lifornia .onal lity BV 1485 F74c FoFBusTT- boys Southern Branch of the University of California Los Angeles Form L 1 U65 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 132* MAR 1 9 19 ^ 1928 ,DEC4 1933 t APR 1 5 193^ 1936 NOV 8 I9J| APR 2 7 198T Ml AY 1 Form L-'J-5tn-12,'23 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS "There are some ways in which we can play on an instrument and some ways in which we can not. Instead of blaming the instrument, we had better learn the stops." W. H. P. FAUNCE. CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS BY WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH AUTHOR OF "THE BOY PROBLEM" THE PILGRIM PRESS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO Copyright, 1910 BY LUTHER H. CARY THE . PI.IMPTOlt . PRESS [w .D -o] HOBWOOD . MASS . U . 8 A PREFACE The Boy Problem was a study of boyhood in general, with some special application to the various forms of social work with boys, and, in the last edition, some reference to the boy in the home. This smaller book deals solely with one special but important part of such social work, that done for boys in our churches. It exalts the signifi- cance of it, states its principles, and goes into details as to methods, books, and organizations for the religious education of boys in the Church. The book is designed for the reading of Church workers and for study in classes by those who are preparing to be of service to the men of tomorrow. For the latter especially, each chapter concludes with hints for first-hand study, outlines for report, and suggestions for further reading. WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH. The North Woodward Avenue Congregational Church, Detroit. CONTENTS PAGE I. WHAT CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS MEANS . i II. THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY . . 8 III. THE PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 19 IV. THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS . . 28 V. How TO TEACH A BOYS' SUNDAY- SCHOOL CLASS 47 VI. How TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB 61 VII. BOYS AND THE KlNGDOM .... 83 BIBLIOGRAPHY 95 INDEX 103 vn Church Work with Boys WHAT UilkCH WORK WITH BOYS MEANS There may be a few pastors and church members who still think that social work with boys is either something of a fad or at least an elective. To such it seems necessary to explain that it is the absolute essential if boys are to be brought into the Kingdom. Social work with boys in the church does not necessarily imply gymnasia or apparatus or elaborate kinds of boys' clubs, such as can be conducted only in churches of wealth or by people of exceptional ability and leisure. Social work with boys is simply a modern expres- N 'sion of incarnation. ^ What is meant is .this: The study of childhood *} teaches us that boys are brought into the Christian --life, not by the formal teaching of truth in sermon \ and Sunday-school class, but by the contagion * of Christian character in actual operation. "Character is caught, not taught." Just as our Master became the incarnation of the life of God in our human life, so the leader of boys must become the incarnation of the life of the Master in their lives. Church work with boys gives the opportunity for a man to live the Christlike life in companionship with boys. One man will do that effectively just by his example in the com- [i] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS munity. Another will thus influence boys by occasional contact with them in the Sunday-school class or at his home, but as such occasions are too fortuitous and infrequent for the certainty of real influence, the devoted leader of boys will covet regular social opportunities for influence. A few men have been able by personal work, which in its finest meaning is tactful personal interest and evangelism, to bring boys one by one into vital relations with God and with manly character. Suitable opportunities for such approach are difficult to secure, and the avenue of such intimacy is a difficult one to travel. Most people who say they depend upon this method are likely to be neglectful in their exercise of it. The reserved soul of a boy is not to be burglar- ized, and most wise leaders feel that an acquaint- ance formed through play or some other wholesome interest of youth is the best way of approach to affairs of the spirit. The interesting recent studies that have been made of "the gang" 1 show that instinctive social organization, especially for outdoor play, but also for wintertime sport indoors, is almost universal among boys. The leader who takes advantage of this instinct is not calling together boys out of their homes who would otherwise be there; he is simply either summoning a ready-made "gang," or he is arrang- ing a new one from members of several others. It has been questioned whether any man-made "gang" is as strong as a boy-made one. The writ- er's experience is that sometimes a "gang" may be adopted by a worker outright, or that, in time, a worker may lead in creating a "gang" which is 1 Summarized in The Boy Problem. [2] WHAT CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS MEANS fully as loyal and persistent as any of those in the neighborhood. To do either of these things, common sense would indicate that the leader should try to follow the line of least resistance in the choice of members, the plan of organizing, and the matter of self-government. It is his own tact and his superior resource which make him an acceptable member of the group, i> What then, essentially, is the boys' club for? It is the opportunity actually to live out a certain portion of the normal life together. It is a real gymnasium or laboratory of life. In the Sunday- school class the teacher preaches fairness, gener- osity, truth, and virtue; in the club he tries, in the real situations of the club life, to be fair, gener- ous, true, and virtuous with them, and this without preaching. The home and the school are of course the chief laboratories of life, but the boy comes so enthusiastically to his club that its effects are of unparalleled intensity. The home and the school chiefly develop individualism, the club uses the cumulative influence of the group. There, chiefly, the boy learns the brotherhood of man. The club, though only occasionally in session, calls out a new moral problem every moment when it meets. In its uses of enthusiasm, cooperation, and eager activity it affords us the most practical and effective exercise of will possi- ble in any human conjunct relation. It becomes, in President G. Stanley Hall's fine phrase, "gen- tlemen practising noblesse oblige." Beyond this general influence there are a number of special ones which can only be barely named in passing. The supervised club gives safe expres- sion for the "gang" instinct, which at its worst is CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS the mob-spirit, and at its best is the power of friendship-making. This segregation of boys in the club tends to prolong boyhood, prevent pre- cocity, and postpone sex-functioning, thus retain- ing wholesome boyishness as long as possible. It offers an opportunity for the expression and satisfaction of certain instincts which are best expressed during boyhood. The boy who has his fill of military drill, for example, is less likely to want to be a soldier later. The boy who belongs to some supervised club with a mystery to it is less likely to become a "lodge fiend." It often reveals vocational aptitudes and is in other ways a help to a boy in self-discovery and self- realization. The study of childhood has also of late laid the greatest emphasis upon the importance of the social instinct even in the religious decision of youth. So strong in every department of immature life is the influence of companions that it seems no exaggeration to say that boys are candidates for individuality rather than complete individuals, and that, to a degree greater than has been realized, they live the conjunct life. If this be indeed a law of the soul during the adoles- cent years, then the social approach is not only the most direct and wholesome, but it is the only complete approach, and it may be questioned whether a boy who enters into the religious life entirely alone really gets all his birthright. These psychological explanations are placed in the forefront so that in the discussions of detailed methods that follow the reader may remember that methods are suggested not for their own sake, but for the purpose of utilizing our best [4] WHAT CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS MEANS knowledge of child nature in the most skillful Christian craftsmanship. We have apparently passed pretty well through the era of organizing in church life. It is becoming realized that the Church often has too much machinery for its power, and church workers groan when anything additional is pro- posed in the way of detail in church work. The only objection that has been urged in Brother- hood circles to work with boys is that aroused by the fear that the Brotherhood itself is pro- posing such a complex program that it is going to give the men of the Church about all they can attend to for the present. In response to these objections it should immediately be stated that church boys' work does not involve more organization and machinery, and that, as far as the Brotherhood is concerned, boys' work is not an adjunct organization; it is one of the two or three central tasks for which the Brother- hood exists. To put it even more simply, church work with boys is not new societies, it is the Church at its work of evangelizing its own sons. And as for the Brotherhood, it is not the Brotherhood's luxury, it is the Brotherhood's job. WHAT OTHERS SAY "The gang instinct itself is almost a cry of the soul to be influenced." G. STANLEY HALL. "The bad boy is what I am, except for a friend and the grace of God." LILBURN MERRILL. [Si CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS "It is doubtful if a boy can be taught anything by counselling. We can teach him by example, but the most impressive way to gain knowledge is by experience." G. A. DICKINSON. "Education being a social process, the school is simply the form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends. I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living, and not a preparation for future living." JOHN DEWEY. "Education is friends seeking happiness together." EPICURUS. HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY Did you ever belong to a "gang" when you were a boy? Did you respond readily to its influences? How did its influence compare in potency with those of the sermons you heard when a boy? In the shaping of your ideals? In the regulation of your conduct? Which influenced you the more in these directions, the "gang" or your Sunday-school? Were these two sets of impressions antagonistic or simply utterly unrelated? Whose fault is it that the Church and its school are not more attractive to growing boys? Is it fair to say of the Church that it seldom honors boys by taking the trouble to understand them? Considering their impressibility, their peril, and their possibility, are our own churches giving boys all they deserve? Does the Church service or the Sunday-school session give much opportunity for the incarnation of adults in boys, referred to above? Do they give much chance for living out any of the moral life together? What ought we to do then? [6] WHAT CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS MEANS OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC The ways by which adults may influence boys: By example. By religious teaching. By personal work. In club life. The advantages and limitations of each method. The "gang" vs. the chaperoned boys' club: studied as to sponta- neity, flexibility, permanency, moral influence. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING ON THIS TOPIC G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, Vol. II, pp. 417-448. F. G. Bonser, Chums, a Study of Youthful Friendship. Pedagog- ical Seminary, June, 1902. [7] II THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY The heading of this chapter is suggested by that beautiful title which Horace Bushnell selected for his proposed autobiography, "The Way of God with a Soul." While a full study of the religious development of boys is impossible here, it does seem wise to furnish an outline sufficient for us to understand clearly how the boy is develop- ing as an individual, as well as in his relation to his group, and so that we may see just where the social instinct in a boy's life emerges in reference to his personal development. The reader is referred to the accompanying chart prepared by Professor G. Walter Fiske, of Oberlin, which presents a conspectus of the subject which is unifying, and is as accurate as any chart can be. The column on "Religious Development" has been inserted by the author for completeness. By studying this chart, it is apparent that the boy passes in succession through religious periods which have their parallels in race history. By the time a boy comes into the reach of the social instrumentalities of the Church, he has passed out of the period of religion as instinct, has secured nearly all that is to come to him from the period of religion as habit, and is dwelling either in the region of religion as sentiment or of religion as [8] THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY o S 1 rt RACE EPOCHS RACIAL PROTOTYPE 1 aJ *c i OH Patriarchal Period S G S 1 CO The Tribal Period Limited Democracy t Monarchy i W. Council 'Brav< _ TT J *. J T* 'U n co J CO 2 51 3 OH a x ^2 ; . 3s H ^S d The Feudal Period Monarchy The Revolutionary Period of the Consti tutional Monarchy The Republic : Social-Democracy in Self-governing State i u u ^0 *> S 3| (U o o 4) W J Z S ,0 3 J3 U .C 60 w~ rt J < < 3 S ITS U Hffi H ^ t- C c c *; a C jj li .2 tJ .sf.S .2 ^ .2 g .? S .0 .2J= .60 60 "S ti o ** ti 'i3 "* ^ "3 o 5 t) 1 " 1 ^i ^ g t> O ^P P* W r* **H -C3 ^ J3 jS ^f- ^_ a H H H^ h H 09 b | .a. IS 2 CJ= .o.i_ A" 2= > c 8 3.8 3 6C U O 60 i PU Q i 2 o |j| r/. *-! 3 -^ *- * f i * T3 W JS ScS-2 </2 *""' co u h u -o .2 "u, u n V V > aa * M S ., 3 u OH 3 -"S i"8 H Si o 4-1 L-) 'C JS-. _z: > "C F 1 " " 'C *^ O *u U X O'o tJ 3 "o CA) (i! c **'& h< u ,^OH f-H Q. t> X U u l> g ^ 13 CO * I o u> oo , ^, in i u *** 1 VO 1 - Til& "J& | a _ g M O >< t^i !^ ^ 2co ^"^co JjO OH "0 W o u u . k. fe] ^ *"O "3? V C a u V V M S* C W 5-a w Ja X flJ o =5 u ."2^ ii u J^ H C 4 - ^H o "Q ^> o ^ WJflQ 11 13 PQ T3 (5 -X O <J < 1 - N * to (9 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS will. It is these two latter periods, then, which are especially under attention and study. The period of religion as sentiment in a boy's life is a very short one. It is parallel physically with the bodily revolution of early adolescence. It is the time of personal loyalty, especially to a hero. This is the period when conversion is first apt to occur, and when it occurs at this time it is usually accompanied by strong feeling. A boy would be more apt to be converted at a revival now than during the period which follows. He would also be influenced more in his conversion by the "gang" than he would in the next period. Conversions which occur during these two or three years are often discouraging to the parent or teacher, because they do not seem to be followed by any noticeable improvement in conduct. This is because the boy's nature has not yet acquired the third dimension, that of depth. The boy lives in the realm of feeling, rather than of will. The endeavor of religious education during this period is to provide the boy with the right heroes, both in books and in life. The emphasis of Sunday-school courses ought to be biographical. This is the time for teaching in a convincing and inspiring way, not only the life of Jesus and of the Bible heroes, but also the heroic men and women who have lived since. This is also the period when the influence of a noble adult leader in a boys' club is more notice- able, although perhaps not more real, than in later years. It is the next period, that of middle adolescence, from fourteen to eighteen, which demands most careful study and endeavor. This stage is [10] THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY marked in Professor Fiske's chart as "The Self- assertive Period." I have called it, in the boy's religious development, "The Period of the Religion of Will." This is the time when, as Professor Coe has suggested, the boy really begins to "person- alize his religion." It seems accurate to say, if he was converted in the preceding period, that it was as much as one integer of a religious "gang" as it was as a religious individual. But now it is the boy himself who is converted. In other words, the boy is now struggling for an individu- ality of his own, religious as well as otherwise, and these are the most significant years for charac- ter-building. It is commonly a period of domestic rebellion. These fierce and sometimes unreason- jng struggles for a life of his own, while the boy is finding himself, his world, and his mission, are often so exasperating and baffling to others as well as himself that this stage has sometimes been called "the crazy period." Psychologists have stated that a time of mild criminality is quite normal to boys during these years. The criminal- ity, however, is in action, rather than in purpose. The boy's whole moral future is in the balance, and never does he more need guidance, patience, and good sense on the part of his parents and teachers than just now. The endeavor of all adult guidance during this "fool" age must be to protect the boy from some of the more serious results of his possession of adult powers without corresponding adult judgment. Without actually crippling the boy's incentive and growing power of choice, we must make his education as inex- pensive as possible to himself and to others. We must encourage him, but at the same time [ii] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS also make him to be chastened by reality. We must never let him despair of himself or become discouraged in his relation to others. This period can probably neither be avoided nor shortened. Never is there a time when a boy is less able to take or appreciate advice, or more able to learn from his own experience. President Henry B. Brown, of Valparaiso, counselling once regarding a boy who was just in this stage, made this wise statement: "Never take a boy from an unlearned lesson. No time, no matter how long, is wasted until he has learned it. And never try to teach it to him. He will not thank you until he has discovered it himself. Some day he will come to you and say, 'Now I know what I have been learning." Just here, where the parents in the home often become discouraged or find that they have lost the confidence of their boy, or where the school teacher has lost his patience, the boy's club leader or the Sunday-school teacher, who comes a little closer socially to the boy and sees him at his best, has often a priceless oppor- tunity. Not being nagged by daily contact with the lad, he can get a bird's-eye view of him, overlooking details, and remaining prophetic and hopeful for his future. Such a leader is often the only person in the world who seems willing to do the boy the courtesy of regarding him as an individual. It is the old story of the prodigal son repeated, and it actually seems necessary for every boy to pass through the experi- ence of the far country, not necessarily of sin, but of alienation from his father and his home, in order that he may discover himself and eventu- ally come back redeemed to his father's house. [12] THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY Those who have watched boys patiently through these trying years bring good testimony to the fact that it is worth while to await these "soul- births" and spiritual fruitions. Among the modifying influences that affect the religious development of boys during these years, probably the most important one is that of sex. Sometimes this influence is manifested by an acquaintance formed with an older girl. The influence in this case is likely to be whole- some, because the affection involved is much like that of a knight of the olden times for his chosen lady. Sometimes it is far different in character and in influence. The Church and the home have, as has previously been stated, an important duty in preparing for the possibility of such influences by wise instruction and a guarded environment. It must be realized that almost no religious change of importance takes place between the age of fourteen and maturity that does not involve some amount of sex influence. The influence of the "gang," as we have been saying all along, is also important religiously, although it grows less evident as the boy matures to the period of self-assertion and self-reliance. It never fails, however, to assist or prevent, and always to qualify, the character of a boy's religious experience. The matter of expectation also modifies a boy's character. The kind of early religious develop- ment produced in the church which expects a cataclysm of conversion will evidently be different from that one which is brought about by quieter methods of steady nurture. A boy's own temperament must always be taken CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS into consideration in the study of his religious growth. All boys have a proper reserve upon these subjects at this time, which is, no doubt, self-protection. The adult leader who finds that certain boys are fond of self-expression and are ready to talk religion ought to realize that he is dealing with deeper and more difficult natures when he has to do with those who do not open their hearts so readily. Taking all these facts into consideration, it is evident that the Church has important relations toward the making of a boy's character in wider fields than has usually been supposed. Perhaps the most important function which the Church supplies is to become to boys the matrix for their religious thought. As we have previously empha- sized, it may not be so much what the Church actually teaches, as the atmosphere in which it immerses its scholars. The difference be- tween those who have been religiously nurtured and those who have not is apparent even under our present imperfect methods of Christian training. The young person who has not been a church attendant, who is converted at a revival, is generally disappointing, because he seems to have no moral foundations. It begins to appear that the important question is not, "Are you converted?" but "To what are you converted?" The Church gives to those who have been in its schools the background of a sound religious training. In the next place, the Church helps the boy by giving him a healthy environment. In this thing, of course, it cannot take the place of the home, but it can help neutralize the bad home, [14] THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY and help supplement the good one. Here is where the church club, with its healthy environ- ment, supplements the church school with its moral atmosphere. The author has spoken of this matter at the end of Chapter IV. The Church also, to a limited degree, especially during the years between ten and fourteen, can help establish good habits in a boy. It not only informs him as to what those habits are, but it examines him to some extent regarding his domes- tic conduct, and offers him some opportunities for the display of good-will in good conduct in the church life. The Church nurtures the boy through the years between fourteen and twenty, which are especially those of religious crisis. Here it ought both to protect and to bring to fulfilment the blossoming of his soul. The place of the church school in relation to a boy's conversion is dis- cussed in Chapter V in the study made there of Decision Day. Then, the Church enlarges the soul of the boy by its social education. In a church boys' club it develops a community life, in which, as I have said again and again, boys live out the moral life together. Further, the Church, both in its Sunday-school and in its clubs, develops the boy in generous activity. The best antidote which the Church can give to the moral struggle and the despair of the revolutionary years between fourteen and eighteen is by leading the boy to think of some- body besides himself. He will gradually regain, through service, the religious life which he has begun to lose through self-assertion. [15] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS Finally, the teacher or club leader has with the boy passing into the last period of boyhood, which Professor Fiske has marked as that of "Resourcefulness," and which I have indicated as "The Period of Religion as Thought," the impor- tant privilege of encouraging the boy to an adequate preparation for life, and, by his knowl- edge of the boy's capabilities, of directing him toward his future vocation. This large and inspiring view of the privileges of boy leadership suggests that there is no nobler calling, either as a vocation or as an avocation, than this of craftsmanship of the spirit. This chapter may fittingly close with the splendid definition which someone has given of the ideal teacher: "One who has head enough, and heart enough, and liberty enough, and time enough, to be a master in the kingdom of life." WHAT OTHERS SAY "Build me as a boy if you would make a man of me." JOSEPH S. WALTON. "The mischief in a boy is the entire basis of his education. The boy could be made into a man out of the parts of him that his parents and teachers are trying to throw away." GERALD STANLEY LEE. "The one essential purpose of education is to set an individual to going from within; to start his machin- ery so that he will run himself." - RAY STANNARD BAKER. "Let him hang on to the boys by any sort of hook or handle until they live past the age of barbarism and [16] THE WAY OF GOD WITH A BOY become human beings. This they will do in time, though to the toiling teacher it seems an eternity." HAROLD C. CHILDS. "Sometimes . . . with the real illumination of the conduct of some one whom he learns to trust and love, he reconstructs for himself a Figure which for all of us sums up and outdoes our hopes a Figure, supreme, unique; an ideal, embodied, but ever idealized afresh; a Presence, fugitive, but real; a Person whom he is too reverent to define, but whose mastery he admits." CHARLES E. B. RUSSELL. HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY Take as an example some boy whom you have upon your heart and, pencil in hand, go over each detail of the chart in this chapter. Note down on paper just where the boy is properly to be placed. To which "stage," which "period," which step of will-progress, of religious development, and of allegiance has he arrived? You may note that he is farther along on one side of his nature than in others. This will be instructive. The whole analysis ought to be enlighten- ing in the discovery of the boy. Read over this chapter again with this boy solely in mind. What does it suggest as to your plans and methods of dealing with him? OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC The Period of Sentiment. The Period of Self-Assertion. The Period of Thoughtfulness. Modifying Influences: Sex. The "Gang." Expectation. Temperament. [17] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING ON THIS TOPIC George A. Coe, Education in Religion and Morals, pp. 44-69, 195-270. Hanford M. Burr, Adolescent Boyhood. Charles E. McKinley, Educational Evangelism, Chapters II and VI. [18 Ill THE PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS Returning to our main issue, church work with boys, we may quiet the fears of the timorous by saying at the outset that church work with boys is simply extension of the Sunday-school. The Sunday-school is the exercise of the teaching function of the church among its young, and work with boys is larger and more effective teaching. We may state, then, as our first principle in work with boys, that it is the outgrowth of the church school. THE FIRST PRINCIPLE: The Extension of the Sunday-school The wisest way to approach boys socially is upon the basis of the Sunday-school class as the integer. The ideal Sunday-school is one com- pletely organized in these two directions: educa- tionally, a series of graded textbooks for every grade of pupils; socially, a series of graded social opportunities for every grade of pupils. In the large city school this would mean that, just as each class meets regularly to study on Sunday, so it also meets regularly, though not necessarily so often, to have fellowship together on a week day. In the smaller school it means CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS that classes of the same approximate grades will meet in this way. In the little school it means that boys of quite diverse ages will meet thus. It seems to the writer invariably wise that all the social organizations of the Church for young people should be regarded as extensions of the Sunday-school. He is convinced that if the school had recognized this larger function a little earlier, the Christian Endeavor movement would never have gone off as a separate educational and social movement. And even now he believes it feasible to bring it back by insisting that it is the social organization for certain definite grades of the school. This correlation prevents a dupli- cation of method and an overlapping of work and brings a complete harmony and a larger efficiency. The writer will accordingly insist in this book, and in whatever influence he may have in shaping our church work with boys, in treating it always from the Sunday-school standpoint and in refusing at any time to dissociate the social from the so- called religious work of the school. He will try always to correlate the weekday with the Sunday work of the Church and he will endeavor, here and elsewhere, to set side by side better methods of teaching and better methods of working socially, believing that the first are made perfect by the second and the second will always react upon the first. THE SECOND PRINCIPLE : The Necessity of a Leader Now the one essential in social work with boys is the same as the one essential in the Sunday- [20] PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS school class, the adult leader. It was of school teaching that Dr. C. J. Little spoke when he said, "The educational problem of every century is to find the schoolmaster, not to found the school." We may paraphrase by saying that the social problem and the religious problem of the body is to find the adult leader, not to found the society or to find the method. The Sunday-school teacher who has the true educational view will regard the weekday social contact with his class as the supplementary oppor- tunity that he needs in order to complete his religious work. And he will recognize it, not as an additional burden, but as a means of alleviating the work of teaching, by giving him a better acquaintance with individuals, revealing points of contact, and stimulating that esprit de corps which gives the class session swing and coopera- tion. The teachers who have tried it will wonder how they ever endeavored to teach without it. The results that come immediately and constantly are so vital that they are ashamed to think of the kind they were satisfied with before, and the enkindling enthusiasm that comes to both teacher and class is such that the teacher is amazed that he ever thought Sunday-school work to be drudgery. The next best thing to the use of the single class as a social organism is to make such an organism out of congenial classes under the leader- ship of one of the teachers who is best adapted or most available for the purpose. Sometimes one strong teacher will utilize the others as his assistants, according as they have time and ability. The third best method is for an outsider to take [21] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS charge of the social department of the Sunday- school work, keeping the most sympathetic con- tact with the teachers and bringing them into the social work as much as possible. Of the qualifications of the leader this is to be said: He should be a person of genuine character. Owing to the intimate personal problems with which the wise leader of boys must deal, it may be said that, other things being equal, he had better be a man, but so many women have done such work so magnificently that we have to acknowledge that in this world other things often are not equal. The second quality of the leader is a patience, sympathetic and prophetic, and that quality is so distinctly common with women that it avails, even though masculinity is not present. While it may be too much to say that character and sympathetic patience are all that are required of a leader of boys, it does seem that in the Kingdom, to which not many mighty are called, the Lord does use commonplace folks who have those traits for most encouraging results. If a sense of humor and ingenuity of device may not almost be regarded as subdivisions.of patience, they are certainly its consummate flowers. THE THIRD PRINCIPLE: The Utilization of Play The two most potent interests of boyhood are undoubtedly play and friendship. Every peda- gogue is striving to-day to utilize them both to the fullest in the educational processes. The Church must do the same if it is to do a complete work of religious education. Play, though apparently a simple thing, is not [22] PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS easily defined. It is not the opposite of work, for every kind of play involves work. It is rather joy in work. Neither is play synonymous with whim, or with "fooling." Such a statement implies that it is capricious or purposeless. Play is the joyous expression of natural instincts. It is both the revelation and the exercise of nascent powers, and genius is only transformed mischief. Education, therefore, has been studying the instincts in order to use their nascent moments in school work. Religion is trying to do the same in its teaching work. This explains why we are selecting certain passages of the Bible for teaching to boys, because they employ joyously the memory-instinct or, later, the hero-instinct. This explains why we introduce some modest handwork in Sunday- school, because it employs joyously the manual instinct. This explains why we try to use co- operative methods in the class, because they engage the "gang" instinct. And so in the social work of the school. The very reason for the weekday social work is that the "gang" is bound to meet anyway. And the Church employs the boys' brigade method because of the boys' play instinct to imitate the soldier; it employs the Knights of King Arthur because of the instinct to imitate the knight; and the civic club because of the instinct to imitate the citizen. The leader of boys will learn to play with them, and regard it not beneath his dignity to use a method which has had dignity in education ever since Socrates and Jesus, and which probably has more potency in intellectual and social and [23] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS moral evolution during a number of years than any other. One would better not try to lead boys who has not himself kept somewhat of the play spirit. THE FOURTH PRINCIPLE: The Utilization of Friendship The boy alone is only half a boy. Not only is all adolescent play gregarious, but adolescent ethics is largely the ethics of the group. The "gang" to the boy is Public Opinion. It is as unusual for a boy to revolt from it as it is for an adult to revolt from the conventions of the public morality of his class. As I have said elsewhere: "It is probably from the 'gang' that most boys learn first how to codify their conduct." This is surely an important fact, for it suggests that the most direct way to reach an individual boy's morals will be by raising the morals of his circle. Not only so, but there is large evidence that even on so high a level as that of religious decision the boy acts with his group, a few as leaders, most by collusion, and a few in mere imitation of those who are strong. Somewhat as a heathen nation is more soundly evangelized through a native ministry than any alien missionaries, so the community of boyhcod is probably more generally and soundly con- verted through the agency of certain key-boys than through the direct motion of the adult leader. And the function of the adult leader, like that of the foreign missionary, is chiefly, aside from his character, in the training of "native workers." Besides this, the "gang" is to the adult leader [24] PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS the convenient opportunity for acquaintance with individual boys. This, after all, is what the leader is trying to get. As Professor Hanford M. Burr points out, "At no time of life, so much as in adolescence, are personal differences so great and is the danger of treating them en masse so serious." It is while umpiring the ball game that the leader notes which boy tries to play unfairly; it is in the free play of the gymnasium that the leader discovers the near-sightedness of the boy who does not care for games; it is in the manual training of the club that the leader finds in his agility of hand the key to the con- trol of the lad who is abnormally restless in the Sunday-school class. And here, by his adoption into the "gang," the leader overcomes the suspi- cion of its members, and thus sets the door ajar for entrance into each individual's confidence. The leader not only learns thus to know indi- viduals, but he learns to educate individualities. By the fifteenth year most boys begin to emerge from the period of feudal loyalty to that of self- discovery and self-assertion. To a degree they begin to outgrow the "gang" at least, to fall out of its lockstep, and while they continue, on all levels, to be influenced by it, yet they now desire and deserve an increasing measure of self- propulsion and independent action. Such boys the leader tries to walk apart with at times, to keep pace with their ambitions, and to help guide their movements toward their vocations. There have come into being during the past twenty years a number of simple, inexpensive, and practical forms of social organizations for boys which involve the two essential elements of play [251 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS and friendship. Some have one strong and attractive feature, some another. Although a few of them have risen to the dignity of incor- poration and salaried officers, they are only tools for the worker's use, and the wisest workers use the best methods they can secure, from whatever source. In a chapter that follows, the writer has attempted to name and impartially characterize the strong points of the movements that seem to have the most potency and enduring value. Each of them is to be used, as has been already suggested, not as a separate society, but as the social method of the church school. WHAT OTHERS SAY "Boys should individualize in work and socialize in play." c , JOSEPH S. WALTON. "After all, the one prime essential for moral and religious education is that the young should live a common life with moral and religious elders." GEORGE A. COE. "The will of the child, now coming to itself, is to be trained chiefly through the fellowship of obedience, the fellowship of labor, the fellowship of play, and the fellowship of worship." GEORGE A. COE. HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY Make a list of what seem to you to have been the most active interests of your adolescent years. Mark the two or three which seemed to you to be paramount. [26] PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS Do you regard them now as wholesome interests? Have you lost any of them since then; and if so, how has the loss affected your life? Could they or could they not have been more definitely and purposefully related to your moral development? If so, how? Could you then have been forcefully reached by appeals that ignored your instincts of play and friend- ship? Is your own church making any use of play or friend- ship in its work with boys? OUTLINES FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC Individualizing vs. Socializing the Boy: A study of the alternate importance of each discipline. The Minimum Qualifications of Boy-leadership. Antidotes against the Professional Attitude toward Boys. A Broader Appeal to Boys by the Church. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING ON THIS TOPIC William Byron Forbush, The Boy Problem, pp. 19-30, 56-65. H. D. Sheldon, The Institutional Activities of American Children. " American Journal of Psychology," Vol. IX, pp. 425-448. IV THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS These statements pave the way to a definite conception of the relation of the organized man- hood of our churches to boys. Conceiving of work with boys as the extension of the church school, into weekdays as well as Sunday, under the leadership of an adult, working through play and friendship, it will be the function of the local Brotherhood, wherever it exists, to encourage such work. This six-fold work suggests the desirability of organizing in all our local Brother- hoods a strong Boys' Committee, and, where the Brotherhood does not exist, of organizing such a committee in the church itself. The local Brotherhood can do this in the following ways: FIRST: Training and Furnishing Leaders If the needs of boyhood are earnestly stated in any church, if the privilege of working with them is enthusiastically urged, and if such sensible ideals are made current as have been named in the last two chapters, it would seem that a Boys' Committee in any church or Brotherhood could secure manly volunteers to do this work. The [28! THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS young athlete just home from college, the father who cares for his own sons, the business man who wants to do religious work that is man's size should catch a vision here. The writer wishes to testify that such a proposition, put up adequately to the strongest men, has, in his expe- rience, made unnecessary an appeal either to women or to weak men. The chivalry that is latent in men answers to this call. The "Big Brother" movement among boys in the juvenile courts is an illustration of an oppor- tunity for personal work by men that requires no organization or machinery. There is also a place for some such informal service as sponsor for boys who are in the difficult process of finding themselves, boys who will probably never reach the court, but who are in danger of missing their best possibilities. Fathers may learn to do this for their own sons. Many a father would be grateful if a brother man in the church would help him to do this with his boy. Both in such personal work and in social service, while leaders of boys are to a degree born not made, yet a little pedagogical training and some general enlightenment will do even the best leaders a world of good, and a Brotherhood could under- take no better task than to endeavor to train men for this service. A series of thoughtful discussions in the men's class for those who may become leaders of boys would be even more concrete and practical. The circulation of books on the subject among indi- viduals would also do good. A list of books for such reading and discussions is given at the end of this book. [29] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS SECOND: Developing Better Sunday-school Methods Many Sunday-school quarterlies are disappoint- ing as aids to real teaching or study with boys. Both the lesson material selected and the method of approach imply that the teacher is to preach a sermon. The material is chosen for its adapta- bility for discourse on the choice of the Christian life and the value of the Christian virtues. The approach is by the sermonette method, with some questioning. At their best, such handbooks fur- nish illustrative helps that are very bright and ingenious, and sometimes the questions are provocative. The danger is that the pupil may have opportunity to cooperate only with his voice and that his chief faculty called out is that of memory. The wise teacher will seek to do his work on the plan, not of weekly climaxes of exhortation, but of consecutive, patient, religious education, and he will crave for his boys, beyond mere mem- orizing, the opportunity for them to use their hands, and, later, a chance to reason and discuss. These are the values that need to be emphasized in our lesson helps. The earnest teacher will try to introduce them, even if his text-book does not emphasize them, and many teachers will be grateful for suggestions of books in which handwork and the discussion method are dis- tinctly provided for. The writer gives elsewhere a list of the hand- books, selected from the mass that is coming from the independent press, which seem to him most nearly ideal. If the boys' course of adolescent grade soon to be published in the new Graded [30] THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS International Series is of the high standard of the Juvenile grades already published, we shall soon have relief also from that quarter. The Boys' Committee will do a service to any Sunday-school if it will investigate these new courses. The question of uniformity for the school must no longer stand in the way of efficiency for the boys, and the objection, in the past justly raised, that the new courses were not practicable because they did not furnish adequate helps for the teacher, has now been thoroughly met. The problem of getting teachers, in the writer's expe- rience, depends much more than is usually sup- posed upon having ready for the prospective teacher a course of study and a text-book that he thinks he can use. While it is generally true that the new material is more expensive than the old, it is also more permanent and the teachers' handbooks, once purchased, can be used over and over. So the ultimate expense is hardly greater. If it is, the Brotherhood that believes in adequate religious education of the young may well take hold here to help. THIRD: Developing Better Social Work with Boys The Brotherhood, through its Boys' Committee, having secured a social leader for the boys, may be further helpful by studying the matter of accommodations and equipment. The writer would here and now state his conviction that many church people are scared away from social work with boys in the church by the bugbear of expense and elaborate equipment. Having himself done CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS work with boys for over twenty years with practi- cally no equipment and with no money but what the boys themselves furnished, he feels a mild wonder at those who cannot do this work because they cannot afford it. The churches, which have learned the unprofitableness of the institutional idea in other departments, and that are giving up their soup kitchens, dispensaries, and reading rooms, still cling to the vicarious method in their boys' work, and seem to think that a gymnasium and a hired instructor are the acme of possibility in this direction.. Now, with all respect to the gymnasium as a means of social service to certain neighborhoods, the writer is sure that such an external view of boys' work is bound to prove disappointing in result and to discourage the doing of real boys' work, which is hand to hand work. The secret of success, as we have been saying, is personality. The gymnasium instructor may have it, and the fact that he is paid to do his work is no detriment to his possession of the trait, but many boys come to some church gymnasiums with no more sense of loyalty than they have in going to the post- office. So the Brotherhood will first find the Man. Then they will find the Place, which may be very modest and apparently inadequate. Then it will help the Man in the Place to find the Method. That is about all. Do not misunderstand. A rich church is not excusable in having nothing but a cubby- hole for its boys. A good leader will soon make a small meeting place impossible. The writer has lately been visiting a church which calls [32] THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS itself "the cathedral church" of its section of the country. The church has a thousand members and the meeting house cost a quarter of a million. It hasn't a room where a boy could do anything but sit still. And sitting still is not a boy's specialty. That church ought to be ashamed of itself. FOURTH: Special Work with Older Boys Social work that is elaborate and continuous can often be postponed to a year before the high school age. That is as soon as the "gang" spirit gets full development, and a strong work with high school boys will hold the younger boys in anticipation. There comes a time when a boy needs to be developed by recognition and by responsibility. The latter element can be fur- nished and should be furnished in the social life of the boys' club and the church. The former can best come by an elder-brotherly attitude on the part of the men. When a boy gets to that awkward age when he is no longer a boy and is not yet a man, it is well to take the presumption that he is prospectively a man, and treat him so. The local Brotherhood will do a large service, not only to these boys but to itself, if it welcomes boys of sixteen or eighteen to full membership and strives at times to accommodate its meetings and its methods to their capacities. It is a splen- did sight to see a father seated beside his maturing son in a church fraternity and it adds manliness to a boy when he can wear the same badge as does his father. Some secret fraternities have been quicker to learn this than the church has. (33] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS Most books on boy study, most clubs, most methods deal with and are most successful with boys under sixteen. But where the church, the home, and school most often fail is with boys in "the crazy period," between fifteen and eighteen. No pastor or parent, Sunday-school or Brother- hood should be satisfied that is not solving this difficult and baffling problem. Here is where sense and service, prayer and good methods and money need most to be applied by the modern church. Some special attention is given to this problem in Chapter VI. FIFTH: Working to Remove Perils from the Boys' Pathway Much social and religious work with boys is a kind of nourishment of health or of a healing of disease, with no attempt to fight contagion that is already abroad. Now it is well to build up a boy so that he will not get tuberculosis, and it is well to nurse him back to health after he is taken sick, but if tuberculosis is a communicable, preventable disease, our best task is to stamp it out. Moral training is excellent as a safeguard to a boy's purity, and moral impetus is the essential aid to recovery if a boy loses his purity, but if houses of ill-fame are a notorious center for resort of high school boys in any given community, it would seem that the Brotherhood there would better be busy in putting a fence at the top of the precipice instead of providing an ambulance at the bottom. The duty of informing boys and girls wisely as to the significance and use of their sex-functions [34] THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS has been urged very much of late. The important thing first seems to be to urge parents to do this. In the writer's own city a committee has secured the services of a number of fine family physicians to visit Brotherhoods and church women's clubs and explain to fathers and mothers the necessity and the methods of doing this with their children. Next best are consultations between young people and their family physicians privately, and next are quiet talks by such physicians to boys' and girls' clubs or classes. In the writer's own Sunday-school he has introduced such informa- tion naturally and unexpectedly in a girls' class, making a knowledge of their own bodies a part of a child-study course which they were taking. In a boys' club he has had this talk given by his family doctor as one of three which were obligatory in taking a higher degree. The church of today has no more important and delicate task, in its endeavor to help young people to a healthy environment, than the atti- tude it takes toward their amusements. This attitude ought to be consistent and constructive. The modern church, instead of easily accepting a conventional list of taboos from the past, must try to discover what are the particular and actually dangerous amusements toward which its own young people are now being tempted. And it ought to meet these dangers not by denunciation so much as by replacing them with more whole- some pleasures. This matter is so important that a few further and definite words may well be spoken. Three forms of amusements have traditionally been placed under suspicion: cards, dancing, and [35] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS the theater. The worker with young people, in city or country, who realizes how large a part pleasure plays in young people's lives, is somewhat dismayed to realize that these three embrace almost all the available and regular types of amusement in the ordinary community, and that he is at some loss to know what to substitute for them. Stripped of some unfortunate associa- tions, they also seem to represent almost the fundamental as well as the most varied forms of amusements : cards, the rigor of spirited intellectual contest, the joy of facing contingencies, and the opportunity for relaxation from pressure; dancing, the joy of grace, motion, and carefree social inter- course between the sexes; and the theater, the study through the mimic world of the human prob- lem, and the restfulness, by means of visions in the house of dreams, of scenes that relieve this life's monotony or gild its commonplaceness. He wonders if the church that has no word for these ancient and racial sources of joy but a frown- ing "No" is actually meeting and solving the real situation. The church that would substi- tute other amusements for these has a task taxing its inventiveness and patience. The church that uses one or all of these for the purposes of right- eousness has indeed a delicate, a skilful, but an inspiring and a hopeful social mission. Let one state frankly what seems to him the probable attitude of the churches in our own cities at least in the near future, an attitude to which a few have consciously arrived. It may be put in this phrase, "We will not manufacture sins." To play games of skill or chance, to dance under proper restrictions, to go to clean dramatic [36] THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS entertainments is not essentially wrong. These pleasures are often misused, but they are too in- fluential, too important, too valuable, and indeed too capable of fine uses to be either blindly opposed or foolishly ignored or indolently toler- ated. We are dealing today in our cities, not with young people who know nothing of these things, but largely with those who do. The homes have accepted these amusements, too care- lessly, it is true. It is the business of the church not to allow the tolerance of the home or the com- mercializing of pleasure to degrade or deprave our young people. We will study those pleas- ures, we will use them as they ought to be used, and we will make them help, not hurt our boys and girls. In the statements that follow, some wise and earnest people will be unable to accord the writer their agreement. For the matter is truly a most complex and delicate one. But the positions to be stated deserve at least this consideration, that they are the evolution of twenty consecutive years of careful observation and experience as a father, a teacher, and a friend of boys. Card-playing is chiefly a matter of the home. Churches are not called upon to introduce it in their social work, and churches, like settlements, do not need to encourage it in their social buildings. The play of the playroom or the gymnasium is too lively for the need. It is the business of the church to keep cards in their proportionate place in life. For young children they are, like "Authors" and "Parcheesi," a merry play with chance. For young people they are an occasional, but not regular bond for home [37] JLO 97 & CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS parties. They are not a fitting profession for men or a steady afternoon vocation for women. They are serviceable to pass the time on long rail journeys and on restless evenings after a crowded day. The abuse of them is a mark of intellectual rather than moral deficiency. The author has played cards at his boys' camps, but has encouraged them only when other resources failed. He has played them in homes, but has with even more readiness suggested other games. He has made them a matter of course with his children and has watched with pleasure their grow- ing indifference to them as they have outgrown them. They could not conceive how they can be wrong. They have become eliminated as a form of temptation from their lives. This attitude about cards is not an unusual or difficult one to maintain in the city, where they are a part of the social paraphernalia. But what shall we say of the country districts, where they are still regarded sometimes as "The Devil's picture books"? The attitude of an educator of public opinion, and especially of one who undertakes to reverse it, is a difficult and thankless one. And yet is it not the surrepti- tiousness of card-playing in the country that constitutes its mischief? If the boys did not have to go behind the barn, to the club room, or to the village groggery to play, does anybody suppose that cards would really be dangerous? Away with this unnecessary glamour of conceal- ment, revive the habit of evening home parties with varied games, suffer cards to come with other games, but not to supplant all other games, and educate the country community to a whole- [38] THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS some intellectual and social life that shall cause cards to cease to exist as a moral problem. The dance, after all is said, is objected to by those who write books against it, because of the physical contact of the sexes that is involved. Frankly, one may ask if the objectors suppose that they discourage such contact by its pro- hibition, or that the substitutions that arise, in the way of kissing games, house parties, and private acquaintance, are less objectionable. The dance is probably the most skilful way of turning this instinct for physical contact toward whole- someness that could be invented. Its conven- tionalisms and gallantries are themselves a barrier against impure thoughts and its publicity is in itself protective. Children should be taught to dance before the sex-instinct becomes conscious, as an exercise of grace and joy in motion. The homes, of course, ought to guard the character of the places and occasions where dancing is held, the company that gathers, the costumes that are worn, but if it does not do so, the church ought to be vigilant, chiefly as to two matters the character of the dancing schools and of the dancing parties attended by its young people. It is con- ceivable that, in default of any other possible course, as a few country churches have already done, a church might take these two institutions into its own charge. The writer has in mind a hill town in New Hampshire where one-third of the births in a given year were illegitimate, and where the loose morals of the young people were distinctly attributable to the unchaperoned dan- cing parties held every winter, tabooed and fulminated against by the local church. He (39) CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS knows of a town in Massachusetts where similar conditions were impending, but where the local church met the issue by engaging a dancing master and opening its school rooms to dancing classes. This has gone on now for many years. Dances in that village begin at eight in the evening and close at midnight and are attended by young and old together. The morality of the town is notably high. Which was the wiser and more practical attitude? There are many finer ways to spend the time than in dancing; a vigorous and varied social life in the local church may make the action outlined above unnecessary. The writer acknowledges also the possible risks of exposure to draughts, danger to health by excessive indulgence, danger to morals by immodest dress, but he regards these as incidental and unnecessary, and believes that there are strong psychological reasons for holding that, under wise restrictions, dancing may be made a relief to sexual stress rather than a means of its excitement. He would urge, with President G. Stanley Hall, the earnest revival of folk and figure dancing and of the festival, in which, as anciently, dance and song and the dramatic portrayal of heroes together express broadly and beautifully the social feelings of the populace. The theater today is manifesting great power both to bless and to curse humanity. The Ameri- can stage, commercialized, disgusts its friends as often as it does its enemies. The men of the church can censor the plays that come to their cities, so far as to keep that which is obscene and disgusting away, but the insidiousness of fashionable plays and of luxurious musical [40] THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS comedies performed in our most exclusive play- houses may be even more pernicious, just as the morality of the popular illustrated novel is often more dubious than that of the nickel library. Pastors and leaders of boys may work for a sane and sensitive dramatic criticism in the local press which shall not be hesitant in setting the danger signals by which parents may be forewarned of pernicious coming attractions. The pulpit and the boys' club ought to emphasize the sin of causing the springs of imagination to be defiled. But all this is merely negative. In some churches it may be advisable, with cau- tion, to call attention to plays whose moral worth and inspiration are unmistakable. The moving picture show is in the main wholesome, and the influence of this inexpensive amusement is enormous, because it is becoming universal. It deserves a better setting than the dirty, unven- tilated halls where it usually exhibits. A whole- some religious and social life in the local church is no mean antidote both to the spirit of sen- sationalism and of melodrama. The man who left a city church one Sunday evening, after the pastor had tramped up and down the platform, contorted his face and his body, and spent the evening in firing off rhetorical pyrotechnics, and who exclaimed merrily, "This is the best show in town tonight," would be more apt to be found in a playhouse the next evening than in the prayer- meeting. Some churches have broken up the habit among their boys of attending the cheap shows Saturday evenings by making that the great basketball night of the week. Others have found that the development and utilization of [41] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS the neglected dramatic instinct among boys by giving plays and entertainments has led them to prefer action to being acted upon or has given them a taste for the best in dramatic art. The theater as an institution would probably be more power- fully effective for good in a given community by an organization of a respectable body of men who would patronize no play in which the situa- tion or the language was not suitable for discus- sion with women than in any other way. These remarks, brief as they are, can only be suggestive. Experiments in this direction have satisfied those who have been pioneers that the church that would live for its own day, really take care of the young people who live in our opulent age in modern homes and conditions, and give them guidance toward righteousness, will move along some such lines as these. The problem cannot