*v k nruiu Waller Albion Squires -V CF PR IfTss^ '■V OCT l 7 1923 '^OfilCAL BV 1475 .S68 Squires, Walter Albion. A parish program of religious education Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/parishprogramofrOOsqui A Parish Program of Religious Education Suggestions for a Church School Designed to Carry On a Unified System cf Religious Education Consisting of a Program of Leadership Train¬ ing, a Program of Cooperation with the Home, and a Central Program of Information, Worship and Expression 17 1923 Walter Albion Squires, B. D. Director of Week Day Religious Instruction Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work Author of''The Week Day Church School," “God Revealing IHs Truth Through Patriarch and Prophet,” “New Testament Followers of Jesus,” etc. With an Introduction by Harold McA. Robinson, D. D. PHILADELPHIA The Westminster Press 1923 * Copyright, 1923 by F. M. BRASELMAN i Printed in the United States of America r T'HIS book is dedicated to the Direc- tors of Religious Education in the Protestant Churches of America. Pioneers in a calling which is new in our day, they are in the midst of a move¬ ment which is restoring the teaching ministry of the early Church to its right¬ ful place in the Christian program of world conquest. Teachers and guides of children and youth, they are engaged in a work an archangel might desire. The author bids them godspeed. ' i INTRODUCTION We are living in a day of the utmost significance for religious education. There is a new appreciation of the fundamental importance of the Christian instruction and training of the children and youth. Old agencies are being overhauled. New agencies are being created. Neglected agencies are being revivified. On every hand there is progress. That very progress involves new prob¬ lems, some of which are in the field of principle and method and some in the field of organization. All of these new problems center in the program of the individual church. Mr. Squires, in this book, has discussed the old problems and the new problems from the point of view of the indi¬ vidual church, and has pointed to the solution of these problems in the creation of a new program of religious education for the church, which shall at once conserve all that is valuable in the old program, introduce what appears to be stable and valuable in the new develop¬ ments, and weld all the elements into a whole. The book will well repay the careful study of pastors and other leaders in the field of the Christian education of the children and youth in the home, the church, and the community, and will make an important contribution to the effort of the Church to take advantage of its unparal¬ leled opportunity to formulate and put into action a comprehensive system of religious education such as the Church in America has never had. Harold McA. Robinson. Philadelphia, February 23, 1923. 6 ■ \ AUTHOR’S PREFACE T HIS book is not a recital of the author’s theories con¬ cerning religious education. Every suggestion which it contains is based on plans in successful operation in at least a few churches. The book is intended to be a clear¬ ing house for the “best things” in church schools as they are being worked out in various churches and in various sections of our country. The only claim to originality which can be made for the book lies in the fact that it undertakes to collect these best methods of various churches and to adjust them to one another in a unified program of religious education for the individual church. The author has sought to make his discussion construc¬ tively critical rather than destructively critical. He has gone on the theory that it is useless and presumptuous to criticise the existing educational methods of the Church unless a remedy of demonstrated efficiency can be pro¬ posed forthwith. There are three major objectives which ought to be gained by church leaders before they undertake to in¬ augurate a new and adequate program of religious educa¬ tion for the individual church within which they labor. In the first place, there must be an adequate apprecia¬ tion of the importance of religious education as a recruiting agency for the Church and as an instrument for the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth. The fault with many churches lies just at this point. The church has an inadequate appreciation of the place and power of education in the plans of God. A fundamental failure to appreciate the value of religious education lies behind every Sunday-school program which is carelessly planned, 7 8 AUTHOR’S PREFACE supported in a niggardly way, and carried on in a slip¬ shod fashion. Easy-going, loosely conducted educational methods in a church have as a psychological background the feeling that education is a matter of secondary im¬ portance in the Kingdom enterprise, and that it does not matter much how the church school is carried on. All this must be changed before a larger and better program of education for the individual church can be undertaken with assurance of success. The church constituency must be brought to see the sublime opportunity for building GocFs Kingdom which exists in the young and plastic lives of the children and youth to whom the church ministers. Church leaders must be brought to the place where they approach the educational task of the church with that religious faith and zeal which says, “This task must and shall be done. ” In the second place, the constituency of the church must be brought to a realization of the inadequacy of the customary educational agencies of the church. This step is apt to follow automatically when the first step has once been taken. A just appreciation of the im¬ portance of religious education leads almost inevitably to a sense of the inadequacy of the educational program of even our most progressive churches. It is well for church leaders to make these inadequacies specific, however, and so to clinch them that they will become determining factors in the thinking of as many of the church people as possible. Inadequacies as to time, teaching force, housing, lesson materials, and superin¬ tendence are so manifest in the church school program that people can hardly help seeing them if they are pointed out. No church will be able to put on a new educational program if the prevailing church spirit is expressed in the phrase, “The old program is good enough.” AUTHOR’S PREFACE 9 In the third place, the constituency of the church must be brought to an understanding of the new program which is proposed and to a conviction of its superiority over the plans and methods which have become established and familiar within the church. This is a task of no mean proportions. The constituency of a church may have a fairly adequate appreciation of the importance of religious education and a conviction that the present educational program of the church is seriously defective, and yet they may recoil from the somewhat revolutionary changes necessary for putting the school of the church on a right basis. The Church is naturally one of the most conservative of institutions, and rightly so; never¬ theless, unwise conservatism can block, as almost nothing else can, the putting on of an efficient educational program within a church. The best methods of overcoming the difficulty growing out of a spirit of ultraconservatism toward all undertakings that are new, is found to be the presentation of definite and reliable statistics as to what is being done in other churches employing the proposed new methods. It is the hope of the author that this volume may be of some little service in helping churches to take these first three steps toward the establishment of a program of education which will be worthy of the calling where¬ with we are called. It has been written with the constant conviction that the educational work of the church is a matter of supreme importance to the nation, to the Church, and to the Kingdom of God, for the coming of which the Master taught us to pray. It has been written with a constant realization of the pathetic inadequacy of even our best religious educational efforts. It has dared to set up new goals, goals which are far ahead, goals yet unattained by any church and which may long be considered unattainable. It throws out a challenge 10 AUTHOR’S PREFACE to the Protestant churches of America believing that some of them will arise and attempt greater things for God than have been undertaken heretofore. The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to the several members of the Educational Staff of the Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work. In undertaking to write a book covering the whole educational task of the individual church the author has transgressed within the special field of educational ac¬ tivity of each of his colleagues in the membership of the Staff. They have graciously permitted him to use the results of their investigations and their experiences, but, of course, the author assumes entire responsibility for the positions taken. Special acknowledgments are due to Dr. Harold Me A. Robinson and to Mr. Walter D. Howell who have read the manuscript for this volume and have contributed valuable suggestions. The main features of the plan suggested in the book have been used in his work with churches by Rev. David H. Craver, Field Representative of the Presbyterian Board of Publi¬ cation and Sabbath School Work in New York. He has consented to their incorporation within the present volume and has offered other helpful suggestions. Philadelphia, Pa., May 20, 1923. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction. Author’s Preface. 1 Historical Background... II The Individual Church as an Educational Agency. III The New Program Which Is Coming into View. IV New Standards Needed. V Organizing the Foundations. VI Setting up the Necessary Administrative Machinery. VII Choosing and Arranging Curriculum Materials. VIM Recruiting and Training the Teaching Force. IX Providing the Physicial Conditions Necessary for Success¬ ful Teaching. X Establishing Right Relations Between the Church School and Its Constituency. XI The Central Program of Information, Worship, and Ex¬ pression. XII The Program of Cooperation with the Home. XIII The Program of Leadership Training. 5 7 13 27 45 ^ 59 " 73 ^ 91 ^ 105 119 133 147 161 179 191 XIV The Relation of the Individual Church School to Other Educational Agencies.203 XV Checking Up the Results.215 XVI A Thousand-Point Standard for a Church School Which Carries on a Unified Educational Program for an Indi¬ vidual Church.227 CHAPTER I Historical Background CHAPTER I Historical Background P EOPLE who are engaged in any important under¬ taking need to know the history of the enterprise to which they have attached themselves. If statesmen are to guide a nation wisely, they must know the history of their own country and be familiar with the records of other lands. The history of education has long been regarded as an essential part of a normal-school curriculum. We have been slow to recognize the fact that historical knowledge is just as helpful to the religious educator as it is to the statesman or the public-school teacher. A knowledge of religious educational history will do great things for the leaders of the church school. It will help them to understand the present situation. It will make them safely progressive because, it will show them that religious education, like all other living things, is under¬ going constant development, if it is in a normal state of health. The history of religious education has curative values for the nonprogressive church-school worker who insists that the methods of his forefathers are good enough for him. It will show him that changing condi¬ tions have ever demanded changing methods. The history of religious education likewise lays restraining hands upon the religious educator who is inclined to be an iconoclast. It shows him that many of the methods he longs to smash have been attained through toilsome experimentation, and that they have a record which demands for them a respectful treatment. The religious educational history of our country falls naturally into five periods, or epochs. By becoming 15 ^ 16 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION familiar with these epochs we provide ourselves with an outline of the whole religious educational development of our country. Such a scheme gives us a framework into which we can fit the various items of information which we gather from time to time concerning the development of religious education in America. These epochs will now be considered in order. Epoch I. The union of secular and religious edu¬ cation. 1620-1787. The religious educational history of our country begins with the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. There had been a few settlements within the present borders of the United States before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock, but these settle¬ ments were for the most part made up of men who were adventurers, seeking their fortunes in the New World and expecting when rich to return to their former homes in Europe. The Pilgrim Fathers came as a group of families seeking a permanent abiding place. It has been said that the Pilgrims came to America seeking religious freedom. It would be more accurate to say that they came seeking an opportunity to give their children the kind of religious education they desired that their offspring should receive. The Pilgrims had religious freedom in Holland, but their children were surrounded by evil influences and they determined to go to new lands where they could not only give to their children that religious instruction which they held so dear, but could likewise control the environment in the midst of which their children must grow to manhood and womanhood. From the landing of the Pilgrims until the adoption of the American Constitution in 1787, there was scarcely any differentiation between secular and religious educa¬ tion. In those days if a child received any schooling at all he received religious instruction. The Bible was the major textbook. Even when other textbooks began to HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 17 be introduced, they were made up largely of Bible selec¬ tions. This truth is illustrated by the New England Primer, which made its appearance during this period. The New England Primer consisted of simple Bible passages and little rhymes which expressed the theological views of the Puritan peoples. The colonial child had for his first reading lesson a Bible verse or some such couplet as “In Adam’s fall, We sinned all.” Those were pioneer days, but it is well for us to ponder the fact that the children of these little struggling settle¬ ments on the Atlantic coast received more religious in¬ struction than we are giving the children in our pros¬ perous land to-day. Towards the close of this period the secularization of education had begun and the separation of Church and State having been made complete under the Constitu¬ tion, the process of differentiation between secular educa¬ tion and religious education became the dominant charac¬ teristic of the next epoch. Epoch II. The secularization of education in America. 