EDUC. DEPT. Manuals of religious Education for parents and teachers Edited by Charles Foster Kent In collaboration with Sidney A. Weston CHILDHOOD and CHARACTER An Introduction to the Study of the Religious Life of Children By HUGH HARTSHORNE Assistant Professor of Religious Education in The Union Theological Seminary THE PILGRIM PRESS {Department of Educational Publications) BOSTON CHICAGO L5 V / 7 /s W 3 COPTBIOHT 1919 Bt HUGH HARTSHORNE SSi EOUC. DEPT. THE PILGRIM PRESS BOSTON TO 434 17G Digitized by the Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/childlioodcharactOOhartrich PREFACE This book is an effort to introduce teachers to the study of childhood religion at first hand. Its aim is increase not so much of information as of insight, by thoughtful observation and control of children. It is in no sense a substitute for boys and girls as objects of study, and it ^hould be used as a way of learning rather than as something to be learned — a guide to the real facts, which are living children, not books. For some time there has been a widely felt need for a book that will unite the study of children with the study of society. The social point of view in religion, in psychology, in attitude toward youth, has not so far given birth to a text for the guidance of teachers. Most current text-books are too abstract, too general, too Uttle interested in problems of religious development, too individualistic in their point of view, or too crowded with facts of lesser importance. They leave the stu- dent with an idea of the dissected body and mind of " the child," but without a notion of children Uving in the fellowship of a social whole which includes them as well as adults. Young and old together constitute society. The youthful ingredient of society in the religious aspect of its development is the subject of this volume. The chapters are arranged in the order in which it is felt it will be most useful to read them. After seeing the point of view from which the subject is approached, the reader is introduced at once to the study of children, in the course of which study the problem of how to vi PREFACE observe the religious life of children is discussed. The latter part of the book deals with factors that enter into the education of children in religion. A bibUography and a considerable amount of fresh data are placed in the appendix. All who are familiar with recent psychological and educational literature will readily recognize the author^s indebtedness to Edward L. Thorndike, to John Dewey, and especially to George A. Coe. Special thanks are due the publishers and authors who generously granted or confirmed permission to print various articles, poems and quotations, acknowledgment of which is made in the text. H. H. New York, April 1, 1919. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Preface v I The Point of Visiw 3 II Babies 7 Foundations of the Religious Life III Five-Year-Olds 24 Achieving Selfhood IV Observing the Religious Life of Children 45 The Science of Child Study V Little Fellows Six to Eight 60 Helping Children Grow in the Religious Life VI Likenesses and Differences 82 Some Facts and Laws VII Boys and Girls 97 The Religious Life of Later Childhood VIII The Transition 118 From Childhood to Youth IX Our Inherited Equipment 134 The Physical Basis X Our Inherited Equipment {Continued) 147 Nature's Provision for Social Living XI Making Over Human Nature 156 Factors in the Educational Process 1. Action XII Making Over Human Nature (Continued) 167 2. Thinking 3. Worship vU viii CONTENTS CHAPTBB PAOB XIII Motives 177 The Fourth Factor in the Educational Process XIV Health 191 The Relation of Health to Character XV Work and Play 203 Psychological Relations XVI Work and Play (Continued) 217 The Educational Use of Work, Play and Recreation XVII Character 229 Discipline for Democracy APPENDIX I Things Children Do and Say 241 Part I : Stories by an Eight-Year-Old Girl Part II : Incidents from Child Life II Bibliography 268 1. On Problems of Method 2. On Facts of Behavior and Growth 3. Popular Books for General Reading 4. The Moral and Religious Nature of Children 5. Books Containing Data for Study 6. References for the Several Chapters III Charts 276 A. Form for a Chart of Social Development B. Coe's Syllabus C. Form for a Time Schedule Index ' 279 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER CHAPTER I THE POINT OF VIEW Back of the millions of money and the millions of men and women devoted to the welfare and nurture of the young, there hes a deeper interest than the love of children. This more insistent demand upon our time and effort is made by the call of the ideal society. To some, this is the perpetuation of the present social order through the passing on of all that is deemed best in the present and the past. To others, the future society takes more definite form in the picture of a purified nation, from which personal and poHtical corruption has been removed. Others see ahead a theocracy in which every individual shall have his appointed place, whether as subject to the will of a ruling tradition, or as custodian and interpreter of this tradition and its sup- posed benefits. But more and more the minds of thoughtful people are being captivated by the vision of the New Democracy, the coming, not the old, social order, super-national, super-ecclesiastical, whose motive is love, whose ideal is the brotherhood of man, and whose destiny is the commonwealth of God. The child is in our midst in a sense far more signifi- cant than as an object of curiosity or of concern for his own future happiness. That his soul must be saved is only a half truth. To be sure it must, and precious is every son of man in the eyes of an all-loving God. But 3 AM ;••: ;-idHn:.t)fiO'aD.''AND CHARACTER saved for what? And saved how? There is something more important than the child whose soul we are intent upon saving — more important because without it there is no sense in which his salvation has any mean- ing, any more than has his present Ufe. There never would be any soul to save were it not for the other souls in the midst of whose ministrations and in the presence of whose visible acts the " candidate for personahty " is living and growing. The child does not exist in any " pure " or unrelated or unattached way as an inde- pendent individual, but is in his very essence a one of many. Whatever may be the all-inclusive society, the ideal society, toward which we move, the individual's salvation must be related to it, and indeed must consist in some sort of permanent and all-to-be-desired life within it. Apart from the social whole, the personal life has no permanent meaning. To have made education completely child-centered was the splendid achievement of the nineteenth century : " The child's interests must rule, and the child's interest must determine the form of family and school Ufe; all adult affairs must give way before the insistent demands of child-nature; King Child is on the throne and must be obeyed." That such a view contains fundamental truth no one will deny. But it is quite as one-sided as the previous reign of King Grown-up. The twentieth century has dethroned King Child, and is teaching him that he must take his proper place as a citizen with in- creasing rights and duties in the new democracy. De- mocracy is concerned, not merely with the separate interests of either children or adults, but with the in- terests of all persons, young and old, wherever they may happen to live. THE POINT OF VIEW 5 As this point of view is fundamental to all our suc- ceeding work, let us formulate briefly its various factors : "1. Man has a destiny that is conceived to be some kind of superior activity. This superior activity is self- directed and essentially satisfying. Superior activity can be achieved only by experience in its two-fold as- pect of activity within the relation to be perfected, and reflection upon that activity and its purpose. " 2. Education is the process by which the ideals of man's destiny become gradually incarnated in the fabric of society and the characters of its individual members. Religion defines man's destiny as a social destiny, or a superior activity which is not only self- directed and essentially satisfying, but which is also socially motived. Man's social destiny is to be achieved only through social experience progressively understood and directed. Religious education, therefore, is the process by which the individual, in response to a con- trolled environment, achieves a progressive, conscious, social adjustment, dominated by the spirit of brother- hood, and so directed as to promote the growth of a social order based on regard for the worth and destiny of every individual. "3. The process of reUgious education takes place as the individual Uves among people, comes into touch with the highest type of spiritual hfe in the present and in the past, and responds to this Hfe and this ideal by developing the habits, attitudes and purposes that serve to give range and direction to the constructive social tendencies, and to hold in check or direct or convert such tendencies as are destructive of the social good. Identical with the process of reUgious education is the individual's increasing participation in the worship, 6 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER work and fellowship of the world, and his increasing contribution to its progress toward the social ideal. " 4. In order that this development of the individual may take place, society must provide for every child : " a. A community dominated by the spirit of brother- hood, whose individual, cooperative and institutional activities in worship, work and fellowship he may imitate and share. " b. Within this community, definite training for skill in these activities, and in their intelligent direction and control through study and discussion. " 5. The goal of reHgious education for the individual is thus seen to be the completely sociaUzed will, expressed in a life which is sharing increasingly in the knowledge and work of an eternal society, and in the joy ot human and divine companionship — in a word, world-citizen- ship. *' The goal of reHgious education for society is the reorganization of institutions and enterprises in such a way as to provide for all individuals the stimulus of the reHgious heritage of the race, and equal opportunities for health, education, work, play and worship — in a word, world-brotherhood.''^ ^Religious Education, June, 1917. CHAPTER II BABIES Foundations of the Religious Life During their first three years, children are laying foundations of selfhood, of individualized personality. They are building up an experience with which to fare forth into the world. They are preparing to proceed under their own steam and without orders. The Baby's Mind. It is hard for us to realize the utter emptiness of the baby's mind. WilUam James has somewhat ambiguously referred to the child's world as a big, blooming, buzzing confusion. But confusion- impHes a contrast with an already organized experi- ence, and the baby has no such standard of comparison. Furthermore, we are conscious only of what we react to, and the baby reacts only to simple and selected stimuU. His consciousness, so far as it exists, has to acquire definiteness. He has to learn to give more than fleeting attention to any one thing. His mind is perhaps in something the same condition as ours is when we look at a bright jewel so hard that everything else fades out of our vision. We see and feel nothing but that jewel. That is all there is to our consciousness — as though we were identified with the bright object and it were the sum and substance of hfe for us. Everything else is emptiness. Our consciousness has no margin. Now if we can imagine this narrow field of consciousness to shift from one sensation to another, each sensation being 8 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER for the moment the sum total of consciousness, we will approximate what the child's mind must be like. It is very simple and vague, and probably chiefly a sense of pleasure or pain, of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The repetition of experiences that satisfy and that annoy gradually builds up a broader mental field. There are memories and expectations as well as imme- diate pleasures and pains. Certain events, hke having a bottle, are associated with certain other events, such as a feeUng of hunger followed by a feeling of satis- faction, or with the appearance of the same visual, tactile and aural stimuli caused by the approach and the voice of the mother. Certain bonds are being fixed between definite situations and definite responses, so that the repetition of the situations sets going the responses. At first only the whole situation effects the response, only the mother plus the bottle plus the milk plus the feeling of the strong arms and the sound of the comforting voice. But gradually the response of feed- ing is made or attempted to one or another part of this total situation. The appearance of the mother may start going the sucking motion of jaw and Hps and the wriggle of arms and legs that show an expectation of being picked up. If no bottle comes with the mother and the baby is hungry, there is annoyance, and the baby cries, unless other satisfactions crowd out the disappointment. The Basis of Morality. Such simple bonds are being made in considerable numbers as the result of what grown persons do. The more regular the treatment by grown persons, the more quickly will the baby get meaning out of his experiences, and learn the signals or part-situations that indicate what is going to happen. If the display of the bonnet and the cheerful " we're BABIES 9 going out now," is always followed by a ride, it will always mean a ride. If it is sometimes followed by a ride and sometimes not, it will not be understood, and baby will be confused and helpless or unresponsive. The same is true of all the other signals we give. They must be uniform to be intelligible and effective. If baby has learned from experience what the objectiona- ble, but common, " mamma spank " means, and then the phrase is used as an unfulfilled threat, it will lose force as a means of control. Or if punishment follows some misdeed one day but not the next, or if the same punishment follows a wilful disobedience or harmful act as is attached to some harmless prank, the child has no basis for forming any independent moral standards. His world is arbitrary and erratic: he will be arbitrary and erratic. With no definite and recurring associations between conduct and standards of conduct, his action will be determined not by standards nor by habits, but by caprice or the effort to escape punishment. A moral bei ng can be produced only by a moral environment. We all understand how our interpretation of new experiences is based upon our old experiences, how the old comes forth to meet and absorb the new. We see all things through the colored glasses of our experience. Each step depends on what precedes, and each step influences all that follows. The further back we go, the more important, therefore, is our experience. If our first experiences are with a harsh, unsympathetic, auto- cratic and irregular social environment, we grow up with this sort of an experience as our only means of interpreting the world, and our whole life is warped and twisted because of it. It is exceedingly important, 10 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER therefore, that every effort be made, from the earliest beginning of consciousness, to provide a sane, loving, iust treatment, unvarying in its rules and promises and routine. The Basis of Self-Control. Such regularity of treatment not only provides the foundation in experi- ence for the growth of ideas of order and justice, but also establishes the definite habits that constitute the basis of self-control. Before the age of four or five such self-control is, of course, rather mechanical. All it means is that this little bit of humanity will perform certain acts not only at the moment when his mother is present to require it of him, but also when she is not present. If in his creeping voyages of discovery he has, by proper training, acquired the habit of not touch- ing certain books on low shelves, he will refrain from touching them without physical restraint. If he has not acquired any such habit, he will have to be constantly controlled from outside and will lack the kind of experi- ence which can be developed as time goes on into con- scious choice of acts; for, as Royce says, one cannot .choose effectively to do what one has not already done. In building up a world of order, where things happen in ways which can be anticipated, the child is laying the foundation of the sense of justice and of moral law that will come as he grows older. And in acquiring habits of regular and correct response to the regularly recurring situations of his limited world, he is laying the founda- tions of the self-control which his growing consciousness of self will one day recognize as his own. The Common Consciousness. Consciousness is a social product. What the baby is aware of is determined by what the mother and nurse and father and older BABIES 11 brother and sister decide upon. He is fed and bathed and played with by persons who are themselves con- scious of certain things. I]^_Jbaby^ consciousness is a reflection of theirs. His instinctive tendencies find expression in the channels which their minds have al- ready laid out. Everything he touches is a human product or is interpreted by the uses to which human inteUigence has put it. His daily regimen on the basis of which he is gaining a sense of order and of goodness is planned by others. Whatever mind he has is so built up, therefore, as to fit in with other minds. His mind is other minds. Their consciousness is his, and he has no other. But it is not only in his notions about the world of things that he is reflecting the minds of others. He also picks up their attitudes and moods. Just what the mechanism of his emotional sympathy is is uncertain. It may be that the subtle facial expressions associated with elemental emotions such as fear are instinctively responded to by the baby in such a way as to arouse the same mood in him. At least he will frequently show signs of similar emotion even though the object which stirred the emotion in his elders is absent or entirely incapable of affecting him. At all events, Jbhie color of the family consciousness is in some way responded to by the children, and they either absorb it or react against it. They are happy when the rest are happy, sad when they are sad, nervous when they are nervous, calm when they are calm, cross when they are cross. They are at one with the rest. Their consciousness is a common consciousness. Professor Kirkpatrick* gives several instances of be- 1 Tht Individual in the Making, pp. 70, 80. 12 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER havior which illustrate this reflection of the feehngs of others : " Girl of fifteen months. Nearly always smiles, even if crying, when anyone smiles at her." " Girl of twenty-two months says * cry ' in a pathetic tone when looking at a picture of some one crying. She did this once when only the attitude indicated grief." " Girl of two years. She heard some one say in an expressive tone, ' I was scared when I saw how much oatmeal there was.' She dropped her spoon and seemed afraid of the oatmeal she was about to eat until reassured regarding it." " Boy three years. His mother was uneasy, not knowing where his sister was, but said nothing about it and tried not to show it. Soon he said he wished he could see his sister, and finally, ' I am not happy, Mamma,' evidently having caught the feeUng from his mother." Premonitions of Selfhood. The process by which this common consciousness is broken up into parts corresponding to individuals is gradual. At first even the body is not distinguished from other objects. By getting a double sensation when touching one part of the body with another, as when the hand hits the toes, a difference is distinguished which in time becomes standardized. It seems necessary, however, to have all sorts of sensations on every part of the body before the distinction between the body and other objects is com- plete, if it ever is complete. A child was observed to bump her head against her bed. Feeling her head in a puzzled way, she went up to the bed and bumped her head purposely. Another child of three bit her fingers till one bled to see if the fingers were a part of herself.^ Then comes the time when, sometimes seriously, some- times in play, the children look upon all objects as just 1 Kirkpatrick, E. A., op. cit., p. 82. BABIES 13 like themselves. Trees, animals, persons, dolls, all are treated alike, with the expectation that they can under- stand the usual signals by which wants are made known, and will do as they are told. This, however, may be largely, if not wholly, the result of the way others talk to children about inanimate objects and animals, as having thoughts and feelings, and as being able to talk. But the gradual growth of an independent train of memories, tied up with the individual tendencies to behavior that more and more emerge in consciousness as, " baby wants this," or " baby wants that," begins to reveal to the child that consciousness is not general but individual. Naturally he does not use these words. He just is conscious, now and then, of a difference. He has desires that do not all meet with approval. His activities are broken into by others. He is aware that people laugh at some kinds of acts and frown at other kinds. He discovers that among the signals he is learning to use there is one that refers to himself, and others that refer to other persons. This difference, between baby and mother, say, is at first the same as between kitty and mother. But around the idea of baby there come to be associated these thwarted desires, these approvals and disapprovals, so that these experi- ences become " baby's " experiences. The next step, or better, the next stage, for it comes rather as the tide comes, in waves that roll farther and farther up the shore — the next stage is the " I " stage, where the thinker becomes aware that the thinker's and the " baby's " experiences are the same thing, set over against other thinkers or " I's " who do not have the same experiences. This separation is never complete in any of us. In mob action, to which we all are sus- 14 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER V ceptible, this distinction between self and others is broken down, and the individual is " lost " in the crowd much as he was when a baby. All of us are more or less " suggestible." That is, all of us respond, without any- inhibiting thoughts of our own, to many ideas and situations presented by others. We eat what is set before us. We dress as fashion dictates. We are colloquial in ideas and words and behavior. Out of this mass of suggested and uncriticized behavior the child slowly emerges to a certain level which he maintains till adolescence brings its new experiences to send the consciousness of self shooting still higher. These emergings of the consciousness of self begin^to^ appear with the use of language. There is a good deal of the experimental about them, as though the child were playing with a new toy to see what it would do. With each new success in independent action, he gains more confidence, till one day he will deliberately " disobey," just to see what will happen. If this separation of the self from the common con- sciousness takes place too rapidly, before there is suf- ficient experience to give it body and substance, there is danger that the child will become morbidly self-conscious — a person set apart, lacking in sympathy and unre- sponsive to the group Hfe. When punishment, which usually disrupts the common consciousness, is not accompanied by some means of restoring the child to the common hfe, it is a deadly weapon, especially later in childhood. Continuous disapproval unrelieved by a sharing of interests with a child is almost certain to make the child either " self-willed " or " sullen " or openly obedient while inwardly rebellious. Too much atten- . tion leads to similar results. Display before strangers. BABIES 15 doing tricks to make friends laugh, being the center of interest constantly for any cause at all, carries in its train a host of problems in the achievement of a normal personality that ought never to arise. Far better is it for the child to come into the possession of himself through the normal processes of social Uving, in which adjustments to the group life are gradually made, and in which he is able to discover himself not as the cynosure of admiring eyes but as a member of a cooperating house- hold working together for some recognized common interests. As the child lays the foundation for self-control and a sense of an ordered universe through his regimen of daily hving and consistent treatment, so does he lay the foundation for social-mindedness in the attitudes that he picks up from his associates and in the kind of a self that they encourage in him. Laying the Foundations op Religion 1. The Sense of Justice and Order. The child's capacity for rehgion does not begin at any one moment. It comes gradually, just as his consciousness of selfhood comes gradually. The child can be rehgious just as soon as he can be a person and maintain a self-directed relation to other persons. But the nature of this child- hood rehgion, which comes into its own between the ages of four and six, depends on what has happened to the individual during the preceding years. His religious de- velopment may be greatly facilitated or greatly hindered according as its foundations are wisely or unwisely laid. The necessity of providing an ordered experience as the basis of a sense of justice has already been suggested* Children's minds work logically. Not distorted by 16 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER prejudices, they go directly to a conclusion from the facts offered. A boy three years and eight months old prayed that God would make all the days Sundays so that papa would be home all the time. He had thought that all out by himself. This is an example of how babies put two and two together in ways that often startle us. The results are of course often absurd from our point of view, just as the ideas of savages seem absurd. But with the same data, the same vague ideas to work with, we would do about as well. Listen to people talking about something about which they know little or nothing, but about which you know a great deal! Women are amused at men's comments on dressmaking, and men heretofore have been amused at women's struggles to make sense out of a political platform, which, again, seems to the economist so stupid a document. It is not the com- ments of the imbecile that amuse us, but the comments of the intelUgent upon an unfamiliar subject. So the children amuse us by their efforts to build a world out of nothing. Some sort of a world they are going to build, and it will be a reasonable world, a world governed by law. The law may be, '' Insist on having your own way and you'll get it," or, " Wheedling pays," or, " Do unto others as they do unto you," or, *' Crying hurries the bottle." Or it may be, " There's no use fussing," or, " To put away toys is part of the game," or, " Trying always pleases," or, " Penalties never fail," or, " Mother knows best," or, " Love rules." It is hard to put into words the rudimentary ideas of babies. Yet they seem to understand far more than they can themselves formu- late, and can get meanings long before they can communi- cate meanings in words. From the day they are born BABIES 17 their training begins, and the impressions are being made which will gradually broaden out into a knowledge of the world. If love never fails — or, faiUng, acknowl-" edges its failure — if the grown-up world gives evidence of being controlled by a beneficent purpose and not by selfishness, if "to be good " is associated with the maintenance of the common consciousness rather than with the whims and fancies of petulant parents; in other words, if the child is born into and lives in a Chris- tian family, there is some chance of his waking up some day to find himself a Christian. God can mean vastly more to a child who has experienced justice and love than he can to a child to whom justice and love are. foreign. To such an unfortunate, God, if the name be used at all, will be a word to conjure with, or a reckless and terrible Being to fear. There will be no possibility of aspiration toward the good, nor of the organization^ of the tender character in terms of an ideal person, unless there is some just, permanent and loving Standard in the child's experience to which he can refer, and upon, whose approval he can count. And as yet, his standard is a person, not a formula. His associates, therefore, need more carefully to adopt something of the inflexi- biUty, the decisiveness and uncompromising clearness of a definitely stated standard. Granted such an ideal environment, the child can easily aspire toward something bigger and better than himself and can conserve his achievements by his sense of parental approval. And this effort is, for the baby, religion. 