wisely be ignored or shirked, neither can it be temporized with. It is not an easy thing, but it is the only eventually possible thing. We must rescue the amusements of our young for their good and service! Often these amusements are not the real dangers at all. Where are our school boys and girls after dark? What goes on at unchaperoned evening parties? What is the program of the local high school "frat" or sorority? Each generation de- velops new temptations and dangers for the young. No church discipline could forecast today's perils, and often its restrictions are simply a dead hand laid on a dead issue, while new and unwritten ones demand strict moral vigilance and activity. A danger greater than that of amusements is one that is fundamental, the possession or [42] THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS the envy of great riches. We have boys in our public high schools who walk to school who are mates of other boys who ride to school in four thousand dollar limousines. There is a problem of the boy who walks, to keep him calm and content, to nurture him in the real values, to prevent him from spending what he does not have. There is also a more difficult problem in the boy who has the automobile, in keeping him from being a snob or a reveler, in sobering him to his responsibilities, and in teaching him the life of service. These suggestions illustrate the possible pro- tective work of the Brotherhood. Many a group of men that has been in the habit of discussing social evils in a dilettante way Sunday noons would be stung to action if the fathers present had put up to them the appeal to do something to save their own sons. Here is a field for vital discussion and real work. SIXTH : By Encouraging Helpful Forces It would be easy to indulge in commonplaces about sustaining the local Y. M. C. A. and juvenile court and farm school, and taking more interest in the public schools. Better will it be for the local Brotherhood to confine its interest for one year to one practical issue. Probably the livest thing in education just now is the agitation for better vocational education for our boys. The word vocational is better here than the word industrial, which is often used, because it is broader. What is meant is the endeavor to find ways to [43] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS help the public schools more directly to assist the boy to find his calling and to get ready for it. It is an appeal that interests the professional men as much as those of the industrial classes. For, after all, the first thing we have to do in life is to get a living, and to show us how to do this is what school is for. But our schools are not doing it. The writer was criticised for remarking recently that too many church men's classes engage in a discussion of social problems "with the scientific accuracy of Ralph Connor and the vague benevo- lence of Lydia Pinkham." The remark was not intended to be flippant. The writer measures greatly the new social enthusiasm that has come into the hearts of the men of the churches, but he believes that there is often apparent more zeal than discretion. Many men's classes discuss social questions in an amateur way that shows that they are not familiar with the simplest text-books of sociology. Alliances of denomina- tions with working men, expressed by honorary memberships of ministers in trades unions and vice versa, alliances which are gracious in peace, but which are forgotten during days of industrial warfare, have some value, but they too often expose the church to the suspicion of being inter- ested in the workman as a prospective church member rather than as a man and a brother. Without discounting the value of these social experiments on the part of the church or of any other effort to deal directly with the industrial ranks, the writer is persuaded that just here and now the professional man in the church and the working man who is too often outside the church [44] THE WORK OF MEN FOR BOYS may find their long-sought common bond of interest upon the field of the schools, which they both support, in seeking, through education and the cooperation of the professions and the manu- factories, for a vocational education for their sons. Here the classes will cross and coalesce in the men of tomorrow. WHAT OTHERS SAY "The school that will hold its boys at sixteen will do so by beginning to hold them at twelve." EUGENE C. FOSTER. "If your Brotherhood does not assume the responsi- bility for the boyhood of your church, who will?" FRANK DYER. "This being the sort of a person to be with children is a very great secret." MARIE HOFER. HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY How is your own church solving the problem of leaders for its boys? Is it providing for classes, now taught by women, that will be coming out into the main room in a year or two, needing men teachers? Just how can that need be anticipated? Would or would not a better type of man come forward for service in response to better methods and the chance of a finer type of work? What is the proportion between the money annually spent in your church for music and that spent for the religious education of its boys and girls? How, in your own church, could the modest sum needed for boys' work best be provided? How, in detail, would it best be spent? [45] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC What the Sunday-school Can Do, and What It Must Not Be Expected to Do. A Critique of the Text-book Now Used in a Boys' Class in our School. Biblical Courses that We Need. Non-Biblical Courses that We Need. Gathering up the Results of the Sunday-school. What More Can We Do for Our Older Boys? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING UPON THIS TOPIC Lilburn Merrill, Winning the Boy. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co. Eugene C. Foster, The Boy and the Church. Philadelphia, Sunday- School Times Co. A list of books upon the social problems of boyhood 'for men's discussion classes is given at the end of the book. 46] V HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' SUNDAY- SCHOOL CLASS Not very many particular lessons that are taught in Sunday-school are likely to be remembered by a boy. This does not mean that a school is absolved from teaching a lesson well, or that a teacher is to be simply an amiable care-taker of a joyful Sunday mob, or that what is called the "influence of the school," in a vague and hazy sense, is going to make up to a boy for the lack of a religious education. Some lessons, by a curious pertinacity, do stick always, probably because they answer questions that the boy happens to be asking. And the best teacher is one who finds out the questions the boy is asking, whether he knows those in the quarterly or not. The functions .oi the school are really two: to be a religious matrix and to be a laboratory of religions. By the best selected material, the best methods of instruction and the best teachers, the school, especially during the habit-making years, will give the boy not so much a system of facts as a system of life, imbue him with the Christian way of looking at things and the Christian way of doing things. Then the school will, especially in the adolescent years, become a laboratory. It will show him how goodness looks [47] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS when it is lived, in the school officers and teachers, and it will give him an opportunity to labor at goodness in the school activities and benevolences and through the school's weekday institute, the boys' club. A few words may be helpful about the practical details of conducting a Sunday-school class of boys. In the first place, seclusion is absolutely neces- sary. It is best secured by means of a separate room, and surely the boys of a church deserve and would appreciate such a privilege more than any other class in the school. If this is imprac- ticable, privacy may be obtained by means of inexpensive curtains, hung on wire, or by portable Japanese screens. At the very worst, the boys' class can be placed in a corner, their seats being arranged to face the corner. The writer has found that class decorum and the teaching of the lesson are immensely improved by some simple class organization. Let there be a class president, who calls the class to order, conducts brief exercises of business, and then introduces the teacher. Let the secretary and treasurer sit near the exit, so that they may pass out the collection and records to the school secre- tary without requiring his entrance. Let the announcements of club meetings and other good times, and the briefest discussion of future plans, be done before the lesson. All these, carried on within a time limit, will prepare the class good- naturedly to give the teacher their undivided attention. These extraneous matters are of great social importance, and if the teacher honors them with his attention, the boys will be willing to honor him with theirs. [48] HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS The class should be seated in a circle. This is to be done, not simply for its symbolism, but also for its practical effect. If the class is small it should be seated about a table. Boys who put their elbows together on a table feel a sense of fellowship, such as does not come when they are separated from one another, and a table is abso- lutely necessary if any manual work is to be done. In a class where handwork is performed, or if other visual methods are used, it is better for the teacher to stand. In a class where didactic or debating methods are used, he would better be seated. The central question which the teacher has to ask, as he completes his preparation of the lesson, is this: "Is it worth while?" The whole endeavor of the teacher is to produce real interest. The common feeling which boys have is that they go to Sunday-school, not because what they are to study is of inherent interest or value, but simply because they are sent. Every real Sunday- school teacher will wish to teach a lesson that is worth teaching. If he finds that the subject matter assigned him in his text-book does not present a point which seems to him worth pre- senting to that class, let him completely discard the subject and choose another. If a teacher can appear in a class every Sunday with a topic which seems to him of value, he is going to be pretty sure of being able to make his class also believe in its value. There is an old distinction in architecture and in literature, between con- structing adornment and adorning construction. No real teacher is willing simply to construct adornment, that is, to illustrate a lesson that [49] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS is not worth illustrating. True teaching is the adorning of construction, that is, the making rich and beautiful that which is already worth while. In teaching boys there are, roughly speaking, three possible methods, the manual method, the biographical method, and the debating method. The manual methods that are possible in a Sunday- school class are of considerable variety. There are text-books like Gates' "Life of Christ," which suggest the filling in with pencil of blanks, in answer to questions. There is the process of constructing a junior Bible, utilized in the new Blakeslee lessons. There is map making, executed with pencil, crayon, or the use of paper pulp or plasticine. There is also the illuminating and adorning of text-books, and the making of curios and small illustrative Oriental articles. In all this work it is important for the teacher to dis- criminate between methods that actually make the lesson plainer, and those which are merely attractive or distracting. Elaborate handwork is better done at home by individuals, as an elective. The plan of creating a class or school museum will often secure the cooperative manu- facture of a number of attractive articles, which will be useful in several classes. The simpler method of writing answers to questions is probably the most reliable and educative of all these hand methods as the basis of work, although the live teacher will avoid monotony even in this, and will not depend upon the bare material furnished in any text-book. The writer firmly believes that the work in these new manual method text- books is better performed in the class than at [50] HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS home. The class thus comes to the lesson with a freshness of interest, each is helped by the suggestions of others, and the method really turns out to be a laboratory in the class. The trouble with preparing lessons at home is that the industrious boy has his work done before he arrives, and so has nothing to occupy him but mischief while the others are doing their work. There is also danger that these handbooks, which are more expensive than the old-fashioned ones, will be lost or mislaid if they are taken home. It helps immensely, especially in the years between eleven and thirteen, if an exhibit of school work is announced in connection with the week of Children's Day. It has been the writer's custom to call together the boys and girls of the younger adolescent years three or four times in the early spring, and show them how to color the pictures in their text-books with water colors, and to designing covers with an elaborate amount of red and gold paint. This tends to give the children pride in completing their work as well as possible, and in cherishing it after it is finished. The awarding of gold and silver seals for work of the best quality, at the time of the exhibit, is also helpful. The biographical method involves a certain amount of research on the part of the pupil, and here the methods of teaching are similar to those of teaching history in the public schools. We shall soon have available some helpful text- books of other than Biblical characters. One of these, which has already appeared, compares characters in the Bible with similar ones in later history. This method is bound to be interesting [Si] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS and inspiring. The Bible is chiefly a book of biographies, and it is the biography in it that is the chief object of interest among children until the later adolescent years. The trouble with most such text-books is that a great life is divided into a number of small sections, and is subjected to tiresome homiletic discussions which retard the current of the heroic story. The wise teacher of boys, realizing that they like to deal with a great life in a mass, will teach the entire life of David in two lessons, instead of ten; will cover the story of Jesus in a quarter, rather than a year; and will dispose of the minor characters, each in one lesson. The moral message of a life is much more effective by this method of teaching. The only didactic method of teaching boys that seems possible is that of debating, and the only time when this is applicable is in the later high school years. The writer has watched, with great interest, the successive steps by which a fine young college man has taken a group of such boys, who have been accustomed to listening with- out enthusiasm to sermonettes from their teacher, and inspired them to get on their feet and discuss hotly with each other and with their leader. Instead of being the central figure in the class, he now sits quietly at one side, rather as an umpire of the discussion than as its leader. The result is that the class seems to go on almost as well when he is absent as when he is present. The writer is certain that the tendency of most classes to hear a series of lectures by prominent poli- ticians and religious leaders is entirely in the wrong direction. The historic method of the debate, which Socrates fostered, which Jesus HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS encouraged, and which is the very heart of the New England town meeting and of popular government everywhere, is the priceless method of arriving at moral decisions among young men who are upon the verge of their careers and life missions. Behind the matter of method and device and the graded curriculum and even the Scripture that is studied should loom up constantly to the teacher of boys the greater question, What am I really trying to teach? It is no mere trick of words to answer, We are teaching, not lessons, but men. To put it more definitely, the real ques- tion is, How ought we to teach to affect the con- duct and relations of these boys this week, next year, and always? To the teacher who feels that he is getting lost in his details or devices or growing stale because of use, let such questions as these constantly appear: How can I make these boys this week more respectful to their mothers? How may I help them to be more useful in their homes? How can I get out of their minds this horseshow attitude toward life? How can I uplift their thought of the nobler uses of money? How can I make them face soberly the industrial order? How can I persuade them to get ready for life? What can I say which shall begin to make them of public service? Such considerations glorify teaching and will often enable a teacher to utilize or rise superior to inadequate materials and un- comfortable environments. Everything else is his instruments, but these are the things that spell life. And more and more he will realize that these are truths that cannot be told, they (53] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS must be lived, they must be arrived at through discussion and moral and mental struggle. This will make him less a preacher and more an inciter of debate, a promulgator of dissatisfaction, a comrade and a friend. Methods of gathering up and conserving the fruits of religious education are of import to us all. The writer does not object to Decision Day, if those who lead in observing it realize what a tremendously serious work they are engaging in. There is no greater responsibility on earth than for one person to undertake to focalize and determine the life choices of another. Such work ought not to be carelessly undertaken by anyone. The day is properly chiefly a census day or a day of quiet committal or witness, con- fined to the adolescent years. The writer's own experience is that the results, no matter how carefully guarded, are distinctly "gang" decisions, by classes and social groups. The actuality of what is obtained by the cards signed is somewhat puzzling to discover. Probably some weaker spirits are encouraged by the example of the stronger ones to come out on the side of right, a decision which life and experience will make real and effective later. Care ought to be taken that those who are not ready to take the step and those who object to "being converted in rows" are not discouraged or alienated. Decision Day should in no case be made a lazy substitute for personal work by teachers with the scholars. At its best it is a manifestation of group witness and the utilizing of the group spirit for the benefit of the hesitant and timid. The writer finds that he has increasingly made [54] HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS it a habit to bring boys into a conscious religious experience in connection with the church life by working through their parents. Is not this the divinely intended way by which a boy should be made conscious that he is a Christian? Indeed, has an outsider the right to approach a boy about so sacred a matter, unless in very exceptional circumstances, without the permission and if possible the cooperation of the home? It has been his constant joy to have boys presented to the church by their fathers and mothers, often without any previous interview by himself with the boys at all; these parents have been invited into the counsels when the officers of the church met with these lads; they have sat beside them at their first communion, and thus in every way family religion was honored and the old Scriptural idea was maintained that the religion of a boy is a covenant and a family blessing. The pastor is often guided by the observation of the parents as to the maturity and sincerity of their children, and while sometimes, with much caution, he needs to disabuse their minds of unreasonable expecta- tions regarding their children, on the other hand he needs their loving alertness to help him help them in the further stages of their religious development. By work with parents and by a watchful observation of the "gang" influences which were likely to work among definite groups of boys, the writer has not recently found the Decision Day plan necessary. He has, however, utilized a strong point of the Decision Day plan, namely, the statistical study of the school, by keeping before him lists of boys emerging into adolescence, [55] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS with careful notations of their home influences, club relations, church activities, etc., and making these lists the subject of frequent conference with their teachers. One embarrassing result of Decision Day, with its implication of joining the church, in the average Sunday-school of today, is that a number of young people are apt to become church members who have actually never formed the habit of church attendance, and as there is nothing magical in mere membership to create this habit, one wonders if a reversal of order of methods is not indicated. Ought we not to get children to come to church, and