1787-1847. During this period the various states were engaged in taking over the educational task. This period saw the rise of the present public-school system of America. It was the age of Horace Mann, David P. Page, and. Thomas Barnard, the period during which these educators addressed themselves to the task of rearing an efficient educational system which would make an elementary education the heritage of every child in America. As the states took over the educational task, the Bible began to drop out of the curriculum of the schools. That process has gone on until the present day. We have now only scattered remnants of the once universal use 18 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION of the Bible in the schools. A few states still require the Bible to be read in the public schools. Other states permit it to be read, provided no comments are made on its contents. Still others forbid the reading of the Bible in public schools. As the Bible was discarded, religious instruction went with it, and to a certain extent moral in¬ struction likewise, for there can be no efficient moral instruction which does not reach down to the deep re¬ ligious capacities of the soul. This secularization of public-school education was in a measure necessary, because we are building in America a new type of democracy in which people of all religious faiths shall have equality and justice; but it may be questioned whether we have not overdone the matter. States which have declared the Bible to be a sectarian book and have excluded it from the libraries of the schools have certainly done so. As this process of secularization went on, there were people of vision who saw the danger. When the public- school system of New York State was being set up, pro¬ vision was made for the dismission of the children from the public schools for a certain period every week that they mijht be given religious instruction in the churches. The provision seems never to have been used. It was lost for many decades and has just come to light through the efforts of Church people in that state to secure public- school time for week-day religious instruction. Church leaders were slow to see the importance and the magnitude of the task which the secularization of education was thrusting upon them. Some churches fought the Sunday school stubbornly because they re¬ garded it as a dangerous innovation. It was a ringing challenge to the Protestant Church to take up its educa¬ tional task that marked the close of this period. The challenge was contained in a little pamphlet by Horace HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 19 Bushnell, which appeared in 1847. This pamphlet afterward grew into the book which we know as “ Christian Nurture.” Epoch III. The spread of the Sunday-school movement. 1847-1886. Sunday schools had been es¬ tablished in considerable numbers before the year 1847, but it was during the years immediately after that date that the greatest development of the Sunday-school movement took place. The goal of religious educational leaders of the period was to establish a Sunday school in every church in America. Local, county, and state associations came into existence. The International Sunday School Association was formed. The movement reached its climax in the organization of the World’s Sunday School Association in 1886. The leaders of the period did their work well. At the close of the epoch there were comparatively few churches which were without Sunday schools. At least one sect- in the South developed such a stubborn resistance to the Sunday-school movement that it is largely without religious educational agencies to the present day. It is a denomination that is doomed to disappear unless it repents speedily and takes steps looking toward an ade¬ quate program of religious education for its children and youth. There are churches in the denomination we have mentioned which have received no more than three new members in some thirty-five years. The effort to extend the Sunday-school movement did not come to an end in 1886. It is still going on. Hun¬ dreds of Sunday-school missionaries are at work planting new schools in the neglected sections of our country. The great task of putting Sunday schools into foreign countries has hardly more than begun. Nevertheless after 1886 the primary religious educational activity in America was of another kind. 20 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION The period which we have been considering saw the beginning of several important religious educational agencies which were outside of the Sunday school and largely outside of denominational control. In 1881 the first Christian Endeavor society was formed in Portland, Maine. There was such a need for expressional work in the religious educational program that the Christian Endeavor movement had a phenomenal growth. It soon spread to all the different parts of the Unites States and to many foreign lands. During the next two epochs into which we have divided the religious educational history of America, expressional organizations which like the Christian Endeavor movement are either inter¬ denominational or extradenominational multiplied rapidly. The problem of adjusting the various educational programs of these organizations to the educational program of the individual church is one of the large problems of our day and a problem with which this book is concerned. Epoch IV. A period of Sunday-school improve¬ ment. 1886-1901. When the task of putting a Sunday school into every church of America was approximately completed, leaders of religious education turned their efforts toward Sunday-school improvement. This is the period during which we first hear of graded lessons, departmental organization, organized classes, workers’ conferences, teacher-training, and other efforts to bring Sunday schools up to a high state of efficiency. Some of these efforts at improvement had been made here and there before this period began, but they had not taken hold of the life of the Church until the effort to spread the Sunday- school movement over America had approximately attained its goal. The dominant aim of the period was to make the Sunday school the efficient educational agency of the Church. It cannot be said that this goal has been even approximately attained. There is much HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 21 to do before the Sunday school becomes the efficient agency for the whole educational task of the Church. Indeed, most leaders of religious education have come to believe that it never can become such. Its limitations as to available time are too great. The habits of the American people are such that an adequate religious instruction for all the children of the land could hardly be secured in a school on Sunday, even if enough time were available. Hence many religious educators, while still emphasizing the need for Sunday-school improve¬ ment, have come to believe that Sunday-school instruc¬ tion must be supplemented by other religious educational agencies holding sessions on week days. The coming of this idea to the fore marks the beginning of the epoch of religious education in which we are now living. Epoch V. Attempts to supplement and unify the educational program. 1901 to the present. In 1901 the first daily vacation Bible school was formed in New York City. A few years later week-day church schools began to appear here and there in various cities of the nation. Community training schools for teachers of religion began to multiply. These undertakings were signs that a new era of religious education was beginning. They indicated that the idea of supplementing and strengthening the Sunday school was taking hold of the Church people of the country. The World War served to accelerate and strengthen the movement for a larger and more efficient program of religious education which was well under way when that conflict began. Nations were rudely awakened to the fundamental place of education in the life of any people. The inadequacy of any system of education which does not build the fife of individuals on a fundamentally religious basis was revealed. Extensive surveys among the soldiers, and after the war in various states of the 22 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION Union, made it plain that the educational efforts of Protestant churches had resulted in practical failure. Not half of the children of the country were being reached by the educational agencies of the Church, and of those enrolled in church schools less than half were brought into a lasting connection with the life and organization of any religious body. Our religious educational agencies were shown to be less than twenty-five per cent efficient. When we consider such facts as have been stated, it does not seem strange that the Church is addressing herself anew to her fundamental task of training child¬ hood and youth in religious ideas, religious attitudes, and religious activities. The only puzzling element in the situation is found in the fact that many churches have not yet become aware that anything is taking place, they are content with conditions as they are. To a certain extent, the movement for a larger and better program of religious education had its beginning outside of distinctly Church circles and the movement is still largely independent of official Church control and ecclesiastic propagation. It has come up out of the life of the people rather than out of any plans conceived and put into operation by denominational or interdenomina¬ tional religious educational agencies. Judges of juvenile courts have been appalled by the constantly increasing stream of youthful offenders brought before them. They have summoned both Church and State to find a remedy for the moral malady which is smiting American youth. They have said to Churchmen, “If you do not find a way to reach the children of America, and if you can find no methods for grounding them in religion and morality, the state must take over the task in the interests of self-preservation.” Business men have noted the clouds which are gathering on the horizons of our civilization and they have turned preacher prophets, warning us HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 23 that unless our economic and international relationships can be brought into harmony with the principles of Jesus, disasters are ahead. Settlement workers have grappled with the problems of our great cities, and more and more they have come to the conclusion that there is no solution of our problems except in a program of re¬ ligious education more extensive and efficient than any¬ thing we have ever known. The religious educational awakening of the past few years has manifested itself in many rapid changes in church programs of teaching. The daily vacation Bible school has been introduced into many communities. During a single year the number of cities and towns carrying on week-day church schools grew from fifty to more than two hundred, thus increasing the number of communities engaged in the enterprise by fourfold. New lesson courses are appearing. Colleges and theological seminaries are organizing departments of religious educa¬ tion. This somewhat rapid advance of the movement has produced new problems. The addition of supplementary educational agencies to the available force has intensified the problem of correlation. The big problem before religious educational leaders just now is not only the creation of supplemental agencies but also their proper adjustment to agencies already in the field. Some Lessons from the History of Religious Edu¬ cation in America This brief survey of the religious educational history of our country suggests some lessons of value to all who are interested in the religious nurture of children and youth. 1. 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We have not yet reached a satisfactory stop¬ ping point, but must go on until we secure a system of re¬ ligious education which will assure a true and efficient religious nurture for all the children and young people of the nation. 2. The secularization of public education in America threw upon the churches a task of such magnitude and of such inherent difficulty that the churches have not yet ad¬ justed themselves to the task so as to accomplish it effici¬ ently. The problem must occupy our attention until a satisfactory solution is found. 3. The elimination of religious instruction from the public schools made necessary a system of church schools in every way equal to the public schools in their efficiency as educational institutions and reaching the childhood of the nation as extensively as it is reached by the public schools. The churches have failed to a lamentable degree in both requirements. They have not organized schools comparable with the public schools in educational efficiency and they have not reached half as many children as the public schools have enrolled. 4. The elimination of religious instruction from the state-controlled schools which most of the children of America attend has put the states under obligation. They are in duty bound to cooperate with all religious bodies upon which the vastly important phases of educa¬ tion involved in religious nurture have been laid. They must not monopolize the child’s time and leave to the cooperating agencies in the educational task only the fatigue time and the recreation time of the children. 5. If states maintain an attitude of antagonism toward church schools they will defeat their own aims, for there can be no true education which neglects the culture of the religious instincts, neither is there safety for any state i 26 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION or any civilization built on an educational foundation from which religion has been eliminated. 6. We have found no way of giving adequate religious instruction in the public schools and it seems question¬ able whether this can be done without seriously disarrang¬ ing the fundamental principles on which our nation has been erected. 7. For the religious bodies of our land to create parochial schools sufficient to care for their children would entail an enormous expense and would destroy our public-school system. The public schools are the corner stone of our national structure, therefore, an extensive system of paro¬ chial schools is not the solution of our problem. 8. The solution of our problems evidently lies in a twofold school system; first of all, a public-school system giving to all the children of America that fundamental educational culture in mind and morals which makes a foundation for good citizenship; and, likewise, a church- school system reaching all the children of America with that religious nurture which is even more necessary for righteous living and neighborliness than anything the public schools under our system of government can teach. 