly and to become subject to abuse.
6. Those which can safely be emphasized and refined
throughout life.
134 Use of Motives
Suggestive Questions
If we get a right action what difference does it
make just which of the various possible impulses may
be back of it? Why is it entirely appropriate that the
more selfish instincts mature first? What is meant
when it is suggested that the unselfish impulses and
reason may come to inhibit the lower impulses?
Why is much of life, especially immature life, a matter
of inhibition? Why does inhibition mark progress?
Why, in a really growing spirit, is inhibition more
easy with time? When may we say that we are
making natural, and when artificial, appeals? Why
is one more valuable than the other?
Some Practical Problems
1. What practical problems arise from the fact
that the selfish instincts mature before the unselfish?
2. The practical dangers of making the grosser
forms of selfishness permanent and dominant in life.
Illustrate by self-will, gratification of the animal
desires, desire to possess things, fighting impulse,
anger, and the like.
3. Enumerate, and estimate the value of, any
practical methods that have been suggested to
inhibit and diminish the strength of these undesirable
impulses. For example: Bodily punishment and the
fear of it; other forms of punishment, here and here-
after; loss of approval and companionship of parents;
public opinion; use of other active impulses that lead
in other directions; sense of duty. Find others.
Certain Principles to Guide the Teacher 135
References
Athearn: The Church School. The Pilgrim Press,
Boston. $1.00
Bagley: Educative Values. Part I. The Macmillan
Co., N. Y.
Galloway: Report of Committee on Fundamentals
in School Science and Mathematics. Chicago.
Galloway: Education of the Will, in Encyclopedia
of Sunday Schools and Religious Education.
Thomas Nelson and Sons, N. Y.
Aims of Religious Education: Religious Education
Association. Chicago. $1.00
CHAPTER X
FORMS OF EXPRESSIVE WORK SUITABLE TO
SUNDAY SCHOOLS: HAND-WORK
1. Review of the principle of expressional work.
We have seen that instruction, impression and
stimulation have been much more emphasized in
Sunday schools than has the finding of ways to secure
the carrying of these into actual practise in life. We
have been too content to do our teaching as best we
could and to leave to chance the '' follow through " of
the teaching into conduct. In general education we
have found that the best results come from a complete
mental reaction, — instruction, self-active mental
states, and suitable expression. In getting internal
character it is as important to supervise and suggest
the right forms of expression as to secure right stimuli.
Inasmuch as all moral and religious qualities and
states, in order to be of any value, must be one's very
own, it becomes even more important here than in
general education that the responses and conduct
shall be rightly controlled from within. Therefore it
is all the more essential that the child shall be insured,
and inspired to have, adequate expression of his best
moral and religious impulses.
We have also noticed that expression^educates
137 "*"
138 Use of Motives
personality even more effectively than instruction,
if it is properly graded. Expression must be very
accurately graded, however, to the degree of develop-
ment of the child. Otherwise we have an effort to
express states which are not really experienced,
and this is the essence of hypocrisy. Very many of
the natural instincts look straight toward expression
and action. This fact really indicates to us the rela-
tive importance of expression in molding and fixing
personality. It also makes it all the more binding that
we Sunday-school teachers, in common with all
other teachers of righteousness, shall find natural
and suitable modes of expression for the normal
impulses that can in any way be made to contribute
to the disposition and habit of choosing the right. We
must have right choice ; and in consequence we must
use the great, wholesome, internal impulses to motivate
right choices and actions.
2. Grades of expressional work in the Sunday school.
While everything we do is very educative, and
what we do with enthusiasm and zest is particularly
so, it remains true that some forms of expression are
more valuable than others; just as some truths,
while no more true, are more important than others.
For example, making a map of Palestine or a model of
the tabernacle is expressive work; and each of these
things may be made so appealing to the boyish im-
pulses as to secure a large amount and a fine quality
of work, which will give him a mastery of facts that
could not be secured in any other way. But neither
Forms of Expressive Work 139
of these forms of expression is as valuable as honest
and honorable playing of a baseball game in the
presence of the temptation to cheat or bully; or
actually to uphold the right at any point in the face
of opposition.
For this reason it becomes important for us to
make some analysis of the forms and grades of ex-
pressive work if we are going to try to use the
principles of motivation in reference to it. We have
seen that activity is more easy to motivate than
learning, because so many of our impulses run to
action, and only a few to learning. We have found
that action is more educative of personality than
instruction is. It is therefore essential that we study
most carefully the outlets of sound activity and the
incentives to it which we Sunday-school teachers have
at our command.
We may roughly indicate the following types of
expressional work:
(1) Hand-work, of all kinds. This includes all the
customary activities of hand and brain in which we
work with materials.
(2) Representative activity, including all sorts of
repetitive, imitative, reproductive behavior. This
embraces dramatization, plays, pageants, recitation,
and the like in which emotions, ideals, and acts of
other people are, through the imagination of the child,
made his own temporarily and expressed in suitable
ways.
(3) Original activity, including all the student's
140 Use of Motives
own behavior in all his social relations. This is of
course the real self-expression, and the thing we are
seeking.
It will be seen that these forms of expressional work
are progressive in importance, and that (l) and (2)
are valuable only as they lead in one way or another
to the rightness of (3).
3. Forms of hand-work suitable to the Sunday school.
Important and valuable as this form of expression
has already shown itself to be in itself and in motivat-
ing Sunday-school attendance, good behavior, and
the study of the Bible and other sources of human
guidance, it is no part of the purpose of this book to
dwell upon it. The pioneer work of Dr. Littlefield ^ is
still the classic in this field, and the teacher must be
referred to it for all details of its use. Dr. Littlefield
has recognized the following helpful classes of hand-
work for Sunday schools :
(l) Illustrative work. This in all its varieties,
whether of paper-tearing, drawings and colorings,
modelings of all sorts of objects in plastic materials,
or constructing of more permanent ones, is an effort
to furnish means suitable to the child to express in
material ways some part of an idea, or event, or story
that may have come to him. It is the simplest and
most concrete form of expressive work and has a
range suitable to all from beginners to seniors.
Its value lies in these facts : it furnishes the teacher
» Hand-work in the Sunday School. Milton S. Littlefield. The Sunday
School Times Co. Philadelphia, 1908.
Forms of Expressive Work 141
a chance actually to understand where the pupil's
thoughts are, and to find out his powers of expression ;
it helps the child to clarify his own ideas through the
effort to express; it enforces a certain attentiveness
to details which is the foundation of all worth-while
character; it develops experience and skill in giving
clear expression to internal states ; and, best of all, it
delights the young child with the satisfactions that
cluster round normal activities and enlists the whole
of himself in the making of much more effort than he
would make for learning or any other form of progress
for its own sake. In a word, it motivates experience,
habit-formation, and learning. It depends on us
whether the experiences and habits and information
he gets are worthy. Clearly it is waste of time to try
to motivate something which is not in itself worth
while. Motivation is not an end in itself.
(2) Geography work. This involves the using and
making of maps and models by the pupil in order to
express his knowledge of facts and to enable him
better to visualize and appreciate the ideas that come
to him in the more abstract form of words. Map and
model making sounds rather formidable at first; and
undoubtedly this will not stand slavish usage. How-
ever, all pupils will have the biblical, or any other,
story made more real for them if they have access to
temporary or permanent topographic relief models
which enable them really to grasp necessary facts.