then ask them for committal and member- ship? Will not this plan produce a finer type of church members? The writer has found that an earnest presentation of church-going to the scholars of ten and over and their parents and teachers, with a quarterly enrolment card, presen- tation of small sermon note-books, and some simple recognition of the younger ones, has soon brought a large number of boys and girls to church. He has followed up this attendance by explaining carefully to them the reasons for the various parts of the service, he has occasionally given them a talk or asked them to sing, but he has found that a monthly young people's sermon was rather better than a sermonette, and that it was, even with the adults, the most popular sermon of the month! Indeed, the whole service tends to become brighter and more real if pastor and people are conscious that they have with them the young people as guests of God. True it is that, "Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God." [56] HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS Church-going young people are almost certain to become church members. The matter of definite preparation for church membership is one worthy of careful study. In the liturgical churches confirmation is a regular stage in the system of religious education. In other churches it is the writer's observation that it is usually a matter of "gang" action, stimulated either by outside or inside influence. Just what value definite catechetical instruction has in helping to develop the religious nature of a boy is problematical. Boys are certainly not so well adapted for catechisms as girls are. A commun- ion class, conducted with informality and reality, no doubt impresses the young with the seriousness of the step they are taking and perhaps leaves some deposit of information. It is probable that no answers are effective in religious educa- tion that do not answer questions the boys and girls are actually asking. Those who write cate- chisms and who conduct classes will probably be successful in proportion as they bear this fact in mind. In supplement to this method, the writer has believed that it was helpful to take up in order briefly at the morning service the same sort of topics which he would naturally deal with in such a class. The fact, mentioned above, that it is church-attending children who are most likely to make good church members, suggested that this would be a good time for them to hear these things, and the fact that their parents heard the talks too made it seem probable that they would be talked over familiarly in the home. One who has followed the standpoints of this book carefully will realize that the author does [57] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS not believe that mere church membership is the goal of Sunday-school or church effort. It is to be regarded as a significant and influential step of progress, but it is the days that follow that are the most neglected and important ones in the life of a boy. Then it is that, if he is allowed to suppose he has reached his haven when he has merely set his sails, or that he has done his work when he has work yet to do, he starts to become a futile Christian. The quality of character which the church develops in its boy members will depend chiefly on the kind and quantity of work it gives them to do. Here the church boys' club becomes the supplement as it has already been the adjunct of the Sunday-school. And there is very much church work that cannot be done in even boys' clubs. The leader of boys must learn not to expect too little or too much from boys. He will be sur- prised to find how accessible, apparently how fickle, shallow or even brutal boys are to tender influences. He will also be equally surprised to find how distinct are the limitations of juvenile religious development. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the boy is living on the ethical rather than the spiritual level until he is pretty well along in adolescence. He needs homely virtues more than spiritual graces. We are to try not to make little men manikins but to produce the promise of manliness. WHAT OTHERS SAY "One of the best definitions of education is, to teach us to delight in what we should." G. STANLEY HALL. [58] HOW TO TEACH A BOYS' CLASS "Truly speaking, it is not instruction but provoca- tion that I can receive from another soul." R. W. EMERSON. "The test of the efficiency of the Sunday-school will be not, how much of the Bible the child has learned, but what he has become." GEORGE A. COE. "It is the moral function of the school, not to teach ethics, but to get right things done." NATHANIEL BUTLER. "He will respond in his own way if you will forget that you are a moralist and remember that he is a child." J. J. FlNDLAY. "The higher education is a finish, but the highest education is a start." THE COUNTRY CONTRIBUTOR. HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY Go into a class that you believe to be well taught. (Don't watch any poor teaching.) Go not once, but twice, or as many times as may be necessary, in order to see the class as it normally is and to discover the secrets of the teacher's power. Try to put down on paper definitely the teacher's general purpose in teaching and his special purpose for the day. Analyze his methods, noting whether they are likely to prove of continuous and general value. Note the character of the response he is winning. Close by noting down things to avoid, and improvements of purpose and method you would make if you were as good a teacher as he. Do this in other classes. Send for the complete material of the text-book that seems to you best adapted in subject, plan, and methods [59] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS to the boys you have in mind. Read, first, the teacher's introduction, then the first lesson from the teacher's standpoint, then the same lesson from the pupils' standpoint. Do for preparation of the first lessons exactly what he asks the pupil to do, and decide whether your class would like or would be able to do what he suggests. Do the same with a lesson of three months later date, and ask yourself whether the suggested methods would lessen or improve in value and interest. Is the plan too monotonous? Are the questions too self-explanatory or too difficult? Is the illustrative material appropriate? Would the book be useful if you should add your own wisdom and ingenuity to it? Is it the best thing available on the subject? If not, find what is. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING ON THIS TOPIC Henry F. Cope, The Modern Sunday-school in Principle and Practice. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York and Chicago. Chapters on grading and method of teaching. Milton S. Littlefield, Handwork in the Sunday-school. The Sunday- school Times Co., Philadelphia. Edward P. St. John, Stories and Story-Telling. The Pilgrim Press, Boston and Chicago. Eugene C. Foster, Starting to Teach. Y. M. C. A. Press, New York. George H. Trull, Missionary Methods for Sunday-school Workers. New York Sunday-school Department of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. A list of recommended text-books for a graded curriculum will be found in the Bibliography at the end of the book. 60] VI HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB Whatever the special methods used in any church boys' club, there are some ideals common to all. These should be stated. I. The purpose of the club, as has already been said, is to form character in the boys by their living out a portion of the moral life, helpfully, together. Play is not a bait for work. The game is not an allurement toward religion. The leader believes that play and games are themselves character-making forces and he uses them for their own sakes and not as secondary to some- thing else. He believes in his methods. II. The definite shaping of ideals in a club comes by the familiar mingling of boys with boys and of the boys with their leader. The club should not be so large as to be a mob, and the methods should not work so much in the mass that the leader cannot know and be known by each individual. A club in a church generally should begin small and enlarge gradually. The leader should early ask himself if he is getting to know each member well. If he is not doing this, he may well leave out some other things and do this first. III. The membership of the club should be [61] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS of boys of nearly the same age, and should consist at the start of a single class or of two or more similar classes in the Sunday-school. The church which sustains a strong boys' club, composed of boys from fourteen up, will hold its younger boys sufficiently by anticipation. The first club inaugurated should be of the oldest boys whom the leaders can hold. The most successful years for organizing are probably from thirteen to four- teen, the culminating years of the "gang" period. IV. The club should be controlled by the church, and should, at least at first, be restricted to boys of the congregation. It should generally meet somewhere in the church building. It should be plain that this work is being done by, through, and at least partly for, the church. V. The expenses of the club should largely be met by the members, and they should not be beyond the reach of any individual. The club should also meet the needs of each member by avoiding study hours, late hours, and too long or too frequent meetings. VI. In order to develop a genuine group instinct and the qualities of initiative and responsi- bility, there should be considerable self-govern- ment. But there needs also to be the background of authority that shall maintain reasonable decorum, respect for church property, and a con- secutive program of some value. "The adult should guide from the rear." No boy has anything but contempt for a club in which he is permitted to "rough house" or in which he does nothing but play. VII. Its plans should be progressively educa- tive. To march around a room behind a drum [62] HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB corps is an inspiriting exercise to a boy of eight, but one would not wish or expect to see the same boy enraptured over this same thing five years later. The club should always be able to keep just a little ahead of the boy. Never must he be allowed to feel he has outgrown it. It should not shoot over his head, but it should exercise him in the best way for which he is willing at any given time. At the close of this chapter a scheme for graded boys' clubs is given, through which a group may successively pass. VIII. Contrary to the opinion of many, the writer holds that the best time to organize work with boys is in the summer time. Base- ball, hiking parties, camps, furnish a natural initial acquaintance and an esprit de corps which are invaluable for a winter's work. Next to the summer, that time in the fall when it begins to get chilly at dusk is indicated as the good time to bring boys together. The winter will pass so rapidly that a club holding its sessions only once a week needs the whole season to do a good winter's work. The writer will now state, as impartially as possible, the strong points of the social methods and organizations which seem to him most likely to be useful with boys in our churches. i. THE CLASS CLUB. The simplest social method is for a Sunday-school class to become a club. Such a club, adopting the meagerest constitution that will hold a body together, can constitute every session of the class a club meeting and hold extra meetings outside. The advantage is that it gives the class a helpful [63] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS self-consciousness and enables its members to make entrance to the class a coveted privilege, by arranging that outsiders must be elected and not dumped into the class. The writer's experi- ence is that such a simple organism is a great help to decorum and attention in the class, the president calling the class to order, and, after announcements and business, introducing the teacher, the secretary and treasurer quietly making their records and collections and passing them out to the school secretary without disturbing the class. Out of even so little an organism as this a sense of class loyalty develops, which assists the moral impression of the teaching, and through it the class performs its chosen benevolences and arranges its week night and vacation fellowships. It is usually well to affiliate even a modest class club with one's denominational Brotherhood. It gives the class a wholesome self-consciousness to become related to the great masculine move- ment of the church. It helps the boys personally to the same fraternity as their fathers. It gives them strength to feel that they are joined by the same ideals and purposes as boys of their own age in other churches. Most of the Brotherhoods have a junior or boys' department and furnish helpful suggestions to local clubs. They usually enroll such clubs without change of name or methods. 2. THE ATHLETIC CLUB. The interest of athletics is one that will arouse immediate enthusiasm among boys, and many leaders, who have some skill in this direction, will find it most easily usable with boys. The [64] HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB mere skeleton of an organization is necessary. The ten-cent handbooks of all the principal outdoor and indoor games are the authorities gen- erally used. 3. THE BOYS' BRIGADE. The Boys' Brigade has been tried out in this country for twenty years and in England and Scotland, where its prosperity has been greater, even longer. Although it is not so much talked of as formerly, it still has its strong place in the hearts of those who have been successful in maintaining it. There is the initial advantage that the plan appeals immediately to nearly all boys, because the glamour of the soldier is upon them, and that younger boys especially are easily held by it, without other attractions. The strongest feature of the Brigade is, undoubtedly, the summer camp; which, though by no means unique with Brigades, is more conveniently run on military lines than on any other. It is sometimes difficult to secure a drill master who combines military knowledge, authority of demeanor, and character, but such a man has, in the Brigade, a plan well adapted to his gifts. The expense is somewhat greater than in some other kinds of work, for uniforms are practically necessary for an enthusiastic company, but it is considerably less than that of equipping a gymnasium, for example. It is estimated at two dollars a boy, for a company of forty. The gradual accumulation of this amount, through gifts, dues, and the purchase of each part of the uniform piece by piece is not found difficult. The manual of information costs twenty-five [65] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS cents, the necessary printed matter about a dollar, and there are various helpful publications and supplies available later. 4. THE BOYS' LIFE BRIGADE AND THE FIRST AID ASSOCIATION. These two plans of work are so similar that they may be yoked together. The first is English and is the outgrowth of the Boys' Brigade, being a protest against the supposedly warlike influences of that organization. The second is American and is a development of the Red Cross, having been devised by Miss Clara Barton as a means of educating our citizenship in methods of emer- gency life-saving. Each organization furnishes interesting and instructive drills for boys in treating accident cases, rescuing from fire and water, and first aid. The drills can be conducted in military uniforms if desired, and the plans are useful, not only in a special organization, but as an attractive feature for any boys' club or camp. The only apparatus necessary in either organiza- tion is an inexpensive handbook. 5. THE WOODCRAFT INDIANS AND BOY SCOUTS. Again, two similar plans, one American and the other English, may be placed side by side. The Woodcraft Indians is an imitation of the nobler qualities of the red men, devised by Ernest Thomp- son Seton, the naturalist. The Scouts is an out- door method of reproducing the life of outdoor men, red men, hunters, and scouts, devised by General Sir R. S. S. Baden-Powell. Both plans have swept through the countries in which they originated and have developed of late not so [661 HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB much into distinct clubs as into the encourage- ment of the more stalwart and skilful elements in the outdoor play and camping of all sorts of boys' organizations. The methods are worked out with ingenuity and are distinctly manly and wholesome. They have in themselves hardly enough of winter time activity for indoor clubs, but they are very suggestive to all those who con- duct summer camps. 6. THE BROTHERHOOD OF DAVID. This is a boys' society, based on the Bible, intended for younger boys, but worked out elaborately by older ones. The boys are a "Camp" of the devotees of David, and meet in a literal or imaginary "cave," as he did when an exile. Boys preparing for kingliness through hardship, discipline, and manly exercise this is the thought of the society. The activities consist in the handwork of making and using slings, spears, and "Goliath swords" in various physical exercises, initiations, which are simple dramatizations of the David stories, and some painless acquisition of knowledge about David and his companions, outdoor life in the Holy Land, the customs of various races in the shepherd stage, and other heroes of the David style. Each boy assumes the name of his favorite hero. The plan is adapted to winter as well as summer. It interlocks well with the Woodcraft Indian scheme. 7. HANDICRAFT AND NATURE STUDY CLUBS. These two are naturally grouped together, because one is a winter and the other a summer employment. In Mr. George E. Johnson's "Play [67] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS School," 1 which was epoch-making in its influence upon the playground movement, handicraft and nature study were correlated both winter and summer. In the rural regions the leader of boys may be enabled by some attention to these subjects to supplement the deficiencies of the public school, especially in hand-training. In the city, where such subjects are in the school curriculum, the club leader will find that the boys are chiefly interested, in their handicraft, in cooperative tasks in fitting up their club rooms, or in forms of bench work that are larger and more immedi- ately serviceable for play or use than the school sloyd. The few books on these subjects, men- tioned at the end of the last chapter, and the literature of vacation schools and playgrounds will be helpful to those who use these methods. Woodworking and printing are the two forms of handwork that seem to be most popular. Nature study runs almost insensibly into camping out. 8. PHI DELTA Pi. While secrecy is hardly safe in organizations of immature lads, it may be presumed that the secrets of this fraternity, devised by Mr. H. W. Gibson of the Massachusetts Y. M. C. A. as an antidote to the high school fraternity, for use in the church and Y. M. C. A., are not very porten- tous. In communities where this particular need ought to be met, this plan may well be investigated. 9. THE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF KING ARTHUR. This fraternity, the largest for boys in the world, is a non-secret society, based on the Round Described in "The Boy Problem," pp. 82-86. [68] HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB Table legends and intended for the encourage- ment of the manly qualities suggested by Chris- tian chivalry. The boys take the names of knights or other heroes and bear them in all meetings of their "Castles." They are supposed to personate there and elsewhere uphold the ideals of knightly fraternity. Each boy is initi- ated, with much merriment, into the humble degree of page. After a season, when he has been instructed in the virtues of purity, temper- ance, and reverence, and has taken appropriate vows, he may become an esquire. After he is a church member he is made a knight. Thus the processes of the "Castle" lead consistently upward. The ideal set up is one of wholesome self-respect. The members are knights; they are above meanness and low habits. They are chiv- alrous gentlemen. Religion is unobtrusive but integral. There are higher ranks still accessible to unusual courage or strength of character. The conclaves may take the form of debates, athletic drills, study classes, games, and so forth. Here the greatest flexibility is allowed. There are to meet the boys' fancy insignia, grips, pass- words, and secret signs, but no secrets are kept from the parents of the members. There is much opportunity for handwork, athletics, dra- matics, and music. The plan is refining, but not effeminate, and seems to appeal to all classes of boys. The method is extremely elastic and the plan has been much enriched by the suggestions of people from all over the world who have thought of attractive modifications of it. In practise, the organization is inexpensive and is easily self-supporting. [69] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS The distinctive features of the plan are most successful with boys in the early years of high school, but the older boys who have attained the "peerage" often become a "House of Lords," with parliamentary practise and some oversight of the younger boys. The handbook costs a dollar and a complete castle outfit (which includes the handbook) three dollars. 