9. The creation of a church-school system which shall be the peer of our splendid public-school system is the most important problem of our land to-day. Three hundred years of development and experimentation have led us to the place where we are face to face with this problem. We cannot longer delay an earnest effort to solve it. 10. Since religious instruction is an indispensable part of any right educational system and necessary to the maintenance of our system of government, all good citizens of the nation ought to be willing to support the church schools as generously as is necessary to put them on an equality with our public schools. CHAPTER II The Individual Church as an Educational Agency f CHAPTER II The Individual Church as an Educational Agency T HE preceding chapter led up to a general view of the religious educational situation in our country. It closed with a statement of an important task which occupies, or ought to occupy, first place in the thinking of our statesmen, as well as of our Churchmen. The erection of a system of religious schools which shall be in every way equal to our public schools in matters of efficiency, which shall reach all the children of the nation, and which shall banish spiritual illiteracy, at least as effectively as our public schools have banished intellectual illiteracy, is the problem evolved out of three hundred years of our history. The problem in its entirety extends far beyond the contemplated bounds of this volume. The subject matter of this book is to be confined to an attempted answer to the question, “Wlmt must the individual church do in order to discharge its share of responsibility for such a system?” As a first step toward an answer to this question, we ought to consider the probable place of the individual church in a religious educational system such as we have seen to be necessar3L A second step would be a survey of the present educational situation within the typical individual church. These two matters are to engage our attention in the present chapter. Place of the Individual Church in a National System of Religious Education What will be the place of the individual church in a nation-wide system of religious education which shall 29 30 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION effectively reach all the children of the land? This is a question which outstanding leaders of religious education in our country answer in widely different ways. Their answers are something more than mere expressions of per¬ sonal opinion, for they indicate the methods which these respective leaders are using, and will doubtless continue to use, as they strive toward the goal which is common to all. At least three types of answers have been given. 1. A community program independent of denom¬ inational and individual church control. There are those who hold that we shall arrive at a nation-wide and efficient program of religious education if we organize on the basis of communities and keep our organizations free from both denominational and individual church participation of any official kind. They insist that the system must rest on a basis that is, as we may say, extra- denominational and wholly independent of the individual churches. Those who advocate this plan admit that in religious matters we have no such uniformity of com¬ munity life and consciousness as is often the case with regard to other interests. They realize that in many places the community considered with regard to the religious preferences of its constituency, must needs be a threefold, or a fourfold entity. There will be a Protestant community, a Roman Catholic community, a Jewish community, and perhaps a community which is anti- religious and unwilling to align itself with any of the groups named. Hence the building of a religious educa¬ tional program on a community basis is an undertaking inherently difficult. What the advocates of this plan really have in mind is a Protestant community system of religious education, a Roman Catholic community sys¬ tem of religious education, and a Jewish community system of religious education cooperating so far as possible in the same locality. THE CHURCH AS AN EDUCATIONAL AGENCY 31 Apart from the inherent difficulties in the plan there are certain considerations which make it probable that the churches will not permit the religious educational task to be taken over by any community, or extrade- nominational body in such a way as to make such bodies the major agencies in religious education. It is ques¬ tionable whether they ought to allow such an event to occur. The Church is the divinely appointed agency for establishing the Kingdom of God on earth and religious education is the greatest instrument for accomplishing the task. Such activities as the giving of secular instruc¬ tion and the care of those who are sick were once carried on directly by the churches; now they have been taken over to a great extent by state or community agencies, so that in such activities the Church plays a minor part in so far as the actual carrying on of the work is concerned. The Church still supplies the underlying sentiments and attitudes without which both education and charity could not long maintain themselves, but the Church does not have so large a part in the direct control of such activities as it once had. Will the same thing happen in religious education? Will this activity of the Church pass into other hands so that the Church has only a minor part in it? Ought we to try to create a community system, or an extradenom- inational system, of religious education which cares for the spiritual nurture of children as the public schools care for their intellectual training or as the city hospital cares for them when they are sick or injured? We can only answer that most people who have thought deeply on the matter do not believe that the Church can thus shift its major task to other shoulders, and thus far efforts to put religious education on the suggested community basis have usually shown that this conservative view has the results of experience in its favor. 32 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION 2. An interdenominational program largely un¬ related to individual church activities. The rise of the daily vacation Bible school and the week-day church school has given an impetus toward interdenominational cooper¬ ation in religious educational enterprises. We sometimes hear it said that the major part of religious instruction con¬ cerning the fundamentals of the Christian faith ought to be given in these interdenominational schools, leaving the Sunday schools to teach those tenets which are peculiar to the denominations with which the different Sunday schools are connected. The need for interdenominational cooperation is great and any movement toward a close fellowship in labor among the different branches of our sadly divided Protes¬ tantism is encouraging. Certain phases of the educa¬ tional task can certainly be accomplished more economi¬ cally when denominations cooperate in the doing of the work than is the case where there is no such cooperation. But the educational task is not one that can be done efficiently by different agencies working without a unified plan. It is a question whether the week-day church school is capable of yielding its maximum benefit when it takes the form of an interdenominational system of schools in which the curriculum is largely a repetition of Sunday-school instruction and where there is no definite correlation worked out for the two sets of schools. The same is true to a less extent of the daily vacation Bible school. Such interdenominational schools are in danger of failing at an important point. They are apt to send the children forth at the end of the period of their schooling without their having become definitely attached to any Church. It seems certain that in a system of religious education which is to be nation wide and which is to bring adequate religious nurture to American childhood there will of THE CHURCH AS AN EDUCATIONAL AGENCY 33 necessity be a unified program so that all waste of over¬ lappings and all confusion arising from a lack of common goals among the contributing agencies of education will be eliminated. All educational agencies will be correlated. There will be a unified course of instruction, adequate training in worship, and suitable expressional activity so that the religious ideas which have been imparted in the instruction and emotionalized in the worship may be wrought into the activities of pupils, becoming a part of their life habits and the foundation of their characters. So long as these ends are attained it does not make much difference whether the major part of the task is performed by the individual churches working by themselves or by the churches working in cooperation. We must keep the spiritual good of the child before us as our goal and not turn aside to seek the good of either denominational or interdenominational agencies at the expense of our great objective. 3. A program in which the educational task has a central place in the activities of the individual church and in which churches cooperate in those phases of education which can be developed most efficiently by interchurch activities. Those who look forward to some such system as is suggested in the preceding phrase believe that an educational ministry to childhood is the most important task of the individual church. They believe that no adequate system of religious education for the nation can be devised until education is given its rightful place in the activities of the individual church. When churches have come to see that this is their major task; when they have learned to put up their buildings so that this task can be carried on without meeting almost insurmountable difficulties because build¬ ings are hopelessly unsuited for educational purposes; when they have learned to choose their pastors because 34 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION of their fitness to oversee an individual church program of education; when these and several other reforms are accomplished, we shall be getting forward toward the goal of an efficient system of religious education for the nation. We must begin with the individual churches. So long as they are content with a meager and palpably faulty system of education as a part of their own activity, how can we hope that they will set up an extensive and efficient system by working together? The goal for which we strive would, therefore, seem to be a national system of religious education in which each church gives the spiritual nurture of children a place in its activities commensurate with its importance, and in which there is interchurch and interdenominational co¬ operation in such parts of the religious educational task as can be assigned with profit to such cooperative effort. This task in which churches cooperate, however, will be a definite part of a unified program. This church program will itself be a part of a larger program of child nurture, in which the home and the public school have a part. Moreover, such profoundly educational influences as public amusements and the daily press will have to be brought into alignment with the church-home-public- school program, so that the teachings and the influence of these agencies may not be made void because of unfavor¬ able and evil elements in the child’s daily environment. The Present Situation Within the Individual Church Before he began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, Nehemiah spent a night riding over the ground where the walls had formerly stood and where he hoped to erect them once more. He was taking account of stock. He wished to understand all phases of the situation. A THE CHURCH AS AN EDUCATIONAL AGENCY 35 similar survey of the educational conditions within the individual church needs to be made before we begin to lay plans for a better system of religious education. We may be in danger of becoming discouraged as we discover that in the educational program of the individual church there is much rubbish. We need to remember that rubbish is often good material out of place, and that out of rubbish Nehemiah erected the walls of Jerusalem into beauty and strength. 1. A growing appreciation of the importance of religious education. It can hardly be doubted that people who care for religious matters and at the same time think logically about them are coming to appreciate the importance of religious education. They are coming to see that the educational agencies of the Church are the chief recruiting force for the Kingdom. They realize that the Church must teach or die; that although churches in times past were able to maintain a kind of intermittent feverish life by means of periodic revivals, that day is passing. They see that the major point of contact between a church and the community in which it is located is through the child life of the community and that the effective approach to child life is the educational approach. This awakening appreciation is seen in the type of new church buildings which are being erected; in the creation of new agencies for religious education and the efforts to improve those which have become customary; and in a growing demand for trained and paid workers and bound textbooks for pupils. A religious educational awakening is manifest in all but the most unprogressive of churches. This awakening to the importance of religious education is a very helpful element in the present situation. Without such an awakening all efforts to build a better program for the church must be largely in vain, but with such an awakening great things begin to seem possible. Having 3G A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION first of all glanced at this favorable element in the situa¬ tion, we shall with better courage examine some less pleasing aspects of the matter. Chart II THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND THEIR PRESENT POSITION IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHURCH ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Various Educational Agencies of the Individual Church and Their Respective Emphases on the Essential Elements of Religious Education. (Percentages based on studies in typical churches.) SUNDAY SCHOOL CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR BOY SCOUTS. GIRLSCOUTS WEEK-DAY CHURCH SCHOOL I. Information. (Chiefly Con¬ cerned with the Intellect.) Emphasis of about 90% Emphasis of about 10% Emphasis of about 25% Emphasis of about 75% II. WORSHIP (Chiefly Con¬ cerned with the Emotions.) Emphasis of about 6% Emphasis of about 15% Emphasis of about 2% Emphasis of about 10% Ill EXPRESSION (Chiefly Con¬ cerned with the Will.) Emphasis of about 4% Emphasis of about 75% Emphasis of about 73% Emphasis of about 15% The chart on this page has been prepared as a basis for our study of the present educational situation in the individual church. The percentages are the author’s own estimates, based on more or less intensive study in a con¬ siderable number of churches. They are offered as estimates only, and may or may not be the true averages for the churches of the country as a whole. A margin of error in the percentages set down will in no way affect the general purpose of our study. THE CHURCH AS AN EDUCATIONAL AGENCY 37 2. Three essential elements of religious education. It has come to be quite generally believed that an efficient program of religious education must make provision for the imparting of adequate information concerning re¬ ligious truth, for training in worship, and for a program of activities in