It is rarely the case that human movements are not
made more appealing, particularly to young people,
142 TJse of Motives
by a knowledge of the actual natural conditions in
which they occurred. All this interest is enhanced
and the knowledge made more permanent and exact
if the pupils themselves are induced to make or color
maps, and to model topography in the sand or other
plastic material. In so far as this effort to represent
conditions appeals to them they will do more work in
getting all the facts and relations than can be secured
from them in any other way. If the facts are worth
knowing at the outset, it surely is worth while to
motivate the getting of them so that they may be
accurately and permanently held, — and held in
relationship to other facts. The mechanical part of
map and model making will not appeal to all pupils
equally.
(3) Written work. In this form of expression scrap-
books, note-books, answers to questions, essays and
themes are produced. This form is not necessarily
in itself appealing to all pupils; but when once entered
upon incites to more thorough work, secures accuracy
of expression and thus exactness of ideas, and tends
to unify the work and give it coherence. It will
sometimes appeal to people who do not care for the
more concrete and mechanical forms of expression
outlined in (l) and (2). It readily combines with both
illustrative work and geographic work.
(4) Decorative work. This appeals to the esthetic
instincts and is supplementary to all the others.
There is no question that the beauty of form, of
design, and of color by which note-books or theses
Forms of Expressive Work 143
or maps or models may be embellished is in itself a
stimulus to many children. Many children may
be induced to make something which can be beauti-
fied when the mere making of the thing itself would
not appeal to them at all. We shall not waste any
time discussing whether it is worth while ever to
do anything merely for the beauty of it. We feel
sure, however, that when the desire to do things
beautifully can be used to secure the better doing
of things in themselves worth while, we are mak-
ing a definite gain in invoking this motive. There
is furthermore a distinct moral and spiritual gain
whenever we succeed in associating the idea of beauty
and the satisfactions that flow from it with our religious
ideas and progress. This principle is at the basis of all
ideas of the use of music and art in connection with
our religious expression. This is peculiarly true of
the form of expression we call worship. We need more
carefully to study and use this relation between
beauty and worship.
(5) Museum or extension work. In a sense this
is a means of motivating the other forms of hand-
work. It implies temporary exhibits of all hand-work
done in the Sunday school, and a permanent collection
in geography room and museum of some of the best
work done by the young people of different grades.
There is no question that such an exhibit strongly
stimulates the desire of the children to take part in
the activities and to do the work as well as they
can. This is an excellent device to motivate the
144 Use of Motives
more laborious forms of hand-work, as map making
and note-book building. But this is by no means
all. The preparation of such a temporary or perma-
nent exhibit gives opportunity to secure a large
amount of comparison and discrimination of values
so as to be very much worth having if it had no other
meaning. Such collections, furthermore, become
most valuable sources in time for the aid of other
pupils. It is scarcely necessary to say that as much
of the work as possible in the building and caring
for and displaying and demonstrating of such a
collection to their parents and to others should be
done by the pupils themselves. The desire for social
approval becomes operative and an added satis-
faction is furnished for all the work.
4. Summary: The service that hand-work renders.
It is important to remind ourselves, lest we make a
fetish of it, of the place and the limitation of hand-
work. It is in no sense an end in itself. Its values
are in the fact that it leads to better ends. None
of these products of the hand is itself greatly
worth while. We could buy much better things.
The prime value of this form of expressive work in
Sunday schools is, first, that it recognizes and en-
courages expression itself and does not allow us to
stop with feeling and knowing; second, all of it
reacts on personality in the form of better informa-
tion, in more exact habits, and in skill in choice and
expression; and, third, the very pleasure we get in
doing things drags us on, not merely into doings, but
Forms of Expressive Work 145
into the learnings that enable us to do them better
than we otherwise would do. In other words, any
motives to which we can appeal in getting pupils to
do things will multiply their desire to learn and to be.
Thus we get our internal allies at work on our behalf
in the most profound possible way.
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. Why expressive work is valuable. The end and
object of it.
2. Differing values of different kinds of expressive
work. What determines the relative value?
3. Motivation not an end, but a means. What is
the end?
4. Respect the difference of appeal which different
kinds of expression make to different children, and to
different ages. Why?
5. The use of the motive of beauty to enhance the
appeal to truth. The practical application of it.
6. The social value of hand-work in the Sunday
school.
7. The home in relation to the hand-work of the
Sunday school.
Suggestive Questions
Why is it that so many of our instincts tend to
produce action? Significance of this in education?
146 Use of Motives
Is it your observation that children get more pleasure
from learning or from doing things? What is the
effect of doing things (as making a picture or a map)
on the ideas of the child? What effect has executing
an interesting piece of hand-work on attention and
industry? What value in personal education and in
self-respect has experience and a consciousness of
skill in expressing? Which types of hand-work are
more likely to appeal to boys? Which to girls? What
are the practical values in having a Sunday-school
department build up a temporary exhibit of hand-
work?
Some Practical Problems
1. The practical problem of motivating home
work on the Sunday-school lessons by means of hand-
work.
2. Parents or teachers need to find just what is
the result of their teaching upon the inner life of the
child. Can we do so? Our limitations; methods of
discovering.
3. Is it educationally worth while for the pupil to
have a fair conception of the land of Palestine? Is
it your observation that the average persons brought
up in our Sunday schools have such a conception?
Isn't it perfectly practicable to overcome this failure
through a little intelligent use of hand-work in the
early grades?
Forms of Expressive Work 147
Refekences
Goodrich: With Scissors and Paste. A. Flanagan Co.,
Chicago. ^.25
Heffron: Lessons in Chalk Modeling. Educational
Publishing Co., Chicago. $1.00
Littlefield: Hand-work in the Sunday Schools. Sun-
day School Times Co., Philadelphia. $1.00
Maliby: Map Modeling. A. Flanagan Co., Chicago.
.75
CHAPTER XI
FORMS OF EXPRESSIVE WORK: REPRE-
SENTATION
1. The essential nature of this form of expression.
In hand-work we have the individual trying to
express by material means some idea or fact or rela-
tionship which he has discovered. In this second type
of activity, which we have called representative, the
person is endeavoring to give expression through
voice or bodily action to ideas, incidents, personalities,
relations, or principles. To do this it requires such
a mastery of a situation through knowledge or imagi-
nation that the individual puts himself temporarily
in the place of the persons portrayed and tries to
present the situation so that it may seem real and
convincing. This is a higher and more vital form of
expression than any hand-work can ever become
because the individual is himself both the actor and
the material with which the presentation is made.
It is not so high, however, as original, self-determined
behavior because it is an imitation. And yet, because
imitation is always an important element in all
human education, this mode of personal expression
is profoundly important in the development of the
moral and religious attitudes of children. However,
149
150 Use of Motives
we have never made any systematic use of it in our
Sunday-school program.
2. The dramatic and play instincts in the child.
One cannot have anything to do with children of
the age of six to twelve years and not be impressed with
the part which these impulses play in their spontane-
ous life. Most children between these ages give a
large part of their time to such " make-believe " r61es.