2. Foundations in Habits. Religion is more than aspiration and more than a philosophy of life. It is life itself improving itself. It is mind at work upon the problem of being a person, of moving toward the 18 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER achievement of the personal ideal. Spiritual progress is not made apart from the hard facts of every-day physical living. A good man is not one who spins beautiful ideals the while he curses his neighbor for disturbing him in the process. Character is physiological. It is an equipment as well as a purpose. It implies that a person can do what he would do. This moral machinery of living the child, too, must begin to build, if he is to acquire character. The babies in the cradles are, as a matter of fact, beginning to build this machinery from the moment they make any re- sponse at all to human beings, which is right soon. The foundations of long standing habits are being laid from the very beginning. If these foundations are weak and shaky in view of the building that is to be built on them, there will be a general disaster later in the form of a weak and shaky individual. The secret of our modern success in bringing up babies lies just in this definite training in habits that will count for future living — habits of eating, sleeping, playing, waiting, and so on, that enable the child to take his place in the family life rather than make the family life take its place in the baby's daily schedule. Such harmonious functioning as will promote general good feeling is a distinct contribution to the kind of atmos- phere that favors the growth of Christian sweetness of temper. Regularity in daily living becomes conscious, and consciously desired, only if it is already experienced and found desirable. And if this regularity is a part of a family regimen, the emergence of it in consciousness will carry with it the recognition of the family regimen and the desirability of choosing to work with the family rather than against it. BABIES ^ 19 Those who have seen babies growing up with the ex- pectation of " having their own way " irrespective of the effect of their own way on others reahze how frequent are the disruptions of harmony, and how irregular the happiness of all concerned. License breeds Hcense, and the process of overcoming the essentially self-centered point of view that is the outgrowth of such a scheme of life is exceedingly painful. A child brought up as one'~ member of a cooperating group into whose life he is made to fit until the desire to cooperate is born of the satisfactions such cooperation brings has no such diffi- culty in adjusting himself to the common life. He has^ acquired the habits on the basis of which his ideals and purposes, as fast as he becomes conscious of them, can be built into the structure of character. 3. Foundations in Attitudes. No less important for rehgion are the attitudes that are generated in the child's mind during these early months of first experi- ences. The deHberate cultivation of habitual attitudes that characterize the Christian religion is entirely pos- sible if we apply the laws of learning to the process. > Attitudes are the antecedents of ideas and purposes. - They are our virgin responses to all that affects us. It is the attitudes of our friends that most interest us, not the words they use in expressing them. They can be expressed without words in the universal language of facial expressions and gestures. The expression, to be sure, can be imitated and assumed, but not the attitude. We need assurance of the way our friends feel toward us, not of the way they think of us. Love covereth a multitude of sins. The open-hearted acceptance of friends is the basis of all higher social intercourse. These attitudes toward persons and toward behavior 20 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER begin to be formed very early. The flavor of family life is reflected in the faces of the little tots before they can talk. The disposition of good-will or the disposition of cantankerousness is easily cultivated by the way the baby is treated by mother or nurse, and by the way mother and nurse and father and brother and sister treat one another in the baby's presence. The preva- -lence of unchristian attitudes in the family relation- ships is almost certain to promote the same attitudes and the same customary emotions in the heart of the .baby. If their opposites can be made the law of the family, the baby will gain a tremendous start along the road of friendship and love that one day will lead into the City of God. Mrs. Mumford ^ calls attention to the effect upon children of the prayer attitude of parents. The regular recurrence of the evening quiet time on going to bed begins to make its impression upon the baby before it can understand the words that are said. With the evening hour there comes to be associated the voice tones, the softened manner, the family hush and slowing down that are essential for the sober reflection of wor- ship. This should not be a sad hour, but rather one of renewed fellowship, in which the less boisterous, yet not unplayful activities, such as story-telUng, singing and reminiscing, are the expected and enjoyable events. The mood that accompanies a true prayer by the mother at the child's bedside will find expression in the mother's subdued voice and in the subtle facial expressions to which children are so sensitive. And so the habit of the reverential attitude necessary to worship will be established as the accustomed attitude of bedtime, » The Dawn of Religion in the Mind of the Child. BABIES 21 making the practise of evening prayer, as the child grows old enough to pray by himself, a natural and easy thing. What a relief in contrast with the all-too-frequent bed- time complaints and outbursts of temper on the part of both parents and children! The morning, too, has its appropriate mood of joyous anticipation of the day's experiences. If this is real to the parents, it cannot help affecting the children — and, unfortunately, the reverse is equally true. Many a good hour is saved for work and play by the habit of alertness in the morning. The prayer of morning is a prayer of outreaching faith, and carries with it an exuberant and overflowing eagerness that colors the whole day's work. There is no room in such a mood for dawdling and fretting over dressing, which, to say the least, is distressing to everybody, and therefore an unsocial way of behaving. The early establishment of the opposite attitude as the morning attitude will go a long way toward preventing the growth of the characteristic dilatoriness of childhood, and will make it easier to invest the difficult art of dress- ing and bodily care with a much needed interest. 4. Foundations in Common Consciousness. Ref- erences have already been made to the maintenance of the common consciousness natural to childhood, out of which the individual consciousness emerges, and with which it is contrasted. The feeling of oneness with the group is one which comes after the individual has begun to become conscious of his selfhood. The appreciation of union is therefore simply an accompaniment of the appreciation of selfhood. They are two sides of a shield, and neither is possible without the other. Both may be distorted, however. The child's con- sciousness of self may be the outgrowth of an unsocial 22 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER experience, in which case he will be himself unsocial. His sense of self will be developed in opposition to others rather than in cooperation with others, and he will become a misanthrope or recluse. His independence will be bravado and seK-glorification, or self-seeking, rather than deUberate seK-effacement in the larger interests of the group life. As is his consciousness of persons so will be his con- sciousness of God. God, the great Father, should at first be absorbed as part of the mental furniture which he unquestioningly takes for granted. God should be a part of the common consciousness, a member of the group. And when the transition to personal conscious- ness takes place, God should be individuaHzed as well as father and mother, and in the same general way. That is, there should grow up a rapport, a consciousness of two selves who are yet in harmony with one another, because they choose to be. As such common conscious- ness among individuals is maintained by common action, so it is with God. Doing as God does or as God wishes keeps up the feeling of union. Doing as God does not wish breaks the feeling of harmony and makes necessary a readjustment. If God is associated with all that is best, with all the childish aspirations and moral successes, there will be built up the foundations of a vital rehgious fellowship which can readily grow in meaning as the child's world grows. A universe that is at bottom- personal rather than capricious is a universe which even a child can feel at home in ; and it is such an interpreta- tion of the meaning of life, I take it, which Jesus believed in and associated with the calm confidence of childhood in the goodness of everything. BABIES 23 SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND OBSERVATION Locate several children under five years of age, and, if possible- ranging all the way from a few weeks old, and make plans to observe these children occasionally when they are awake. Children passing by in their go-carts or playing in the parks or streets are just as real and just as interesting as when they are at home. 1. What do these babies seem to be interested in? What do they do? Don't say they " play." Say exactly what they do with arms and legs and voice. 2. What do they take pleasure in? What causes them annoyance? 3. Describe instances of apparent self-control or self-direction, recording the exact age, and the circumstances. Compare Case 1, App. I, page 254. 4. Describe the social enviroimient of the children you are observ- ing, from the point of view of the children. With whom do they come into contact? What do these persons do? How are the child's satisfactions and desires dependent on them? 5. Read the cases of children under four in App. I, pp. 254—257. The following books will be found to be of especial service: Mrs. E. E. R. Mumford, The Dawn of Religign in the Mind oj the Child. H. "i*^. Cope, Religious Education in the Family. CHAPTER III FIVE-YEAR-OLDS Achieving Selfhood Cooperation and the Discovery of Self. What the babies learn in the way of religious behavior they learn from their elders chiefly : by their efforts to put two and two together, making up their own little worlds of thought out of the fragments thrown to them from the great unknown world of grown-ups; by their attempts to please father and mother, and do what wins their approval; by their gradual discovery of the possibility of getting what they want by making use of people; and, finally, if they have been wisely trained, by their additional discovery that there are other desires besides theirs that are seeking satisfaction and that they are happiest when deferring to the desire of the home group as it finds expression in the family regime or in parental control. By the time a child goes to the Beginners^ Class, he should be trying to make his adjustments to the group hfe. He should have at least occasional lapses into a cooperative frame of mind. By the time he has en-' tered the second year of the Beginners^ work, that is, when he has passed his fifth birthday and is in his sixth year, he should be habitually cooperative. Otherwise, his presence with the other five-year-olds is a disturbing factor and destroys the unity of the class. Ordinarily, then, the four- and five-year-olds should not be in the 24 FIVE-YEAR-OLDS 25 same class in church school, and the criterion of advance- ment should be primarily the actual abiUty to take an intelligent part in the activities of the older children. The training we can give to the four-year-old is more of the type that he gets at home. It is a continuation of the older person's effort to help the youngster find himself and to find other folks. He is hovering on the threshold of true self-consciousness, ' and we must pa- tiently wait for him to enter, of his own accord, the larger world of real persons, before we confront him with the more serious problems of conscious social adjustment. The Enlargement of Experience. Coincident with this stretching of the child's social imagination is his entrance into a larger world. Home has been his sphere, or rather his home base, from which he took his frequent departure on long excursions into the childish world of fancy. But now come school, new playmates of his own age, teacher, the sight of older children at play. The world is not just father and mother and brother and sister and cousins. It is these plus, oh, so many, many children. Try to recall the first time you were in a great crowd such as gathers in a college stadium or a circus. How vivid were the people and how keen was your consciousness of the presence of humanity in the large. And so the child feels, when for the first time he walks into the kindergarten room with its twenty or thirty children, or sees the older children marching through the halls in never-ending lines to their various classrooms. No wonder the youngsters are at first dismayed. They didn't know there were so many people in all the world. At once upon entrance into this bigger world of children, the child's former world of toys and dolls and blocks and whistles and convenient father and mother CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER takes on new meaning. These articles of the soli- tary play of imagination become spiritually marketable. They become the materials of social cooperation. They are also the interests of others and therefore the basis of a common interest through which the dehghts and the difficulties of social Hving arise. The Clash of Imaginary Worlds and the Discovery of the Real World. The delights and difficulties are both real and both essential to proper development. Were it not a pleasure to play with others, the little conflicts of thought and feeling which spur the children to clarify their thinking would not occur. They would continue to play alone. And when the imaginary world of one is little by Httle brought into touch with the imaginary world of the others, the fancy-free way of thinking receives a check, and the children are all forced back upon their common experience with a common world of things and ' people as the final arbiter of truth and reality. The Cosmopolitan. The child's world is further enlarged by his seeing what 6ther children do. Each one of these kindergarten children has been brought up in a home whose life he has been exclusively sharing and whose way of doing things he has been imitating. Now these different children, from different homes, and representing the characteristics of the different homes, all come together, and therefore bring into one room all their various interests and activities. Instead of having simply their own home life to imitate, the children now can imitate a great variety of behavior. Johnnie plays with his blocks in a most fascinating way, and Edward must do it just as Johnnie does. Likewise Edward's particular strut and puff as he pulls his train . FIVE-YEAR-OLDS 27 of cars is an accomplishment that stirs Johnnie's ambi- tion. And so the different ways of doing things which the different children bring with them are pooled in a common stock of experience and the whilom provincial member of the Tenny family becomes a cosmopoUtan, brushing up against the Olsons and Smiths, the Mac- Dougals and Murphys, the Hahns, and Trabues, and so minghng not only the family traits but also the national habits that appear in the plays and games of the off- spring. Individual Interests and Their Submergence in the Group-Life. But the pleasure in doing what the other girl or the other boy does is not the only enjoy- ment of the five-year-old. He also wants to l^ave his own way and to display his own talents. That is why he has something to be imitated. He does it his way first and shows the rest how. He wants his chance. His story must get a hearing. This is a wholesome thing, provided it does not mean simply the display of conceit. What we desire is that each child shall make his contribu- tion to the group life, and that his contribution shall be his own. The transition from display to cooperation is well illustrated by the responses of the different children to the teacher's request for illustrations of the subject of the story. One child gives an apt illustration from his own experience. Another cannot think of any, and so, apparently in a cooperative spirit, begins to tell a story of her own that has no particular relation to the subject under discussion. A third is insistent on reciting a poem entirely irrelevant to the theme in hand and with the obvious desire to show off. How to help the second child to make her contribution intelUgent, and how to 28 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER secure the cooperation of the third, are real problems in kindergarten teaching. Natural Tendencies and Characteristics. The '' animal " life of the immature human has analogies with the immature life of other species. There is the same delight in multiform activity. The essential wrig-^ gle of the confined child is not a sign of degeneracy but of health. It is normal for a child of five to be active with his whole body. The finer control of energy, by which the larger muscles are allowed to rest while a small group of closely coordinated muscles — hand and eye — are kept in continuous operation, has not been attained. To draw a picture, therefore, requires the motion or tension of legs and trunk and mouth and tongue as well as of arm and hand and eye. But not only is action imperative; it is also impulsive. There are few pauses for reflection upon consequences. One act leads directly to another with little intervening thought. This does not mean the absence of imagery. It means that the mental life is like the observed physi- cal activity — a series of rather disconnected and play- ful images accompanying a series of rather disconnected and playful acts. As activity is playing with things, so thought is playing with images of play. It is not so much the object or scene that is imaged as the action. The story of the Little Blind Girl ^ was once told to a group of children including some six years old. The climax of the story, from the adult point of view, is where, for the first time, the child sees her mother's face. Yet not one of the younger children afterwards expressed any interest in this dramatic ending. It is not the mother's face but her action that interests most children. ^ Lane, First Book of Religion. FIVE-YEAR-OLDS 29 The famous Ketchup Story ^ well illustrates this playing with images: Once there was a man who ate ketchup. He ate ketchup on his bread and on his meat and on everything. He ate too much ketchup. His friends all said, " If you eat so much ketchup, you will be sick." But he kept right on eating ketchup. And then, one day, his arm fell o£f. But he kept right on eating ketchup. He ate ketchup on bread and on meat and on every- thing. He ate too much ketchup. And his friends all said, " If you eat so much ketchup, you will be sick." But he kept right on eating ketchup. And then, one day, his leg fell off. But he kept right on eating ketchup. He ate it on bread and on meat and on everything. He ate too much ketchup. And his friends all said, " If you eat so much ketchup, you will be sick." But he kept right on eating ketchup. And then, one day, his head fell off. And then he was scared. And he ran straight to the doctor. And the doctor looked him in the eye and said, " Young man, if you don't stop eating ketchup, something's going to happen to you ! " The Interest in Activities and Purposes. Kirk- patrick^ quotes the definitions which a four-year-old child gave of common objects: Ankle — means to walk with. Apple — means to eat — just to eat. Baby — it means babies that creep just like this. Ball — it means balls for playing tennis or anything. Book — A book you read. You're reading a book. Boy — Oh, boys — They're boys that walk of course. The boys go in the house and play and walk around. Chair — A chair means to sit in. Girl — Why, girl means to go to school. Hat — To wear on your head. Papa — To take care of you. 1 The author does not know the source of this story and tells it from a single hearing of some years' standing. If it does violence to the original, he begs pardon. * Kirkpatrick, The Indiv \dual in the Making, p. 163. 30 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER More and more the imagination of children is taking in the future as well as the present. There is a growing sense of continuity and custom, and a growing interest in standardizing modes of behavior. The function of objects, more than their appearance, arouses their curiosity. This is a matter of no small importance to reUgious education. It offers a problem as well as an opportunity, however, for once the function of an ob^ct or mode of behavior is grasped, any change or enlarge- ment of the idea of what the object or act is for is difficult. The vividness of imagery apparently rejects changes automatically. Any stimulus, such as a story, which has once set going a set of images, must be told again in exactly the same way. The change of a word is resented, for it probably interferes with the imagery already fixed. Similarly, if a particular act has ever secured a pleas- ing result, the act will be carefully repeated when the same result is again desired, although there may be no logical connection between them. And if the expected result does not occur, violence is done to the child's notion of a stable world. A small boy was asked one day to say grace at table. It happened that his uncle, of whom he was very fond, was sick. So he said for grace, '' God bless Uncle George and make him well." That was a quite satisfactory way to meet this situation of having to say grace. And so, thereafter for some time, long after Uncle George was quite well, the boy's grace at table was, ^' God bless Uncle George and make him well." The advantage that the interest in activity and in standard activity or fixed forms gives us is of several ' kinds. In the first place, it is relatively easy to form - FIVE-YEAR-OLDS 31 habits of conduct. Behavior, as such, is prominent in the child^s mind, and correct behavior, that is, customary behavior, is all-important. The child wants to do the right thing and insists that others shall also. How many youngsters are shocked by the table manners of their fathers! But only when they have been taught some other way of holding fork or spoon. It is exceedingly important that the habits which are formed are correct, \ therefore, not only in the child's eyes, but in the eyes \ of the " best people.