which the truths taught are given expres¬ sion so as to become an inherent part of the pupil’s life and character. These elements of the educative process do not exist independently of one another. The process does not consist in giving a few items of information, then a cessation of the information-giving process to be followed by a stirring of religious emotion, and, when that phase is accomplished, the leading of the pupil into some form of activity which will give expression to what has been im¬ parted as information and then warmed up by a quickening of the emotions. The teaching process is by no means so mechanical as this conception of it would imply. The different stages blend into each other so as to make the teaching process a unity. Information has to do chiefly with the intellect, worship has to do chiefly with the emo¬ tions, and expression has to do chiefly with the will. We have come to understand, however, that the psychic activities of the human individual are not divided into air-tight compartments. Feeling enters into the process of knowledge-getting, and both the intellect and the emotions are present in acts of the will. There is grave danger, nevertheless, that some phases of the educative process will be overemphasized and others underemphasized so that the teaching process will fall short of its goal. If the efforts of the teacher of religion are centered almost exclusively upon the giving of infor¬ mation, the result is apt to be unsatisfactory. Mathe¬ matics can be taught, after a fashion, where the process is largely an imparting of information, because mathe¬ matics is a matter primarily of the intellect. Religion is 38 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION not primarily a matter of the intellect. If it is a true religion, it must include the deep emotions of the soul and it must find expression in the life of the individual. Rabbinic education is an outstanding example of the kind of religious instruction which centers its efforts in the imparting of information and leaves the other phases of the educative process to chance. The rabbis said that the model pupil was like a well-plastered cistern which does not allow one drop of water to leak out. So, in accordance with this idea, they taught their pupils to memorize by rote long sections of the Mosaic Law and of the interpretations of the rabbis. This kind of religious education produced Phariseeism and the spirit which said, “This multitude that knoweth not the law are accursed. 7 ’ It will not do to leave out instruction and center our efforts on the development of the religious emotions. Such a process leads to religious emotionalism. Its effects are seen in sects like that which has been called “Holy Rollers.” People of the “Holy Roller” type are produced through an imperfect religious education which develops the religious emotions without a proper informational background and without providing suitable avenues whereby emotion can express itself in orderly worship and types of brotherly service. Expression has been the phase of religious education most neglected in our church program. Our teaching has been too much on the abstract information basis, with just a little attempt to train the pupil in the spirit and forms of worship, and the whole matter of religious ex¬ pression left to take care of itself. We need as religious teachers to learn the meaning of that motto which has become familiar to all public-school teachers, “There is no impression without expression.” We must have a program of expression coextensive with our program of information and a part of the same orderly plan. THE CHURCH AS AN EDUCATIONAL AGENCY 39 We must not set up any one phase of the educative process as the all-important element. Any phase divorced from the others is practically worthless. Just now there is danger in certain schools of religious educational thought with regard to expression. We are told that nothing else counts. Information-giving is discredited and treated as though it had no definite place in the program. We must avoid this opposite swing of the pendulum, for an exclusive emphasis on expression will be quite as mischievous as an exclusive emphasis on in¬ formation or on the development of the religious emo¬ tions. If we pick out any one phrase of the process and laud its importance and vehemently deny the place of all else, we shall be like the blind men who went to see the elephant; we shall be demonstrating that we have really touched this great problem at only one point and that the problem itself is altogether too large for us. 3. The religious educative process illustrated. One morning at the opening service in a certain Sunday school a missionary from Porto Rico was present. This missionary was deeply interested in his work and he had passed through some thrilling experiences. He knew how to present his subject effectively and the pupils seemed deeply impressed by what they had heard. After the classes had gone to their places, a certain young lad, some fifteen years of age, arose in his place and thus addressed the president of the class; “Mr. President, I know more about Porto Rico now than I have ever known before. I feel that our class ought to do something to help the missionaries who are carrying on the work in that island. I, therefore, move, Mr. President, that we undertake to raise ten dollars for the support of missions in Porto Rico.” Unconsciously this boy had expressed the three phases of the religious educative process. “I know; I feel; I move”; these are the phases through 40 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION which religious truth is apprehended and wrought out into life and character. If that lad had gone no further than the gaining of a few items of information concerning Porto Rico, it would have done neither him nor anybody else much good. If he had stopped with an awakened interest and a feeling of sympathy and there had been no action on his part, the process would have been in¬ complete and probably barren of any real value. But he gained new ideas and these ideas emotionalized by sympathy with those in need, became ideals. These ideals when given expression found a place in his person¬ ality and helped to build in his life a Christian character. It is well to note that the religious educative process does not always take the exact course indicated in this illustration. The carrying out of a program of expression in itself results in a sense of need for further information, and the educative process will often have its real begin¬ ning there. It is not the point of departure that counts, but the point of arrival, namely, the development of Christian character; and that is possible only when the educative process is complete and has increased religious knowledge, stirred religious emotion, and built a religious life through expressional activity. 4. Some dangerous omissions. A glance at the chart on page 36 will indicate some serious omissions in the educational program of the Church. The Sunday- school program is sadly overbalanced on the side of in¬ formation. This fault may be corrected to a certain extent by the greater emphasis on worship and expression given in some of the other organizations for young people within the church. We must remember, however, that approximately seventy-five per cent of the children and young people for whose education the church is respon¬ sible attend only the Sunday school. Three fourths of the pupils of the church school are therefore getting a THE CHURCH AS AN EDUCATIONAL AGENCY 41 type of religious education which lacks pedagogical com¬ pleteness and must of necessity be ineffective. Experience shows that the children and young people who drop out of Sunday school and never become permanently attached v to the Church are for the most part those children and young people who have never had any other point of / contact with the Church than that of being members of the Sunday school for a time. Children and young people who not only attend the Sunday school, but who are also identified with other organizations like the Chris¬ tian Endeavor societies are usually brought into church membership and become the working and supporting force of the church as they develop into maturity. The difference is due to two causes. The second group of children and young people are held and the first group lost because the church has had a greater hold on the second group than it has had on the other; the first group has been tied by one point of contact, the second by at least two. A cause more fundamental is to be sought in the fact that the children and young people who have gone away have been given an imperfect type of religious education which because of its deficiencies did not lay hold upon their lives and bring them to a full religious development. 5. A program lacking in unity. Even if all the young people and children of any church were brought into all the organizations named in the chart, one grave defect would remain. There would be no unity in the program and it would be still liable to failure in a dis¬ tressingly high percentage of cases, because of this funda¬ mental defect. Such a church would have not one pro¬ gram of religious education, but four or more carried on under different organizations, which are accustomed to act quite independently of one another. All of these organizations would be emphasizing information, worship, and expression in varying degrees, but the throwing of 42 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION them all together would not create a unified and well proportioned program. Their work must be correlated into a unity, in order that overlappings and omissions be eliminated and each phase of the educative process be given its proper emphasis. There must be an orderly curriculum for the whole program of the Church and the different educational agencies must take their places in this curriculum. The information given in one organiza¬ tion must supplement that given in the others and it must be a part of the whole program of information. There must be common goals toward which all the organi¬ zations are striving. The worship periods must be related to the informational material and not based on a meager and unrelated body of information put in as a prelude to the period of worship. Expressional activi¬ ties must be related to the informational and worship phases of the program and not based on such meager and unrelated informational matter as can be put into the expressional meeting. 6. A meager program. When a thinking person really senses the importance of the educational task of the Church, there is an immediate consciousness of the meagerness of the program which the Church has provided for this great task. The time provided is meager. The available teaching force is meager. The provisions for train¬ ing teachers are meager. Provisions for housing and equip¬ ping the church school are meager. The money which the church puts into the work is meager at best; some¬ times it is nothing at all. So we may as well say that if the individual church is to take its rightful place in a system of religious education which shall bring efficient religious nurture to all the children of the land, it must have not only a unified and pedagogically complete program, but a program in which there is a larger provision for all the things which make for efficiency. THE CHURCH AS AN EDUCATIONAL AGENCY 43 7. What might be accomplished under an ade¬ quate program. When we consider that even under present conditions the Sunday school is the greatest recruiting agency of the Church, greater perhaps than all other agencies of the Church put together, revival serv¬ ices not excepted, we get a glimpse of what religious education might accomplish for the establishment of God’s Kingdom in the world if only it were given a fair chance. If a unified, pedagogically complete program, efficiently carried out by trained and consecrated teachers who could give their best efforts to the work, were put on in all the churches of the land, and this program were brought to all the children of our nation, we must believe that spiritual illiteracy would be banished quite as effec¬ tively as intellectual illiteracy has been banished. It has been demonstrated that practically all the children of any community can be reached with religious instruction when suitable time for the giving of such instruction is secured, an interesting c our se of study provided, and real teachers given a chance to show what can be done. ■ CHAPTER III The New Program Which Is Coming into View ' CHAPTER III The New Program Which Is Coming into View A growing appreciation of the importance of religious education has resulted in a growing discontent with the customary agencies which the individual church pro¬ vides for the accomplishment of its educational task. Progressive churches have set about the reorganization of their educational systems. Denominations are more and more seeking an educational leadership which shall not confine its efforts mainly to supplying the individual churches with such programs, lesson materials, and educational guidance as is so insistently demanded the churches that the appeal can hardly be denied. They are seeking a leadership which shall go ahead, keeping fellowship with the most progressive churches of the denomination, though their number be a bare half dozen or so, and which leads the way beyond any present pro¬ gram of any church. Denominations have come to see that their educational boards and agencies are not func¬ tioning as they should unless they are blazing new trails which give promise of larger and better things in the field of religious education. Leaders of secular education have come, in increasing- numbers, over into the religious educational field. They have seen that here lies a great undeveloped area of the educational task. They have come to realize that there is something radically wrong with the educational system of America; that so long as we neglect the culture of the religious faculties, there can be no sure basis for the culture of a high type and a lasting quality of the moral life. These people who have been trained for the educa- 47 48 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION tional task of the public schools have a contribution of great importance for the educational work of the Church. They insist on new standards and new methods and such an insistence is sorely needed. Sometimes these public- school people forget that religious education is not the same as secular education. Thoroughly grounded in the principles of modern psychology and pedagogical science, they seek to apply their technical knowledge and trained skill to their new problems in the field of religious educa¬ tion in the same way as they applied their knowledge and skill in the field of secular education. It is only gradually that they learn that there is a difference between religious education and secular education, a difference which is funda¬ mental and far-reaching, which demands in the efficient religious educator a knowledge of theology as well as a knowledge of psychology, which demands skill in training the religious emotions as well as the ability to give