They play the parts of parents, of soldiers, of school-
teachers, of Indians, of bears, of trees, of fairies, and
of railroad trains. There is scarcely anything in the
whole realm of their knowledge that they do not at
one time or another become. We have been inter-
ested in this fact, but we have not consistently used
it for educative purposes. An impulse that fills such
a large need in the life of the child and gives him such
consistent satisfaction must have a big value to his
inner life. When we come to understand how to use
it properly it will certainly help us in molding per-
sonality.
3. The qualities on which these instincts depend and
the states to which they minister.
It may help us in our effort to use this dramatic
instinct to examine briefly the underlying states
which feed it. It is clear in the first place that im-
agination plays a big r61e here. In playing a part the
child, unless the acting is mere direct imitation, is
reimaging or reconstructing the person and the situa-
tion which he is portraying. It is a matter of inter-
pretation and appraisal as well as of imagination.
Forms of Expressive Work: Representation 151
On the other hand, in doing this the child must tem-
porarily submerge his own personality. This is
another form which imagination takes. It gives the
child himself the imagined qualities of the object
represented. The child can throw himself into the
part without reserve. To do this he must dispossess
himself. Imagination in childhood is peculiarly able
to do this. The self-consciousness of later years
tends to make it impossible then.
This situation is full of very attractive esthetic and
emotional states also. It is not rational; it depends
on the qualities out of which sympathy, wonder,
faith, worship and devotion come. It is thus closely
allied with the deepest of our religious and spiritual
states. In '* Peter Pan " it was disbelief in fairies that
made them impossible. It is this imagination and
its correlated group of emotional states that make
the Kingdom of Heaven the real realm of the child.
It is rarely quite real to the normal adult. Further-
more, the instinct of repetition aids the operation of
the dramatic impulse. The child is usually willing
to play over and over the r61es in which it has once
found pleasure. Thus the imaginary character grows
and is enriched, and the states at first temporarily
assumed tend to become permanent in the child. The
child himself is being trained by the expression and its
demands on his internal qualities. He is also taking
on some coloring from the object he has been repre-
senting. He has had practise in self-effacement.
If these things are at all true we may hope, by some
162 Use of Motives
stimulus and supervision of the dramatic and play-
expressions, not merely to develop these imaginative
and emotional powers basal to spiritually minded
personality, but also to minister to the internal ideals
and standards that help determine choices. For
example, a child could not frequently act the r61e of
a " good fairy " and not have some of the attitudes
of his own personality predisposed thereby to choice
and action involving sympathy. A normal child
cannot continually ^' make believe " without having
some ability of real belief come out of it. He tends to
become what he represents. It becomes necessary
therefore not only that the representing instinct
should be used, but that it should be properly directed,
and that the child's representative expressions should
be sound.
It is not impossible also, in highly imaginative
children, to overdo this kind of work. It is possible
to get too much of the withdrawal of the child's
personality to make way for that to be represented.
This is another reason why, as in play, the dramatic
expressions should be wisely supervised and guided.
4. The use of this in Sunday school.
The teachers in English and history and other
general subjects in education are learning that the
play and acting instincts can be used in securing good
response in these fields. Plays, dramas, pageants, and
the like are devised to get the pupils into the spirit
of literary or historic situations. Pupils will do much
more enthusiastic work to prepare for such presenta-
Forms of Expressive Work: Representation 153
tions than it is possible to get by any other device.
There is a growing conviction that something very
interesting may be done for the motivation of chil-
dren's study of the Bible by this means. We shall
have to admit that our instruction in the Bible and
related subjects has been none too good, and has
never aroused any great interest or enthusiasm among
children. We have never given it the full advantage
of its strongest appeal.
If we assume that the biblical facts are worth some-
thing to the child, that the truths and persons and
relations and principles presented there are true to
the essential nature of life, it surely becomes important
that the child should be brought to assimilate these
things in a normal and complete way as he becomes
able to do so, rather than to get them in a half-hearted,
routine fashion, as is so often the case. Only by such
vital assimilation can they really minister to the
inner life and thus come to aid in our religious task
of securing habits of right choice. It is believed that
there is no way in which the biblical situations which
are suitable for the child can be brought so thoroughly
into the reach of personality as through such dramatic
presentation. It is believed further that there is no
other device which will send a Sunday-school class to
the sympathetic study of some episode in the Bible as
will the task of presenting that episode on some occa-
sion, such as the opening exercises of the Sunday
school. The dramatic presentation of an episode Uke
that of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, or the life
154 Use of Motives
of Joseph, will motivate enthusiastic investment of
time and energy on the part of a group of boys. It
will secure the study of all the circumstances and of the
spirit of the thing that nothing else can bring. If
these passages contain anything worth while to the
boys, this kind of attitude makes it very certain that
they will get and assimilate much more of it than
they will probably do in any other way. It is an
ideal method of motivating certain passages so as to
make them yield the maximum moral and religious
value to the pupils.
5. Forms of hihlical representation.
There are several forms of representative expression
of the moral and religious ideas from the Bible and
elsewhere within the reach of our Sunday schools.
First, it is to be remembered that this is a form of
expression and thus relates itself to the child's choices
and conduct which, as we have said, have always a
close relation to morals and religion. While the
situations may not be original, they nevertheless re-
quire choices on the part of the one expressing them,
and under circumstances that make for sound de-
cisions. Practise in making right choices, which
one's nature approves, in imitating another's action
is helpful in securing the power for oneself. In the
second place the process itself is full of the imagination
and sympathetic emotions which are basal to the
religious and spiritual states. In the third place, in
the Bible and similar literature we are dealing with
material which is peculiarly rich in moral and spiritual
Forms of Expressive Work: Representation 155
incentives and inspiring to right choice. For all of
these reasons biblical material is well suited to be
used by children in these dramatic ways. The
following forms are suggestive :
(1) Storytelling. This is one of the simplest drama-
tic uses of the biblical material, and has come to
be used in high degree and with excellent method
and success in the early years of Sunday school.
The children themselves should learn to tell the
stories which illustrate the great truths they can
appreciate. These truths thus become their own in
greater degree.
(2) Recitation. This is also a simple form of expres-
sion which might well be used more than it is. We
are all familiar with the use of this on such special
occasions as Children's Day and Rally Day; but this
does not exhaust the possibilities. The incentive of
recitation in class or before the school may often
stimulate mastery of great hymns, passages of scrip-
ture, elevating rituals, and the like. The very act of
becoming responsible for the presentation of some of
these great things is in itself a valuable experience.
The satisfaction of the public appearance with its
sense of doing something worth while will motivate
a large amount of effort to get a full mastery of the
matter. Not all individuals, nor all ages, find this a
stimulus, however. For example, there is a period
of boyhood in which this would be the greatest possible
bore.
(3) Pageants. Young people of all ages enjoy
156 Use of Motives
pageants and mass displays of that kind. They have
been used to great advantage in motivating historical
study. Biblical and church history are rich in inci-
dents which are most attractive and inspiring for this
purpose. It would require much study and apprecia-
tion of the essential conditions of the period to do
such a thing well and convincingly. By using this
method we harness the satisfactions of the dramatic
motive and public appearance to the study of the
Bible times and thus arouse curiosity and give to it
an immediate aim. One advantage of pageantry is
that it is so adaptable to all ages.