*' The standards of behavior for I- the child must be Christian standards from the very / beginning. In the second place, the interest in activity is, in^ germ, an interest in purposes. To be sure, the five-year- old does not form very extensive purposes. But he wants to know what things are for^ what their behavior is,^ what they are used for by people. And he wants to know why he has to do some things and not others. -" Here is one opportunity to help the child make the beginning of a religious interpretation of his life and of the world. He is systematizing his thinking already. What kinds of purposes is he himself forming, and what kinds of purposes does he find others forming? From the Christian point of view, what are things for, and what is the reason for our behavior? The Parental Instinct. Besides the original ten- dency to activity of various kinds with its mental asso- ciates which we have been describing, there are other instinctive tendencies that provide fairly definite forms of behavior. The most significant just now is the pa- rental instinct, with its nursing activities. The child fondles and pets everything, including father and mother. This is largely automatic, and the mental reflections of 32 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER this sort of activity gain definiteness only with an ex- tended experience of the results of this indiscriminate mothering. ^ It is quite important, therefore, for the proper develop- ment of Christian habits of conduct and thought, that the parental instinct be given direction. The tender- ness of feeling that apparently accompanies mothering activity must not be allowed to become sentimental or mushy. The desire to help must be made intelligent in its operation. The children must be taught to find satisfaction in activities that really help. That is, the relatively automatic acts of superficial helpfulness must gradually become purposeful. Delightful as is the spon- taneous and impulsive caress, we must not confuse it with true thoughtfulness, which has a conscious aim, namely, the interest of the other person. By emphasis on thoughtfulness for others, by encouraging the gener- ous impulse to work its way through a consideration of various possible generous acts to the selection of the act that best meets the other person's interest, we can gradually transform the blind impulse into a controlling purpose, which is Christian in its essence. A certain wise teacher of Beginners is accustomed to ask each pupil why he brings a penny with him. This is a puzzler for most children. If they have any idea at all, beyond the fact that mother said it was the proper thing to do, it is usually a general notion of miscellaneous and undirected helpfulness. But the pennies accumulate, and the question arises as to what to do with them. The teacher is not contented with im- pulsive answers, such as '^ give them to the poor chil- dren." She desires an intelligent grappling with the problem of giving. So as various definite objects of FIVE-YEAR-OLDS 33 expenditure are suggested, she encourages an estimate of need, and tries to secure a judgment as to the relative needs of the different objects, and a real endeavor to find out how the money will cause the most happiness or do the most good. The blind generosity of the chil- dren is being transformed gradually into a wise Chris- tian purpose. One of the objects which is of particularly vital interest to this class of Beginners is the purchasing of milk for some babies in a near-by day nursery. The children understand the babies' need of milk and can be shown how important it is that they have good milk. Their parental tendency to care for these Uttle ones finds a wise as well as a satisfying outlet in spending their savings in this way. Children's Fears. A great deal has been said about children's fears, and of their place in '' primitive " child- hood reUgion. Undoubtedly fear was a component of primitive man's religious experience. But we are no longer primitive, and the things that made him afraid are not the bug-a-boos of civilized man. One achieve- ment of the Christian religion has been to eUminate fear from the heart of man. Why should the child be dragged through the experiences of the savage, when, as we know, the child's native tendencies to confidence and love are precisely the central attitudes of Chris- tianity? That children have fears is true, though frequently these can be traced to the vicious stories of nurse-maids, or even to foolish mothers, who try to scare their chil- dren into good behavior. Better were it that a millstone were hung about their necks and that they were cast into the midst of the sea. A child once possessed by fear is in some degree always abnormal. The very structure of 34 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER his brain builds itself around the acts and fancies that grow out of a dominating terror, and forever after those connections or habits of act and thought survive to destroy his peace and efficiency of mind. - Our work as teachers of religion is to prevent any such fears arising and to disperse them as rapidly as possible by corrective teaching if they have already taken pos- session of the child. That religious (Christian) teaching is a powerful antidote to such conditions is well estab- lished. A pleasing result of teaching a child about the Father^s care is seen in the following quotation from a mother's account of her efforts to train her daughter in the use of prayer: " She is a very timid child and has been afraid of imaginary things after she was in bed. This fall I have taught her to ask the Father to take care of her. She has done so and the fear has practically vanished. *' (Age, six years.) The Desire for Approval. One other strong ten- dency of childhood remains for our attention. It is the great satisfaction children of this age take in the approval of their superiors — parents, teachers, and older chil- dren — and the pain caused by the disapproval of these same associates. Here is a powerful weapon for good or ill. Out of it grows that desire for the approval of one's own best self, for the approval of the best selves in others, for the approval of God as he makes his will known through conscience and the demands of the ideal society. It is a dangerous weapon, however, for it may lead to the desire for popular approval, for the acclaim of the crowd, or for the insidious flattery of those whom we contemn. It may rest satisfied with what the lower self dictates, or it may be constantly vacillating between FIVE-YEAR-OLDS 35 one master and another, seeking now one approbation and now another. A unified source of approval is essential for a unified personality, and this should be, of course, what we mean by the approval of God. Some such unifying will as is formulated in the idea of God, and some such unifying experience as is typified in the experi- ence of fellowship with an over-will, are essential for the achievement of that unity of soul which it is the func- tion of rehgion to secure. The Experience of God. The beginnings of the God-consciousness as they are taught by parents have already been discussed. The children in the Beginners' Department are not strictly beginners. They began their reHgious life before they came to the church school, and they bring with them also some idea of God. What should be the normal idea of God by the time the child is ready to enter the first grade? What sort of an ex- perience of God will promote this rehgious development? For we must not suppose that all ideas of God or God- experiences are helpful. Some may actually be irrelig- ious, as this instance suggests: " A little girl of five years, during that period of the child's life when it exhibits more or less the tendency to run away from home, became quite a runaway and visitor to other homes in the com- munity, going at any hour of the day. " This habit came to be a matter of great anxiety to her parents and a nuisance to neighbors and friends. The parents tried various methods to overcome the habit. They admonished her but it did no good. Then they tried keeping her indoors but this did not avail for, after her periods of confinement to the house, sooner or later she would be off from home. As a last resort, her father in- structed the people in the community to ask Mary, his daughter, if she had the consent of her parents to go out a-visiting. If she replied that she had not, she should be refused admission and sent home. 36 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER " Shortly after the above arrangements had been made by my friend with his neighbors, Miss Mary set out to go a-caUing on a Mrs. J . When Mrs. J , on answering the raps at her door, found that it was Mary she immediately inquired if she had gotten her father's permission to come. On receiving the negative answer, Mrs. J asked if she had then obtained her mother's consent. Upon learning that this consent neither had been obtained, she asked her Uttle caller as to what she was doing there when she hadn't obtained permission from father or mother. ' Oh,' repUed Mary, ' I do have permission. I asked God before I came and he said I could.' " The child had been taught by the father to be reUgious, that is, in so far as he felt the child mind could grasp it, and particu- larly did he point her to God as the one whom we should all love and obey; and if we did, he would be our helper, and to him we could take all our troubles and difficulties and he would help us through them. " She couldn't resist that strong tendency to run off, but as she must not go now without permission, she determined to go out on the campus in a comer and talk to God about getting the privilege to go a-visiting to Mrs. J . She claimed that she did explain it all and seemingly to her childish mind came the right, the privilege, to go, and on the strength of her conviction she went. " She had been taught that there was a value in prayer — that if she prayed and had faith, God would answer her prayer."^ -Here is a child of five, who made use of God for unworthy purposes. Her God was distinctly inferior to her best self, though she regarded him as the final authority. There was evidently an error in this child's teaching. An unethical mystical experience was taught as superior to her own moral judgment. This child should be taught to associate God with her own best self, not her worst self, and through the wise regulations of her family life she should have found ample experience of God's good- ness and wisdom. Inasmuch as she was ethically, even » See also Cases 12 and 19, App. I, pp. 25S and 262. FIVE-YEAR-OLDS 37 though not physically, superior to her God, her God was not a part of her real religious life. This is the sort of God that will soon be cast aside as superstition, unless this girl's vital experience can be transformed so as to promote her own religious growth. On the other hand, many a child gets the idea that God is a great master-mechanic, doing astonishing tricks with stones and earth. The child can understand some- thing of the achievements of such a God, because he has tried to make mud pies. But if we expect to get a reverential attitude toward God (and apart from the attitude of reverence, the idea of God is not religious), we shall be disappointed. A small boy of three and a half who had been taught that God makes the wind blow was exceedingly annoyed at God for blowing his hair into his eyes. What more natural? But this is not the basis of reverence. Indeed, a more natural idea of God was possessed by the boy who, in trying to estimate God's abiUty, said, *' Why, he's so big he could spit from here to the barn.'' The God of nature, of stars and infinite spaces, is an adolescent's God. He depends for - his supremacy upon a breadth and depth of imagina- tion quite out of the five-year-old's range. No. It is not God the Santa Glaus, nor God the magician that supplies the religious needs of Beginners in religion. It is God the Father. Let us take our cue from the child's own interest in functions, in actions and purposes, in behavior. Let us interpret God to him* through the behavior, not of things, but of people, and teach him to look for God in what men and women do when they are at their best. The unseen companions of childhood are well known — not simply fairies with Santa Glaus as the biggest fairy 38 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER of all; but ordinary little sisters and brothers with whom the imaginative child carries on what seems to be a vital fellowship. The notion of God as an unseen com- panion is not a difficult one for childhood. But what should distinguish God, the great Companion, from these other inhabitants of his world? First, of course, he is distinguished by his purpose, which is not to bring nice presents to good children nor to keep it from raining on the Fourth of July. His purpose must be interpreted in appropriate terms at each step in the child's progress, as the establishment of the Family or Commonwealth of God. Jesus was insistent in emphasizing God's purpose for the present and the future in terms of a reorganized society, and a new kind of person, who comes Jnto being because of his relation to this new society. So the child's God must be a God of love and justice, and every advance in the child's moral consciousness must definitely be capitalized in his idea of God. His God must grow in moral purpose as he does, else he will be cast aside or cease to be an instrument of religion. ' In the second place, the child's God is distinguished from his other unseen associates by the fact that he be- longs to the fellowship which he does see. Father and mother and teacher, brothers and sisters and class- mates, old and young ahke, all acknowledge this fellow- ship of God and frequently speak with him. Only by this consciousness of social fellowship can the idea of God maintain itself in the child's growing experience of the world, and only so can his idea of God grow with his growing social experience. Prayer. This leads us to the problem of prayer as a means of rehgious development. Up to this time the child's prayers have been largely his mother's. He is FIVE-YEAR-OLDS 39 trying to participate himself, especially in the family prayers, if he is so fortunate as to find them in his home. He has listened as his mother spoke with God at his bedside, and he has occasionally ventured to add a word of his own. But the need is growing for a more definite and complete fellowship, such as can come only through greater effort. The major part of the training in prayer belongs properly to the parents. Unfortunately this work will be left undone in most instances. Much will depend, therefore, on the way the church-school teacher handles this problem.^ This is not the place to discuss the methods involved. The principle, however, is clear, and is well illustrated by the following incident: Unsatisfied with the classic " Now I lay me," a mother sought a more natural prayer for her six-year-old son. The best she could think of was a modification which read as follows: Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord me safe to keep, And when the morning comes again, Please help me to be good. Amen. The first time he used this prayer happened to be after an occa- sion of recognized moral delinquency. A small cousin wanted to play with the boy's Hallowe'en cap, but was refused permission on purely selfish grounds. After saying this prayer, the boy jumped out of bed, ran and got the cap and took it to his cousin, saying, " This is the way to be good." Defective as this prayer is in some respects, it at least was answered on the spot in a way quite within the comprehension of a child. Many children so love the repetition of the same words » Teachers of Beginners would do well to consult Mary E. Rankin's A Courat for Beginners in Relioioua Education, on this problem. 40 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER that the thought-content is crowded out and the repeti- tion becomes a mere incantation. This mere chanting of words has httle if any value for the child beyond the momentary pleasure he has in saying the familiar form. The habit of saying the same form over and over again without thought as to its meaning may become so firmly fixed that the child may not dare to go to sleep without this ritual. This is of course mere superstition and is the farthest removed from Christian prayer. Many boys and girls on arriving at years of independence have suddenly waked up to the fact that they were saying a child's prayer every night which meant nothing to them, and, not knowing any more adequate ways of praying, have given up the practise altogether. Even the child who found so much help in the prayer quoted above soon got to using it mechanically. Its rhythmical form helped in this devitaUzing process. A prose form, with more intimate touch with the child's life, would help solve the problem. Here is one suggested by Professor Coe: " Jesus, when he was a boy like me, obeyed his parents; when he grew up he went about helpmg people, and was forgiving towards those who did him wrong. Help me, our Father, to be like him, and especially to be helpful to father and mother, to be truthful, and to be kind even to those who are imkind to me. Amen." Opportunity for the insertion of special reasons for gratitude, or special events of the day for which the need of forgiveness is felt, or special interests and aspirations, or petitions, is desirable. The best guide to the en- couragement of such intimate and personal relations with the Father is found in the mother's own prayer or in the family prayers, where the grown-ups themselves humbly confess their own shortcomings and their desire FIVE-YEAR-OLDS 41 for a closer approximation to the ideal of life for them- selves and for every one. Children must begin to organize their hves about an ideal which has as its sanction fellowship with an ideal companion. The keenest punishment for a normal child is the loss of desired companionship. He is quickly- affected by any changes in the temperature of the spiritual atmosphere. He can be helped to be sensitive also to the attitude of the divine Father whose will is made known through his own higher desires, and through the higher selves of others. The Child's Jesus. Teachers will ask, " What place has Jesus in the religion of a Beginner? " Obviously, any attempt to indoctrinate the youngsters with a philosophical formulation of the place of Christ in sys- tematic theology is sublimely ridiculous. Fortunately it usually does httle harm. But it may do harm by con- fusing the child's notion of God. " God is hke Jesus," is a legitimate approach. But we find that Jesus' Godlike qualities can be understood by the child only through the medium of the child's own experience of these qualities in his own immediate associates. It is at best a secondary experience of God that the child gets if he must wait until he understands Jesus before he understands God. The simpUcity of the gospel makes its direct appeal in present human life. On the other hand, the Beginners are beginners. They have a long future before them in which Jesus will take a more and more prominent place. Such stories about him as will win their interest and affection are, therefore, wholesome even at this early stage. The baby Jesus they love. It is with the baby Jesus they should begin. But let us not introduce hopeless confusion into their 42 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER little minds by trying to get them to identify the baby Jesus with God, save as all babies are a manifestation of God in the love that they call forth. No wonder people are worried by doubts and difficulties when they are taught as children to pray to the baby Jesus for the gifts of fatherhood! The acknowledgment of the leadership of the man Jesus, Master of life, will come later, when the appeal of his wonderful personality will enhst the enthusiastic devotion of the hero-worshiper. It is sufficient for the present that the boy Jesus should himself exhibit to the child all that is desirable in childhood, and that his love for children, when he grew up, should be a famiUar story. For so will the childish ideals gradually cluster around him, and the childish heart respond to the call of his affection. Summary of the Needs of Five- Year-Olds. Let us finally sum up the needs of youngsters of five which challenge the teacher of reUgion, and endeavor to formu- late the aim and method of our work with them. We must not forget the limitations in experience and physical equipment which determin.e the range of their activities. They can neither read nor write, but they can draw and sing and make things. They require activity, both physical and mental, for they cannot long remain still nor can they learn without doing things themselves. But their action must be directed so as to form habits of conduct which bear the Christian stamp. They do not respond readily to ideas of conduct, however. They need actual situations as stimuli to conduct, rather than aphorisms and proverbs and ser- mons. In forming notions of correct behavior, they need standard images of behavior in the form of stories and incidents embodying the desired behavior in recognizable form. But better than stories, even, is the conduct of teachers and pupils and parents, offering objects for imitation. As an offset to self-seeking tendencies and as a basis of Christian morality, they need the cultivation and ra- FIVE-YEAR-OLDS 43 tionalizing of the parental instinct. They need habits of feeling as well as of conduct, — the cultivation of Christian attitudes in the relations of home and school. They need, finally, a definite social interpretation of self and of the world, reaching as early as possible a notion of self as one of God's children, and a notion of the worid as a friendly place to hve in, and a place in which people are trying to do what God, the All-Father, desires. The Purpose of Religious Education for Five- Year-Olds. To formulate our purpose briefly, then, it is this : 1. To develop a Christian type of social response in action and attitude, within the child's limited environment, both real and imaginary. 2. To assist him to a social interpretation of his environment which ^ shall include God as the great Father of all. 3. To assist the growing consciousness of self to come to a head in ^ a self-consciousness which includes a recognition of the reality and the claims of other selves, as also children of God. The Essentials of Method Formulated. The essentials of our method can be formulated thus: 1. There must be a cooperative group-life in the class in which- all participate as best they can. The children must find some common enterprises, which carry out in one way or another some truly Christian motive. The best condition is attained when this enterprise is itself definite cooperation with others outside the class, whether in-the rest of the school or with some neighboring family or with neglected or over-favored children or with children of dis- tant lands who are needed to enlarge the fellowship of the beginners and who also, it may be, need the loving help of our children. 2. Intimately associated with this cooperation in many forms of activity is the training in worship, through songs and prayers and - verses, that serves to assist conscious fellowship with the Father, and to identify the best the children know and desire with his will. 3. And finally, there should be assistance from the teacher in ^ the way of stories which embody examples of the desired conduct and which elicit the desired attitude and help to formulate the 44 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER desired ideal — stories of action giving vivid experiences of animals or children or men in situations that are like those the pupils them- selves constantly meet. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND OBSERVATION 1. Study the home and school life of a live-year-old and make a list (a) of conditions which favor Christian growth, and (b) condi- tions which hinder the same child's Christian growth. 2. Compare the plays of five-year-olds with those of twelve-year- olds. 3. How would you make the Christian idea of God vivid to chil- dren of five who come from non-Christian or unchristian homes? 4. What ideas of God have you discovered among five-year-old children? How would you change these ideas? 6. What play activities of five-year-olds can be made use of to promote growth in Christian living? How may these plays be used in a scheme of religious education? 