guidance in the process of knowledge-getting, and which demands a thorough knowledge of the Bible as the central element in the religious educational curriculum. Some of these public-school people are proving immensely valuable to the cause of religious education. Others are of less value than they might be if they would only concede that those who have been long in the religious educational task may possibly know a thing or two about this work. All would be well if the public-school people would only consent to play, to a little extent, the part of learners as well as the part of teachers. Communities have awakened to a new sense of respon¬ sibility for the religious nurture of the young, and com¬ munity efforts have not infrequently been made for the training of religious teachers and even for the carrying on of schools in which the children are to receive religious instruction. Thoughtful pastors/ in larger and larger numbers, have THE NEW PROGRAM COMING INTO VIEW 49 come to wonder whether the program of the Church could not be modified so as to make it more educational; whether there ought not to be a larger attention to the needs of the junior members of the congregation. They have come to feel that their greatest goal ought to be a ministry suited to the developing minds of children and young people rather than a ministry so evidently intended for people of adult mind and mature experience. Statesmen such as President Harding and business men such as Roger W. Babson have seen deeply into American life and have understood that the fundamental need of our nation is a need for a thorough and universal religious nurture for American childhood. They have issued clear calls to the churches to take up this great task with renewed effort and with reorganized programs which will give promise of more satisfactory results than can be shown at present. It will be seen that the sources of the religious educa¬ tional revival are widespread. The demand for a better system of religious education in America has its roots in many different organizations and many different classes of citizens. Individual churches, organizations like the Kiwanis Clubs, denominational boards and agencies having responsibility for education, pastors of churches, public-school educators, statesmen, business men—these individuals and these organizations, together with many others, have helped to create the widely felt need for a program of education larger and more efficient than we have now or ever have had. There have been not only calls here and there for a larger and better program of religious education, but also many and repeated efforts to solve the problems involved in setting up such a program. Here a church has been im¬ pressed with the inefficiency of its Sunday school and has struck out in a new manner, making some progress toward A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION 50 . the solution of its problems. There a community has awakened to the fact that not half of its children were receiving religious instruction and has organized agencies for wiping out this disgrace. Some communities have been so successful in such efforts that the children have been gathered into religious schools one hundred per cent strong. Here a pastor has come to believe that his church owed its sickness to a lack of religion in the homes of the congregation. He has addressed himself to the task of introducing, or reintroducing, religion into the homes of his people. He has helped parents to erect family altars and has shown them their responsibility for the spiritual nurture of their offspring. Through his efforts and the efforts of his helpers the whole life of the community has been transformed. One church has seen that its educational program is lacking in unity and has organized a correlated school. Another has found an efficient way to train its teaching force. One has learned that the young people can be reached and held by making the church minister to the social and recreational life of young people. Another has tried out a combination service to take the place of the Sunday school and the morning preaching service and finds that the new plan is more efficient than the old. It is out of this widespread interest in religious educa¬ tion, out of the multiplied demands for a better program coming from many sources, and out of such experimenta¬ tion as has been mentioned in the preceding paragraph, that the new program of religious education is beginning to appear. Is it possible that a unified and efficient program of religious education for America can emerge out of such divergent and apparently chaotic sources? Can we predict thus early in the movement anything with regard to what that program is to be? A study of the situation will enable us to answer both these questions THE NEW PROGRAM COMING INTO VIEW 51 in the affirmative with some degree of confidence. Con¬ ditions are not so chaotic as they seem to be on the sur¬ face. There are certain underlying thoughts and funda¬ mental principles which are common to most of the plans proposed and to most of the efforts put forth for the solving of the problem which is before us. A brief outline of the new educational program in so far as it is to be a task of the individual church and as it seems to be forecast in the primary religious educational movements of the times is the remaining task of this chapter. Most of the items here considered will be taken up for fuller and separate treatment in succeeding chapters. 1. The new program will be properly organized. Good organization is fundamentally important in the educational program of the individual church, because it makes the attainment of efficiency less difficult. A poorly organized program tends to waste the efforts of teachers and supervisors. Churches have been ex¬ perimenting for some years with different forms of organi¬ zation. We have heard much of departments and divi¬ sions and organized classes. There has been a fairly continuous evolution leading up from the one-room Sunday school to the organized school of the church which lays out in one comprehensive scheme the whole educational task of the church. By noting the stages of this evolu¬ tion and the direction of its trend, we ought to be able to predict with some certainty the outstanding phases of the church-school organization which will be regarded as standard in the days when the new program comes into actual existence. An attempt to do this will be made in the next chapter. 2. The new program will be efficiently adminis¬ tered. One grave defect which has been until recently almost universal in the educational program of the in¬ dividual church is seen in the loose relationship which .52 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION has existed between the church and its educational agencies. The Sunday school has been in a state of semi-independence, or worse. The official board of the church has been theoretically responsible for the conduct of the Sunday school and the other educational agencies of the church, but its relations to these organizations has been of the most nebulous character. The official board has not functioned as an administrative agency having the oversight of educational activity in the church. The educational agencies of the church have thus been left without any real supervision. An educational system lacking supervision can have no uniform efficiency. All will depend upon individual teachers and upon the kind of leaders the other educational agencies happen to find. A Sunday school with a superintendent who does not supervise instruction can have no high and uniform efficiency. A good many churches are coming to under¬ stand this educational principle and to realize that real supervision is far more essential in the church school than it is in the public school. Public-school teachers are trained for their work and ought to be able to “go it alone” better than church-school teachers who have had meager training or none at all, yet it is thought necessary to have an extensive and efficient corps of supervisors in the public schools while we are just beginning to realize that something of the kind is needed for church schools. 3. The new program will have a _ curriculum which is adequate in its extent and suitable in its subject matter. The time is past when we can answer the curriculum problem with the short and simple admoni¬ tion, “Teach the Bible.” If the Bible is to be reallv taught, its subject matter must be built into a series of graded lessons. Its wonderful truths are best taught when they are not only seen in the Bible setting, but also illustrated by the richly educative material to be THE NEW PROGRAM COMING INTO VIEW 53 found in literature, art and history. We are coming to understand that Bible truths are never really taught at all until they awaken the proper emotional response in the heart of the pupil and are then given expression in the pupil’s life and character. Hence we must regard the culture of the religious emotions and a program of re¬ ligious activities as essential elements in a curriculum which has the Bible as its center. What about missions, stewardship, temperance, the great hymns of the Church, and other such matters? A discussion of these elements of the curriculum would take us beyond the necessary limits of this paragraph and must be taken up at another time. 4. In the new program the Sunday school will be a part of a unified plan which includes all the edu¬ cational agencies of the individual church. There can be no educational efficiency where there is no unified plan of cooperation between the different agencies having to do with the educational task. The new program will secure efficiency; therefore, it will be unified. Sunday school, Christian Endeavor, missionary society, and week-day church school will be no longer independent agencies. They will be component parts of a unified program, sessions of a church school and phases of its activity. They will be under one administrative and supervisory agency. They will have to do with a curric¬ ulum which is common to all and for a portion of which each is responsible. Such an absorption of the Sunday school into a new and efficient educational program of the individual church is not to destroy it, but to enable it to fulfill its destiny. The same truth applies to the other educational agencies of the Church. 5. Week-day religious instruction will have a place in the new program. In most communities the time available for religious education is hopelessly 54 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION inadequate. Adequate time is absolutely fundamental in religious education. There can be no substitute for it. There can be no great advance or improvement until more adequate time is secured. There is no cure for this inadequacy apart from the securing of week-day time for the task. The best week-day time is public-school time and religious education has a right to the best. Public- school people who have spiritual vision are already gladly granting public-school time for religious education to be given under the care of the churches. Public- school boards which lack this vision are behind their times. They are lacking in a sense of spiritual values; they ought to change their views or lay down all respon¬ sibility for any institution which has to do with child¬ hood and youth. 6. Vacation time will be utilized in the new program. The vacation Bible school has shown that children enjoy a school for religious instruction conducted during the summer vacation season, if the school is properly organized and an efficient teaching force is secured. The vacation school has a peculiar advantage in that its sessions can be of considerable length and can come on consecutive days. Certain types of work which are very hard to do under the usual Sunday-school or week-day-church-school plan, can be accomplished easily under the more generous arrangements of the vacation Bible school. It should be remembered that a vacation Bible school of standard length doubles the time usually available for religious instruction. It seems certain that this new agency has come to stay and that it will find a large and important place in the program of education which is being evolved. 7. Bxpressional activities will have a large place in the new program. There is no real religious teach¬ ing which does not result in modified conduct. To give THE NEW PROGRAM COMING INTO VIEW 55 religious instruction, trusting that in some way the truths imparted will work themselves out into habits and charac¬ ter, will not do as a working basis for religious education. There must be a program of expressional activities co¬ extensive with the informational program and growing out of it. The expressional part of the educational pro¬ gram must not be a kind of elective which few of the church-school pupils elect. It must be a part of the regular educational program and all the church-school pupils must be brought into it, if there is to be a true type of religious nurture for all. In the new program Christian Endeavor societies and other like expressional organizations will find their rightful place in a unified program of religious education for the individual church. A change of name would not seem to be necessary; neither will there need to be any very extensive changes in pro¬ gram. The study topics will have to be related in some orderly way to the whole curriculum material of the church school. This will leave the expressional agencies free for their part of the task, and they will be able to do it better if they are relieved from certain phases of the educative process because of the taking over of these phases by other educational agencies with which they are in cooperation. Such an absorption of the expressional agencies into a unified program would be a fulfillment of their destiny, enabling them to accomplish the great ends which their founders had in view, for they all came into being because earnest friends of the Christian religion sought to bring young people into closer relationships with individual churches. The interdenominational activities of such organizations ought to be preserved, for there is need for just such a contact of church-school pupils of different churches and different denominations as has been brought about by the Christian Endeavor unions and similar organizations. 56 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION 8. The new program of education in the individual church will encourage a program of religious edu¬ cation in the home, will help to create such a pro¬ gram, and will be in close cooperation with it. The attempt to rear altars in the church and in the nation will be futile if there are no altars in the homes. The home was intended to be the primary educational agency, and God’s laws cannot be changed. The home will continue to be the foremost educational influence in the life of the child for either good or evil. The new educational program of the church will recognize this fact and will contain within itself instruments for helping the home influences to be good and not bad. 9. The new educational program of the individual church will work in harmony and cooperation with all needful denominational and interdenomina¬ tional educational agencies. Independent and com¬ peting efforts at religious education, however good the intentions of their promoters, are apt to be bad for the child. Long-distance thrusts at the boy by competing agencies must give place to a system of education in which the boy’s home and the boy’s church have first say in his religious nurture and are competent to give him the things most necessary for his spiritual growth. Agencies denominational, interdenominational, and extradenomina- tional, of the community or hundreds of miles away, will work through the individual church, in harmony with its plans, and as a supplement to its programs. 