(4) Plays and dramas. All that has been said of
stories, recitations, dialogs, and pageants, may
be said with even more force of these more exact and
formal efforts to represent the life and truths of the
Bible. We return to our illustration of the Parable
of the Good Samaritan, given as a ten-minute opening
exercise for Sunday school. For a class of twelve-
year-old boys this would motivate an amount of study
that no ordinary teaching will do. The love of the
dramatic in the child would inspire in the making up of
the dialog and the business; this desire to dramatize
and present the story properly would lead to a study
of the parable and the conditions surrounding it, im-
possible to secure in any other way. During this
process the spiritual and humane point of view of
Jesus in the parable would be impressed in a most
intimate and lasting way, not as a moral dragged
in by the teacher, but as something absolutely
Forms of Expressive Work: Representation 157
essential to the understanding and the staging of the
incident.
The Bible is literally full of this dramatic matter
true to our best appreciations of life; we are all but
failing to bring it in any vital way to the real accep-
tance of our boys and girls; they have dramatic and
play instincts which will help accomplish what we
wish. Are we going to use these natural allies in the
child to the best advantage? Or shall we allow them
to be dissipated on the picture shows?
6. Summary of the educational value of the drama in
Sunday-school work.
In the presenting of dramatized biblical material
by Sunday-school pupils there are three educational
opportunities to be considered: (1) The construction
of the dramas; (2) the preparation and presentation
of the dramas; and (3), the observation of the per-
formance by those who do not participate actively.
Even for the last class, which has least opportunity
to profit by it, the dramatic presentation of such inci-
dents is more readily visualized and more remembered
than any other form in which it is brought to their
attention. In other words this which we have found
peculiarly valuable as an expressive device for a few
becomes also a good method of instruction for the
others.
Probably the work of building the dialog and arrang-
ing the business is the most educative of all. This
task requires the very best study, appreciation, and
insight. It ought to be done by the pupils if possible.
158 Use of Motives
The selection of a suitable incident, the finding of the
essential spirit of it, the determination of the method
of presenting it, the choice of the right words and
actions to bring out the vital meaning, are the very
essence of good Bible study. A good device is to
allow older classes to develop plays suitable for
younger classes to present; though even the younger
classes will surprise those who have not tried it by
their ability to do the work necessary to stage for
themselves the more simple incidents.
We have already dwelt suJB&ciently upon the edu-
cational value of presenting the stories to the public.
It is somewhat of the same nature as in the building
of them, but rather less original. It is more spectacu-
lar and has in consequence a stronger appeal to most
children. The presence of an audience too has a
stimulating effect to most children. Much the same
mastery must be had of the essential meanings and
of the manner of expressing them as in the construc-
tion of the story.
The structure and the presenting of such work by
Sunday-school classes will undoubtedly be crude and
amateurish. It is necessary for teachers early to get
the understanding that the prime purpose is not
artistry and a professional smoothness of acting. All
that is essential in this respect is sufficient excellence
and beauty to make the children themselves feel that
they have succeeded. What we are seeking is appreci-
ation, understanding, acceptance, and expression of
the essential facts, truths, points of view, and values
Forms of Expressive Work: Representation 159
contained in the passage. The artistry is quite inci-
dental if it only be as good as the child can do.
7. Worship as an expressive activity.
In the strictest sense perhaps worship is an attitude
of the whole of the human spirit, rather than an
expressive activity in the meaning in which we have
been using the word. However, in childhood it
probably must be considered an " exercise '' some-
what similar in its nature to those discussed in this
chapter. It calls for much the same internal qualities
of imagination, wonder, faith, and self-effacement
that are used and fed by dramatization. At first
the child's worship is probably very much like its
thoughts of fairy-land. At this stage it is likely to
become rather a matter of words and routine. This
state should not be allowed to become permanent.
In mature life the early emotions of wonder and rever-
ence should be enriched by knowledge and ideas into
an emotional and intellectual companionship with the
Author of life.
In the Sunday school itself it is pretty well agreed
that the great poetic and wonder passages of the
Bible, the great hymns, some of the finer ritualistic
utterances, and the moving prayers of the church
may well be learned and uttered in much the same
spirit as the dramatizations are mastered. It is felt
that these cannot pass into consciousness without
leaving there something which later will mean a
worshipful spirit.
Teachers and parents should help children find
160 Use of Motives
subjects for prayer suitable to their age and stage of
development. Whatever else prayer may mean, there
is no question that it acts in a highly valuable way
by autosuggestion. In this way praying is similar
to any other expressive act in molding the internal
ideas, ideals, and standards in accord with it. The
whole matter of the pedagogical use of prayer and
the grading of prayer to the actual needs of the child
must have more careful study than it has yet received.
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. The place of imagination in representative ex-
pression. The place of imagination in faith and wor-
ship. The possible relation of dramatic exercises to
faith and worship.
2. Imitation as a factor in the education of youth.
Its possibilities in morals and religion. Some corol-
laries of these facts.
3. Is personality really influenced by the imaginary
r61es which we assume as children in our reading and
acting? Your own evidences.
4. Having the children build up dialogs of the Bible
stories as a teaching exercise. Methods; problems;
values.
5. Inducing the child to tell the stories versus
repeated telling of them by the teacher.
Suggestive Questions
What observed proofs can you give that love of
imaginary and dramatic situations furnish motives
Forms of Expressive Work: Representation 161
for childish activities? Why is the realm of spirit, —
the " Kingdom of Heaven/' — more real to the
normal child than to the normal adult? Is there any
practical value in this? Do you recall that you placed
yourself, in your early reading, as the hero or heroine
of the stories you read or plays you saw? Do you
think that fact makes what one reads of more influ-
ence in molding character? What is the fundamental
meaning of the fact that all grades of people, from
criminals to people of normal morals, choose the hero
and condemn the villain in the melodrama? What are
the educational corollaries of this? Why should the
dramatic representations not be allowed to be an
end in themselves?
Some Practical Problems
1. The practical need of supervised reading and
dramatics, in the light of the childish tendency to
adopt the r61es that appeal to it. How to use these
facts to best advantage in giving the child sound
standards.
2. How may we strengthen and make permanent
the states of mind and choices that a child adopts as
his own in his reading or the representation of a drama?
How help the child carry them into practise? The
necessary cooperation of teachers and parents.
3. The practical problem of making most real and
appealing to the child the spirit of the Bible stories.
In order to do this what must be the teacher's attitude
toward the Bible? Toward the child?
162 Use of Motives
References
Athearn: The Church School, pp. 193-205. The
Pilgrim Press, Boston. $1.00
Bryaiit: How to Tell Stories to Children. Houghton
Mifflin Co., Boston. $1.00
Chamherlin and Kern: Child Religion in Song and
Story: University of Chicago Press. $1.25
Eaton: Dramatic Studies of the Bible. The Pilgrim
Press, Boston. .75
Hartshorne: Worship in the Sunday School.
Johnston and Barm: A Book of Plays for Little
Actors. American Book Co., N. Y. .30
St. John: Stories and Story Telling. The Pilgrim
Press, Boston. .50.