10. THE CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR SOCIETY. The oldest and largest of all the young people's movements presents a variety of plans suited to several grades of maturity. This organization, unlike the others mentioned, makes its religious meeting the central feature, yet it is fair to say that it is only the local societies that really "endeavor" that continue to have strong religious meetings. This is in accord with an important law of the spiritual life. Many churches sustain various boys' clubs, as outlined above, and use the Christian Endeavor meeting as the rallying points of all their young people's work. To those who want to work with boys apart from the girls the question may be asked, Why not organize a Boys' Christian Endeavor Society? The Christian Endeavor Society has proved its worth chiefly as a co-educational society for adolescents. An overloading of a local society with adults tends always to be a barrier to actually reaching the young people, and the features- of the Society that are characteristic are not so wholesomely applied to children in the so-called "junior" societies. The normal Endeavor Society is the first social grouping of adolescent boys and [70] HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB girls continuously together. It is a delightful and a delicate opportunity for a pastor. The watchful adult notes the sex-influence at every point. It is this which helps stimulate to verbal witness the reticence of many a bashful lad, and the unconscious preenings and posings which accompany both the social and religious activities must be winsome to all grown-up people who are not misanthropic. The adult guide will be quick to remember that the sex-life and the religious life are never more closely parallel than now. Many a boy has been brought into the kingdom by the mere presence there of an innocent girl. Yet here is a limitation of the society which makes separate effort for boys still necessary. It is largely only the boys who like girls that go to the Chris- tian Endeavor Society. The splendid idealism of the Endeavor move- ment is needed to redeem some of our boys' clubs from pettiness and selfishness, and in many churches the old Societies will, by furnishing leaders or supervising committees, conduct the boys' work. The movement has been criticised for certain faults and tendencies of its life, but these are largely the faults and tendencies of lack of guidance by leaders, and the sufficient answer has always been made that a pastor will get out of his Christian Endeavor Society just as much as he puts into it. ii. THE BROTHERHOODS. Almost every denomination now has its national Brotherhood. Some of these have a boys' department. In the Congregational Brother- CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS hoods boys' clubs of whatever sort are enrolled, without change of name or plan. This makes possible federation for denominational causes, and makes easy the transition of the boys at the proper age to the men's brotherhood of the local church. Some Brotherhoods, like that of St. Andrew and that of Andrew and Philip, have a distinct junior department, in which the methods of the senior branch are adapted to boys. This plan, in the writer's judgment, is not usually successful. The Junior Brotherhood of St. Andrew stands very strongly for the idea of a select band of Christian boys segregated into a society for the purpose of winning boys who are outsiders. Most of us work rather by regarding the Christian boy, as in the rest of life, as part of the community of boys among whom he lives his life in fellowship and influence. 12. BOYS' CAMPS. Among the wholesome ways of living with boys none equals the living with them in tents in God's out-of-doors. A week of such association is worth a year of meeting them once a week in the winter. There is no culmination better for any of the forms of social organization mentioned above than a church camp. If all leaders of boys knew how easy, how inexpensive, and how safe (with strong boats, guarded bathing, and no firearms) such a fortnight can be, more of them would try it. Boys mature and change so fast that most leaders find, whatever their club may be named, it needs to change its plans every two or three years. After a while its old records and para- phernalia may be left to the " kids " who are coming [72] HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB on. We may summarize our analyses by present- ing an ideal GRADED SYSTEM OF CHURCH BOYS' CLUBS 10-13. The Boys' Brigade, or The Boys' Life Brigade, or The Woodcraft Indians, or The Brotherhood of David. 14-18. The Knights of King Arthur. 1 6-2 1. The Christian Endeavor Society. 1 8- The Brotherhood. How shall one start a church boys' club? The prospective leader will look about him first and study his field and his resources. He will select the prospective members, who will, as has been said, probably constitute one or more than one Sunday-school class. With some knowledge of their home conditions, their schools, the neighborhood advantages, and temptations, he will begin to frame his conception of the kind of a club that will be likely to appeal to them and hold them. He will consult as many of their parents as possible, as their counsel and coopera- tion will become invaluable. He will talk with their Sunday-school teacher probably he will be that teacher himself. After he has formu- lated his plans somewhat he will take a few of the leading boys into his confidence, and will try to arrange things so that they themselves will suggest organization and support his plans. In the meantime he will have secured the hand- book of the form of organization which he pro- poses to use or will develop his own, tentatively, and will have a definite and intelligible proposi- [73] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS tion to put before the boys. Upon the first night of meeting he will plunge at once with the boys into plans of work. Endeavoring to make the movement self-propulsive from the start, he will insist that he is not to be expected to endow the club either with money or with ideas. It is not his club, it is theirs, and it will succeed only as they recognize this fact from the start and all along. Still, while the tendency of an adult leader is to assume too much responsibility and power, and to leave too little to the boys, it will be more or less necessary the first winter to help a group that has not hitherto worked seriously together both with suggestions and with incentive. The problem of order in the club is one that need never come up seriously more than once. The leader should refuse to hold any office him- self, unless it be that of secretary, and there should be someone, the president or the mar- shal, whose business it is to keep the meeting under discipline. If, when disorder occurs, the leader rises and remarks kindly that it is obvi- ous that interest in the club must be impossible if it continues, and that the members will no doubt both recognize this fact and act accord- ingly, the public sentiment will at once mass itself against the offender, and things will move along peaceably. The matter of order after the first few meetings will depend almost entirely upon the interest. When club meetings are uninteresting, someone is sure to want to "start something." Misbehavior therefore becomes a danger signal to the leader that he must renew his energy in getting a program. It is neither an indication of total depravity nor of a desire [74] HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB to insult himself it is the wholesome appeal of the boys for what is worth while. The Club leader who goes home after an unsuccessful evening and blames anybody but himself is pulling the wrong doorbell. It was not his busi- ness to pull the load, but it was his business to generate power. It may be helpful if the author brings out some of the details of club work by describing a typical evening in a church boys' club. This description is a composite picture from his own current experience in a club of twenty-five boys of the average age of fifteen. The leader arrived first. This statement is both literal and symbolic. He did not enter a room full of boys who had already "started things." He started things himself. He unlocked the door and admitted the boys. While one turned on the lights, he despatched another to bring the paraphernalia, and, picking out a third who seemed to be especially exuberant, he set him to arranging the chairs. He began the session at the appointed moment, regardless of whether all were present or not, and had the regular pro- gram in motion before someone started an ex- temporaneous one. All the officers were boys. The leader sat near both the presiding officer and the secretary, to guide both, but he never pre- sided himself. There was a boy sergeant-at-arms. The leader did not preserve order; he asked the sergeant to do it, and if he failed, called the atten- tion of the house to the matter. This massed the public sentiment against the offender. It might be remarked that there was not very much order to preserve, by which is meant that there [751 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS was the constant stir and murmur of interest, but little or no confusion. During the opening exercises the Lord's Prayer was said. This was done kneeling, with closed eyes. The writer does not lay much stress on devotional exercises in a boys' club, but if they occur, they ought to be reverent. There was a little union business and some discussion. The president refused to recognize anyone who did not properly address the chair. Matters of parliamentary procedure were explained by the leader, and were quite carefully remembered afterward. The boys had agreed upon a five-cent weekly tax and a similar fine for unexcused absence. This was cheerfully paid and created all the revenues needed. The member who was latest to arrive was designated as "Jester" at the next meeting, and his witti- cisms, delivered when ordered, served to relieve any tension. There was not any consecutive program. The leader often wished he could secure one, but it was his first winter with these boys, and he expected better things another season. The boys were busy in school and had been confined all day, so the meetings were quite informal and varied. One evening there was an initiation, another a visitation from a neighboring club, once an hour of progressive games, again a family physician gave an instructive talk. Often the session closed with a hide-and-seek about the darkened parish house or some indoor athletics. The club had no gymnasium and owned no athletic material except a baseball. The whole damage which they did to the building during the winter amounted to less than two dollars. This was accidental and was cheerfully paid for. They [76] HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB met but once a week from October to June on Monday evenings, from seven to eight. Appar- ently they did not do much. But at the end of winter several assets were counted. They stuck together. They insisted on meeting after the leader was willing to stop. After the first sifting, the attendance averaged over eighty per cent. They grew increasingly to initiate plans for them- selves, and were ready in the spring to sustain a ball nine and to conduct a camp. Nothing was said in the club about Sunday-school, but not one of them left the school during the year and their attendance became more regular. Nothing was said in the club about the church, but several joined the church at Easter. They had made a voluntary contribution to beautifying the church building. The minister, their leader, and one of their Sunday-school teachers, who were with them all winter, had gotten acquainted with them all pretty thoroughly, and were now known by all. These were the superficial results. It may also be supposed that they had been educating each other, that they had become a little more fair, honest, and loyal to each other, that they were now capable of joint action, that they had grown to think of the church as their home, as during the winter in several small ways they began to serve it, and that there was to each a beginning of an interpretation of the Kingdom of God as the Church, as the minister and the club had revealed it. This was to be regarded as only one step in the process of educating a group of boys into a life of wholesome religion and of generous devotion to the church of Christ. In itself it was worth while, but as an early part of a sys- [77] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS tematic, sensible Christian method it was regarded by its leaders as of indispensable importance. It is interesting and sometimes amusing to watch the education of the members of a club by attrition. The boy who has been quite a hero in the Sunday-school class because of his ingenuity in annoying his teacher is surprised to find that he is regarded as a nuisance when he starts operations in the club. The lad who has shone in the Christian Endeavor meeting is chagrined to find that his club fellows are not much interested in his oratory. The boys who are always talking and always proposing something are quieted by seeing their pet plans voted down or by being delegated to carry them into execu- tion, while the silent members are stirred, by real interest, into discussion and are encouraged to find that they can think on their feet. In- stinctively the leader finds himself challenged by the most difficult and the least winsome boys, and he is helped daily both to understand them and to bring out the best that is in them by the revelations and the support of the club. It is the writer's earnest testimony that, after he has given a most proportionate attention and affection to such boys he has been rewarded in later years, not only by the warmest appreciation from them, but by the distinct evidence that his help and the club life were actually crucial and transforming in their development. Of course a longer experience will give a pro- portionately more important result. The writer recalls such an experience of seven consecutive years with a certain group, with whom he played and prayed, sat up nights, camped out and played [78] HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB games, sharing as much of their life as was not spent at home or in school. He has abundant reason to believe that his guidance was in many ways directive of their later living and that they went out into life distinctly marked by his per- sonal touch. This kind of work does not always seem to be appreciated, but in this instance even this reward was not withheld. The last evening brought an expression which may be quoted, not only because it was so satisfying, but because it seemed to define the very nature and quality of the influence that had been exerted. A fare- well social evening had finished, a presentation had been made, with an awkward speech by the boy orator, and an equally awkward one by their leader. Then came forward the finest fellow of the lot, and leaning over into the circle, said, "What this ring means, Mr. Forbush, is that not one of us fellows is ever going to disappoint you!" "Who builds in Boys builds lastingly in Truth, And 'vanished hands' are multiplied in power, And sounds of living voices, hour by hour, Speak forth his message with the lips of Youth. " Here, in the House of Hope, whose doors are Love, To shape young souls in images of right, To train frail twigs straight upward toward the Light; Such work as this God measures from above! "And faring forth, triumphant, with the dawn, Each fresh young soul a missioner for weal, Forward they carry, as a shield, the seal Of his example so his work goes on. "Granite may crumble, wind and wave destroy, Urn, shaft or word may perish or decay, But this shall last forever and a day His living, loving monument, a Boy!" [79] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS WHAT OTHERS SAY The author has asked a few persons whom he knows to have had long and successful experience with boys to seal this chapter with their testimony as to the value of church boys' clubs: "The church needs both the Sunday worshipper and the weekday worker. What that work is, and what that worship means, can be taught most easily and practically in the freedom and intimacy of the boys' club. "Our club started in 1889 and it has done its simple, healthy work ever since, being today in charge of a man who eighteen years ago entered the club as a small boy of nine or ten years. "I believe with all my heart just what I have written." Miss A. B. MACKINTIRE. "During the last twelve years I have come in contact with many boys, in various church clubs, where I have been fully persuaded of the very great value of such work. Many of these boys I know intimately, having found the club, preeminently the Knights of King Arthur, the most effective means to such personal acquaintance. I think I can hardly overestimate the force of a wisely conducted club, both for visible results and for the greater permanencies of life in character." (REV.) RAYMOND M. Dow ADAMS. "The manly associations afforded by church clubs are serving as a powerful factor in arousing within boys the disposition to become men. In these clubs Christian leaders, together with their younger brothers, practise quite fraternally the real spirit of the Christian life. Two years' work with boys in two church clubs has convinced me that if more such work had been done [80] HOW TO CONDUCT A CHURCH BOYS' CLUB twenty years ago, men approaching middle life would now be in our churches in far greater numbers." (REV.) HERBERT L. PACKARD. "After twenty-three years' work with boys as teacher and pastor (six years of which were spent in a boys' boarding school), I am glad to give my testimony that the one who would do most for the boy must keep close to him for a long time. To win his confi- dence before he enters the period of adolescence and to keep "next" during all those tremendous years is the sure way to the greatest service. "I am very glad that you are bringing this to the mind of our workers. The notion that one can take a fresh group of lads each year, or even every two years, and then drop them for others, is one which I fear is not uncommon, but one which in my judgment can never lead to the finest nor the most permanent results." (REV.) ELLIOTT F. TALMADGE. "For three years I have been using 's methods with from thirty to forty boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. I was satisfied that from the psychological standpoint the idea was all right; now I know that it works. It has done wonders for our boys, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I like it for its manly appeal and for its appeal to a boy's honor. Best of all, it makes for the ideal manhood of Jesus Christ, and leads the boys naturally on to church membership." - (REV.) T. C. RICHARDS. HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY Send for the material of the particular forms of organization that seem most likely to be adapted to the boys you have in mind. Study the ideals and CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS methods of each in view of the facts you have just learned. Try out one plan with some boys. Do the author of it the justice to follow his directions patiently, unless you find they actually defeat your purposes. As you assimilate his ideas, begin to be original and use your own. Look out that the machinery of the organ- ization does not obscure your view of the boys them- selves or tend to prevent your knowing individuals. When it does, get somebody else to tend the machinery, while you go after the boys. OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC Feasible Restrictions of Membership of a Church Boys' Club. Methods of Meeting the Expense of a Club. The Governing Board: its personnel and powers. A Five Years' Program for one Church Boys' Club. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING ON THIS TOPIC As the organized forms of work with boys issue pamphlets of information, many of which are ephemeral, the reader is simply directed to the following addresses for further advice: The International Sunday-school Association, Hartford Bldg., Chicago. The Boys' Brigade, Central Savings Bank Bldg., Baltimore. The Boys' Life Brigade, 56 Old Bailey, London, E.G. The First Aid Association, 6 Beacon St., Boston. The Woodcraft Indians, Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. The Boy Scouts of America, 124 East 28th St., New York. The Brotherhood of David, 171 Taylor Avenue, Detroit. Phi Delta Pi, State Y. M. C. A. Bldg., Boston. The Knights of King Arthur, Taylor and Third Avenues, Detroit. The Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, Tremont Temple, Boston. 