10. The new educational program of the churches will be closely correlated with the program of the public schools. The child is a unity and the closer the correlation which exists between the educational agencies which have to do with the child’s development, the more effectively will the different agencies perform their task. There are good reasons why the pupils of a high-school THE NEW PROGRAM COMING INTO VIEW 57 class who are studying Roman history in the public school should study the beginnings of the Christian Church and its progress within the Roman Empire. Such an arrange¬ ment is economical of the pupils’ efforts and of teachers’ labors. A course in Church history covering the first five centuries of the Christian era can be taught in this way with about half the effort that would be required were it taught independently of a course in the general history of Rome. Each course serves as a complement to the other. Things which belong together in history are studied at the same time and associated together. A true conception of events and their significance is gained. What is true of the high-school grades is equally true of all grades. Little Primary tots who are getting their first lessons in flowers and bees and birds in the public- school classes ought to have this public-school instruc¬ tion supplemented by something which the public schools in our country cannot give. In their church school they should be studying the same things, but with this differ¬ ence; the church-school teacher leads the child to know and love the Creator God, who made the flowers and birds, and to know the Child-Friend Saviour, who loves and cares for all the Father has made. 11. The new educational program of the churches will lay restraining hands on all that mars child life and makes void the efforts which are put forth for the religious nurture of children. Moving-picture shows where people of base character depict killings, suicides, and other such dime-novel trash before audiences of children will have to go. Child labor in dingy mills and blackened coal breakers will not be tolerated. Slum and dive and bootleg den will be hounded out of existence when humanity awakes to the importance of safeguard¬ ing child life from educational influences that are degrad¬ ing. The “funny page” of the daily paper will be full 58 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION of humor, but not low or vicious, as is now so often the case. 12. The new educational program will produce results. The new educational program of the church will furnish adequate and efficient religious education. It will teach the Bible effectively and GocPs Word will not return unto him void but will accomplish that which he pleases and it shall prosper in the thing whereto he has sent it. Approximately all the children of the land will be brought under religious instruction. They have been thus enrolled in the religious schools of other nations; why not in ours? They have been so enrolled in some American communities; why not in all? The children and youth of the land will be brought into the Christian Church and the Christian life. There is no doubt about it. They have been wonderfully responsive when our educational efforts have been meager, intermittent, and sometimes half-hearted; is there any reason to believe that a harvest correspondingly great will not be reaped when we show ourselves workmen who need not be ashamed? CHAPTER IV New Standards Needed , - Ill . CHAPTER IV New Standards Needed D URING the past ten years, public-school educators have undertaken to erect definite standards for practically every phase of their work. Public-school education is rapidly passing out of the period of standards and measurements based on personal opinion into a period of standards and measurements based on wide experimentation and scientific investigation. Something of the same kind is taking place in religious education. Churches are coming to see that there is value in erecting standards based not upon the experience of a few individ¬ uals of not very wide experience but upon the collected and compared experiences of thousands of individuals, many of whom have had wide experience in church-school teaching and who have made religious education a subject of life¬ long study. They are coming to realize that Deacon Boggs may not know all that ought to be known about religious education, even though he has been Sunday- school superintendent for thirty years. The educational work of practically every church has suffered because suitable standards have not been erected. A church school without suitable standards fails to have goals that are definite. It has no adequate means of measuring its progress. Not possessing any definite ideas as to where it is going, it does not know whether it is getting along well or poorly. Certain educational agencies of the individual church usually have standards of their own, but there is an almost total lack of standards for the whole educational task of the individual church. Each organization has set up its standards without taking 61 62 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION into consideration the work done by other organizations of the church. Since no educational agency of the church can carry on its work efficiently without cooperating with the other educational agencies of the church, it follows that these standards are defective at least in one important matter. Every standard for an educational agency ought to have some such item as, “Correlation with Other Educational Agencies of the Church.” Most of the standards set up for individual educational agencies are defective in other respects than that men¬ tioned in the preceding paragraph, because no suitable standard for any one agency can be erected unless the whole educational aim is kept in view. We need, there¬ fore, a standard for the whole educational program, that is, for the Church school as a whole; and we need stand¬ ards for the different organizations which make up the church school for the Sunday school, the week-day classes, and the expressional meetings. Items which have to do with the whole educational program should be contained in the church-school standards. Items which have to do with individual organizations of the church school should be included in the standards for such organizations. For example, the item “Adminis¬ tration and Supervision,” since it refers to matters belonging to the church school as a whole, should be included in the church-school standard. Such an item as “Taking Part in the Expressional Meetings” belongs peculiarly to the expressional organization and should appear in its standards. It will not be necessary to analyze the standards set up for all the educational organizations of the individual church. A consideration of the standards adopted for the Sunday school will be sufficient to illustrate certain changes which are needed in all, if the educational work of the church is to be unified and brought into a state of NEW STANDARDS NEEDED 63 efficiency at all comparable with the work of our public schools. A Ten-Point Sunday-School Standard The following ten-point standard is in use among the Sunday schools of more than thirty denominations: 1. Cradle Roll and Home Department. 2. Organized Bible Classes in Young People’s and Adult Divisions. 3. Teacher-Training. 4. Graded Organization and Instruction. 5. Missionary Instruction and Offering. 6. Temperance Instruction. 7. Definite Decision for Christ Urged. 8. Workers’ Conferences Regularly Held. 9. Full Denominational Requirements. (Special Days, Denominational Lesson Materials, et cetera.) 10. Full Sunday School Association Requirements. (Reports, Offering, et cetera.) A Sunday school which can establish a claim to each of the above items is given the title, “Standard Sunday School.” It is, therefore, looked upon as having attained the goal set up for it by the denomination to which it belongs. There may be danger in setting our goals too high, but there is also danger in setting them too low. The educational leaders of the various denominations have evidently erred in the latter respect rather than in the former. The great defect of this standard lies in the fact that it is constructed without regard to the educa¬ tional agencies of the individual church which are outside of the Sunday school, but with which the Sunday school must cooperate if the work of religious education is to be accomplished in an efficient manner. We may leave this point for the present, however, and inquire as to whether the standard is satisfactory in other respects. Does it 64 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION contain all, or approximately all, of the goals for which the Sunday school ought to strive? Is it well constructed with due proportion and logical arrangement of items? 1. A standard which is not well-constructed. A little study of the standard will indicate that the foregoing questions must be answered in the negative. The standard is not well-constructed. Its form suggests that it has grown by consecutive additions to it, as one phase or another of Sunday-school work became prominent enough to claim recognition on the standard. It seems to be a loosely constructed list of things thought necessary for a Sunday school rather than an orderly arrangement of the items which are of greatest importance in the educational program which the church is seeking to carry on through the Sunday school. Some of the items overlap each other. The Cradle Roll and the Home Department are parts of the general organization scheme of graded departments. Why give them separate mention and count them as possessing together a value equal to one tenth of the whole program? Missionary instruction and tem¬ perance instruction have to do with the curriculum. Why mention them separately and give them an im¬ portance which is equal to one fifth of the whole educa¬ tional program? Why not have an adequate curriculum as one of the required items of the standard and include in the curriculum all subject matter which ought to have a place in the educational program of the church? The matter of organization is scattered through several items. Why not make organization a single item of the standard and gather under it all forms of organization deemed desirable, such as organized departments, organized classes, and organized teaching force? 2. Certain serious omissions. It seems certain that a number of items which are essential for an efficient Sunday school are omitted entirely from the standard. NEW STANDARDS NEEDED 65 It has nothing to say regarding enrollment. The Sunday school is the agency of the church for bringing religious education to all the children of the church’s constituency. Ought a Sunday school to be considered standard if it is not fifty per cent efficient in this fundamental phase of its task? If a church is responsible for the religious nurture of one thousand children and has not enrolled more than four hundred children in its Sunday school, ought that church to be credited with having a standard educational agency for the accomplishment of this im¬ portant task? The standard says nothing about attendance. As a matter of fact, Sunday-school pupils attend, about half the time. Under the present arrangements a Sunday school could fall to this deplorable state and even lower and still be counted as a standard school. Every public- school teacher knows that if a pupil habitually misses one day from each week of school, that pupil receives only about half of the value of instruction which is being given. Public schools are therefore very particular about attendance. No school showing a low percentage of attend¬ ance could possibly be considered standard in any state of our nation. And yet the matter of attendance is more important in the church school than it is in the public school. Church-school recitation periods are far apart at best, and when the distance separating the recitation periods is doubled because of the absence of the pupil, any real educational work becomes impossible. Frequent absences on the part of pupils cause Sunday-school teaching to become the imparting of isolated and unre¬ lated items of information, which is not really teaching at all. The standard has nothing to say about punctuality and good order and manifest interest on the part of pupils. All these are important items in public-school standards, 66 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION and if they are wanting in the church school, the work accomplished will not be large, nor will it be permanent. Religious truths must be taught in harmony with the requirements of pedagogy, if they are to be taught with efficiency. The standard we are considering has nothing to say with regard to actual accomplishments. In public- school standards this is one of the most important items. The school must not only have the kind of organization and the kind of teaching which make successful education reasonably to be expected, but it must also be able to show the actual results. Pupils must pass examinations on the subjects taught. They must show that they have not merely memorized certain facts, but that they have also gained skill in using the knowledge gained, that they have grown in the power to think and to do. Is it wise to credit a church with having a standard school when we do not know anything about what the school is accomplish¬ ing? Ought we not to insist on tests which would reveal whether or not religious information is being imparted at all, and whether such information is being given in such a way as to make it effective in the character and conduct of the pupils? 