CHAPTER XII
FORMS OF EXPRESSION: ORIGINAL
PERSONAL BEHAVIOR
1. Introduction.
After all is said about impression, instruction,
hand-work, and dramatization of fine incidents as
means to help secure right character and habits of
right choice, none of these compare with the making
of actual, original, and suitable choices and responses
in the face of the actual situations which confront
our own lives. These other things are aids to study
and to conduct, but life is the real clinic of moral and
religious education. It is here that habits of right
choice and actions are formed. Our churches and
Sunday schools have not properly realized that their
work for morals and religion is very likely to be lost
unless they can find a way to help the training to
actual expression in the home, on the street, in the
school, at play, at work, and in private. We ought, if
possible, in Sunday school to find or arouse motives
that will make right choices surer, not merely in
Sunday school but outside. We must, furthermore,
find means of coordinating our efforts with those of
parents, school teachers, boys* secretaries, juvenile
courts, and all grades of social workers with children.
163
164 Use of Motives
The steps in this coordination must be experimental
and practical.
2. Furnishing motives for conduct, or practise in
righteousness.
This is of course at the very crown of the expressive
work of the Sunday school, of which hand-work and
dramatization are only beginnings. It is, however,
in practise, as we have repeatedly suggested, the
weakest point of the whole Sunday-school effort;
and wj must regard our work as a failure in so far
as we fail to get our pupils to carry into the practise
of individual and social life the impressions they
receive. It is not enough to teach righteousness in
our schools, — even though we have all our pupils
deeply enthusiastic in the study of all the biblical
examples of honesty, truthfulness, purity, obedience,
etc., — and then leave the putting of these ideals into
practise to become a sort of haphazard by-product of
this teaching modified by the accidents of life. Unless
the Sunday school succeeds in getting the boy to
connect the teachings of honesty on Sunday with the
propriety of being honest in the ball game on Monday
he is really worse off than if he had not been taught.
Unless he is a more obedient and considerate boy
in the home, our teaching about obedience is a
failure.
We must therefore make a closer connection be-
tween our moral teaching and the practical behavior
in the home, at school, in the games, and on the
street. We must motivate in some strong way this
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 165
practical life of the pupil. The every-day, expressive
life of the boy is much more attractive to him than
the theoretical teachings. It is more genuine and is
a better test of the nature of personality. It is more
educative. How can we motivate it?
The writer has no complete answer to this question.
This is the region of our most promising future in-
vestigation. We can only illustrate the possibiUties
here. The problem briefly stated is this: We want
to secure right knowledge, right desires, and right
conduct both in the Sunday school and in life; we
have the children only a few minutes in Sunday school.
Our first task is to motivate right conduct within the
Sunday school; and our second to devise ways to
enlarge these motives to life outside. For this reason
the appeal to motives must be natural and ring
absolutely true to real life. If it does not it will be
left behind as the pupils pass out through the doors,
and rightly. Our most natural and easy step is to
the life in the home. We must at every point touch
hands with the parents. They must help us to secure
the translation of instruction into life.
3. An illustration: giving.
Take, for example, the matter of giving, as a means
of expression of interest, and also as a means of edu-
cation of attitudes and habits of action. It is pretty
safe to say that the usual method of Sunday-school
giving, which it is unnecessary to describe here, is
almost destitute of educative (or human) value.
Could not a great increase in habits of generosity
166 Use of Motives
and of sympathetic action be made if the church
would include in its own budget the expenses of the
Sunday school; eliminate the process of giving just
for the sake of having money in the treasury; and
allow the Sunday school, as a whole or through its
different classes, to work up interest in and devote
their offerings to definite, fine, human purposes? How
much of interest in humanity, open-heartedness, sym-
pathy, and self-sacrifice could be developed about the
act of giving when motivated by acute personal inter-
est in the object of the giving! Great human causes
could thus be brought, week after week, to the
attention of the children. By grading these appeals
very carefully to the children's ability to respond with
a whole heart, we could secure in them habits of
giving heartily and wisely to the needs of the race.
Missions, local church enterprises, organized local
charities, fresh-air funds, and scores of religious
and humanitarian activities could be brought to their
earnest attention through the motive of the query in
their own minds: "What shall we vote to help
with our money next week? " Similarly, in individual
classes, it would be possible to give something of the
Sunday-school atmosphere to daily life by a search
for genuine needs which the members of the class
might undertake to help in some discriminating way.
4. The task.
Is it not possible, in a similar way, to take certain
other motives and desires and interests which our
children have, and in our Sunday-school classes de-
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 16?
vise ways whereby these desires may be brought to
express themselves rightly out in the world where the
children live? Or we may approach it from the other
side and decide upon certain types and habits of
conduct which the children ought to practise, and
then see whether we cannot discover some internal
motives which, by a little encouragement and guid-
ance, will impel the child to do the kinds of things
that will develop these habits.
Most of us realize that it is much more easy to
impart information than it is to get right conduct,
which is to get instruction converted into conduct.
Even in those Sunday schools in which most has been
done to grade the intellectual and emotional instruc-
tion to the needs and capabilities of the child, little
has been done in a conscious way to connect the
emotional and intellectual states with the practical
choices and activities of life. After teaching the
children, we have left them pretty much to the
hazard of chance events to get practise in carrying
out the things we have taught. This is not fair to the
child. His inexperience is not equal to the situation.
It makes it too easy for him to drop into the bad
habit of divorcing in his own mind the teaching of the
school and the acts of his life; of disjoining his inter-
nal standards and states from his conduct. This is
always destructive of personality.
As religious teachers, then, we must do three
things: (1) we must get right convictions and ideas
of life in the minds of the children, through the use
168 Use of Motives
of the finer native motives and impulses; (2) we must,
by a similar use of the natural motives and tendencies,
secure actual practise in right living; and (3) we
must succeed in connecting the practise with the
teaching, so that personality will not only have both
sound convictions and right habits, but a perfectly
open roadway between. Every agency interested in
the child must work together if this is to be done.
5. The possibilities.
In this most vital of all tasks of securing right
conduct controlled from within by right convictions,
we need the help of every native childish motive that
can be made to contribute to the result. What one
does is more educative than what one is taught;
what one does, impelled by one's own interests and
by the satisfaction one gets in the doing, is more
educative than things done without these accompani-
ments. Just as there are personal desires making the
process of learning more meaningful, so there are de-
sires leading to personal satisfactions that make conduct
more meaningful. By appealing to these it is possible
not only to strengthen the child against the difficult
chances of his life, but to make these life experiences
have a fuller educational value for still later times.
This field of Sunday-school pedagogy is almost virgin,
but it is the belief of the writer that it has great
possibilities. This point of attack has demonstrated
its value in all secular education. It is proposed here
to make life the clinic of the Sunday school, in some-
what the same way that the hospital has been con-
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 169
nected with the medical school; that the shop and
laboratory have been added to the classroom.
6. Some dangers.
A little thought makes it quite clear that there are
some dangerous things to be avoided here. The
motives appealed to and the stimuli applied must be
chosen with keen insight into the stage of development
of the child. So, also, must the practical expression
in life be on the grade of his development. If these
things are too mature and advanced it is quite possible
to produce a state of pretense and hypocrisy, far
removed from what we desire. If the appeal is to
outgrown motives we are liable to another form of
failure scarcely less fatal.