6. Read Cases 10-19, App. I, pp. 257 ff. CHAPTER IV OBSERVING THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF CHILDREN The Science of Child Study ^ If the suggestions made at the close of the two pre- ceding chapters have been taken, the reader has by this time entered on that fascinating voyage of discovery, the observation of children. Probably certain of the difficulties that one meets in studying children have already been encountered. What shall we observe? What Hght will the things we observe throw on the prob- lem of the religious life of children? How can we make the best use of the results of our observations? Before undertaking the interpretation of the next period of growth, we will take time now, therefore, to discuss these questions. Selecting our Field of Study. Interesting as are all the facts of child-life, the needs of our study compel us to confine our attention to certain classes of facts, and, for the most part, to children who have passed the years of babyhood. So far as other classes of facts con- cern us, we shall have to take for granted a few general statements, or investigate their accuracy at some other time. How to study children is by no means a new problem, as the numerous results of such study clearly indicate. We wish to know what children do. We cannot look directly into their minds and see their thoughts and 1 This chapter is based largely on an article by the author in Religious Education for October, 19 J 5. quotations from which are freely made. 45 46 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER feelings, nor would these necessarily point to what they are going to do next, even if we could see them. The only insight into their thoughts and purposes we can get is through the observation of what they do, nor is it unreasonable to suppose that what they think is what they do. But all that they do is not of equal importance for our particular interest, necessary as is complete knowledge for a complete psychology of childhood. For such com- prehensive knowledge, so far as it exists, we must go to the standard works on child-nature. Our selection of facts for study is based on our interest in the child's religious development. It is his religious acts that most concern us. Religious Behavior. What we are trying to produce « in our schools of rehgion is the Christian type of life. And our product for each successive year is a type of Hfe as nearly Christian as we can make it, in view of the limitations of the pupil in capacity and experience and environment. It is at once seen that it is far easier to describe and test the final product, than to describe and test the steps by which this product is reached. What, for example, should be expected of a child of ten in the way of Christian attitudes? In this or that situation, what may we rightly expect him to do, as the result of his Christian training? We know fairly well what to expect of him when he is grown, but we know very Httle about what we ought to expect of him along the way. Until we do know, we shall not be able properly to formu- late our purposes with respect to each grade, nor to decide intelligently upon just the methods and the course of study needed to produce this desired result. This does not mean that we have no aims, beyond our OBSERVING RELIGIOUS LIFE 47 desire to have our boys and girls grow to full Christian maturity. Rather have we been obliged in formulating these aims to depend almost altogether on the knowledge of childhood accumulated by persons not concerned with rehgious development. We know a good deal about all sorts of behavior which is more or less involved in relig- ious behavior. But our direct knowledge of specifically religious reactions of children is very hmited. Here are some illustrations of the sort of facts that we should try to gather. A story was told in the service of worship in a certain church school which aimed to de- velop in the children grateful appreciation of what mothers do for them without pay, and to stimulate the resolve to make their acts correspond with this sense of obligation. That is, an effort was made to develop a conscious purpose to control their acts in accordance with an ideal. A seven-year-old boy had been in the habit of depending on his mother for help in dressing. One morning she was in a hurry and asked him to put on his stockings himself. He refused, but finally suggested that he would if his mother would give him a piece of candy. His mother asked him how it would do for him to put his stockings on first and for her to give him the candy afterwards. He thought a minute and then decided that he would have to put them on anyway and not take the candy, giving as his reason the fact that the principal had told a story about being paid for things (*' What Bradley Owed "). He could not reproduce the story, but the attitude developed by the story had found actual expression in his daily life, and he achieved a moral victory that would have been impossible for him without that experience. This, you see, is a brief description of a child's reaction 48 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER in a social situation. Now, suppose we had a thousand similar instances about children of seven, or of six, or of five. Would we not be justified in saying that self- control of the type mentioned can be developed in chil- dren of a certain age, to at least the degree described, provided proper aid be given? Shortly after a certain school adopted the practise of using unison prayers written especially for the children, the fourth grade pupils suggested to their teacher that they have a prayer to be used just in their own class. So the teacher said that any who wished might compose the prayer they thought would do, and bring it the following Sunday. Ten of the children responded, and quite of their own free will wrote out what they thought such a prayer should be Hke. Here are one or two of them : " Our heavenly Father, we thank thee for all the things thou givest us. We have sinned many times but we hope thou wilt forgive us. You have given us our earthly mothers and fathers, our eyes to see with, our nose to smell with, our arms and hands to feel with, our legs to walk with, our ears to hear with, and our mouth to eat with and many other wonderful things. " We thank thee and wish thee to help us to use them in the right way. " This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen." " Dear Lord, help us to be good, and help us to have sweet tem- pers, and be kind to all people who are worse off than we. Please help us to be satisfied with all we have. And please give us all we need. Please forgive us all our sins, for we are sorry for all the wrong we do. Sometimes we know we're doing something wrong, and then we are very sorry; other times we forget. We thank thee, heavenly Father, for all you have given us. All the toys that we have, our lovely homes, and the good schools we are sent to, and all the food and clothing we have. And we thank thee heartily for our fathers and mothers whom thou hast sent to care for us, and we pray that nothing may happen to them. Amen." f OBSERVING RELIGIOUS LIFE 49 From a study of these two prayers no assured facts as to the religious capacity of nine-year-olds can be ob- tained. It is clear to see that at least these children, with their particular background of experience, showed evi- dence of certain definite religious needs and appreciations. But supposing we had a thousand such prayers, prepared under conditions accurately described, would we not be able at least to suggest a few preliminary standards con- cerning certain attitudes we may expect to develop in children of nine years? One more instance. A class of fourteen-year-old boys started the year with the readiness to discuss and the reluctance to do that are so often the despair of teachers. It did not seem as though the problems of Christian con- duct that they took up in class had any intimate relation to their own practises. Rehgion and life were things apart. But in three months the whole situation had changed. Calls for sympathy and help from classmates or from persons in distress were no longer disregarded. Those who had been quite indifferent early in the year became now enthusiastic volunteers in every enterprise. And best of all, they all saw why they were doing these things. They were consciously putting their new-formed ideals and principles into practise. They were making experiments in reUgion and were discovering that re- ligion and life are one. We are not now discussing methods of teaching. But suppose we had a complete description of how that teacher went to work, of the subjects discussed, the ideals formed, the purposes carried through; and suppose a thousand other teachers should record similar observa- tions — would we not have immensely valuable informa- tion as to the possibilities of boys of fourteen? 50 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER Let us now define what we are to have in mind in our study of religious behavior. We are interested in relig- ious reactions. But how are we going to know a religious reaction when we see it? Let us recognize at once that we are not trying to distinguish moral from rehgious acts so as to cultivate one apart from the other. In point of fact, they cannot be so separated in practise. This is an age of social religion and religious morality. -ReKgion finds its highest expression in an ideal, perma- nent, social relation, and morality finds its sanction and motive in religious experience. The religious quahty of an act is not to be discovered by observing the act, simply. Rather do we assign it a religious quaUty when we know its relation to the individual's past acts, his values, and purposes. It is when a person's acts are" expressions of his highest purposes, the means to the attainment of his highest values, that we call them religious acts. Acts which in themselves have no rehgious quahty may become rehgious acts, when, in the mind of the individual who performs them, they are consciously related to the work and fellowship of the divine-human society we call the kingdom of God. A man is rehgious just to the extent that his whole being responds to the world of things permanent and things ideal. Naturally, all men do not have the same ideals nor the same no- tions of what is real, and of what is of most worth. That is why we have the Mohammedan rehgion and the Hindu rehgion and the Christian rehgion, the rehgion of the child and the rehgion of the adult. The child is- a Christian only in so far as his acts are controlled by the ideas and values we call Christian; but he is rehg- ious in so far as he is capable of organizing his whole OBSERVING RELIGIOUS LIFE 51 being around what is conceived by him to be of most worth. We have, thus, two types of growth in religion. -One is growth in capacity to form and carry out purposes ; _the other is growth in the quaUty of purposes formed and the quahty of the ideals and values with reference to which they are formed. What we need to know is: What sort of working ideals do children have, and can children have, at various stages of growth? So we have to consider such questions as these : 1. How does the child behave in various social situations? 2. What is the relation of his behavior to his consciousness of what ought to be done in these situations? 3. What purposes does the child form? Does he carry them out? 4. What is the child's idea of God? What place does God have in the child's experience? 5. What does the child value most? What experiences, or things, or relations, does he regard as of most worth? If questions of this character could be asked concern- ing a great many children of various ages, and the answers could be properly tabulated, we would be in a fair way to state the degree of Christianity that one might expect of any normal child at the age given. But this does not tell us how much progress a child ought to make under given conditions. In order to discover this, it would be necessary to - check up the results just indicated by a study of individ- ual children covering a period of time. That is, in order to measure progress one must know the state at the beginning and at the end of the period in question^ and compare the two in such a way as to show the difference between them. The account of the class of high-school boys was such a study. With good teaching 52 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER it was found that certain customary opinions concerning the relation of rehgion to Ufe could be completely re- versed in a stated time. The same sort of observation should be made on a great many different matters and with a great many different children, in order that the amount of growth and progress proper to each of these matters in a given space of time and with individuals under different conditions may be ascertained. The General Principles of Observation. So much for what we shall observe. But how shall we go at it? All we can do here is to outline the general principles involved and sketch a method for discussion. First, as to principles of child-study. There is a large amount of data on children's ways that is almost worthless because it is incomplete in one respect. We are told, for example, that at a certain age a child has a tendency to get angry; at another age he develops a tendency to fear ; at another age he is capable of love and hate. But unless we know under just what conditions he is angry or afraid, or just what he loves and hates and what experiences lead up to his loving and hating, then the mere knowledge that he is capable of anger and all the rest is of little use. The first principle in observa- tion is, therefore, to observe the situation^ as well as the act or idea that is called forth by the situation. In studying a child's prayers, for example, it is not enough to say that the child said this or that. It is necessary to record also the experience that led up to his saying this or that, and the character of the total situation in which the prayer was said — the mood, the attitude, the experi- ences of the day, the suggestions of the mother, and 80 on.i »Cf. the instance in Chapter III, p. 39. OBSERVING RELIGIOUS LIFE 53 The second principle is this: To discover if possible the relation of the act observed to the child^s notion of why he did it. We are not content to develop automatons which perform the desired acts at the proper time. We want intelHgent human beings, acting in accordance with self-chosen purposes, and with understanding of the relation of their acts to the social group of which each is a member. The boy referred to in Chapter III, who gave away his cap, had a motive for doing so. He did it because he knew it was expected of him as a member of that Uttle society of which God and Jesus and father and mother and playmates were all members. We might wish that he had been generous also, but for him this act represented a motive higher than mere good feeling. It was the attempt to carry out a self-chosen purpose to be obedient and kind as God's child should be. It is this attitude of mind that gave this act its religious quality. Attempts should be made to discover motives, and purposes, and ideals, and notions of right and wrong, and of other social relations, not by guessing, but by making more observations, by observing the total reactions of a child to whole situations. The two principles so far mentioned — to regard acts as responses to situations, and to note, if possible, the relation of the acts to purposes and values — are con- cerned with the methods of observing isolated acts. The accumulation of facts of this character would be of great value for certain purposes ; but it would be of only shght use for precise description of the Unes and periods of growth unless checked by a study of the growth of in- dividual children. Given such and such a degree of skill, how long should it take to acquire such another 54 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER degree of skill? Or in view of this child's previous train- ing in religion, what ought we to try to accompUsh with him during this church-school year? An approach to the solution of this difficult problem of individual rates of growth will be made if we can plan our observations of reHgious reactions to cover definite periods of time. We will describe what a child does in a given situation in November, and then find out what he does in a similar situation in April, and compare the two reactions, not forgetting to indicate the influences that have been brought to bear upon him between these dates. And so we have the third principle of study: To observe the reactions of a child to similar situations at different times. Guiding Rules for Observers. It will be helpful to indicate in a few brief rules how these principles of obser- vation will affect our own study of children. ^ 1. In making an observation, record the date, the age and sex of the child, and some key, such as the child's name or initials, by which the observation can later be referred to or identified. 2. The home life of a child is usually a determining factor in his rehgious and moral reactions. If possible, therefore, observe and record how religion is treated in his home, and what the general conditions are. What are the religious attitudes and habits of each parent? Is religion talked about in the home? What is said about it? Describe the family worship, if there is any. What type of rehgion is characteristic of those employed to attend the child? What is the method of family government and discipline? What are the intellectual interests of the home? About how much is the family income? OBSERVING RELIGIOUS LIFE 55 3. Exclude from the record of observations all items of hearsay. - 4. Distinguish between what is observed and what is inferred. We can not observe emotions, ideas, motives, or choices in others. We can only observe acts and words and other modes of expression, and the consequences and products of a child's acts. Exclude opinions such as " One day when Ohver had been naughty " — say what he did. 5. Record ordinary as well as extraordinary conduct. We need to know what any ordinary child may be ex- pected to do and say under ordinary circumstances. 6. With the record of an act should go a careful state- ment of the situation in which the act occurred. By *' situation " is meant anything that throws hght on what he desired, attempted, enjoyed or disHked, thought about, meant by his words, and why he made just this reaction rather than some other, e. g., where was the child? who was present? what was going on? what had the child been doing immediately before? what had been said in his hearing? what previous experience had he had of such situations? 7. Observe a child under as many different situations as possible. In this way one reaction will throw Hght upon another. The most valuable records are those of the same child over a period of years. 8. Get hold of diaries, journals, letters, stories written, drawings, and the Hke, that throw Ught on the child's moral and reUgious growth. Photographs showing chil- dren doing any spontaneous act are of great value. ^ 1 Readers may be interested in a pamphlet called Cooperative Study of the Relig- ious Life of Children, which contains a set of valuable questions for the guidance of observation. It is printed by the Religious Education Association, 1440 East 57th Street, Chicago, and will be sent free on request. 56 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER Experimental Observation. Suppose hundreds of cases, such as those suggested here, were to be accumu- lated and classified by types of situation and types of behavior. It would be discovered that a few children of a certain age were capable of behaving in a certain way under certain conditions, and in another way under other conditions, and so on, through every type of be- havior reported on and for each age. A list of observed behaviors would result. But are these behaviors char- acteristic or normal? The only way to find out is to try out a lot more children and see what proportion of them behave in the way indicated for the appropriate ages. By repeating experiments and changing the tests, a set of standard types of behavior would gradually be de- veloped for each age of childhood, so that we could say confidently, " Eighty out of one hundred children of professional parents will, by the second birthday, be able to ignore books on the lowest shelves, or at least will not touch them when requested not to "; or, " Seventy out of every one hundred children of all classes will possess a similar seK-control.'' And so on, through a long list of typical situations of childhood. We would know that the twenty or thirty per cent of children who could not do this are to this extent below standard and need special training or patience. It will be a long time before such laws of behavior will result from the study of children. Meanwhile, the best we can do is to accumulate facts and classify them as best we may. The following ways of putting together things that belong together are suggested : System in Observation. Students would do well to have a child-study notebook, loose leaf. This should have a sort of daybook and ledger arrangement, so that OBSERVING RELIGIOUS LIFE 57 the facts concerning different children can be kept separate, and facts concerning the same type of behavior be assembled. If only one child is being studied, the diary-form is satisfactory, with the separate obser- vations carefully listed. If several children are being studied for any length of time, each should have his own pages in the notebook. As far as possible, each complete observation should occupy a separate page so that it can be easily removed and placed with similar observations for purposes of comparison. This necessitates some simple system of identification, so that pages once removed can be easily reassembled. Such a method is represented below. Age Sex Date Classification. Name or Identification Significant facts about child's family Significant facts about child's home life, etc. What the child said and did, and the occasion, i. e., the situation and the response. Include all essentials, not forgetting: persons present, previous happenings, the time and place. But some guide to constructive thinking about the facts observed is needed. We should have a scheme or diagram on which to hang our facts. This diagram should approximate wholeness and comprehensiveness, so as to avoid our getting into the habit of thinldng of the child as a diagram or as made up of various quahties and abilities. Further, the emphasis in this chart 58 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER should be on the child's behavior in its setting. The bare bones of such a scheme will be found in Appendix III, Chart A. Various summaries of facts by which groups of differ- ent ages can be compared more definitely are also help- ful, e. g., Question 1, below, would secure the detailed information on the basis of which a chart Hke the follow- ing could be prepared. THE WAT BOYS SPEND THEIR TIME The time, in hours, is the average per week for those reporting the activity. AVERAGE HOURS FOR NUMBER REPORTING ACTIVITY THOSE REPORTING IN EACH GROUP Age groups: 12-14 15-17 12-14 15-17 Asleep 70.4 63 14 7 Awake 97.6 105 14 7 At Home 35.6 34.5 14 7 At School 33 27 14 6 Study 8 10.4 14 6 Church School 1.5 1.5 11 6 Study for Church School. . . 0.3 ? Special Lessons 4.5 1.5 7 2 Entertainments 5 7.3 5 6 Housework 2.3 1.5 4 3 Business 1.5 1.5 1 1* Indoor Play 8.6 6.4 7 5 Outdoor Play 11.7 8.5 14 7 Meals and Dressing 14.5 14 14 7 Miscellaneous 6 4.5 4 2 Unaccounted for 9 9 11 7 ♦Of those in school. Help will also be found in E. P. St. John's chart,^ and in Coe's chart reproduced in Appendix III. » A valuable Chart of Childhood, published by The Pilgrim Press, Boston. OBSERVING RELIGIOUS LIFE 59 SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND OBSERVATION 1. Secure detailed time schedules from as many children as possible (one is better than none), and summarize your findings as shown above, under " The Way Boys Spend Their Time." A con- venient form for recording facts is shown in Appendix III, Chart C. 2. If you have any other way of thinking of " religious acts " than that described in this chapter, write out your point of view and give illustrations of acts you would prefer to call religious. Analyze the illustrations. 3. Visit a child at home and then at school and compare his behavior in the two situations. How does this child behave in church school? What is the relation between his behavior at home and at either school? - 4. Start a collection of children's prayers. 