3. Outside interests which confuse the aim. It would seem that a Sunday-school standard ought to be constructed with the one aim of providing adequate and efficient religious instruction for the children of the church and other pupils for whose spiritual welfare the church is responsible. Every item of the standard can rightly be subjected to this test. The spiritual good of the pupils, rather than the interests of the denomination or of some interdenominational organization, must be the matter for first consideration. If an offering to a Sunday-school association is of enough importance as an item in the education of church-school pupils to entitle it to a place NEW STANDARDS NEEDED 67 on the standard, it should be there. It should not be placed on the standard because it is to the interest of the Sunday-school association to have it there. If missionary instruction is of sufficient educational impor¬ tance to entitle it to one tenth of the standard’s estima¬ tion of values, it should have a corresponding recognition in the standard. It should not be given this rating in order to promote some missionary organization. If a certain type of denominational literature has religious educational value over any other kind of literature suffi¬ cient to give the use of the denominational literature ten points of value in a hundred-point standard, it should be given such a rating. It should not be given this recogni¬ tion in the interests of denominational publishing houses. Suggestions Concerning an Educational Standard for a Church School Which Carries on a Unified Program The existing Sunday-school standards have been criti¬ cized in the preceding paragraphs of this chapter. Before attempting to rebuild a standard for the Sunday school, it would be well to consider what standards ought to be set for the church school as a whole. The following items are selected because they seem to be fundamentally im¬ portant and because an adequate care for them has enabled many churches to put their educational work on a basis of efficiency heretofore almost unknown in religious education. The ten items are first listed, then each is given a brief description. Succeeding chapters of this book will deal with the several items more at length. 1. Organization. 2. Administration and Supervision. 3. Curriculum. 4. Teaching Force. 68 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION 5. Physical Conditions Necessary for Successful Teach¬ ing. 6. Relations Between the Church School and Its Con¬ stituency. 7. The Central Program of Information, Worship, and Expression. 8. The Program of Cooperation with the Home. 9. Relations with Other Denominational and Inter¬ denominational Agencies. 10. Definite Results. Under these ten items will be grouped the elements of a unified program of religious education for the individual church. Churches are finding the elements listed necessary for doing their educational task in the best way. The items are, of course, not all of equal importance, but the ten points will give us a working outline through which we may hope to make some progress toward the setting up of a more detailed standard. 1. Organization. This item includes all matters pertaining to the arrangement of departments, the organ¬ ization of classes, teachers’ associations, et cetera. It should be kept in mind that the plans for organization run through the whole educational program of the church. The departments are the same for Sunday school, ex- pressional organization, week-day church school, mission¬ ary society, and every such agency. Certain pupils make up a church-school department, and these groupings are the foundation for all educational and social and recreational agencies of the church. 2. Administration and supervision. This item has to do with the governing body which the church sets up for carrying on its program of education. It is concerned, too, with the supervisory organization which this govern¬ ing body creates as its executive agency for carrying out the plans it formulates. It would include such matters, NEW STANDARDS NEEDED 69 therefore, as the Church Council of Religious Education and its various committees, the Director of Religious Education and the system of superintendents through which the Director carries on his work. 3. Curriculum. The term curriculum includes not only the lesson materials which the church school uses, but also all the activities which the church school carries on as a part of its educational program. This item of the standard should determine what subject matter is to go into the lessons taught, how it is to be arranged, how the essential elements of the teaching process are to be secured, and how lesson materials are to be made avail¬ able for the use of teachers and pupils. 4. Teaching force. Under this item the church should set up its statement as to the necessary qualifica¬ tions of its teachers. The item should also include a statement of the agencies which the church employs for improving its teaching force and for recruiting workers, in this field of service. 5. Physical conditions necessary for successful teaching. What ought the church to provide in the way of housing and equipment for the church school? This item of the standard ought to answer the preceding question. It might well contain also some statement concerning the general financial support the church ought to give the church school. 6. Relations between the church school and its constituency. This item would deal with such funda¬ mentally important matters as the church-school enroll¬ ment, the average attendance of teachers and pupils, punctuality, orderly conduct on the part of pupils, interest of the pupils in the work of the church school, and general attitude of pupils toward the school and the church. 7. The central program of information, worship, and expression. The central program of a church 70 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION school consists in its work of instruction, training in worship, and expressional activities carried on with the pupils of the Sunday school, week-day church school, vacation Bible school, and expressional organizations. This item would set up standards concerning the co¬ operation of the agencies named and their provisions for carrying out their respective parts of this central educa¬ tional program of the church school. 8. The program of cooperation with the home. Besides its central program of information, worship, and expression, the efficient church school will carry on at least two other programs of great importance. It will be engaged in the preparation of teachers for its educational work and it will be carrying on a program of cooperation with the homes of its constituency in which the whole educational environment of the child is so molded as to make the development of religious character assured. The teacher-training program has already been mentioned as coming under the general item in which the teaching force of the church school is standardized. The elements of a successful program of cooperation between the church school and the home would be stated under the present item. Here would be listed matters pertaining to the Home Department, the Cradle Roll, parents’ classes, and parent-teacher associations. 9. Relations with other denominational and in¬ terdenominational agencies. It is generally conceded that the individual church school should cooperate with its own denomination and with interdenominational educational agencies. The religious educational problem can hardly be solved without some such cooperation. It is the task of this item, therefore, to state what relations should exist between the individual church school and all other religious educational agencies. 10. Definite results. What educational and spiritual NEW STANDARDS NEEDED 71 results ought the church school to accomplish? How far short of these results ought a church school to fall and yet be ranked as a standard school? In this item the church would formulate its statements answering the preceding questions. Having thus briefly outlined the subjects with which the ten points of the standard ought to deal, we will in succeeding chapters take up these items of the standard in a more detailed way, reserving the last chapter of the book for the consideration of a thousand-point standard for the educational program of an individual church CHAPTER V Organizing the Foundations CHAPTER V Organizing the Foundations T HE organization of the educational program of an individual church is the foundation on which the church builds its plans for discharging its teaching func¬ tion. Organization is important because foundations are important. A weak or faulty organization for the educa¬ tional agencies of a church will give way under the weight of an extensive educational program. A strong and well- planned organization gives security and strength to all the educational agencies of a church. Warnings against overorganization are common, and it is true that there are certain dangers of this kind which it is well to avoid. Nevertheless, what passes for over¬ organization is often something of quite another kind. The fact that church organizations fail to function is no sure sign that the church is overorganized. The fault usually lies with administration and supervision rather than with organization. The individual church usually needs all the organization it has, but often lacks the administrative and supervisory force and the leadership for keeping its organizations in continuous and successful operation. The remedy in this case will not be found in curtailing organization, but in strengthening the phases of the church program which are really at fault. What passes for overorganization is often really faulty organization. The church does not often have more organizations than it needs, but it does often have a medley of unrelated, overlapping, competing, and semi¬ independent organizations. Sometimes the situation is further complicated by the fact that many of these organi- 75 76 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION zations have loyalties to outside agencies which compete with their loyalties to the church with which they are connected. The remedy for this fault may require the elimination of certain organizations which overlap one another and compete with one another, but the larger remedy lies in the creation of a church system in which each organization will take its place in an orderly arrange¬ ment, with its own particular task clearly outlined and its relationships to other organizations made plain. A Plan of Organization for the Sunday School Which Has Been Found to Be Helpful Sunday schools have for some years been experimenting with different forms of organization. During these years of experimentation there has been a steady movement to¬ ward setting up departments and making these depart¬ ments the primary units in the educational work of the church. Perhaps the best form of Sunday-school organiza¬ tion yet evolved is as follows: DEPARTMENTAL ORGANIZATION FOR A SUNDAY SCHOOL 1. Cradle Roll 2. Beginners 3. Primary 4. Junior 5. Intermediate 6. Senior 7. Young People’s 8. Adult 9. Home Department 10. Normal Department In some of the larger schools it is found helpful to group certain departments into divisions for administrative purposes. When this is done some such plan as the follow¬ ing is usually adopted: Birth to 3 years 4 and 5 years 0, 7, and 8 years 9, 10, and 11 years 12, 13, and 14 years 15, 16, and 17 years 18 to 23 years 24 vears and over ORGANIZING THE FOUNDATIONS 77 1. The Children’s Division. Cradle Roll, Beginners, Primary, and Junior departments. 2. The Young People’s Division. Intermediate, Senior, and Young People’s De¬ partments. 3. The Adult Division. Adult, Normal, and Home Departments. Within this general scheme of organization most Sunday schools include a more or less complete system of class organizations. The present tendency, however, is to center the activities in the department rather than in the individual class. This is especially true of all departments below the Intermediate. Many denomina¬ tions recommend the formation of class organizations in the Intermediate Department and above, but not in the departments below the Intermediate. Some Sunday schools likewise separate their boys and girls for club activities, and for this purpose create a Junior boys’ club, a Junior girls’ club, an Intermediate boys’ club, and an Intermediate girls’ club. This general scheme of organization has proved so helpful in Sunday schools that it is being taken over with some modifications as the organization plan for a unified educational program by churches seeking to bring their educational work into an orderly system. The new program of religious education for the individual church is being built on a plan of organization fundamentally similar, therefore, to the plan of organization which has been found most helpful in the Sunday school. An examination of the ten departments named in the Sunday-school plan of organization reveals the fact that they are not all coordinate. They fall naturally into three groups. The departments from the Beginners to the Adult include a group who are under the teaching of 78 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION the church in a peculiar sense. They comprise the people for whom the central educational program of the church is planned and operated. The Cradle Roll and the Home Department have to do with people not so intimately connected with the church school as the group we have just mentioned. They are touched in their homes by a program of cooperation which the church school maintains with the home. The Normal Depart¬ ment forms a third group composed of the people whom the church school is training for teaching and other types of religious educational leadership. Based on the Sunday-school plan we have been con¬ sidering, and on the three types of educational activity which have just been pointed out, the new program of religious education is being built in some such way as is indicated in the following outline: Plan of Organization for a Church School Which Carries on a Unified Program of Education for the Individual Church I. The main program of information, worship, and expression. A. The Beginners Department, Ages 4 and 5. An organized staff; superintendent, assistant superintendent, secretary, teachers. B. The Primary Department. Ages 6, 7, and 8. An organized staff; superintendent, assistant superintendent, secretary, teachers. C. The Junior Department. Ages 9, 10, and 11. 1. An organized staff; superintendent, assist¬ ant superintendent, secretary, teachers. 2. An organized student body; president, vice president, secretary, and other officers. ORGANIZING THE FOUNDATIONS 79 a. A Junior boys’ club; officers, com¬ mittees, etc. b. A Junior girls’ club; officers, com¬ mittees, etc. D. The Intermediate Department. Ages 12, 13, and 14. 1. An organized staff; superintendent, assist¬ ant superintendent, secretary, teachers. 2. An organized student body; president, vice president, secretary, and other officers. a. An Intermediate boys’club; officers, committees, etc. b. An Intermediate girls’ club; officers, committees, etc. E. The Senior Department. Ages 15, 16, and 17. 1. An organized staff; superintendent, assistant superintendent, secretary, teachers. 2. An organized student body; president, vice president, secretary and other officers. Organized classes; president, vice presi¬ dent, secretary and other officers. F. The Young People’s Department. Ages 18 to 23. 1. An organized staff; superintendent, assistant superintendent, secretary, teachers. 2. An organized student body; president, vice president, secretary, and other officers. Organized classes; president, vice presi¬ dent, secretary, and other officers. G. The Adult Department. Ages 24 and over. 1. An organized staff; superintendent, assistant superintendent, secretary, teachers. 2. An organized student body; president, vice president, secretary, and other officers. Organized classes; president, vice presi¬ dent, secretary, and other officers. 