7. Some methods.
In the light of these suggestions our specific tasks
are these: (1) to find the childish impulses and desires
that lead the child most surely toward right expres-
sion; (2) to find ways in the Sunday school to arouse
and increase the child's consciousness of, and satis-
faction in, those impulses which are most valuable
in life, and to relate these desires to the things he is
learning in the school and doing in his home; (3)
to find special forms of personal and collective expres-
sion suitable to the development of the child, at once
worthy and liable to give him satisfaction in the doing
rather than in the mere reputation of having done
them; and (4) to find a means of enabling the teacher
and pupil to consider together the degree to which
the particular effort has succeeded or failed, and
170 Use of Motives
thus strengthen the feehng of responsibihty for the
result, and the connection of cause and effect.
A few illustrations of what is possible are suggested
below. It must be recalled that these proposals are
only suggestive. This is a realm for scientific edu-
cational experimentation rather than for emphatic
or dogmatic statement of conclusions at present.
It is the purpose of this book to arouse teachers and
parents to thoughtfulness and to experimentation
upon this subject rather than to claim that proper
methods are certainly known.
8. Motivation of right conduct through sympathy^
a desire to serve, and kindred qualities coupled with
desire for approval.
There is no question that the young child has these
qualities nor that they make it possible for him to get
pleasure and satisfaction out of doing things which
ordinarily, but for them, he would be quite unwilling
to do. They furnish a powerful means of checking
or inhibiting selfish actions, and thus of opening
the consciousness to the satisfactions of unselfishness.
These are qualities which may be safely strengthened
and increased. They need to become habitual until
they can safely stand even without the gratification
of external approval. These sympathetic motives are
in some danger of dissipation and decay in the active
relations of life. Teaching about sympathy and social
service does not meet the need. Citing instances
calculated to arouse it, if not followed by actual
appropriate expression, is liable to develop the feehng
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 171
that sympathy is a mere emotion. What we want is
to follow instruction with a clear, definite clinic of
worthy, useful, satisfaction-giving, sympathetic be-
havior, with chance to repeat it over and over, in
connections that are interesting and do not present
too many nor too strong other native tendencies that
would work in the opposite direction. It would not,
for example, be judicious to make a twelve-year-old
boy choose between what we are speaking of and his
game of ball. It is not necessary to invite certain
defeat at the outset. Some day, if matters have been
properly worked, we may have the pleasure of seeing
him drop out of a game, of his own accord, to gratify
a higher impulse.
The necessary steps would be something like these :
(1) the teacher would portray to the individual pupil,
or to the class if it is to be made a class activity, some
instance of human need or limitation of a kind to
appeal to the stage of development of the pupils;
(2) he should indicate, or have the class decide, what
can be done for relief, being sure that it is not beyond
their capacity either for assimilating or doing; (3)
he should get definite responsibility located on each
pupil for a definite part of the service; (4) he should
see that the report of the work of each pupil comes,
without exaggeration, clearly before the class and
before the parent or some one whose opinion the pupil
prizes; (5) if possible there should also be a report to
the child of some good and happiness that has come
to another through his work.
172 Use of Motives
The writer believes that the moral effect of this
kind of thing is strengthened in the child if occasion
should offer that the pupil, or some one in whom he is
interested, should become the object of similar con-
sideration. This makes him realize how the other
person feels.
9. Use of the quality of chivalry in motivating
conduct.
This motive is one of some strength fairly early in
the life of the boy. It is a mixture of growing con-
sideration for others, self-respect, and desire for the
respect of others. It rises in normal boys of twelve
to sixteen promptly, on proper stimulation. Appeals
to this impulse should lead to actual practise in
courtesy to the aged and to women; increased con-
sideration to mother and sisters or other women
members of the home; the espousing of the cause of
the weak rather than the strong; self-control in the
face of temptation to do things that would forfeit
one's own respect. The courteous street and home
behavior and amenities belong here in part. Coupled
with the love of the other sex, which is liable to play
some part in the emotional life of adolescent children,
this quality of chivalry can easily be used in estab-
lishing and strengthening standards and habits of
personal purity. There is no question that the
Sunday schools have some duty in regard to this
momentous human problem, which educators are
quite generally coming to consider as in large part an
educational one.
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 173
10. Appeal to the spirit of tractahility or obedience
to authority.
Assuming that there are relations of reasonably-
cordial appreciation between teacher and pupil
(and certainly moral and religious education is
scarcely thinkable without), the teacher can count
upon a certain amount of this motive in the average
child, and use it to secure responses and practises
which would not in themselves appeal strongly to
children. It is best not to use this motive, standing
alone, too often nor too strongly, nor even in-
discriminatingly; but it supports and supplements
other appeals. The sane use of it leads toward a law-
abiding attitude later. Supported in its turn by the
desire for approval, and by the impulse of imitation,
and that of hero-worship, it often enables the teacher
to secure actions and attitudes and habits of the
utmost educative value. There is scarcely an activity
or relation in all the student's life which cannot be
included in the definite program of moral practises
by the help of these qualities: general behavior
at home, at school and on the street may be influenced ;
relations to and treatment of companions in work
and in sports; honesty and true sportsmanship in
games; keeping the spirit of the Sabbath; obedience
to any of the divine rules of life; personal habits in
relation to many types of temptation, all these
may very well become, consciously, fields in which
the pupil may be induced to try to put into practise
the teachings of the classroom. The desire to obey
174 Use of Motives
and please a teacher in whom the pupil has confidence
will often help secure right choices from the pupil.
In conclusion the writer is convinced that the
teacher can get closer to pupils and make his personal
character and influence count more with them through
this mutual joining of their resources in the active
expression of life than is possible in the ordinary class-
room instruction. It is in working out the program of
moral activity that the teacher will best learn the
real nature of the pupils in his charge, and impart to
them whatever inspiration his character holds. In
other words it is in expression rather than in instruc-
tion that the motives of obedience, imitation, and
hero-worship take the qualities of the teacher and
raise them to the n'^ power in influencing life.
11. Motivation of life in the home.
Reference has been made to the fact that the
translation of teaching into action demands an alliance
between all the friends of the child. The work of the
Sunday-school teacher must be consciously articulated
with all the agencies that touch the child. For certain
reasons, however, well realized by most teachers, it is
peculiarly essential that the teachers and the parents
be working in harmony for the child. Aside from the
profound importance of the early homelife on the char-
acter of the child, the home is on the whole the
most sympathetic and easily accessible to the teacher
of all the realms of childish activity. There ought to
be a specially close understanding between the
Sunday-school teachers and the parents as to what
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 175
should be sought for in the way of internal qualities,
and what methods are most likely to secure them.
The beginnings of all the moral and religious qualities
should come of course in the home; but may we not
say that it is the peculiar duty of the home to secure
attitudes of obedience, cheerfulness, helpfulness,
cooperative sharing of life and its obligations, industry,
honesty, and the like?