6. The following references will be found useful at this stage of our study: George A. Coe, Education in Religion and Morals, Chapters I and II. George A. Coe, A Social Theory of Religious Education, Chapter IV. E. A. Kirkpatrick, The Individual in the Making, Chapter I. CHAPTER V LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT Helping Children Grow in the Religious Life General Changes of Mind and Body. By the time a child is in Grade I, he will have become fairly steady in his grip upon the real world of persons and things. Some children, to be sure, seem to let go of their imaginary world with difficulty, and confuse the fanciful and the actual for a long time. Others are excessively matter-of-fact and find no pleasure in flights of fancy. They want hard facts and cold truth. Most children, however, still enjoy fairy stories, and, while not really believing them, can enter into the spirit of the tale with whole-hearted enthusiasm. They " play up '^ easily and respond with ready feehng to the lead of teacher or pupil. This readiness to respond in all sorts of unexpected ways to all sorts of unforeseen stimuli is a perplexing problem for the teacher. With active minds and bodies, the seven-year-olds, unless subdued by an oppressive school or home Hfe or by weakness, offer a fund of exuberant vitahty which only waits the guiding hand of the teacher to be transformed into con- trolled cooperation. During these years, most of the children will learn to read and write and figure. But reading and writing are not yet so well under control as to be economical means of expression. It is not in the control of the finer coordinations needed for free use of eye and hand that 60 LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 61 growth is most conspicuous. It is in the use of arms and legs that most progress is made. Watch how much more sure-footed and vigorous the eight -year-old is than the five-year-old. The httle fellows seem very small to be sure when compared with those of ten or twelve, but they are far more able to care for themselves than they were three years before. Running games are favorites. Tag is universal. Just to chase another is a dehght, and of equal excitement is it to be chased. Physical Limitations. But it is easy for these little fellows to overdo. Their love of activity goes beyond their endurance, and they finish many a day quite worn out. This is partly due to the fact that their hearts and lungs have not developed as rapidly as their locomotive powers, and so cannot keep up the strain of constant recuperation from muscular fatigue. Care must be taken, therefore, that older children do not tempt the younger ones to play beyond their strength. Growing Stability and Self -Control. Coupled with this growth in size and control is the growth of experience with things and people. Part of the increas- ing stability is due simply to the fixing of habits, the achieving of particular skills in acts that heretofore have consumed much time and energy. It is no longer a supreme task to get dressed and undressed. The friction of conflict of desires is lessening by the achievement of a social consciousness that recognizes the superiority of' the group and by a gradual accumulation of habits of adjustment which ehminate conscious strains and efforts. Obedience to the customs of the family hfe, • if these are wise, should be fast becoming automatic. The increasing desire to " stay up," for example, should be anticipated by creating a delight in the regular bed- 62 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER time hour. The crystaKzing of routine should relieve the impulsive and whimsical little fellows of the tyranny of their own caprice. Growing stability is due also to an increase in the accuracy of images of conduct, and the increasing con- trol of conduct by practical concepts which assist in the recognition of famihar elements in new situations and in calling out appropriate responses. The " cues " to proper action are increasing in number, and less and less is the child dependent on the unintelligent impulse of original nature. In other words, the children are accumulating a stock of experience on which they can draw, and on the basis of which they can interpret and control the future. The Purposeful Organization of Acts and In- terests. To just what extent purposes can be formed and utilized by children of six, seven and eight we do not fully know. Nor do we know just the nature of the purposes that are most effective in controlling con- duct. We do know that even more than with adults the actual connections between ideas and acts must be made in experience if ideas of acts are to serve as agents of control. The child who cannot stop an impulsive tendency and cannot anticipate in imagination the consequences of various possible reactions and choose among them is not yet capable of rehgious behavior. He is moving not toward organization, but toward dis- organization of life. The boy learns the uses of tools by watching and help- ing his father use tools. The girl learns the purpose of a broom by having a broom of her own with which she can perform the same acts that her mother performs. In the same way, the boy learns to foresee results and LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 63 adapt means to ends by participating with his father in an enterprise which involves planning toward a desired result. The girl discovers her mother's purpose in the cleanliness of the room by sharing in the work of making two square feet of the room clean. These are simple elements in a complex sharing of purposes and plans with the whole family and with other cooperating groups of children and grown-ups, by which the child acquires social experience and social purposes. The Broadening of Human Interest and Contact. The range of the social contacts of children in the elementary grades is of course much broader than that of the Beginners. School Ufe is more complex. The street is more often accessible, and for too many children it is the only playground. The Uttle fellows are learn- ing to buy things in stores, and so they meet in a con- crete way certain real economic problems and problems of social adjustment. They ride on the cars, they see the postman make his rounds; the same delivery boy that brings things to eat to his home is now seen pushing his cart or driving his horse ; and the goods that used to appear mysteriously on the table are now seen piled up on counters and purchased by buyers of every descrip- tion. The imaginary world is also enlarging by the increasing fund of stories and incidents listened to in school, at table — and from under the table when nobody knows that the big ears of the little pitchers are keenly on the job. Intellectual Interests. A growing curiosity about things and people makes instruction relatively easy up to a certain point, but beyond this point it becomes relatively hard. For the interest of childhood is various, 64 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER not persistent. Quickly satisfied with an easy and shallow explanation, the children of fortune become blase and all-wise, and for them there is about some topics " nothing new under the sun.'' Guiding the Instincts. Intellectual life, in other - words, is relatively of minor importance. The working ^ out of great physical instincts makes an irresistible demand upon attention and interest, and the training we provide largely concerns the proper guidance of these tendencies in channels of valuable experience. The^ unorganized games of childhood in which every man is for himself yet without keen desire for victory provide splendid training in muscular control and afford also an experience in at least a limited cooperation for a good time. The very limitations in the capacity for team-play call attention to problems of adjustment and to the underlying conditions of having fun together. The parental instinct can be directed into channels of social usefulness as an antidote to the tendency to tease ^ and annoy, while the teasing can be brought vividly to consciousness as an undesirable type of activity by a social scorn which deprives the offender of the right to ' cooperate in the common fun. The Educational Value of Imitative Plays. Be- yond making use of the instinctive activities mentioned, however, we have a splendid ally in the delight children take in representing the activities of their elders. By playing at housekeeping, at buying and selling, at school-teaching, and so on, the children acquire a basis in experience for a better understanding of these social enterprises, and a group of habits that makes more con- scious cooperation easier. But this more conscious co- operation should not be postponed. The spirit of play LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 65 is not destroyed when the children can be made to feel that playing at keeping house may be of real value to the family hfe. It all depends on the degree to which the older members of the family can put the play spirit into the round of household duties. Why should not parents and children together play at their work, the elders entering into the reaUty of the child's world of play and the children catching the spirit of the game of life from the good sportsmanship of father and mother? The Development of Attitudes. What the family does and feels determines chiefly the social development of the children of this age. The principle of learning the acts and purposes connected with the use of things through cooperation with others who are using things for a purpose applies also to the learning of the forms and purposes of Christian behavior. The Christian attitude, is caught, just as the unchristian attitude is. Children are not naturally snobs. Though some may be born snobs, most of our httle snobs have had snobbishness thrust upon them by their fussy parents. The race problem among children is the natural consequence of racial antagonism among parents. Let the children alone and matters of color and race are not within the field of attention. In the fraternity of childhood, all are welcome who will play the game. Socialization Through Loyalty to Family. Loyalty to the family and its attitudes is at once a hope and a stumbling-block for the teacher of religion. The child resents any reflection on his parents' superiority. He has a real family pride even at the tender age of six.- This is a worthy feehng. We desire not less of such loyalty, but more. The child not only is a part of the little group; he is now becoming conscious of the fact 66 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER that there are other similar groups. At the same time that he is emerging as a self-conscious member of a- Uttle circle of family and playmates, his family itself is emerging in his consciousness as a social unit, which he identifies now with himself. By and by he will identify himself with other and larger units until finally this socializing process completes itself in identification with the universal society, the achievement of a completely socialized will. Elementary Cooperation in the Christian Pro- gram. The church -school class can make a vital con- tribution to this process. It can make cooperation in some Christian endeavor the most interesting thing in the world. The particular forms of Christian activity that are appropriate to the early years of childhood are ' largely the forms of simple neighborliness. Problems of social reconstruction to which the children can make no present contribution should not be forced upon their attention. If these are problems which they face, how- ever, in their daily Hves, they cannot be ignored, and the children will have to be convinced that some one is trying to help matters. The son of a wage-earner who can find no employment is directly confronted with a great social problem about which Christianity has some- thing to say. Although the seven-year-old son can himself as yet do nothing about the removal of the con- dition of unemployment, he can be led to have the Christian's resentment at the condition, and to beheve (if true) that Christians are trying, not only to help his - father get work now, but to help all fathers always. If the strain arises between loyalty to family and loyalty to the church as represented in the church-school class, r it will be because the church is faiUng in its Christian LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 67 duty toward the family, and church and child alike will be the victims of this tragic neglect. '* Cooperation " versus ** Charity." The question is always raised : What can children of these tender years actually do in the way of real social cooperation? Let us first get rid of certain notions of service which are vicious in their effect upon the child's rehgious de- velopment. By simple neighborUness we do not mean condescending hand-outs to '* the poor," nor are we Hmited in our social horizon to a series of geographic circles ever widening in their area. The Achievement of Friendship and Justice. Anything which creates class consciousness is to be avoided as the invention of the devil. But how? It is clear that here, as in so many other cases, no man can be saved alone. As long as some are outside and some inside, the children of the insiders will look down on the outsiders and vice versa. And to be inside instead of outside means, psychologically, to be working together for a common purpose. It means being friends, not dolers and recipients of charity. It means giving the child's instinctive love the controlling vision of justice. Not that love should first seek justice for itself and tem- per its good-will with calculation of its own right, but that it should first seek justice for all, and infuse into its good-will a glowing enthusiasm for the rights of all, even the rights of enemies. The benevolences, therefore, are to be transformed into the costs of justice and the gifts of friendship. Cultivating the Attitude of Brotherhood. One of the ways by which a universal attitude of brotherhood can be cultivated, in contrast with the counterfeit called by this name, is this. Our attitudes are simply 68 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER phases of our activity. They are a part of our general movement toward some biological or human end. It is helpful, however, to pick them out of the stream of life and center our attention on them. We can some- times best get our interpretation of action by studying - the attitude that goes with it. We find that we can insert an influence into the stream of life's activity at the point where attitude is prominent in consciousness, and, by controlHng the attitude, con- trol also the thought and act. Attitudes foretell our acts as well as our thoughts. But they also grow out of acts and thoughts. Each achievement reflects upon the general attitudes that precede future achievements, and each achievement influences each next achievement, not merely by the extra wear upon the ruts of our nervous mechanism, but by the effect upon our whole mental set. To establish relatively permanent mental sets that are characteristically Christian is one of our main objects. We must therefore plan for the kind of action which will have as part of its effect the forming of these social atti- tudes. To allow the child to find satisfaction in snobbish acts is to confirm him in snobbish attitudes and to assist him to organize his whole outlook on life in aristocratic forms. If he is to have the same friendly and humble attitude toward all, he must treat all aUke, and assume in all the same fundamental desire for the great end of life, which is social justice. Among his circle of friends, therefore, the child must count children of as many classes and races as possible, and with all he must assume a friendly cooperation for the good of all. This means, for the- child, sharing good times, giving presents which add to another's happiness, exchanging postals with other chil- LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 69 dren, or doing other things that will increase the feeling of friendship, and doing these things entirely without reference to the other child's geographical or social or economic or intellectual position. World Fellowship. This brings us to the second problem, that of the theory of concentric circles. The child of course begins his social contacts somewhere, and gradually increases them. But these increases are not by any means geographically determined. They might have been so determined when there were no means of transportation or communication with those outside one's own hamlet. But today the world is one com- munity, and what goes on in China is known here before it is known by China's own four hundred milHons. It is as easy to send a postal to Beirut or Lahore as it is to send one to the next town. The problem is the estabhsh- ment of real social contacts. The enlargement of a child's horizon might and should be so planned as to embrace from the beginning the whole world community and to spread out not so much geographically as in the kind and complexity of social contacts and social prob- lems involved in human fellowship. The same kind of problems of adjustment should be faced by the six-year- old in his relationships with immigrants from southern Italy as are faced in his daily school hfe. As he grows and encounters fresh problems, these enlargements of the sphere of active social hving will include his relations with the children and grown-ups of other places, together with whom he is gradually entering into the fulness of the world's Hfe. One of the enterprises of a first-grade class was the preparation of a book containing pictures of American homes and public buildings, personal messages, and so 70 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER on, which was to be sent to some children in China. These Chinese children were just school children Uke themselves, but they had not seen America and wanted to know how American children hved. And these American children were telling them in the language of pictures and by little friendly letters. Here was the reality of world brotherhood in the simplest and most effective form — the fellowship of children. Some Typical Childhood Interests. There are a few typical interests of these childhood days that we should keep in mind. The indefatigable investigating desire — the insistence upon experiencing and knowing — this, when it is not blunted by over-stimulation, is a constant source of satisfaction to the real teacher. This inquisitiveness includes as its objects, of course, the things of nature: flowers, and stones, and bugs. These occupy a large part of conscious attention if the child has access to them, and without access to them his Ufe in- terests are necessarily impoverished. A seven-year-old boy offered the following exquisite prayer after a happy Thanksgiving : " Dear God, we thank thee for the creatures that swimmeth in the sea, for the wild beasts that prowleth in the forests, for the flowers that waveth in the breeze, for the bee that bringeth honey, even for the fly that buzzeth in the summertime; and in the end we thank thee for our lovely Thanksgiving dinner. Amen." Witness the miscellaneous assortment of specimens in a small boy's pocket and back yard. He loves to accumulate little odd things, precious objects of play or of exchange, and will bargain the less precious for the coveted possessions of his neighbors. This interest in barter is only beginning, however, and among city children has Httle opportunity for proper expression. LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 71 The puzzle interest is beginning, and can be made some use of, although the type of puzzle is of course very- simple. Children love to play with words, to make -- rhymes and simple puns. Their use of language is relatively self-conscious, and they seem to take dehght in the mere sound of words, and to gather meanings from the tone and inflection with extraordinary facility. They are ready to see a story in almost anything, whether - a picture or a piece of music, and love to act out the events, taking parts unconsciously so far as action is concerned, and vividly representing, with the help of literal symbolism, almost any sort of narrative. A second-grade class dramatized on the spur of the mo-^ ment an animal story which included the personifying of animals, trees, flowers and insects. The children had no hesitation in being a tree or a toadstool or a squirrel and behaved in the appropriate manner. There is - considerable evidence that this dramatizing process goes on even though the children merely Usten to a story. They readily put themselves in the places of the char- acters and sympathetically experience what they experi- ence. An imaginary letter from an Armenian orphan was read in a service of worship telling how the little girl lived without any home, hunting for food, and exposed to cold and danger. When asked afterward, *' How did you feel when you heard the letter? " a httle eight- year-old boy said, " I felt just as though it all was hap- pening to me." They do not easily express themselves spontaneously in spoken words, however, and spontaneous representa- tion must, therefore, depend on action for its effect. But they take great pleasure in saying things they have learned, particularly if they are strongly rhythmical. 72 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER I have seen a seven-year-old break right into the class work by the first line of "It was the night before Christmas," and immediately the whole class was stampeded into a choral chanting of the whole poem. Nothing could have stopped them but violence. Religious Behavior and Religious Needs. In what does the rehgious life of these httle fellows consist and how can normal growth in the rehgious Hfe be promoted? We have to ask here, as at all stages of growth, What sort of purposes can they form and carry out? What habits and what insight into social action do they require to make the purposes they do form effective? What is the nature of a childish ideal and how can children be helped to put value upon ever higher and higher ideals? The children are moving in a realm of relatively simple human relationships as we saw above. Their rehgious life must concern these relationships. Their major interests include fun and helpfulness and curiosity. Rehgion must have something to say about good times and friendship and the pursuit of knowledge. The Christian standards of sportsmanship and brotherhood and truthfulness must become the children's standards, and these must be in a form sufficiently concrete for them to grasp and apply. They must discover their freedom and joy in cooperation, not in selfishness ; and in their cooperation, not in their isolation, they should find fellowship with God. The conditions of this fellowship are the same as for the Beginner, but God will mean more and more to the growing child as the child's experience grows and this insight into the meaning of a father's (or, it may be, a teacher's) love is given definiteness. LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 73 Prayers of Childhood. A magnificent opportunity for securing religious organization is afforded in the bed- time prayers of childhood; but how often is this neg- lected! We saw in the last chapter one instance of effective prayer. Children are not learned in the wiles of the world. Most of them are not capable of maintain- ing permanently a calm exterior over a memory stored with explosive regrets. They desire moral fellowship, and this they know can be preserved only in an atmos- phere of frank sincerity. Many a child's soul is saved by a parent's thoughtful sympathy in encouraging the confession of misdeeds and in giving assurance of a re- stored fellowship with God. Little assurance need be given, for the child finds in his own peace of mind the secret of the answering of prayer. ^ Securing the Control of Acts by Christian Ideals and Motives. What is then the form of the mental process called religious in early childhood? In general, as we have seen, the process is a movement within the impulses and desires of fife by which these are criticized and revalued and constantly reorganized in terms of, or under the dominance of, some supreme motive. As the child grows, this criticism is made more and more independently, by the use of standards which are more and more abstract in their form. The dominant and organizing principle is gradually more perfectly defined in terms of a life purpose. In early childhood neither abstract standards nor an intelhgent life purpose is possible. The standards by which conduct is judged are necessarily concrete examples of conduct or simple rules or propositions which define conduct in terms of ^An interesting instance of this desire for harmony of mind is seen in a story quoted in Case 18, App. I, which see. 74 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER deeds rather than in terms of qualities or principles. The meaning of the term " justice " for example cannot be grasped by the average child of seven or eight except as another name for a particular kind of act, such as giving back a stolen knife. But these just deeds are of great interest to them, and simple rules which formu- late what they themselves have found to be the condi- tions of happy cooperation are exceedingly useful as means of self-control. The older children in a settlement had a council through which they participated in the conduct of the organization. The Htter left in the hall- ways was ob- jectionable. So the council included among the house rules that halls must be kept clean. But the children under eleven or twelve did not respond to this ideal at all. So another rule was made saying that paper must not be left in the halls. This worked. It described the actual deed, rather than a general purpose. The organized purposes of children should therefore be in terms of deeds and their immediate consequences, rather than in the abstract terms of adult life. These are the first steps toward the control of acts by far-seeing and therefore relatively general and abstract purposes which require long experience and a more mature type of mental action to make them effective in present conduct. For the little fellows these practical rules are a vital factor in their self -organization. It is the teacher's task to see that the rules describe Christian types of action and are understood by the children in terms of actual experience. Little by Httle as the child's ability to grasp larger and larger relations grows, the rules grow more general until finally they are all included under LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 75 the single great purpose and principle of the Christian life, which is love. It is of course essential that the little rules and prov- erbs which children use as means of self-control and as standards of action should be their own. If the teacher makes the rule or gets it out of a book and expects the children to obey it because of some superior authority which she or the book possesses, the rule will be a means of enslaving, rather than a means of hberating, the will. What we seek in rehgion is control from within. Con- trol from without is the antithesis of rehgion. The process of growth in rehgion is a process of liberation from external control and, at the same time, of increase in inner control. Of recent years, in our effort to gain freedom from the external control, we have sometimes placed too little emphasis on the necessity of corresponding self-control. The result has frequently been the subjection of the child to his own unorganized desires. Unless these happen by accident to be of a social rather than an anti-social color, the result is the criminal, the selfish, the cranky, the dehumanized man or woman. Better far than this is a continuation of external control which secures at least the appearance of goodness. This process of making a rule one's own is the same as for any kind of action involving the control of one's own acts. The fact that the problems we are interested in are problems of conduct in human relations does not reheve us of the necessity of studying these relations and our own acts. There is a widespread fear lest this direct approach to problems of behavior result in some kind of moral weakness or abnormahty. Whether of 76 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER not it does so depends upon the motives that are encouraged. As this problem is discussed more fully in the chapters on " Motives " and " Character," we can leave it at this point. Meanwhile, let us not forget that children want to do the right thing and welcome the slogan or rule or proverb that will help them at the right moment to keep their impulses under control. Children vary tremendously in their ability to control their acts by ideas of their consequences, or by rules or principles. An impulsive child may be far better- natured than a thoughtful child, and yet the thoughtful child may overcome a selfish desire sooner than the better-natured child, because he is so constructed that he can stop and weigh the consequences before he acts. Some children can respond to abstract principles more easily than their elders, and others, of a lower level of intelligence, never reach the point where an ideal or principle is really understood or effective as an organizer of conduct. The wise teacher must study each child and help him to reach a constantly higher and higher level of self-control, as his abihty to analyze and general- ize increases. The Christian life of these children will be, therefore, living childhood's own life on its highest level. The Christian child will first play fairly, for play is his chief occupation. He will participate with others in the family of God in the Christian enterprise, in its several aspects, including worship and friendship, relief, and social reconstruction, according to his ability. He will five his own fife abundantly because he is achieving a measure of freedom from impulsive caprice, and a fund of purposes which direct his hfe into the channels of LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 77 social cooperation where the permanent satisfactions of life are found. The Purpose of Christian Education for Early Childhood. Let us now formulate briefly the aims of rehgious education for children in the early years of childhood. 