82 VII BOYS AND THE KINGDOM Having studied pretty carefully the methods of religious nurture in the church, school, and club, let us now turn to the problem of training boys in religious expression through service. There are naturally three fields for such service: the home, the church, and benevolence or missions. The religious life of a boy must chiefly be lived in his home. Not very much of the journey to heaven can be taken in congregations. It is rather difficult, however, for the church worker to do very much consciously affecting a boy's home conduct. He can arrange the hours of meeting for his boys' club so that they will not interfere with home work or home study, and incidentally he can teach lessons or make sugges- tions from his observation of an individual boy's conduct which will modify the boy's ideals and life. Probably the most important thing which the school teacher or club leader can do for the home is to exalt the authority of the boy's father and the sacredness of motherhood. A close and hearty sympathy, expressed by frequent confer- ences between teachers, church workers, and the parents of the boys, will be sure to form a three-fold cord of inspiration and influence. It is the happy testimony of many church workers [83! CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS that fathers and mothers have come to them to say that because of the church school or club the boy's conduct in the home has noticeably improved. In the field of church work the important thing to say seems to be that it is necessary to give boys work suited to the different grades of their development. The plan of messenger service in a Sunday-school is a good one for younger boys, but it is not applicable for very many years in a boy's life. The older boy would prefer to be an attendant at the church door, or to become an usher. Younger boys like to distribute church bulletins, but it would be more agreeable to older boys to print the bulletin, or to publish a church paper. Young lads are easily organized into boys' choirs, but as there are a number of years later when boys ought not to sing, the plan of a boy choir cannot be made continuous. Probably the most useful field of service in the church for boys is as Sunday-school teachers. It may seem heretical these days, when the highest require- ments are being held up for teaching religion, that one should suggest boys as teachers of religion. It is the writer's experience, however, that they are quite as willing to take preparatory courses of study as adults are, and their sympathy for younger boys and their interest in them, espe- cially in athletic lines, is so much keener than that of grown people, especially of women, that a group of boys of sixteen or seventeen will often make an admirable corps of teachers for the junior department. Just as a class begins to get hard to hold in the main room is a good time to suggest to them the delight of volunteering as a group [84] BOYS AND THE KINGDOM to take charge of their younger brothers in the school. Not all can teach, but nearly all can be used in the administration of the department. The "gang" spirit of older boys and girls can sometimes be used by sending them off as a chorus to sing in a mission or a hospital. Such a preliminary service often enlists young people in an enthusiastic way in further and continuous service. I have in mind a downtown church of limited field from which a young people's society, going as a body into the foreign section, has not only built and administered successfully a social settlement, but has actually saved its own life and that of its mother church. That church is alive because it has found something worth living for. The great field of missionary benevolence is one in which it is practicable to interest boys at every stage. One who has hopes for a future generation devoted to the work of the Kingdom needs no argument to convince him of the im- portance of developing such interest. Those who have watched boys who are being addressed by some live missionary or social worker have realized that the subject was one not inherently alien to them, and has learned from a skilled presentation what qualities in it are most likely to appeal to boys. They are interested in heroic personalities. They are unprejudiced against mis- sions as a cause, and they are generous in heart. They are, however, poor in purse. While it is probably more important to get a boy to make personal sacrifices for the causes in which he is interested than anything else, this is a matter which must largely be inculcated in the home. There is another kind of giving which may be per- [85] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS formed in the church, and in this church workers have the part of leadership. The "gang" spirit can be used in missionary interest in giving, as much as anywhere else. It inspires a boy, even in his personal sacrifices, if he can earn money, together with other boys, and give with them, and the collective amount is so much more respect- able than what he can do unaided that it dignifies his own small contribution. In selecting the causes to which a group of boys should be asked to contribute, the studies which we have made of their dispositions and certain applications of common sense may guide us. Other things being equal, it is better to encourage the boys to give to causes supported by their own denomination. Picturesque as undenomina- tional benevolences often are, they are usually well supported financially. The church to which the boys belong has causes that are just as pic- turesque, which are in infinitely greater need, and if a boy is to grow up an intelligent church- man, he should have a hearty loyalty to the agencies for which his church is alone responsible and which must perish without his aid. The causes to which boys should be asked to con- tribute should have the following qualities: First, they should be specific and concrete. We ought to begin with a person who is on the field, the place where he is working, and the task which he has. Do not begin with a society, a country, or a history. Second the causes should be varied. While the boys may give to only one at a time, these should be selected, in a course of years, so as to educate broadly. They should present a number of countries, and a [861 BOYS AND THE KINGDOM number of racial situations in .America, and represent the work of several, if not all, of the national boards of the denomination. Third, they should be continuous. They should enable boys to become well acquainted with the person- alities in charge, and demand increasingly an interest in the development of the work itself. Fourth, they should be picturesque. While value is not to be sacrificed to attractiveness, it is important to emphasize to young people, who are at a rather blase and fickle period, that the church societies are doing some of the most picturesque work on record. Usually the objects of help should be boys and girls, so that young people may be giving to young people. Fifth, - the causes chosen should be abundantly able to supply fresh information, which will keep up interest and inspire the spirit of eagerness and anticipation of more news. Sixth, the interest should be cooperative. The boys should not only know, they should know together. They should not only give, they should give together. One of the oldest ways of encouraging cooperative giving that has been established by the mission- ary boards is that of issuing a certificate with "shares of stock" in some united young people's missionary cause. Probably the missionary ship in the Pacific, the "Morning Star," was the first enterprise to which young people were thus ever asked to subscribe stock. Most of the denom- inational boards have plans of this sort. In the Congregational Brotherhood, for example, a certificate has been printed in the national colors, bearing the facsimile signatures of the Brotherhood leaders. The share represented by [87] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS these certificates are ten cents each, so that a certificate for ten dollars represents one hundred shares. The boy who gives ten cents through his club or class may feel that one of those hundred shares is his own. The shares are graded in a rather ingenious manner by a series of seals, as a recognition of the amount given, as follows: Certificate to a Club Certificate to an Individual Twenty-five Cents a Member Red Seal Fifty Cents a Member White Seal One Dollar a Member Or One Dollar Gift Blue Seal Two Dollars a Member Or Two Dollar Gift Bronze Seal Three Dollars a Member Or Three Dollar Gift Silver Seal Five Dollars a Member Or Five Dollar Gift Gold Seal As an illustration of possibilities in this direction, it may be helpful to enumerate the causes which were selected after careful study by the writer, as President of the Congregational Boys' Brother- hood. The first of these was a work in the Shanshi Province of China. This province is both the Pennsylvania and the Minnesota of China. Because of its natural resources it is in the line of first evolution of the awakened China, and it is destined to become one of the world's greatest industrial centers. Its ground is also sacred with the blood of the martyrs in the Boxer massacres. Here, in a province practically alone, two young American ministers and two doctors, with their wives, are pioneering in one of the most interesting and hopeful fields on earth. The boys are invited particularly to give to a hospital work for boys and girls, which is alleviating pitiable conditions and saving the lives of thousands, and also to elementary village schools, which are the bases of the great scheme of Chris- tian education that culminates in the North China Union College. Fifteen dollars takes care of a hospital cot or a village school for a whole year. The second, the boys are being interested in a Philippine mission in the Island of Mindinao, which, with its million souls, has been entirely assigned to Congregationalists. The people are mostly raw savages, and the interior of the island is scarcely explored. It is the only foreign station of the denomination that is under the Stars and Stripes, and it is the only mission of the church now ministering to untouched savages. Third, of course there is a boys' mission to Indians. The Santee Training School in North Dakota is said to be the best Indian School in America. The picturesqueness of Indian life is echoed in the school cata- [88] BOYS AND THE KINGDOM logue, in which such poetic Indian names of the students are retained as "Cuts the Cloud," "Beautiful Spring Flower," "Flying Eagle," etc. The industrial work is also practical, and the training of teachers for the native schools is most important. Fourth, the boys are being interested in the South, in the institution at Tougaloo, Miss., where negro boys in the heart of the black belt are struggling to secure an industrial education, and that is helping to solve one of our most serious national problems. Fifth, our last frontier is Montana. Its mines, its irrigation and reclamation projects, and its water power, make it indeed "the Treasure State." Here still linger the Indian, the cowboy, the miner, and the forester. Sixth, the most backward portion of continental America is New Mexico. In ignorance, cruelty, and immorality it represents much that is a shame to the republic. Yet this great domain, which is to be a State, has an old and roman- tic history, wonderful architectural achievements, beautiful native handcraft, marvels of scenery, and great undeveloped resources. The mixture of Indian and Spanish has produced a race whose histories, character, and possibilities are quite unknown. Boys are being asked to give the boys and girls of New Mexico a chance to escape the bondage of darkness that surrounds them, in the new industrial school near the border line between America and Mexico. Finally, the problem of the city and the alien is being brought to the boys' attention by telling them of a most unique and heroic man, a Slav by birth, who is on the firing-line of the problems of immigration and poverty in the industrial city of Duquesne, Penn. Other denominations, of course, have equally attractive causes to present to boys, but these paragraphs may be helpful to leaders, as suggesting the kinds of objects which are available. Those who find the adult missionary magazine and adult missionary literature uninteresting may, with a little care and some correspondence, sift out just the right object in which they can interest themselves and their boys. There are two possible ways in which boys can cooperate in the benevolent movements of their church. They may give to all the causes. They could divide their gifts among the different treasurers in a series of objects, such as have been mentioned above. The advantages of this method are the opportunities it affords for a broad and continuous missionary education, preparatory to [89] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS a lifelong loyalty to all the varied work of the church. Or they may choose one or more of such causes. The advantage of this plan is that the interest felt naturally becomes intensified, and, the gifts to the single cause becoming larger, the young people are more likely to reach the point where they can become personally related to their chosen field. As to methods of money-raising a few suggestions may be given. While the best way to raise money everywhere is to give it, a mutual gift made from the proceeds of an entertainment is a good way, because it represents partnership, and because there are many wholesome ways in which the dramatic instinct of boys may be exercised. Some kind of dramatic entertainment, which will take a great portion of the winter to prepare, has its own educative value, and brings the season to a triumphant climax. A short list of such avail- able entertainments is given at the close of this book. Out of the hundreds of reports of boys' clubs which come to the writer every year, he has selected a few ingenious methods which may be suggestive, both by their novelty and by the large success and results which have been reported. Several boys' clubs have given exhibits of boys' work, veritable expositions of boy life, including on one occasion boys' pets, boys' collections, boys' manual work, and an evening of boys' music and oratory. A boys' club in Provincetown, Mass., has purchased a vacuum cleaner and are renting it, with two boys to operate it, at fifty cents per hour. After three weeks' toil the machine is almost paid for, and several of the boys have earned encouraging amounts. Their leader gives the boys fifteen cents an hour until the machine pays for itself, and after that each boy will get twenty-five cents an hour for his labor. The church boys held a "Farmer's Supper," in connection with the girls' society, in Rutland, Vt., which was profitable and enjoyable. A small food fair and entertainment which the boys gave raised $35. [90] BOYS AND THE KINGDOM A group of Durham, N. H., boys netted #30 from a lecture given for their benefit by a war correspondent. The boys' Club of Sackett Harbor, N. Y., has introduced a printing press. The club members print the church calendar and church notices, and do some paying job-work. A boys' club of Andover, Me., won a game of baseball at Andover Fair, which gave them $15. An Olean, N. Y., boys' society g?.ve a military entertainment which was a great success. They sold tickets in advance, which, with donations from a few interested men, raised $33?. A boys' club of Dodge City, Kans., gave a pie supper and cleared over 10. Inside the hall door was set a table from which the guests bought their tickets, which were eight-inch strips of card- board. Along the strip was printed, "Coffee, Pie, Plate, Napkin, Fork," etc. As the customers passed along the table, they were served with the different articles by several boys, who tore off that part of the slip which had on it the name of the article he had served. Only fifteen cents was charged for a quarter of a pie, two doughnuts, a cup of coffee with cream and sugar, but a good profit was made. Just before the holidays a boys' club of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., held a successful "Art Exhibit" and cleared over #30 selling Copley prints and other pictures. From Andover, Me., comes a report from the boys of a remu- nerative day of wood chopping. In Malone, N. Y., a boys' club collected waste paper and sold it, for which $78.85 was realized. A food sale netted them $20. The club members have been conducting an entertainment course costing $200 for talent. Is it too much to expect that these entertain- ments shall not only become a joint means of joy, expression, and beneficence, but that they shall also be uplifting? There is great need for us to study the possible place of the festival in life, and especially in church life. The writer saw an announcement of a boys' Bible-class exhibit in a church, conducted by its teacher, who is a boys' Y. M. C. A. secretary, a few days ago, in which, with a number of excellent items, was a blackberry pie-eating contest. Such merry ex- ercises probably do no permanent gastronomical or moral harm, but it must be possible to be just as merry and keep just as close to boys and yet CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS make even their church festivals a contribution toward what we in America need so much to learn, the beautiful ordering of life. WHAT OTHERS SAY "If a boy has gone through his teens and has not formed the habit of service, we may try to break him in when he is twenty-five or thirty, but it is a difficult task." EDGAR M. ROBINSON. "The way to make a boy's conscience braver is to reinforce it with a commission." GEORGE A. COE. "The implanting of the missionary spirit so as to give it control of the life of every pupil may fairly be said to be the chief and sole purpose of the Sunday- school." CHARLES G. TRUMBULL. HINTS FOR FIRST HAND STUDY Choose a definite missionary cause and begin to col- lect material in the way of information and illumination upon it. Get all the juvenile literature about the field. Read over the adult literature with boys solely in mind. Look for strong personalities, picturesqueness, adven- ture and heroism, elements for pity, lively incidents, each in turn. Try to prepare this field as a cause to present to boys. Begin with its persons. Illuminate its conditions. Have ready a tangible plan for relief. Eliminate everything that is unnecessary and dis- tracting. Present your data at a meeting for business and discussion, and listen carefully to what is said, for future guidance. After a plan has been decided upon, push it patiently and for a sufficient period to [92] BOYS AND THE KINGDOM have secured from it missionary education for the boys and for it some measure of interested, sacrificial sup- port from the boys. OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF THE TOPIC The Boys' Field of Service: The Home, The Church, Benevolence or Missions. How Much More Can our Boards Afford to Do to Develop the Interest of our Boys? Methods of Money-Raising from Boys. The Sources of a Boy's Interest in Missions. Making Youthful Interest in Missions a Permanent Life Principle. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING ON THIS TOPIC George H. Trull, Missionary Methods in the Sunday-school. This contains an abundance of plans and methods and a graded list of missionary books for young people's reading. New York: Presby- terian Board of Foreign Missions. Emma E. Koehler, The Boys' Congress of Missions. New York: Westminster Press. 93 BIBLIOGRAPHY I. A SELECT REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS UPON THE NATURE AND NURTURE OF THE INDIVIDUAL BOY: For fathers, teachers, pastors, and workers with boys. THE BOY'S BODY: Stuart H. Rowe, The Physical Nature of the Child and How to Study It. New York: The Macmillan Co. J. M. Tyler, Growth and Education. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. Winfield S. Hall, From Youth into Manhood. New York: The Y. M. C. A. Press. The best help in sex instruction. BOYS' PLAY: George E. Johnson, Education by Plays and Games. New York: Ginn & Co. Jessie H. Bancroft, Games for the Play- ground, Home, School and Gymnasium. New York: Macmillan Co. BOYS' CAMP: Charles S. Hanks, Camp Kits and Camp Life. Chi- cago: Sports Afield. Horace Kephart, Book of Camp and Wood- craft. New York: Field and Stream. Francis H. Buzzacott, The Complete Campers' Manual, published by the author. Chicago. Brief but adequate. BOYS' HANDICRAFT: D. C. Heath, The American Boys' Handy Book. New York: Charles Scribncr's Sons. A. Neely Hall, The Boy Craftsman. Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. THE BOY'S MIND: Frederick Tracy, The Psychology of Childhood. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. A standard account of child develop- ment. Edgar J. Swift, Mind in the Making. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Brilliant, separate essays. G. Stanley Hall, Youth: Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene. New York: D. Appleton Co. BOYS' NATURE STUDY: Clifton F. Hodge, Nature Study and Life. New York: Ginn & Co. STORY-TELLING: Sarah Cone Bryant, How to Tell Stories to Children. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. BOYS' READING: Books for Boys: lists in Work with Boys, Decem- ber, 1909. Fall River: Thomas Chew. C. B. Kern, Selected Books for Boys. New York: Y. M. C. A. Press. THE BOYS' SPIRITUAL NATURE: H. M. Burr, Studies in Adoles- cent Boyhood. Springfield: The Seminar Publishing Co. BRINGING UP BOYS: George A. Dickinson, Your Boy: His Nature and Nurture. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Kate Upton Clark, Bringing up Boys. New York: Crowell. [951 CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS BOOKS OF ADVICE TO GIVE BOYS: Winfield S. Hall, From Youth into Manhood. New York: The Y. M . C. A. Press. Sex information. Charles F. Dole, The Young Citizen. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. N. C. Fowler, Jr., Starting in Life. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. On the choice of a calling. David Starr Jordan, The Call of the Tzoeniieth Century. Boston: American Unitarian Association. On the kind of a man the world wants to-day. Choosing a Career, pre- pared by the New York High School Association, 75 Jefferson Ave., Brooklyn. A helpful booklet on the subject, with a valuable list of books on the different vocations. II. A SELECT REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS UPON THE SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF BOYS: For Men's Classes and Brotherhood Discussions. JUVENILE CRIME AND PROBATION: Thomas Travis: The Young Malefactor. New York: Thos. Y. Crowell & Co. Our best book on delinquency. Homer Folks, The Care of Destitute, Neglected and Delinquent Children. New York: Macmillan Co. The Survey, the magazine of social and philanthropic progress. New York, 22nd St. and 4th Ave. Current new items. Judge Ben B. Lindsey, The Beast and the Jungle, a book on his experiences with boys and politics. PLAYGROUNDS: Ernest B. Mero, American Playgrounds. Boston: American Gymnasia Co. EDUCATION: Paul H. Hanus, Educational Aims and Educational Values. New York: Macmillan Co. Frank Parsons, Choosing a Vocation. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. George A. Coe, Edu- cation in Religion and Morals. New York: Fleming H. Re veil Co. 0. J. Kern, Along Country Schools. New York: Ginn & Co. RELIGIOUS NURTURE: Charles E. McKinley, Educational Evan- gelism. Boston: The Pilgrim Press. LOCAL WORK FOR BOYS: A Survey of the Boys of Detroit, in "Asso- ciation Boys," for October. New York: The Y. M. C. A. Press. A study of what needs to be done in one city, not thorough, but suggestive. III. SPECIAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES FOR WORKERS WITH BOYS: 1. AN IDEAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL CURRICULUM FOR BOYS, with refer- ences to the text-books which at the date of writing appear most useful for teaching these subjects: 9-11. BIBLE STORIES, with sketch, color and picture work: The International Graded Lessons, Junior Series (Old Testament). The Junior Bible (Bible Study Lessons: Old, followed by New Testament). 12-14. BIBLE BIOGRAPHY, with writing and other notebook v work: The Life of Jesus, by Gates. The Story of Paul of Tarsus, by [96] BIBLIOGRAPHY Atkinson. Heroes of the Faith, by Gates (Biblical and Christian Biography). 15-18 BIBLICAL AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND HISTORY, with discussions. Life Questions of High School Boys, by Jenks. The Comrades of Jesus, by Perkins. The Gospel of the Kingdom, by Strong. Life Problems, by Doggett-Burr-Ball-Cooper. The Conquer- ing Christ, by Boone. These special text-books and others are analyzed in the list follow- ing: 2. AN ANALYSIS OF SOME RECENT SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS FOR BOYS. It is coming to be realized by teachers of boys that the Interna- tional uniform lessons, prepared to be used in all grades, are really adult lessons in purpose and plan of selection. Those who use them should know that the weekly articles in the Sunday-school Times, Philadelphia, by Eugene C. Foster, entitled "My Class of Boys," the ingenious devices suggested in "The Boys' Teacher," Chicago, and the articles of high standard and the varied helps in "The Pilgrim Teacher" are the best teaching material published. Teachers of boys will look forward with eagerness to the complete International Graded Lessons, which are now published for boys only up to their twelfth year. I. JUNIORS: 9-12. The International Graded Sunday-school Lessons: Junior Series, prepared by Josephine L. Baldwin. Published by the denominational houses. These beautiful handbooks, including teachers' book, picture cards and pupils' folders, represent the triumph in the International Sunday-school movement of educational ideals. The material is arranged to be used beginning in October and closing in June, but there are lessons for summer time also. The Scripture is chosen wisely for the grade, the stories are charmingly told, the pictures have artistic merit and the teachers' helps are plain and adequate. This, the third and last of this series now ready, adds to the mate- rial of the earlier series a little more varied handwork. These lessons, like the others, are selected mainly from the Old Testament. Being undated, they can all be used at any time, though they are written with some relation to the seasons and the church festivals. The Life of Jesus, by Herbert W. Gates. The University of Chicago Press. This material, which includes a teacher's manual and a beauti- fully printed pupil's workbook, with a set of pictures, is the best yet published for the later years of this department and is used suc- cessfully even beyond this period. Each lesson contains blanks in the text which the pupil fills out and a space for a pasted picture, and there is some map work and memorizing. By doing the written work the boy composes a paraphrase of the Scripture story and when [97] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS he is through he has become co-author of a life of Jesus. The teacher's book introduces fine literary allusions and is of strong spiritual fervency. The optional use of stereographs is regularly provided for. Heroes of the Faith, by Mr. Gates, a text-book in Biblical and Chris- tian biography. The Bible Study Publishing Co., Boston. In this book, published in quarterly form, Bible characters and those of modern history are brought into ingenious contrast, and the meth- ods are interest-provoking and original. Early Heroes and Heroines, by Harold B. Hunting and Charles F. Kent. The Bible Study Publishing Co., Boston. The teacher's manual is in pamphlet form and the pupils' folders are sections of a Junior Bible to be filled in and bound by the pupil. Each section includes a colored Tissot picture, than which no more vigorous Old Testament illustrations exist. The course is arranged so as to be complete in a year with or without the summer months. The Scripture is chosen with a recognition of historical criticism. The teacher's helper is admirable and is indispensable to the use of the course. There is nothing better on the Old Testament for this grade. Succeeding courses, three in number, are announced in this series, to follow this book, the four including the whole Bible story. Budget of Manual Work for Sunday-school Teaching, by Preston Fiddis. The Newell Press, Baltimore. This elaborate scrapbook of handwork was designed for guidance to teachers desiring to do what the International people call "sup- plemental" work, which in many cases has proven to be fully as interesting and important as the regular work. It constitutes the best help we have on teaching elementary knowledge of the contents of the books of the Bible and the outlines of Bible geography, and it is worthy to stand as a text-book for a year's work in those subjects. The book, which is for the teacher, contains beautiful examples of actual work done, and is the best guide to handwork that exists. It tells where to buy the various materials that may be used by the pupils. An Introduction to the Bible for Teachers of Children, by Georgia L. Chamberlin. The University of Chicago Press. A difficult thing to do, carefully done. The reviewer is convinced that the work could be used successfully in a month older grade than the author has planned, and hence he places it nearer the seventh than the fourth grade of school. Fiddis' manual would be better for earlier years, with this as a book of reference for the teacher. Child Life in Mission Lands, by Ralph E. Diffendorfer, &nd China for Juniors (also Japan, Alaska, Africa, and Coming Americans), by Katherine E Crowell. All published by the Young People's Missionary Movement, New York. All these, though intended for Mission Bands, are well written and well illustrated handbooks which would also be suitable for missionary education in the Sunday-school. [98] BIBLIOGRAPHY II. INTERMEDIATE: 12-14. Men who Dared, by Charles Gallaudet Trumbull. The Y. M. C. A. Press, New York. These eighteen studies in Old Testament manhood include a teacher's book, some scholars' slips for home study and some fairly well chosen pictures. The strength of the course is the live, thought- provoking questions and colloquial material in the teachers' book. The study is ethical, not at all historical in purpose. The teacher will be helped by the book's simplicity. The danger to be avoided in its use is preachiness. What Manner of Man is This? by William D. Murray. The Y. M. C. A. Press, New York. Nineteen lessons. A teacher's book and pupils' study slips. Suggestions are made for picture work, the use of stereographs and drawing, map making and pulp work. These useful exercises are made optional and are not very well related to the main current of the teaching, but a bright teacher could find them suggestive. Men of the Bible, by W. H. Davis. The Y. M. C. A. Press, New York. Of this course, of twenty-five lessons, the same praise and the same criticism would need to be made. The Story of Paul of Tarsus, by Louise Warren Atkinson. Uni- versity of Chicago Press. This consists of a text-book, a pupils' book for home work, and another for class use. It resembles in plan and method Gates' Life of Jesus. It emphasizes the boyhood and the education of Paul, and places the various parts of his history in the proportions in which they are valued by a young person's mind. It is an admi- rable piece of work, the only satisfactory juvenile text-book on the life of Paul ever published. Heroes of Israel, by Theodore G. Scares. The University of Chicago Press. A dignified text-book for teacher and another for the scholar, including thirty-five lessons, a year's work. The American Revised Version is used and the selections are chosen so as to avoid critical and moral difficulties. The method is that by which English classics are introduced to high school students and the historical and Oriental background are clearly painted. An intelligent teacher would make this course of great educational value to a class of boys. The ethical teaching is wholesome and constant. It excels other books in its emphasis upon actual Bible reading. Travel Lessons on the Old Testament and Travel Lessons on the Life of Jesus, by William Byron Forbush. Underwood & Underwood, New York. The plan is to enter into the very atmosphere of Bible life by visiting the places in order, through the only instrument that gives the third dimension to pictures, the stereoscope. The Old Testa- [99] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS ment outfit consists of the teacher's book, the stereoscope and a col- lection of fifty-one stereoscopic photographs of the Old Testament places. The New Testament book is accompanied by thirty-six such standpoints. Suggestions are also made for a class "log" of the travel and individual notebooks and handwork. The Life of Jesus, by Herbert W. Gates. The University of Chicago Press. This text-book is so good and has been found so useful for this grade, as well as the one previous, for which it was prepared, that it is named again. In this grade the teacher would introduce varied suggestions beyond the assigned written work. III. HIGH SCHOOL YEARS: 14-18. Life Questions of High School Boys, by Jeremiah W. Jenks. The Y. M. C. A. Press, New York. Professor Jenks has composed the most usable text-book for the discussion of Christian ethics that has yet been published. It is most suggestive. Any live teacher will rejoice in it, because it gets the boys to talking. The Gospel of Mark, by Ernest D. Burton. The University of Chicago Press. This study presents the Gospel text with notes and questions in the same form as a Shakespeare text is issued for high school students, and a teacher who could interest a class in the latter ought to be able to in the former. It is the writer's conviction, however, that most teachers cannot at present depend upon an initial interest from high school boys in such a thoughtful course. We need very much a course that emphasizes the heroic and practical elements of Jesus' character in terms that will attract boys. The Men of the Old Testament, by Leon Kurtz Williams. The Y. M. C. A. Press, New York. A teacher in the Hill School has prepared this book from experi- ence in the required Bible study classes of that school. It is the first constructive study for boys written from the modern view of the Old Testament. It is constructive, informing and devotional in character. There is no special teacher's manual, but the same kind of a teacher who could use Burton's book, mentioned above, would be successful with this one. The Y. M. C. A. and the private school of course get a quality of attention which the voluntary class in Sunday-school seldom reaches. In this connection we may name a book of similar plan and quality from the same publishers, The Life of St. Paul, by Arthur G. Leacock. Life Studies, by various authors. The Unitarian Sunday School Society, Boston and Chicago. A teacher's handbook, pupils' leaflets and some pretty good picture slips for a yearly study in Christian biography. The heroes studied are chosen each as an illustration of a Christian life and the emphasis [ 100 ] BIBLIOGRAPHY is ethical rather than biographical. There is much attractive and intelligent material and these studies are a commendable endeavor in the too much neglected field of the pedagogy of biography. Starting in Life, by N. C. Fowler, Jr., and What Can a Young Man Do ? by Frank W. Rollins. Both by Little, Brown & Co. These two, though not prepared as text-books, would be excellent as guides to personal preparation and discussion in a class of young men who wished a course in the choice of a vocation. Mr. Fowler's book takes up thirty-three topics in 411 pages; Mr. Rollins', fifty- four topics in 339 pages. They seem to be of very equal value. The teacher would wish to supplement these books by the useful bibliography in the ten-cent pamphlet, Choosing a Career, to be obtained of E. W. Weaver, 25 Jefferson Ave., Brooklyn. The Comrades of Jesus, by Richard R. Perkins. The Y. M. C. A. Press, New York. A brief, practical discussion-study of the characters of the disciples of Christ written by a schoolmaster for high school boys. It com- bines the biographical and the ethical, the suggestive and the co- operative, in a skilful way. A very attractive and useful feature is a bookmark study-slip for the use of the boys who might be scared by a text-book. The Bible Study Union, of Boston, announces for publication January, 1911, a new course on Christian Conduct, based on a com- parative use of the Bible and of modern instances, which has been outlined by Professor George A. Coe. IV. OLDER BOYS: 18-21. The Gospel of the Kingdom, by Josiah Strong. The Institute of Social Service, New York. An excellent series of studies, published in monthly instalments for men's discussion classes, on the relation of Christians to all the pressing social problems of the day. Informing, constructive and inspiring. Life Problems, by Doggett-Burr-Ball-Cooper. The Y. M. C. A. Press. Vigorous discussions of the most intimate questions of personal morals, intended for debate in groups of young men. A course for youths a little older than those using Professor Jenks' book. The Y. M. C. A. Press publish a variety of texts for men's Bible classes, of which they will be glad to send a catalogue. These, being beyond our purview, we have not examined. The Conquering Christ, by Ilsey Boone. Bible Study Publishing Co., Boston. A study in quarterly form, and with a teacher's helper, of com- parative religion and of present missionary problems. The course, though advertised for adults, would be a very rich one for older boys and would introduce into the school a subject of most important interest, the kingdom-idea in its worldwide movement. [101] CHURCH WORK WITH BOYS 3. RECOMMENDED DRAMATIC ENTERTAINMENTS FOR BOYS. A Dramatization of Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, by Florence Holbrook. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. It will take weeks of time in club sessions, if desired, in the wholesome handicraft of making the Indian costumes. For boys 10 to 14. The Young Knight, or How Gareth Won His Spurs, by James Yeames; also, Gawain and the Green Knight, by the same author. Detroit: Knights of King Arthur. Stirring and somewhat humorous dramatizations of the most boylike of the King Arthur stories, which can be given with simple paraphernalia. For boys 14 to 18. The Drama of Joseph. New York: William Beverly Harrison. A reverent and dramatic rendering of the best Old Testament story. For boys 10 to 14. How the Missionary Came to Bfar Camp. Boston: Woman's Home Missionary Rooms. A short home missionary sketch, with a strong boy interest. For boys 12 to 14. A Town Meeting, by Frank E. Hiland. Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston. For boys 14 to 20. Roll Call of the Nation: patriotic, with singing; by Caroline E. Dickenson and Stanley Schell. Edgar S. Werner & Co., 45 E. igth St., New York. Sailors' Entertainment, by Stanley Schell. A musical play. Edgar S. Werner & Co., New York. For boys 14 to 18. Valley Forge, a war play, by E. S. Lovejoy. Edgar S. Werner & Co., New York. For boys 14 to 18. "Books About Boys," being the July number, 1909, of Work With Boys. Thomas Chew, Fall River. A larger list of books about boy nature, boys' physical, intellec- tual, social and moral activities, boys' organizations and periodicals about work with boys. Those who wish to go even more deeply into the subject are urged to secure this number. 102 ] INDEX Adolescence 7, 10, 25, 55 Amusements 35, 36, 42 Athletic clubs 64 Benevolences of boys 85 Big Brother movement 29 Biographical method of Sunday-school teaching . . . . 10, 50, 51, 52 Books of advice to give to boys 96 Books of boys' reading 95 bringing up boys 95 camps 95 dramatics for boys' clubs 102 education of boys 96 for Sunday-school teachers 95 for Sunday-school teaching f. . . 96 the "gang " 2 handicraft 95 juvenile crime 96 local work for boys 96 nature study 95 play 95 playgrounds 96 probation 96 religious nurture 96 social education of boys 96 story-telling 95 the boy's body 95 the boy's mind 95 the boy's spiritual nature 95 Boys, allegiance 9 " crazy period" 34 environment 14, 15 epochs 9 Boys and the kingdom 22, 83 Boys' brigade 23, 65, 73 clubs 3 clubs, church 61 life brigade 66, 73 Boy scouts 66 Brotherhood discussions 71 work with boys 5, 28, 3 1 , 43 of David 67, 73 [I0 3 ] INDEX Brotherhoods, denominational 71, 72 Camps 63, 67, 72 Card-playing 35, 37, 38 Catechetics 57 Certificate plan for benevolence, the 87 Christian Endeavor Society, the 20, 70, 73 Church attendance of boys 56, 57 Church boys' clubs 61, 62, 73 Church control of its boys' work 62 Church, functions of the, for boys 14 Church membership of boys 56, 57 Church work for boys 84 Class clubs 63 Criminality among boys 1 1 Curricula for Sunday-schools 53, 96 Dancing 35, 39, 40 Decision Day 15, 54, 55, 56 Debating method of Sunday-school teaching 50, 52 Development of boys, chart of 9 Dramatic instinct, the 42 Dramatics in boys' clubs 102 Educational ideals in boys' clubs 73 Environment of boys 14 Evening in a boys' club 74 Exhibits in Sunday-school work 51 Expectancy, influences of 13 Expenses of boys' clubs 62, 76 First aid association, the 66 " Fool Age," the 143 "Frats" 42 Friendship, utilization of 22, 24, 26 "Gang," action of the 57 allegiance 9 characteristics 9 culminating year of . . 62 influence of 13? 55 instinct of 5 spirit of 33 Graded boys' clubs 63, 73 Habit, period of 15 Handicraft 67 Home, the 14 Individual, the 4, 8, 12 [104] INDEX International Sunday-school lessons 30, 97 Knights of King Aithur 23, 68, 73 Leadership in work with boys 20 training of 28 Manual method of Sunday-school teaching 50, 98 Missions and boys 87, 88 Modifying influences in boys' development 13, 58 Money-making in a boys' club ox> Messenger service 84 Nature study 67 Older boys, special work with 33 Perils of boys 34 Periods of boys' development 8, 9, n, 13 Phi Delta Pi 68 Play . . 22, 25, 61 Preparation of boys for church membership 56 Racial prototypes of boys' development 9 Religious development of boys 9, 13 Religious nurture 96 Reserve of boys 2, 14 Resourcefulness, period of 9, 16 Revivals 10, 14 Self-assertive period 9, II, 13 Self-government in clubs 62 Sentiment, period of IO Sex, influence of 13 Sex-instruction 34, 35 Stages of boy lif 9 Summer work with boys 63 Sunday-school courses 3 3 * 9^, 97 extension 19, 20 function of the .... 47 methods 30 Temperament, influence of 13 Text-books for Sunday-schools 97 Theatre, the . .36, 40, 42 Training leaders 28 Vocational training 4> 43 Will-progress of boys 9 Woodcraft Indians, the 66, 73 [105] University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY !! II Mil Mill III! II I! HIM Hill III III HIM || A 001 013 175 3 SOUTHERN BRANCH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES, CALIF, Uni