It is by no means the province of this book to show
the steps by which all these Christian graces shall be
made habitual. It is the purpose rather to suggest
principles that must be applied and to give illustra-
tions which will enable the teacher and parent to
study the particular cases appreciatively, and make
their own selection of steps. As a matter of fact the
question of obedience is probably settled favorably
or unfavorably in the case of most children before
the Sunday-school teacher has much to do with the
child. Nevertheless the Sunday school and the
minister are in a position to bring to mothers and
fathers in the home much that will tend to overcome
the rough and ready disposition to control children
by caprice and impulse. Indeed parents need as
much help as the children.
Attitudes of disobedience can be broken up; but
it is much better and easier to form the attitude of
obedience at the beginning. This does not at all
mean that the child is merely to be forced in the
beginning to do what another person chooses. He
must be the one that chooses to obey. To teach
176 Use of Motives
obedience is not to talk about obedience; it is to
place the child in situations that call for obedience,
under circumstances at first where obedience will be
relatively easy; it is to secure first acts of obedience
in directions toward which the impulses of the child
naturally lead; it means that the child should get
the rewards in the satisfaction of approval and sym-
pathy and fellowship that follow. It implies confi-
dence and ground for confidence in the parent. It
means no vacillation in the parent. It means that
always without exception the parent's requests or
commands shall be supreme. This makes necessary
that commands shall always be just and right; that
the withdrawal of favor shall always follow dis-
obedience; that there shall never be more satisfaction
to the child in disobeying than in obeying. If the
demand is for something really difficult for the child,
it should be lightened and motivated by satisfactions
which will make it easier to do than not to do. These
satisfactions and dissatisfactions should not be
artificial, but should be natural to the relations of
parent and child and to the particular problem at
hand.
There is no gain in invoking the instincts of re-
bellion and self-will, and then undertaking to " break "
these by force. A complete attitude of obedience in
the home and elsewhere may be secured by making
obedience easy and pleasant until the impulse is
strong and then gradually extending it to more diffi-
cult things.
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 177
One other illustration: the attitude of helpfulness
and cooperation. We may admit that the impulses
leading in this direction are not strong in the child
at the outset; that the tasks it can perform are not
particularly interesting to it; that it very perversely
prefers to help in tasks that it cannot do; that its
play is much more appealing to it. And yet any
normal child may be brought without great difficulty
to do his part in the home duties promptly, cheerfully,
and even enthusiastically, if the parents are really
concerned to have it so. The value of such training
to the child is inestimable.
How is this to be done? We must again assume
that the life and attitude of the parents are such that
there is on the part of the child confidence and fond-
ness, some desire to have their approval, some distress
at lack of companionship and sympathy. If these do
not exist there is something radically wrong with the
parents. The parents must assume the social atti-
tude, — the democratic sharing of life, a competition
of unselfishness toward one another. The child must
have the full opportunity to become one of this
group; must share its joys if he tries to do so, must
be deprived of its satisfactions if he does not. He
must be held to the laws of the group and not be
allowed to gratify selfish impulses at its expense. He
must grow to feel that the labors and difficulties and
adversities are shared in order that the gains and
joys and recreations and comforts may be shared.
It may be taken for granted that real parents will
178 Use of Motives
see to it that the child's satisfactions are artificially
sure and artificially rich without making them un-
related to the pleasures of the group, or allowing
them to minister to an attitude of selfishness on the
part of the child.
In a very similar way parents may secure, and our
religious workers may help them to secure, ideas and
habits of honesty, promptness, duty, virtue, truth-
fulness, and indeed anything else that they may
really desire in the character of the child, not through
preaching, but through the proper motivation of
choices in terms of the natural instinctive endowments
of the child. The common principle in all of these
enterprises is that at the beginning the task shall
seem as easy to the child as possible, shall always be
rewarded by satisfactions sufficient to enlist the desires
in its behalf, and shall progress into a habit and atti-
tude of personality.
12. A suggested program of graded social expression.
It is intended that what follows shall be only sug-
gestive. Churches and teachers must work out their
own programs in the light of all existing conditions.
We may include under this head all activities that look
toward other individuals. The service may take the
form of gifts of money or materials or of personal
service. It may be rendered to individuals or to
causes. It may be rendered by individuals or by a
class acting together or by a whole school. It may
be practised daily and weekly as a regular part of the
work or may in addition be concentrated upon special
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 179
occasions, as Easter, Children's Day, Thanksgiving,
and Christmas. These latter should not be neglected,
but it is not wise to teach children that it is right to
reserve their social services for these special times.
In all this work the teacher should not forget for a
moment that we are seeking to develop a genuine and
lasting internal sympathy and generosity of spirit,
and that this is the legitimate outcome of sympathetic
action followed by the satisfaction that comes from
the happiness of others. All this kind of expression
must be closely graded to the stage of development
of the child. We spoil it all if we demand the im-
possible. The field of social expression for the child
includes the home first of all, the class members, the
home Sunday school and church, the local com-
munity and its special social enterprises, and the
world needs and movements. Clearly the first steps
must be very close and concrete and personal to the
child. Later in youth the interests broaden and may
become more abstract and idealistic. Some such
program as this is necessary in order to carry our
teachings into choice and expression.
(l) Beginners' Department (Kindergarten grades:
years four to five).
(a) The general field of expression: the home and
the class; for children of the same age; concrete and
personal.
(6) The native impulses to be utilized for motivation
of expression: sympathy, kindliness, gratitude, obedi-
ence, imitation, desire to be active, desire to please.
180 Use of Motives
(c) Type of instruction : about child life, local and
distant; about the home and parents, and the com-
forts and advantages of having them; the child's
power to add to the happiness of the parents; largely
by means of pictures and stories.
(d) Special forms of expressive service: thought-
fulness and obedience to parents in the home; con-
sideration for other pupils in the class ; gifts of pictures
and toys, or picture books to individual children who
lack them, or to children's homes or hospitals and
the like; kindness to all.
(2) Primary Department {GrBides one to three; years
six to eight).
(a) The general field of expression: the home, the
class, the Sunday school, the school relations; for
children and helpless people generally. Still needs to
be concrete and personal rather than abstract and
general.
(6) The native impulses to be utilized: imitation;
impulse to be doing things; play; obedience, repeti-
tion; sympathy for distress in animals and people;
spirit of wonder.
(c) The type of instruction : continuation of stories
about children of the same age; the needs of, and the
work being done for, children in cities and abroad;
heroic work done by missionaries, teachers, nurses,
and other social servants; home duties and privileges
of children; duty of reverence and worship.
(d) Special forms of expressive service : right home
attitudes and activities; right attitudes toward mates
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 181
in school and Sunday school ; fair play; animal rescue
work; gifts of material or money especially for enter-
prises for help of children; suitable acts of worship.
(3) Junior Department (Grades four to seven; years
nine to twelve).
(a) The general field of expression: the home, the
class, the school, the play group ('* gang "); the com-
munity, the world.
(6) The native impulses to be utilized : restlessness
and activity; hero-worship and imitation; combative-
ness and fighting; collecting impulse; play; the
" gang " instincts; desire for leadership, etc.
(c) The type of instruction: about heroes; the
heroic extension of Christian work the world over;
the great workers of the local community and how
they are doing their work; the problems of the class
and of the local Sunday school and church; the need
of money and of services; a continuation of some of
the teaching of the former grades.