1. To assist the children to adjust themselves to their new social relations — in the street, in school, etc. — in a Christian way — that is, in the consciousness that all these persons with whom they come in touch are children in God's family. The simple forms of Christian friendship are already familiar to them from their experience in the Beginners' class. But we cannot assume that the friendly deed at home will be duphcated at school. These new problems of adjust- ment must be consciously attacked, so that with the expanding social contacts there will be a like expansion of friendly deeds and attitudes. If the children's own natural relations are not expanding, then it is a part of our purpose also to assist them into larger social spheres, so as to secure in experience the basis of growth in Christian ways of life. As rapidly as possible the child's consciousness of his own hiunanity, of his brotherhood with all sorts and conditions of chil- dren and men and women, must be established. But we do not wish to limit the Christian principle of life to per- sonal friendships. It is important also that the children should participate in the larger phases of the Christian program, such as are represented in the reUef of distress wherever found, and in the en- deavor to make social machinery conform to the Christian ideal of love and justice. There is little of this that is within the reach of the Uttle fellows, but the lack of food in India, or China, or Belgium is quite well understood by them, and the fact that some children have to go to work and have no time to play or to go to school is something they can readily appreciate. In the removal of these conditions they should therefore have a share. And to help buy milk for children whose mothers cannot afford it — this is a real bit of Christian service. And so our second purpose is: 2. To secure cooperation in the Christian program for the world. But we do not want mere automatism. All these good deeds might be present and yet the spirit and purpose of the thing be 78 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER lacking. Imitation may be the first introduction to kindness or helpfulness, but, as mere imitation, the deed lacks religious signifi- cance. In the third place therefore our purpose is: 3. To assist the children to develop and organize ideals of conduct in terms of Christian etiquette and concrete examples of Christian conduct which are known as Christian. And finally, 4. To assist the children to realize vividly the family of God, and their own relation to it. Principles of Method. The particular methods and material for this work cannot be discussed here, but certain general principles underlie our work, and these can be profitably stated at this point. 1. In the first place, any church-school class should be primarily a cooperating group. It should have some kind of common life. The children should be doing together the things which children like to do together. Sharing in a common pleasure, and sharing gener- ously and fairly — this, as far as it goes, is exactly what we desire for children. And in this group life there will be opportunity for the practise of Christian etiquette under conditions of control by the teacher. She will see to it that social situations arise in which the problems of adjustment, of courtesy, thoughtfulness, etc., can be squarely faced and be worked out deliberately. There will be the need of reflection here, and of stories which reveal the desirabil- ity of certain ways of behavior. 2. The home life should offer a similar environment for the child. Here, too, the basis of the group life should be cooperation. With children of six, seven and eight this is difficult to manage, as the direction of their contribution to the family welfare frequently takes more time than the doing of the task would take. But when we come to the point where the family will be recognized as funda- mentally an educational institution, these additional responsibiUties on the part of the parents will not seem so unreasonable as they do now. One of the ways in which children can cooperate in the family life is by having specific duties to perform. The five-year-old can see that waste baskets are emptied daily. The six-year-old can keep the floor of the hall closet in order. The seven-year-old can help LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 79 with dishes and dusting. The eight-year-old can make his or her >. bed, keep the rest of the hall closet in order, etc. All can take care of their own toys and help keep the rooms neat. All should have a share in the great family decisions. One family I know would not think of buying a piece of furniture without holding a family council -» in which every child takes part. The chair or table that is pur- chased becomes our chair or table in a new sense. More and more, wise parents are making definite budgets, providing definite al-v lowances for the children and for themselves. The children keep accounts, purchase what they can pass judgment upon, save for desired gifts or toys or tools, contribute through the family purse or through the school or church treasury to social betterment as far as they can understand the nature or at least the purpose of the causes. 3. They should thus be led to participate together in activities _ that take them outside of their own group. Things are going on in the school and in the world in which they should have a part. Making picture cards for sick children, sending pictures and toys . to natives of other lands, contributing to causes in which the school is interested, taking part with other Christians in supporting relief work — these are illustrations of forms of organized service in which the children should be engaged. Here again, the teacher will have to help by providing much of the material for this cooperation in the way of stories of work done by other children, stories of children of other lands, stories which stir the desire to help, or which increase admiration for others, or which portray in concrete form the way Christians do things in the world. These stories will probably be organized in some way, and so we provide 4. A course of study, or a selection of human experiences that are needed by these children to help them organize their deeds and their ideas and their attitudes. These stories will provide op- portunities for the exercise of moral judgment, distinguishing be- tween different kinds of deeds and their various consequences. They will help the children to see their own experience in the deeds of others and will make attractive to them certain ways of behavior - which otherwise would not be emphasized or promoted. And this aspect of the work naturally includes the formulation and the learn- ing of practical slogans for the guidance of conduct and of practical 80 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER standards for the judgment of acts. The Bible affords many- examples of excellent slogans, such as '' He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city," or the " Golden Rule." 5. In connection with the mastery of this subject matter, there will be appropriate instructional activities to assist the memorizing of verses, or the clarifying of ideas, or the practise of the particular form of cooperation described. Picture pasting if properly done has a place in the program. Drawing, dramatizing the story, singing, reciting, visiting other classes to tell about the class work, discussion, and so on, are themselves a basis for group cooperation, and also effective means for increasing the intellectual grip upon the problem at hand. 6. Finally, there is cooperation in worship. This necessitates training in the use and understanding of the forms and materials of worship which are used. It is exceedingly important that in this significant Christian enterprise the children feel that they are doing something that all Christians do. If the only worship they share is their own, their notion of worship will be provincial and defective. Indeed they cannot worship as members of God's family apart from other members of his family. They learn by taking part with those who know how, just as they learn how to use tools. It is part of our work therefore to have available for these children services of worship with older children and with adults so that they can regularly participate. But they need also the more intimate and free fellowship that is possible in class worship, and in family worship and the bedside prayer. Naturalness in our conversation with God is important if God is to be a factor in the control of conduct. Reverence for him, which so many fear we shall lose by our emphasis upon his approachableness, is gained properly by attention to his character and purpose, rather than by attention to his physical power or his enthronement among the stars. Each class session should include its own worship, its own recogni- tion of the presence of God and its own constant emphasis on God's goodness and nearness, and on the reality of a sonship which makes God depend upon his children for the carrying out of his desire. LITTLE FELLOWS SIX TO EIGHT 81 SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND OBSERVATION 1. Examine the hymns used by the children in your Primary Department. Are the words of a character to promote Christian growth? In what particulars? 2. In what cooperative activities do the children in your (or some other) school engage, and with whom are they associated in these common enterprises? Are these enterprises Christian in character, that is, are they efforts at the increase of love and justice in any particular sphere or relation? 3. What instinctive tendency is common to Cases 20-22 in Appendix I? In what respects are Cases 23 and 24 alike? 4. What sorts of conduct characteristic of children between six and nine do you think should be changed? What sort of conduct have you observed that is on the Christian level? CHAPTER VI LIKENESSES AND DIFFERENCES Some Facts and Laws In our study and observation we have all noticed that no two children, even twins, are alike. Are there any laws in accordance with which likenesses and differences occur? Before proceeding further with our analysis of children, let us note some facts and formulate some laws that will be of service in our further observation. Twins resemble one another more completely and in more particulars than siblings, or children of the same parents who are not twins. And siblings are apt to be more ahke in more ways than children of different fami- lies. If children were all ahke, our work as teachers and parents would be relatively easy and uninteresting. The extraordinary surprises, the endless variety, the obstinate refusal of any child to come within the text-book defini- tion, or indeed within the scope of our own experience, these are what challenge our interest and urge us on to the discovery of the new law which will include this new species of conduct, only to find that the very next young- ster we see thoughtlessly contradicts our rule. And the differences we find in the same child from day to day, indeed from moment to moment, are almost as per- plexing as those we find among different children. " What is that boy going to do next? " is a question that is never completely answered until he does it. Then we know what he was going to do next, and so does he. 82 LIKENESSES AND DIFFERENCES 83 The Laws of Behavior. One of our troubles is that we are looking for the wrong kind of a law. We are looking for some kind of statement which will apply equally well to every single case. We want too much. We are contented enough with the statement, " wood burns " ; and yet we know that under some conditions wood does not burn, for example, when we want to make a fire in the open on a wet day. The complete state- ment would include a qualification of the proposition, such as, " dry wood burns," or, " wood bums when the temperature rises to a certain degree, the combustion degree varying with kinds of wood, stages of greenness, etc." Iron burns, too, if it is hot enough, but we don't bother our heads much about that fact. We use it as though it did not burn, because we know that for our practical purposes, under the conditions we are Ukely to meet, iron won't be so obstreperous. A law is useful to the extent that it enables us to predict what is Hkely to happen under ordinary conditions, even if it does not enable us to predict what will happen under every possible condition. If we can go further, and say that something is or is not Hkely to happen in so many cases out of every hundred, our law will be still more useful. If we could know, for example, that seven four- year-olds in ten are afraid when left alone in the dark, our prediction would be more reliable for any new case than if we knew simply that some children are afraid in the dark. Unfortunately, there are very few traits of childhood that have been suflB.ciently studied to war- rant any such accurate statement of probability, and our generaUzations will have to take the usual form. What do we know, then, about children in general that will help us to understand particular children? Are 84 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER there any useful classifications of children or of childish traits that will enable us to place a child and so to find out more readily how to treat him? Is there any " genius " of childhood, any key to its mysteries, any wand or symbol that can disperse the mists of age that hide from our view " . . . boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon " ? The Marks of Childhood The two aspects of childhood which we are most prone to forget and yet which it is most necessary for us as teachers to keep constantly in mind are these — obvious enough when we stop to think about it : inexperience and potentiality. Children Differ from One Another in Experience partly, of course, because children are not all of the same age, partly because they live under different conditions, and partly because they are by nature equipped to be- have differently and so to gain various experiences. But the fact remains that experience must grow. It cannot be gained at one stroke in toto. All children are moving from a stage of relatively simple experience to a stage of relatively complex experience. The meanings of things that depend on having had certain experiences are non- existent for the child who has not had those experiences. If a child who had never come into contact with the heat of a flame were told that the flame would burn him if he should touch it, he could have no idea what " burned " means. If he dechned to touch it, it would be out of regard for the person who told him not to, or because he feared punishment. It would not be because of any- thing the fire might do to him, for of that he knows noth- LIKENESSES AND DIFFERENCES 85 ing. Listen for a few minutes to the questions of a nine- year-old boy — these are not such puzzlers as those of a four-year-old, but they are hard enough to answer. We assume the presence of knowledge in children because we ourselves have forgotten that we ever lacked it. Only recently I heard a small boy of nine ask, as he looked at a stretch of water, *' What makes the waves come in, the wind? " And he was brought up where waves were a common sight. What would a poor fellow know about waves who had never seen or felt any? Few city chil- dren have ever seen a flock of sheep or even one of the species. Practically none have ever seen a shepherd of the East care for his sheep, and none but the natives of Syria have actually experienced the search for pasturage, the dangers of the lonely mountains, the evening cor- raling of the flock. By what magic is the city child, then, to understand the twenty-third Psalm? This, for its literalism — and as for its symbolism of the deeper experiences that come with maturity, of this the child is fortunately unaware. Wise indeed is the teacher or parent who can walk surefooted in the paths of childhood. It is easier far to gain experience than it is to lose it or to cast it off, once gained. Indeed, that cannot be done. We can recall dimly what it was to be a child, but no one really remembers himself, his original and virgin experiences with the world of things and people. What he re- members is his previous memory of these originals, and with each recollection there are inevitable alterations in the pictures that creep in because of later experiences. -■Vividness of recollection does not guarantee accuracy. *How vividly we recall things which never happened! Gifted with sympathetic insight, we can imagine the 86 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER child's world, however. But if this imaginary world is to resemble the reality and not be constructed simply of beautiful symbolic pictures of sweet innocence, it must be based on our experience of children. We must observe, observe, observe! and mull over our observa- tion, until it is as natural for us to think in terms of childhood experience as it is for a veteran motorist to follow the freaks and fancies of a gasoHne engine. The Second Mark of Childhood is Its Potenti- ality. This in two senses. On the one hand the child is not a small specimen of a man or woman. The de- sires and passions, the ideals and temptations of maturity are not there. The child is a different sort of person altogether. But his difference has a pecuUar quaHty that distinguishes it from the dog's difference from the mature human being. The child will become the man, the dog will not. As Professor Coe has so aptly said, the child is a ^' candidate for personaUty." Of the way in which the new capacities characteristic of maturity appear, one by one, as the child grows, more will be seen later. What we need to remember now is that the child does not grow up all at once, and that he does really grow. Time is a wonderful physician for many ills of body and soul, since, if given time, the physical and spiritual resources of the individual will have opportunity to develop. A youngster of four is rebellious and " naughty," braving parental wrath in the delight of disobedience or of '' wilfulness." One such sat all morning in his chair rather than eat his oatmeal as his mother requested him to do. He was experimenting with his environment, trying to bend it to his own fancy. Appetite, more in- sistent than fancy, finally demanded its right, and the LIKENESSES AND DIFFERENCES 87 conflict was at an end. The child ate the oatmeal and was " himself " once more. A punishment so natural as to be no longer punishment but simply the normal working of the mechanism of life — eat or starve — furnished valuable data for the child's growing con- sciousness of self to work upon. A few more such ex- periments and a few more weeks or months will find him as cooperative a member of the family group as could be desired. But time is needed for the transition, time for the growth from within as well as for the changes wrought by experiences with the outer world. The changes in mood and behavior that accompany adolescence are too obvious to dwell upon. The power of emotion, the social consciousness, the feelings toward the opposite sex, these are not due simply to more ex- perience; they are largely due to growth, inner changes, provided for in the cell structure of the individual, just as the tree is provided for in the seed. We must be content to wait for much that we desire in the way of character until body and mind are ripened by experience and growth. Individual Differences So much for the distinguishing characteristics of child- hood, inexperience and potentiality. The other quali- ties that we Uke to associate with the youth of the race — humility, wonder, faith, loyalty — what are these but the operation of the child's Hmited powers in a world of which he has had little experience? Fortunate indeed it is that the baby is born unequipped and also inex- perienced. If he came to us with the power of an adult, but with no experience of the world, or with the capaci- ties of a baby, yet wise in the ways of the world, what a 88 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER monstrosity he would be! Since he lacks both power and experience, there is the possibility of an infinite diversity of combinations of these two variables, with the resulting infinite diversities of human nature. The Causes of Variations. There are many causes at work tending to make a child different from some children and Hke others. Besides the effects of age or growth, there are the effects of experience, already mentioned, including all the environmental forces that play constantly upon the child — education, accidents,- health, the effect of ancestry, near and remote, and sex. The fact that all these causes are at work at any one time in producing and modifying any given trait makes it exceedingly difficult to assign to any one cause its due proportion of effectiveness. Many attempts have been made, however, to do this, and some conclusions are being reached. Certain of these are of interest to us as teachers of religion. Differences between Boys and Girls. Certain of these are obvious. We know, for example, that girls are more interested in dolls than boys are, whereas boys Hke rough-and-tumble fights more than girls do. Girls are more sensitive, as a rule, and at the same time more amenable to control. Boys are stronger at certain ages, and are outstripped by the girls in size and some- times in strength also, at other ages. The '' tomboy " is an exception just as the " sissy "is. It is hard to discover just what differences between boys and girls are due to the fact that they are boys and girls, and what differences are due to differences in training and in the conventions of modern life. Extensive studies, into the details of which we need not go, seem to justify these conclusions : LIKENESSES AND DIFFERENCES 89 " A child is, for example, by being a girl rather than a boy, hkely to be more observant of small visual details, less often color-blind, less interested in things and their mechanisms, more interested in people and their feel- ings, less given to pursuing, capturing and maltreating hving things, and more given to nursing, comforting and reUeving them. It is no accident that girls learn to spell more easily, do better relatively in Uterature than in physics, and have driven men from the profes- sion of nursing/'^ In any group of girls and boys, or in a class of girls as compared with a class of boys, the girls will tend to be more aUke than the boys. One is not apt to find either such dulness or such brightness among them, and in almost every other particular the differences among the boys will be greater than the differences among the girls. This is of minor importance educationally and does not particularly affect one's methods of teaching. It helps to explain some of the puzzling facts of hfe, however, as, for example, the greater frequency of genius and of imbecility among men than among women. There are relatively more men leaders, both in science and rehgion, than there are women leaders. But this need not discourage the women, for it does not follow that girls are therefore as a class inferior to boys. On the contrary, there are as many traits in which the general average is higher for girls than for boys as the reverse. According to a study made by Karl Pearson,^ boys tend to be more athletic and noisy, less shy, yet more self-conscious, less conscientious and more quick tempered. These differences are sUght, i Thorndike, E. L., Education, p. 68. » Quoted by Thorndike, Educational Psychology, Vol. Ill, pp. 197-8. Cf. also pp. 262-3. 