(d) Special forms of expressive service : honesty and
fairness in games; loyalty to the group to which he
belongs; calling on or otherwise remembering sick
or absent members of the class; volunteer messenger
service for pastor or superintendent; increasing the
Sunday school; boys' clubs, girls' clubs; Camp
Fire Girls, Boy Scouts, and the like; chorus choirs or
glee clubs for the Sunday school; giving of money;
collecting magazines or other articles for institutions;
preparing suitable gifts for some definite mission
about which something special had been learned.
182 Use of Motives
Toys, games, puzzles, stamp collections, post-card
collections, dolls, scrap-books, and the like for the
children of distant communities may mean much
more both to giver and receiver than money. These
call for time, thought, ingenuity, sympathy and
imagination.
(4) Intermediate Department (High-school grades;
years thirteen to seventeen).
(a) The general field of expression: the home, the
Sunday school arid church, the community, the world.
In this adolescent time the objects of service may be
more remote, less concrete, more ideal than in earlier
days.
(6) The native impulses to be utiUzed: self-asser-
tion; leadership; mastery; love of approval; intellec-
tual questionings and searchings; idealistic and social
sympathies; sex impulses and impulses of chivalry;
worship of the heroic and the Divine.
(c) The type of instruction: of the great, firm,
reasonable human beliefs; of the great masterful
men; of the qualities necessary to achieve real
success; of public opinion at its best; of the great
humanity-saving institutions and movements, their
ideals and work (as schools, churches, societies for
uplift, missions, etc.); of the best expressions and
aspirations of the optimist; of the ideals of purity and
the single standard of sex morals ; of the great barriers
to human progress.
(d) Special forms of expressive service: special
Sunday-school and church tasks; helping in any
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 183
forms of local community service, as united charities,
social settlements, Y. M. C. A's. and Y. W. C. A's.,
playground associations, flower missions, civic im-
provement associations, purity leagues, etc.; organiz-
ing and leading the groups of younger boys and girls
of the Sunday school in their expressive work; help-
ing the " kid brother " find himself; looking out for
boys and girls of their own age who do not have
homes of their own in the city; helping support
some foreign enterprise in the mission field; talking
and leading in prayer in the young people's societies;
tithing the income for benevolent purposes; personal
purity for the sake of society.
(5) The Senior Department (College grade: years
eighteen to twenty-two) .
The impulses here are much the same as in the
last group, except that the individual, especially if he
does not go to college, begins to take on the re-
sponsibilities of mature life. This is an age of
questioning old beliefs and of permanent individual
adjustments intellectually, socially, and economically.
The thing needed to save from catastrophe at this
time is a wise and strong appeal to the expression of
those human sympathies and impulses to service so
characteristic of late adolescence. The teaching
ought to be related closely to what the young person
needs to know to make him a sane and efiicient unit
in society.
The field of service here is the whole range of
human need. Some particularly appropriate expres-
184 Use of Motives
sions are: teaching classes of boys and girls, and
serving as officers in the Sunday school; playground
and athletic supervision for younger children; teach-
ing English and civics to foreigners; singing and
entertainments in almshouses, hospitals, and detention
institutions; any sort of service for people who are
shut in for any reason; defense of the weak; rural
community service; cooperation with all kinds of
social uplift movements; interdenominational expres-
sions of the Christian spirit.
13. Conclusion.
The writer has failed in his statement of this prob-
lem if the reader thinks that it means just a little
more, and more vigorous, preaching that the child
should carry into practical life the principles of
honesty, truthfulness, purity, and reverence taught
in the Sunday school. The point is that we must, as
Sunday-school workers, help the student to find in
the home, in school, and on the street the actual
laboratory and clinic of right resolves; and must
help deliberately to stimulate the specific motives
that will insure in him an effort to carry these right
purposes into effect. We should not leave to chance
this last, crowning step of all teaching, — the expres-
sive reaction of the life to truth. We must find a
way to help him make the right choices and inhibit
the wrong ones; we must guide him into the satis-
factions that come from right action and into the
discomforts that come from wrong action; and we
must continue to do this until we have fixed him in
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 185
the ability, the desire, and the habit of making right
choices. In doing this we must bring our work more
and more vitally and sympathetically into coordina-
tion with the home, the playground, and the school.
Topics for Further Study and Discussion
1. How can the Sunday school cooperate with the
home in such a way as to carry over the impressions
of the school into the choices and actions in the home?
2. Similar coordination of the Sunday school and
public school: Possibility; method.
3. Similar coordination of the Sunday schools and
the supervised play.
4. Find motives for being truthful. What supple-
mentary inner tendencies of the child may be used to
reinforce these? What are usually the inner motives
for falsehood? How meet and minimize?
5. Treat similarly purity; honesty; fairness; in-
dustry; consideration for the aged.
6. Enlarge in detail the steps in section 7 of this
chapter.
Suggestive Questions
What method does your Sunday school use to
train pupils in giving for benevolent purposes? Could
it be improved? A real interest in the object of giving
is more important than the giving itself. Is there any
training in this interest? Can you suggest possible
steps that would better educate this generous atti-
tude? Is it not possible to make the pupils reahze that
186 Use of Motives
we are called upon to give more than money? If you
were seeking to get an average girl of thirteen to be
willing to help her mother more, what of her internal
impulses and motives would you appeal to? What
internal tendencies would you probably need to over-
come? If you desired to modify the fighting instinct
of a thirteen-year-old boy, how would you appeal?
What is the advantage of using first one and then
another impulse in such cases? Map out just as
strong a program as you can in each case. As a
teacher how could you plan cooperation with the
parents in these cases? As a parent how could you
cooperate in these things with the Sunday-school
teacher? Do you really believe that much of our
failure is due to lack of cooperation among the
agencies at work for the child? What then?
Some Practical Problems
1. To secure honesty and fairness to playmates in
play.
(1) The teacher must make very clear and real to
the individual and to the class the right and admirable
attitude in these things, citing inspiring instances of
it and its satisfactions.
(2) He must secure the mental assent of the indi-
vidual and the class to this, and a resolution to carry
it into effect on the playground. Must get a feeling
of responsibility and pride in the prospect of making
good.
Forms of Expression: Personal Behavior 187
(3) He should conspire with the play director to
give the child a chance to test himself out under
favorable conditions. If there is no director, the
group of children may pledge one another.
(4) Children should report results in private to
teacher and parents.
(5) They should have, in addition to their own per-
sonal satisfaction, the knowledge of real appreciation
from teacher and parents.
2. Is it best to introduce new organizations into
the Sunday school for expression and social service,
or should we use the class as the unit group? Your
reasons for your view.
References
Athearn: The Church School (various chapters). The
Pilgrim Press, Boston. $1.00
Beard: Graded Missionary Education in the Church
School. .75 American Baptist Publication
Society.
Cahot: Every-day Ethics. Henry Holt & Co., N. Y.
$1.25
Diffendorfer: Missionary Education in Home and
School. $1.50
Hutchins: Graded Social Service for the Sunday
School. University of Chicago Press. .75
Kerr: Care and Training of Children. Funk and
Wagnalls Co., N. Y. .25
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