90 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER however, and are not so important and far-reaching as differences in certain elemental instincts, the operation of which leads to the differences mentioned and to many- others as well. These are the fighting instinct and the parental instinct. Both sexes have both, but boys are better fighters and the girls are better mothers. Other differences, such as those mentioned in the following quotation,^ are perhaps chiefly due to the more fundamental biological differences just named: " In detail the exact measurements of intellectual abihties show a sHght superiority of the women in recep- tivity and memory, and a sHght superiority of the men in control of movement and in thought about mechanical situations. . . . They (men) excel in muscular tests, in abihty to ' spurt,' whereas women do better in en- durance tests." Differences Due to Race. Of more interest are differences among individuals which are due to other causes than sex. There is a wide divergence of opinion as to the effect of race on a person's mental make-up and capacity. Between the lowest and highest races the gap is clear, but among men of highly developed races, the differences are not so obvious. " My own estimate," says Thorndike,^ " is that greater differences will be found in the case of the so-called * higher ' traits, such as the capacity to associate and to analyze, thinking with parts or elements and originality, than in the case of the sensory and sensori-motor traits, but that there will still be very great overlapping — the differences in original nature within the same race are, except in extreme cases, many times as great as the * Strayer and Norsworthy, How to Teach, p. 153. *0p. cit., p. 224. LIKENESSES AND DIFFERENCES 91 differences between races as wholes." The history of achievement by foreign students in our own colleges and universities should give pause to any tendency to regard all who Hve outside of our own land as inferior. There are more relatively dull persons and fewer rela- tively brilliant among some races than among others, but there are plenty of ordinary folks among them all who are of similar intelUgence and who constitute the basic material of the world fellowship, which shall be willing to make use of intellectual leadership wherever found, and which shall devote itself to the elimination of the inferior as rapidly as is consistent with common humanity. Differences Due to Family. One's own immediate family stock is of more significance than his racial stock in determining his place among his fellows. But his family stock is complex, and, apart from occasional reversions to an old type, the observable influences seem to be exerted mostly by parents. The effect of this influence is not to make children dupUcates of their parents, but to make them vary from the general human average in the same direction as their parents do. It is difficult, if not impossible, to eliminate entirely other influences than those of family, such as training, when measuring resemblances and differences, except in the case of physical characteristics not affected by training. The composition — the quahty — of the brain is one of these inborn physical characteristics not affected by training. A child's destiny, so far as his upper and lower limits of development are concerned, is fixed by nature. The point in between this lowest and highest possibility which the individual reaches is determined chiefly by training. 92 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER How specific the resemblances to parents are in emo- tional types, morality, and so on, is not clearly known. Children of the same parents and the same upbringing certainly vary tremendously in mental characteristics; but in any specific trait, it is fair to say that a child is more Ukely to resemble his own parents and his own brothers and sisters than some one else's parents or chil- dren of these other parents. These resembling tendencies, however, are subject to changes, and, save as limits, do not determine the individual's growth. Differences Due to Experience. Training is more significant in settling a child's future than is his ancestry. It cannot raise him above his inherited limitations, however. The dull boy will never overtake the bright boy, for the bright boy goes faster. As each generation grows up, those naturally well equipped forge ahead, and those ill equipped get further and further behind. The ill equipped make progress, but their progress is absolute, not relative; and their general status in society, so far as intellectual attainments are concerned, remains the same. To pit one child against another may spur both to action, but if one is much superior in native ability to the other, it is cruel to subject the latter to the certain humiliation of defeat. Better far would it be to pit him against his own record, and to encourage satisfac- tion in absolute progress. The feeling of superiority that results from surpassing the inferior gives the bright boy a false sense of progress and an insufferable pride that is exceedingly difficult to overcome. But any trait can be improved with training. How much of this improvement is due to sheer growth and how much to educational influences is not known. LIKENESSES AND DIFFERENCES 93 Some children of nine are intellectually superior to some of eighteen. Yet growth is certainly a factor in mental development. Changes in brain structure take place which make possible more and more complex associa- tions. New desires arise which affect the direction of interest and attention, and, in turn, these new interests affect achievement. Without the stimulus of the en- vironment, however, these new interests might never be called into effect, and certainly the nature of the en- vironment determines largely the specific forms which instinctive interests will take, and the specific materials on which the mind will work. The particular conventions, the habits and ideas of social life, which constitute the machinery of morality — all these are learned. No child is born with habits or ideas of any sort. All these he gets from his environ- ment, and these constitute at once his freedom and his bondage. How far he will transcend these environ- mental limitations or how completely he will be subject to them depends largely on his native capacity, and this in turn is the gift of race and family, plus the unac- counted-for variation upward or downward that he him- self exhibits as an altogether new specimen of human life. The Necessity of Recognizing Differences. It is important for us as teachers of reUgion to recognize both the possibilities and the limitations of our pupils. We know that all except some of the defectives can be- come conventionally moral by training — but not with- out training. We know that most can become, not only conventionally moral, but independently moral, acquiring standards and principles of conduct through their own critical study of human life. This, too, re- 94 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER quires training. And we know that a few will not only be independent but prophetic, born leaders of men and architects of the new social order. Who knows whether such a potential prophet may not be in his own class? The leaders of tomorrow are now in training somewhere, and whether or not they will be leaders in crime or leaders in progress depends upon what is happening to them now. And the world is waiting for the issue. It is as teachers of the future leaders of the church that we have our greatest re- sponsibility and our greatest opportunity. Miscellaneous Dififerences. A word should be said finally about other sorts of differences than those mentioned above, differences which do not materially affect one's leadership or one's morality, but which do affect our method of teaching. These differences con- cern the form of one's mental life. They are primarily differences in types of interest. The causes of these varieties in interest lie back in ancestry, sex and experi- ence. There is, for example, the practical, common- sense child, as contrasted with the fanciful dreamer. These find it hard to understand one another. One is interested mostly in his own thought process ; the other, in what is going on around him. Some children enjoy getting away from concrete things and working with intellectual symbols. Others prefer to work directly with objects. Some children are constantly reflecting, valuing, " sizing up." Others rarely " stop to think," but just plunge ahead, reckless of consequences. Some enjoy the sense of power that comes from managing people. Others confine their attention to the control of things. Some are delicate and discriminating in their appreciation and sympathies. Others are coarse and LIKENESSES AND DIFFERENCES 95 blunt and hard to move. Some are easily led, amenable to suggestion. Others are independent. Frequently these differences and their numerous combinations are characteristic of the same child at different times. He has his fancy-free moods and his common-sense moods; his thoughtful moods and his reckless moods; his moments of interest in things and his moments of interest in abstractions; sometimes he is the philosopher, sometimes the poet, sometimes the scientist, or the moraHst. It is helpful to recognize these varying moods or types of behavior, for they represent in any case a fairly con- stant set of phenomena. We soon learn what to expect from the fanciful child or the fanciful mood, and can anticipate the actions of the practical child or the practi- cal mood. To name a thing is in part to control it, for the name affords a basis for the organization of ideas. As we gather our data, therefore, it might be wise to record not only the situation and the child's response, but also the child's dominant type of interest, if known, or what seems to be his immediate mood, if that is known, giving the evidence for the judgment expressed. We shall soon find that as teachers we shall have to counterbalance these dominant tendencies with the encouragement of their opposites, if we are to develop well rounded personalities, sensitive, yet not weak; aggressive, but not overbearing; leaders, but not bullies; thoughtful, but not cowardly; courageous, but not reck- less; rich in fancy, but not unbalanced. 96 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND OBSERVATION 1. The stories quoted in Appendix I were written by a girl eight years old. Read them, and make a note of the dominant interests that appear in them. 2. Ordinarily children are placed in the same class in the church school because they are of the same age or in the same grade in day school. Is this practise wise? Give detailed reasons, and suggest other possible ways of selecting children who are to be in the same class. 3. What provision do you make, or have you seen made, in church-school assignments, for differences among the pupils in ability or interest? 4. Those who are interested in further study of individual differ- ences will find any of the following books by E. L. Thorndike of great help : Individuality. Education, Chapter IV. Educational Psychology, Briefer Course, Part III. .^Educational Psychology, Volume III. CHAPTER VII BOYS AND GIRLS The Religious Life of Later Childhood Social Relations. The years from nine to eleven or twelve are conspicuous for two changes in the lives of the boys and girls. First, they are physically far more- vigorous and tough than in early childhood. Second, they are Uving in a vastly bigger world. Home is less significant than it was, partly because it absorbs less of the children's time, and partly because other interests are growing which lead away from home and compete with the home influences. Boys go off together, either playing games or exploring and foraging. Girls, less adventurous, stay nearer the hearthstone, but never- theless are much more in the company of other girls and less under the oversight of adults. The teachers of children are now largely of their own age: the children look more to their own group for ap- proval and disapproval. The codes of cooperation are becoming fairly well established, and standards of con- duct are being fixed. Every man is still for himself most of the time, but spontaneous groups are forming which make demands upon the individual's loyalty. The gangs are rather flexible in membership, but they are sufficiently distinct in the minds of the boys to form the basis of a large part of their activity. Street gangs fight one another as groups, not as individuals. Girls belong to different sets, each scorning the social standards of other 97 98 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER sets. Team-play is attempted, but the teams find it difficult to play without fighting over individual pref- erences, and as like as not the team evaporates in the course of a game or a day or a week. When representing a larger institution, Uke a school, however, or under competent leadership, the team, even of ten-year-olds, tends to last longer, which indicates that the years of later childhood are exhibiting larger and larger capacity for group action and group loyalty on an ever widening scale. Growth and Instinctive Tendencies. Height and weight increase gradually. The girls begin to grow more rapidly before the boys do, so that at the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence the boys seem much younger than girls of the same age. This no doubt accounts in part for the tendency of boys and girls to hold one another in apparent contempt. Significant instincts like fighting and the parental in- stinct are increasing in the strength of their impulsion. The conditions of civilized Hfe put restraints on pug- nacious behavior which sometimes are irritating to the small boy. It is not surprising that he breaks out oc- casionally, either in street fights, or in some form of bullying or teasing. Rivalry is keen among both boys and girls. They delight in competition of any kind and take great pride in their achievements. Fortunately, however, we have a strong tendency still present to care for and fondle. Pets are universally desired — anything alive — snakes, cats, turtles, dogs, rabbits, canaries. How tender a boy is with his own dog, and how proud of its abiHty to eat up all the dogs in the neighborhood! BOYS AND GIRLS 99 Here is a real incident which brings out certain of these boyish traits. " An eleven-year-old boy tested us to the limit by his stubborn resistance to all control. He was either bad or indifferent most of the time. Sometimes the teacher held him by main force, while teaching the lesson, or sent him to the church-school superintendent. Once she sent him home. It became unbearable, and in my round of calls I came to this home. As luck would have it the boy came to the door. His face beamed as he saw it was a visitor for him, as well as for mother. He called his mother, grandmother and sister, then sat on the edge of the chair and listened for four or five minutes, while we talked. He finally ventured — "I have some rabbits." " How many? " I asked. " I had the father and mother, then seven little ones came, but the Ginnies stole four, one died, and I have two left." " Oh, may I see them? " " Do you really want to? " " Why, yes." " Well, come on." So I followed through the kitchen, down the rickety back-stairs into the yard. There we found the rabbits. I took up the prettiest baby to fondle it. Henry took up the homeUest one and said, " I like this one best, it's so homely and cuddles up close to you." He told me what they ate, how they slept, showed me the dog and cat, told of two Httle white mice he had had and lost, of his newspaper route and customers, also how easy it was for him to get up in the morning. By this time we were back up-stairs, and the mother began to tell me how she was not well and that Henry helped her clean the floor, wash the dishes and even hang up clothes. He got red, and uncomfortable, as she talked, so got up and said, " Guess I'll go nowl " That was the last of Henry as a bad boy in the church school, for his teacher and I talked it all over and learned to understand. Every Sunday, however, he came early so as to come up and talk for a few minutes about the rabbits, etc., especially the new baby, which became his chief treasure."^ ^ Quoted from a student's observation. 100 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER Some one has suggested how to get an idea of the ex- uberant abundance of hfe and energy of the years of later childhood. Think of how you feel some fine crisp morning after a good night's rest, awake and ready for the day's work. Then multiply your feeling of strength and energy ten times. You are ten times as hungry, ten times as desirous of shouting and singing, ten times as good natured, ten times as full of mischief, ten times as eager for the next act. That is the way a boy feels. Here is a letter written by a boy of eleven years who had been sick in bed and still had a cold. It is addressed to his father. Note his overflowing good spirits. " Professor, Doctor, Reverand Esq. Hello! there — alright. Mother probably told you that I was sick in bed about two weeks ago — well I'm alright now except a Httle cold that will soon be gone. E. H., R. D., R. L., A. W., B. Q., K. L., D. McL., G. W. (each name was written in full) and myself make up a BASEBALL TEAM of which I am captain. Spud H. is manager and Gordon assistant manager. We play the Cypress Street Team tomorrow at 2.30 o'clock. H. M. isUMP, MR. G . has sent those stories about the slaves he told us about and mother wants to read to us now. So solong old sport. Your left hand man . " This letter reveals another tendency that it is import- ant for us to remember. Notice the interest in the indi- viduals with whom he plays. He mentioned them all by name. Beginning now at ten or eleven, this interest in individuals increases through the early years of adolescence till it reaches its height in the chums of middle and later adolescence. These chums, many at first, and becoming fewer, are generally of the same sex. BOYS AND GIRlia }r ^M'^rMW^. But the plays and games of boys and girls do not ex- clude those of the opposite sex by any means. It is not until the latter part of this period that the problem of cooperation between the sexes becomes acute. Technical Skill. Physical and mental activity is becoming more skilful, and the children take more and more dehght in proficiency for its own sake. Boys and girls can make things extraordinarily well. The finer skills we call technique are possible now and appeal to them. Except for the feehng that comes with maturity, the boy or girl of eleven can play the piano with con- siderable abiUty, and produce paintings or drawings that continually astonish us for their sense of form. Artistic and mechanical abilities that had begun to show them- selves earlier are now rapidly developing. A group of boys at a summer camp built an observation tower twenty feet high in fifty minutes, having nothing but growing trees and tools to work with. A few directions were given them at the beginning, and then they set to and produced a mechanically perfect structure from raw material. Writing is becoming easy and so can be used as a ready means of expression. Reading is so easy as to be a temptation. Stories of an exciting and adventurous kind are consumed at an alarming rate although, in this as in all other characteristics, children differ from one another greatly. But they Hke books and hke to own them. Dramatic Interests. In spite of this increasing interest in and grip upon language, however, they do not yet find discussion easy, nor is conversation fluent except in the form of chatter. Yet the dramatic sense is keen and the representation of stories is a never-ending source 4^? <.*' 'CraLDHOOD AND CHARACTER of pleasure. With a native genius for dramatic effects they get up plays, make scenery and costumes, prepare speeches — and charge admission! The following outline describes in a boy^s own words a play that he and three other children, one of them a girl, prepared and produced at a camp in the woods. The author was eleven. THE LAST STAND By Lynd Ward Cast of Characters Little Beaver Buffalo Bill Showandassee Jim Scene I Time: Sunset. Place: Indian Camp. Showandassee preparing evening meal when Little Beaver comes home from hunt with deer. Showandassee (without looking up) — Did you get anything this time? Little Beaver — Yes, I got a deer, but it was very hard to get him. S. — My, he is a big one! L. B. — Yes, he was the biggest one I could find. S. — Well, supper is ready; let us eat. They have supper and then go to bed. Scene II Time: Next Morning. Place: Cowboy Camp. Jim — Say, Bill, do you suppose there are any Indians around here? Bill — Oh, I don't know. Let us go and see. They start off in opposite direction from Indian camp. During their absence Little Beaver takes some spying in hand, finds out their strength and position. He then returns to his camp. Cow- boys return home after fruitless hunt. BOYS AND GIRLS 103 Scene III Time: Midnight. Place: Both Camps. Little Beaver creeping upon Cowboy Camp which is fast asleep. By some mishap he steps upon a dead twig and they awake. He dodges behind a large tree that is near at hand. They see no harm, and so go back to bed. Little Beaver then returns to his camp and bed. Scene IV Time: Next Morning. Place: Cowboy Camp. The Cowboys are ambushed on their way home from a hunt by Little Beaver and Showandassee and taken to the Indian Camp and tied to a young tree. Scene V Time: Near Midnight. Place: Indian Camp. Indians asleep. Cowboys tied loosely. After much quiet squirming Bill gets loose and unties Jim and together they kill the Indians. This play consisted almost entirely of " business." There was very little speaking. There was no " star." Several meals were prepared, eaten and cleared away. Each scene was a unit, however, and the whole play moved on naturally to a dramatic climax. The next year, when the author was twelve, he pre- pared another play of which he was the hero. He had looked forward to it all winter and had saved up money to buy his costume, which was an Indian suit. In con- nection with the play was a long speech by the hero. This was never written out and so is not preserved. The players chose a most beautiful spot for this outdoor pro- duction, with an eye for scenic effects. In the actual production they had the assistance of a woman who had had dramatic training, but as far as possible she merely assisted them in carrying out their own ideas. 104 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER The interest in the dramatic takes another form in story-writing and poetry. These stories and poems throw considerable Hght on some of the interests of later childhood. Turn, for example, to the one printed in Appendix I. Individuality and the Critical Frame of Mind. Individual differences are more conspicuous as time goes on, but the variations are more obviously in the direction of the family type. This is no doubt largely due to the Ufe in the family. But httle traits crop out that assure us that Jimmy is a chip of the old block. But he has a mind of his own, however, and is less willing to be a chip. He wants to be a whole block. He will no longer swal- low whole everything that is told him. Long experience with the world has taught him caution and increduHty, which easily becomes shallow cynicism. Childish fancies and practises are now to be put away. Unreflecting and universal doubt is the small boy's armor behind which he goes forth to combat. A fine-illustration of this growing independence of thought and enjoyment in making decisions is seen almost every year in the sixth or seventh grades of a certain school. It has been the custom in this school to help support a local day nursery. The children also contribute to this philanthropy through their day school, so that by the time they are eleven or twelve it is an old story. It usually occurs to some one in these and sub- sequent grades to object to doing what they have always done. And then ensues a debate. On one occasion a committee was appointed to look into the matter. On this committee was the boy who had objected most to continuing the contribution. The committee went to the institution, saw for themselves what was being done BOYS AND GIRLS 105 there for the babies, and reported so enthusiastically about the work that the class had to be advised not to vote all its accumulated resources to this one institution. The boy who had opposed the idea himself proposed that the class give all it had. All he needed was to be shown. In a certain fifth grade, stories from the Old Testament are used, not in a hteral way, but as good and wholesome stories. The attention of the children is directed to the values in the story and to their representation of uni- versal human relations. When the story of David and GoHath was told, one boy piped up with, " I do not be- lieve there ever was a man ten feet tall." After some argument the class decided that it did not matter whether Goliath was ten feet tall or not ; anyway, David was a brave man in the presence of danger. The Interest in Conduct and in tlie Prowess of Heroes. One aspect of this critical tendency is the effort to form standards of conduct, to organize conduct under acceptable ideals. These acceptable and usable ideals cannot be too general or absolute. They need to be in the form of rules or customs or simply the concrete acts of heroes who have won their admiration. It is not their qualities but their deeds that appeal to the responsive and alert minds of these children. Heroic behavior, prowess, physical and moral, power and skill in all its manifold forms — these are the deHght of child- hood. The movie makes its appeal at this point. The graphic exhibition of power and the intensely dramatic or " rough-house scenes " swiftly following upon one another are the very bread of life to an eleven- or twelve- year-old; and these visualizations of conduct must in- evitably go far toward forming his standards and sug- gesting to him his own behavior. 106 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER It would be interesting to know how far movie heroes are replacing baseball heroes in the minds of the boys. Competition and Cooperation. We have thought thus far chiefly of the interests and capacities of the chil- dren. We should keep constantly in mind the actual situations in which they find themselves from day to day, the persons they are with, and the effect upon them of these relations. An examination of the schedules of boys and girls will reveal an exceedingly crowded day, spent mostly in the company of children of the same age. The characteristic free behavior of children with one another is a combination of keen competition and cooper- ation. Both are wholesome. The stimulus of rivalry is not to be despised. Seeing another do something automatically makes a boy or girl desire to excel in that activity. And in thus plunging into the combat and the chase, the children discover their own capacities and Umitations. It is hard indeed to convince the small boy that he is beaten. There is no such word as fail to the ten-year-old. Failure is an adolescent experience. When the boy gives in he gives in for poUcy's sake, but his spirit is not conquered, and when he gets around the corner he again shouts defiance at his adversary. But he is learning caution, nevertheless, and knows himself better both by defeat and by victory. This indomitable or obstinate or individuahstic spirit does not mean, however, that there can be no leaders among boys and girls. The one who proves his abiHty to get desired results can be the leader, although he may have to earn the right to lead by his physical superiority. The latter is by no means always the case, and the street gang will often follow the weaker but more intelhgent boy. The man is permitted to lead the BOYS AND GIRLS 107 " bunch/ ^ not primarily because he is strong, but rather because he can control the situations which the group enjoys. He can provide amusements and games. He can do interesting things that the boys want to do. He can make possible the hikes and expeditions which the boys could not undertake alone. He releases the boys from certain responsibilities, and reduces the amount of thinking they have to do in order to have a good time. He is a good provider, and a greatly to be admired paragon, a miniature god to whom one gives ready allegiance — up to a certain point. This delight in leadership merges with the enjoyment of cooperative activities. Leadership is at its best when it facilitates cooperation for common ends. The boys Uke to be together and the girls Hke to be together, and under certain conditions the boys and girls Uke to be together. Being with others affords the necessary condition of the competitive activity which is so much enjoyed. Cooperation for competition more nearly characterizes this period of development than its re- verse, competition in cooperation. But in thus rivaUng one another's achievements they are securing all un- consciously the training in cooperation that is essential for their social development. The teacher's task Ues in providing suitable occasions for rivalry, suitable objects for competition, and in so arranging the conditions of competition that the group will gradually translate its competitive efforts into -cooperative efforts. Group Loyalty. The basis for this transition is in the incipient group consciousness which identifies one's own interest with that of the group when another group appears on the horizon threatening the prestige or prop- 108 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER erty of the first or the safety of the individuals concerned. Loyalty is born in conflict, in the competition of groups. But this group competition involves a certain degree of cooperation, just as in the case of individuals. The group enjoy their competition only when they agree to compete. There is no fun fighting when the other fellow won't fight back. And, furthermore, just as competing individuals become transformed into co- operating individuals by the mere appearance of another set of individuals on the horizon, so a group of competing groups is transformed into a cooperating whole when all the groups are confronted with a common enemy or a common task. It is the teacher's task to secure this transformation of competing groups into cooperating groups as rapidly as possible. Higher Loyalties through Cooperating Groups. But the interesting thing is that the relation between the individuals in any one group is not changed when the group ceases to compete with another and starts to cooperate with it instead. The presence of the larger task seems to inhibit the individualistic tendencies and to encourage the social tendencies. In terms of church-, school practise this means that all individual competi- tion for exclusive honors such as badges for attendance should be transformed into cooperative activity for the sake of the class group. Class competition is enjoyed exceedingly. But class competition also should give way before the higher form of activity involved in co- operation among classes. The awarding of class ban- ners for attendance, therefore, although on a higher social level than the giving of individual badges, is not on the Christian level, for it involves the recognition not only of success, but of victory, that is, of another's BOYS AND GIRLS 109 defeat. If all had banners there would be less fun in it. The joy of defeating the rest is thus encouraged at the expense of the cooperative spirit. It should be said in palliation of this practise that it is far superior to the rewarding of successes which in the nature of the case consist in another's loss or humiliation. It is better, for example, than the social recognition that comes to a man who has made his wealth by refusing to share equita- bly with those who have helped him in his work. But it is not good enough. A higher and equally enjoyable procedure is to get every class to work for the record of the school, so that the school may beat its own record every year. Cooperation for a common purpose is here the essential motive. To make it thoroughly Christian it only remains for the pupils to see the rela- tion between attendance at church school and the prog- ress of the kingdom of God. If there is none, of course attendance must naturally be a matter of small moment to every one! The Religious Assets of Later Childhood. What then is the religious Hfe of the boys and girls? What rehgious problems do they face? How can the church school and the home assist them to grow reUgiously? Let us count up the religious assets of later childhood. There is, first, what we have called the parental instinct. Covered up though it may be in many children by habits of a contrary character, it is still there, and even in the worst bully will occasionally show itself in an attach- ment for a pet. Here is a real basis in human nature for much that is characteristically Christian. Second, there is increasing fondness for a closer form of social cooperation. The group, as such, rather than as a mere opportunity for a good time, is beginning to no CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER enlist budding loyalties that transcend individual in- terests. Here is the basis in life of true Christian socialization of will. Third, there is intellectual alertness, manifesting it- self in incredulity, in exploration, in reading, in rabid inquisitiveness, and coupled with an ever increasing ability to subject action to intellectual control. Stand- ards of conduct can be increasingly effective and pur- poses can include wider and wider ranges of conduct and extend over longer periods of time. Witness, for example, the case of the boy who planned all winter for the play he was going to give the following summer. Here is the basis in mental ability for the increasing organization of hfe and its purposes in terms of the Christian standard. Finally, there is the increasing interest in persons and their deeds, which reaches its maximum at early adoles- cence in what is called hero-worship, and in a shghtly different form, at middle adolescence, in chumming. The idealization of personality, the setting up of a picture of what one wants a person to be and identifying this ideal with the person as he is — here is the basis, in appreciation, of the peculiarly Christian emphasis on the ultimate and supreme worth of every indi- vidual. Hindrances to Religious Life. Over against these wonderful religious assets of later childhood we have to set certain other tendencies of individual and social life that make our work as teachers of religion difficult. There is nothing in the physical and mental make-up that is really antagonistic to our purposes as Christian educators except the presence of those natural desires BOYS AND GIRLS 111 and tendencies which are anti-social in character. The chief trouble comes from the bad habits already formed: habits of disrespect and irreverence, habits of selfish indulgence or of indifference to others* rights; habits of subterfuge and deception, of indecency in thought and practise. These are the direct results of unchristian surroundings. The boys and girls them- selves are not at fault for being Httle savages when so- ciety itself provides them with no opportunity for being anything else. The city gang is the result of social neglect. The marauding gang is a rare thing in the country. There is abundant opportunity in the rural districts for wholesome activity, but what can a bunch of boys in the city do? In the country there is still some semblance of normal family hfe, but what can the family in the city do? How many famihes take their recreation all together? How many boys would have a good time doing the kinds of things that are possible for adults in the city? But beyond these gaps in the provision which society makes for normal childhood, there are the vicious in- fluences, some blatant, some insidious, that surround the youth on every side. Fortunately much of the moral laxity of modern Hfe is not within the range of the boys' and girls* understanding and does them no harm. But much that is not understood, even, is quietly form- ing the standards of business and sex relations that will persist through Hfe. It is these early standards that are the most permanent. The throes of adolescence leave the individual on an apparently higher moral level, largely because of the persistence of early standards, which were themselves on a high level. Give us the child until he is eight, say the Roman Catholics, and 112 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER we care not what you do to him afterwards. How much more is this true if the period can be extended to ten or twelve! Having been brought up in an atmosphere of indiffer- ence to the rights of individuals in school and business and every-day concerns, of quiet assumption of low moral standards of relations between the sexes, as exhib- ited in conversation, on bill boards, and at movies, is it strange that adolescence frequently finds itself utterly unable to withstand the sohcitations of evil-mindedness? Overworked Childhood. Another problem arises out of the preoccupation of children with affairs not strictly reHgious. What a busy day the nine-year-olds have! The typical day affords small opportunity for^ leisure or for play of a spontaneous character, and none for the preparation of church-school work. City chil- dren keep up the pace till late at night. They get up just in time to scramble into clothes, snatch a bite to eat and race for school. The better-to-do have spare time taken up with special lessons : music, language and dancing. The children are too busy to be rehgious, too much engaged in their own affairs to take part in the building of the city of God. The Responsiveness of Later Childhood. But give them a chance, and their capacity for Christian conduct is amazing. Their environment is a challenge as well as a drawback. Here and now they can try out their powers as Uttle citizens of the Kingdom. By worship and study and training in Christian coopera- tion under wise leadership they can arm themselves fully for the present conflict and against the day of the greater trials and temptations of adolescence. Speak- ing out of his own heart, one ten-year-old boy wrote BOYS AND GIRLS 113 this prayer of aspiration, a true product of childhood religion : " O Lord, we do a good many wrongs in a day, but you are kind and tender, and you forgive us. And we must try to do better, and we must keep on trying, and we will keep on trying for you are in us, and helping us all of the time." The Purpose of Religious Education for Children Nine to Twelve. As an aid in the discovery of our method, let us now formulate the purpose of religious education for boys and girls in the later years of child- hood. With adolescence comes increasing capacity and need for organization of personality. From nine to twelve this organization can only be approached. But so far as organization of life in terms of the Christian purpose is possible, this must be achieved. Fundamental to the subsequent unifying of personality is the formation of correct habits of thought and conduct and feeUng now. Many such habits have already been formed. There are many left, the need for which arises out of the far broader fellowship of the boys and girls. As our first purpose, therefore, let us remind ourselves of the necessity of actual training in Christian living which has as its object specific habits of conduct : clean thinking, clean living, the doing of good turns, generous treatment of others, fair play, regular prayer, if possible, or at any rate the constant thought of God as companion in the moral struggle. And, second, to bolster up these habits, the acquisition of ideals or rules of conduct which embody the Christian standard, and which imply the moral leadership of Jesus, in whose conduct the boys and girls shall find their most appeahng ideal and their most effective rule of life. As will be seen in our formulation of method, these rules must of course be the product of the children's own thinking and be 114 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER worked out in imagination and in practise in every possible sort of situation. Third, to give body and color to the Christian standard concern- ing the details of behavior by constantly enlarging and intensifying the children's consciousness of their world citizenship, of their kinship with the children of the whole world, of the Christian move- ment as a mighty cause to which they are, as a matter of course, to devote their lives. ^ Fourth, to anticipate adolescent changes with suitable information on matters of sex, associated intimately with all that is sacred and noble in the child's own imagination and with the hours of highest fellowship between father and son and mother and daughter. General Principles of Method. So much for our purpose. Our method follows the same general princi- ples already outlined, with adaptations to the special needs and problems of children from nine to twelve. 1. There is the necessity of providing some kind of organized group hfe, either in the church-school class, or in the Junior de- partment, or in clubs, or in all these. The need for cooperating companionships and the desire for competition should be met in such a way as to insure the intensive and extensive development of social motives, so that by twelve or thirteen years of age the child's interest and loyalty shall be attached to the church of Christ, either through some organization or by direct membership. We must seek to Christianize the present social relations of the pupils in class, school, home, day school, and so on, by interpreting this present life in terms of Christian standards, and by providing such activities as will give training in Christian ways of doing things. Class duties, school duties, home duties, all of which contribute definitely to the happiness and efficiency of the group, are needed. Organized service in the community through the care and expenditure of class funds; visits to homes for crippled children, day nurseries, homes for the aged, schools for the blind, with a view to adding to the cheer of the inmates; correspondence with children of other lands, and the mak- ing of things that will be useful to others; relief work of all sorts, and many other activities which have social interest are essential and enjoyed by the boys and girls. BOYS AND GIRLS 115 2. Training in worship that is proper for them. "3. The children will need the help that comes from hearing and reading stories of deeds involving moral struggles and problems like their own and showing the natural social consequences of right and wrong choices. Many of the Old Testament stories are admi- rable for this purpose. The nine-year-old can well appreciate Abraham's generosity to Lot. The ten-year-old responds to the stirring appeals of Amos for justice to the poor, and enters into his clever trap for securing the attention of the crowd at Bethel. These Old Testament stories have the additional advantage of providing the background for the appreciation of the life of Jesus, which is also well adapted to the latter part of this period. But, suitable as are the Bible stories, much more is needed to give the pupil the wide social sympathy and understanding that we desire for him. Stories of inmiigrants and of people of other lands are a great help, and the children are capable of considerable caref'il research into the ways of foreign Ufe so well described in periodicals like Everyland and in many books published by the Missionary Education Movement. It is important, however, that they should not be led to suppose that " Missions " is a separate subject of study or interest in the church school — as though to be friendly with one's neighbors were a sort of afterthought instead of the very heart of Christianity. Whatever story material is used will be of added value if it is freely dramatized by the pupils. This appUes particularly to the first two or three years of this period. Old Testament stories lend themselves to spontaneous representation, and the pupils enjoy taking parts and reproducing freely the meaning and the words of the characters. The words will be few, but the expectation of taking a part adds interest to the preparation of the lesson and in- creases the vividness of the children's imagery. Pictures also greatly help in getting the children into the atmosphere of ancient Israel or of modern China. Prepared dramas, unless written by the children, take too much time as a rule to justify their inclusion in our program. But it is a fine piece of training for a group of children to get up a short BibUcal or " Missionary " play themselves, studying and making costimies and scenery, writing the lines, and so on. All these matters are a part of our effort to make vivid sections 116 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER of human experience which will help the children understand and improve their own experience. 4. The children need also formulated ideals or rules of conduct in the form of texts, poems, verses, psalms, hymns, which express Christian standards and appreciations. They learn these readily and enjoy using them in concert. 5. They need, in addition to what has been described above, some specific information concerning some of the great social in- stitutions, such as the church, and of certain church practises, such as baptism, the Lord's Supper, the church year, the services. Here is a splendid chance for the pastor to come into close touch with every young member of his parish. 6. Various instructional activities are possible now that would be too difficult for the younger children: writing answers to questions, writing short essays, making charts of attendance, decorating, mak- ing a class book, and the like. Discussion is now more profitable, and story-telUng by the pupils as well as the dramatizing mentioned above are more effective. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND OBSERVATION 1. It is customary to separate boys and girls between the ages of nine and twelve in the church school. What differences between boys and girls have you noticed that would make desirable or re- quire this practise? 2. What is there about the youngest Junior children that justifies or requires or makes desirable their separation from Primary chil- dren? Should they be separated for all purposes? 3. If you can do so, ask several children ten or eleven years old to state what kinds of motion pictures they prefer, and who their favorite actors and actresses are. The following form might be used to record the answers: 1. Your name. 2. Your age. 3. What kind of a picture do you like best? 4. What actor or actress do you like best? 5. Which one do you like second best? 6. What well known picture do you like best? BOYS AND GIRLS 117 After looking over the results of this investigation, define some of the problems of religious education for children of this age. 4. Have schedules similar to Appendix III, Chart C, filled out by a group of children from nine to twelve years of age. Summarize the results as was suggested for the younger children. 5. Cases 25 to 30 belong to the period studied in this chapter. They may suggest similar instances from your observation. CHAPTER VIII THE TRANSITION From Childhood to Youth Some General Facts. The charts given below reveal astonishing facts that may challenge the credulity of some of the readers who examine them. Doubtless, however, they would be matched by charts of almost any 1765 r^ 1214 425 / \ 8 /o iZ /!/ /C iS iO io-*- Figure 1 church-school's enrolment. The charts on crime and conduct can be checked by making others on the basis of the police statistics and school conduct marks in one's own town or city. The first chart is taken from a table in G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence, Vol. I, page 326. It shows graphic- ally the number of sentences imposed on 7475 boys from 118 THE TRANSITION 119 eight to twenty years old. The figures at the left in- dicate the number of cases, and the figures at the bottom the ages of the boys. On page 346 of the same volume, Hall gives a chart showing the school marks for conduct of 3012 Italian Age^' II II /3 i4 IS Ik n t% It Jo 41 u U 6o Si Figxire 2 boys, from eleven to eighteen years old. " Conduct was marked as good, bad and indifferent, according to the teacher's estimate, and was good at (age) eighteen in 74 per cent of the cases ; at eleven in 70 per cent ; at seven- teen in 69 per cent; and at fourteen in only 58 per cent." Figures 3, 4 and 5 are taken from Coe's The Spiritual Life. The first one shows the age distribution of the rehgious awakenings of 99 men. It reads thus: Eight per cent of the men report a religious awakening at eleven years ; nineteen per cent report a religious awak- ening at twelve years; twenty-two per cent at thirteen years; only nine per cent at fourteen years, etc. 120 CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER Figure 4 shows the age of the decisive religious awak- ening of 84 of these 99 men. The curve is more irregular, but the high and low points are at about the same ages. It reads the same as figure 3. In Figure 5 the same interesting facts appear. This shows the age given by 272 ministers as the age of their own conversion. It is remarkably like the last curve. These curves represent what is going on in the young THE TRANSITION 121 people. Let us compare these facts with the influences being brought to bear on them. Figures 6 and 7 show the curve of ehmination in two city schools.^ The ages are at the bottom. The number of pupils is at the left. The curve represents the number of pupils of each age enrolled in the schools. Not less significant are the facts of church-school enrolment. In a survey, not in print, made by the students of the Y. M. C. A. Training School at Spring- field, Mass., the following facts are brought out con- cerning the enrolment and attendance of boys in 'The figures for these graphs are found in Strayer, Age and Grade Censua of Schools and ColUgw. U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin 451. CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER Elimination curve for Somerville, Mass. g J ,o tl /«. tA lU IS- t^ *7 'f tf X.O Figure 7 Elimination curve for Philadelphia, Penn. THE TRANSITION 123 thirty-four Springfield church schools.^ Figure 8 shows the enrolment in actual numbers. The enrolment in- creases to thirteen years, at which point it is the highest. That is, there are more boys of thirteen enrolled in the o 7 /« // /2. /5 lU ,s- tL // It /f 2o Figure 8. — Enrolment Springfield schools than of any other age. But see what happens next! Figure 9 gives the percentage of attendance for a short period. Ages ten and twelve are the high points here and then there is a steady decHne in the attendance of the boys as well as in the number on the roll. » These two sets of facts were compiled by O. C. Fowler. 124 So . 20. . CHILDHOOD AND CHARACTER Figure 9. — Attendance »^ i