80 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION II. The program of cooperation with the home. A. The Cradle Roll. Birth to 3 years. An organized staff: superintendent, assistants, visitors. B. The Home Department. 1. An organized staff: superintendent, assist¬ ants, visitors. 2. An organized student body: president, vice president, secretary, and other officers. C. Parent’s Classes. Organized with president, teacher, and other officers. D. Parent-Teacher Association. Organized with officers, committees, etc. III. The program of leadership training. A. A Normal School for Present Teachers. Organized staff: superintendent, instructors, etc. B. A Normal School for Prospective Teachers. Organized staff: superintendent, inspectors, etc. (This plan is shown in graphic form on page 81) Advantages of the Proposed Plan of Organization The scheme which has just been outlined is not a theoret¬ ical projection of what the writer thinks a church plan of organization for religious education ought to be. Every feature of it is in successful operation in some church. It is recommended because the different parts of it have been helpful beyond other plans which have been proposed and tried. On the basis of experience and demonstrated worth, valid claims can be made for it. In large churches the plan tends to reduce the number Chart III PLAN OF ORGANIZATION FOR A CHURCH SCHOOL WHICH CARRIES ON A UNIFIED PROGRAM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION FOR AN INDIVIDUAL CHURCH I 82 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION of organizations. It accomplishes this end by encourag¬ ing for the lower grades, departmental organization and departmental activities instead of class organization and class activities. It substitutes for the many similar clubs in some churches one departmental club for boys and one for girls in the Junior Department and also one club for each sex in the Intermediate Department. This is the great club-forming age and in some churches the organization of the educational program is overburdened by the number of clubs at this point. By bringing ex- pressional organizations such as the Christian Endeavor societies into line with departmental organization it does away with the need for a separate organization for ex- pressional work. The Christian Endeavor societies are fused with the departmental students’ organizations. Fully organized on this plan, a church would have a Junior Christian Endeavor, an Intermediate Christian Endeavor, a Senior Christian Endeavor, and a Young People’s Christian Endeavor, but these organizations would be the same as the students’ departmental organiza¬ tions. Christian Endeavor meetings would be simply the students’ departmental organizations meeting for expres- sional work based on the information and incentives imparted by other sessions of the church school. By introducing a uniform classification of pupils, the plan removes confusion and misspent effort from the educative process. The term “Intermediate” is given the same meaning in all the phases of the school’s activity. It no longer means young people from twelve to fourteen years of age in the Sunday school and young people from twelve to eighteen years of age in the expressional organiza¬ tions. Such a lack of alignment between different educa¬ tional agencies means something more serious than a confusion in speech. It means confused effort. It means one group of religious teachers trying to give a ORGANIZING THE FOUNDATIONS 83 certain phase of religious education to a certain group of pupils and another group of religious teachers trying to give another and supplementary phase of religious educa¬ tion to these same pupils, but in a group arrangement quite different from the first, because it contains many pupils who were not in the first group and who differ in age and experience from the members of the first group. The result is a broken and ineffective effort to carry on the educative process. Another of the advantages of the plan is its alignment with public-school organization. Many cities and states are forming junior high schools. Where this is done the Intermediate Department of the church school corresponds with the junior high-school grades and the Senior Depart¬ ment of the church school with the senior high-school grades. This is a matter of considerable importance when public-school time is granted to the churches for the giving of religious instruction. It likewise makes it possible to work out a plan whereby the church-school curriculum and the public-school curriculum can be correlated. The plan furnishes a systematic basis for the whole educational program of the individual church. Every phase of the task can be done more effectively when it is carried on under such a plan than it can when different portions of the task are being attempted separately. An effective educational program must be like a well-organized army, which is made up of different units of infantry, artillery, cavalry, and air forces. Each of these portions of the army has its own task but each works in harmony with all others and the main objectives are common to all. One of the most important improvements made possible by the plan lies in the fact that when it is put in operation, the expressional organizations are given a definite place in the program of the church with a task which is peculiarly 84 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION their own. They thus cease to be regarded as electives and become so important that they can gather into their meetings all the children and young people to whom the church ministers, whereas under the old plan of indepen¬ dent or semi-independent expressional organizations it was found almost impossible to provide suitable ex¬ pressional work for all the pupils of the church school, because they looked upon the expressional organizations as nonessential and unrelated to the general program of education which the church was carrying on. The Plan in Operation * Perhaps the best way to gain a clear idea of the plan we have been discussing would be to try to picture to our¬ selves a church school operating under the form of organi¬ zation which has been outlined in preceding paragraphs. In order to accomplish this we should need to do nothing more than gather together what certain churches are doing and imagine that some individual church had laid hold on some of the “best things” which other churches were doing and had combined them into a unified program of its own. 1. The central program of information, worship, and expression. The church has, as we have said, laid hold on the best things other churches are doing; therefore it has a week-day school. It carries on this school as an integral part of its educational program. There is an arrangement with the public schools whereby pupils of the Primary, Junior, Intermediate, and Senior Departments of the church school are dismissed from the public schools at certain hours so that they may receive re¬ ligious instruction under the care of the church. The week¬ day classes are taught by trained and paid teachers. These classes are a part of the church school which this particular church is carrying on and, together with the Sunday and ORGANIZING THE FOUNDATIONS 85 expressional meetings, they constitute a real school. The course of study is graded. The school is comfortably housed and adequately equipped. In the week-day session of the church school, the pupils receive one hour of religious instruction. The imparting of information is the main objective of the session, but it is not the exclusive aim. There is a period of worship in every department. There is handwork suited to the lesson. There are frequent reviews in all departments and written examinations in the higher grades. After receiving one hour of instruction, the pupils return to the public schools to complete their work for the day. They are not penalized for their attendance at the church school as is the case when they must go to the church for religious instruction after the close of the public schools and thus give up their recreation time for the purpose of learning religious truth. They look on the church school as the peer of the public school and engaged in a task for which the best time of the whole day ought to be reserved. The high-school pupils receive credit toward graduation for the work they accomplish in the church school. Ele¬ mentary-grade pupils are not required to make up any¬ thing they may miss from the public-school program while attending the church school. Thus they, too, in a way,, receive credit. The public-school authorities re¬ ceive monthly reports from the church school and each pupil’s standing in the church school is recorded on the pupil’s public-school report card. When Sunday morning comes, the pupils of the church school gather in the Sunday school, which has now be¬ come the Sunday session of the church school. They have a lesson following naturally after the week-day church-school lesson and growing out of it. The Sunday lessons have been chosen whenever possible with a view 86 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION to their fitness for developing a spirit of worship and reverence. Information is not excluded from the Sunday session, but the main emphasis is on the spirit and the forms of worship. There are prayers in the class recita¬ tion—some by the teacher, others by the pupils. The opening service of each department is a period of real worship. The classes study some of the great hymns of the Church and learn to sing them with understanding. On Sunday afternoon or evening the pupils of the Junior, Intermediate, and Senior Departments gather in expressional or Christian Endeavor meetings. They have topics for discussion and these topics are such as grow naturally out of their week-day and Sunday lesson. They discuss the problems involved in the application of the truths they have studied to their own lives. Com¬ mittees are appointed to plan for departmental activities in the community social service and other like under¬ takings. These expressional meetings belong to the pupils in a peculiar way. They carry on the meeting under the care of the superintendent, one pupil presiding. They learn self-expression and spiritual initiative. During the week there may be a business meeting of some one of the departmental students’ organizations. A boys’ club may meet, or it may be the week when the girls’ club of some department has an hour in the church gymnasium. Possibly a hike has been planned, or some departmental athletic team is to meet a team from some neighboring church. Thus the correlated program of information, worship, and expression goes on among the pupils of the departments we have named. Similar activities are going on in departments above the Senior, except that pupils of these departments do not have a week-day session and they are organized, for the most part, not only into departmental units, but also into smaller units based upon the Sunday-school class. ORGANIZING THE FOUNDATIONS 87 When the end of the public-school year has been reached, the church will still further strengthen its central program by the organization of a daily vacation Bible school with a program of instruction and play activities which will not repeat but supplement the educational work which has been carried on in the three-hour-a-week program. In the vacation school there will be classes for all departments up to and including the Intermediate. 2. The program of cooperation with the home. In the meantime other phases of educational work have been going on under the care of the church-school supervisor and his corps of helpers. Visitors of the Cradle Roll Department have visited many homes where there are children under three years of age. They have secured new names for the roll which hangs in the Beginners Room, but they have not ceased their efforts with the securing of a few names. They have talked with mothers about ways and means of caring for the physical and spiritual welfare of their children, during the days of infancy. These Cradle Roll visitors take their work seriously and they are among the most important and useful workers of the church. They have left behind them in the homes which they have visited, little gifts which bind home and church together in bonds of sym¬ pathy. Here the gift was a dainty birthday card; there it was a pair of little bootees for some baby who had just arrived. They have talked about the mothers’ and babies’ party which is to be given at no distant date. Home Department visitors have been at work. They have arranged with the pastor for a series of Sunday¬ morning sermons to be given on the subject of religion in the home. They have talked over the Home Depart¬ ment Sunday-school lesson with busy housewives. They have talked about the family altar and how to set it up in the home. They have distributed literature dealing 88 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION with the problems which parents face in maintaining a Christian family life and in rearing children to useful adulthood. These helpers of the pastor and servants of the church have been forging links in a chain of sympathy which binds the church to the community in which it is located. Parents’ classes have met and discussed the problems of parents. They have been led by an expert in child psy¬ chology and religious pedagogy. There has been a meeting of the Parent-Teacher Association and the parents of the church-school pupils and the teachers of the church-school pupils have become better acquainted with one another. Parents have gained a new interest in the work of the church, and the church-school teachers have been better fitted for their work by becoming ac¬ quainted with the parents and the home circumstances of their pupils. 3. The program of leadership training. During the week or at the Sunday-school hour the church training school has held one of its sessions. There have been courses in Bible, in psychology, in religious pedagogy, in Church history, and in the administration of religious educational agencies. There have been courses for those already engaged in church-school-teaching and courses for prospective teachers. Those who are already teach¬ ing have caught new visions of the greatness of their task and those who have never taught as yet have gained in their fitness for the teaching ministry of the Church. The church is exercising forethought. There is no dearth of teachers for its church-school classes. There is a considerable waiting list composed of those who have offered to teach, but who must wait until some vacancy occurs in the teaching force. The church has made common-sense preparation for the meeting of a known need, and consequently its lamps are not found to be going out in the hour of supreme opportunity. ORGANIZING THE FOUNDATIONS 89 And so the educational work of this church goes on week after week. Its program is varied, but unified. There is a wise division of labor which eliminates over¬ lappings and misunderstandings and waste of labor. The church has a plan, an organization, a foundation on which it can build without having its house continually tumbling down. The church knows what it is trying to do, and what is necessary if its efforts are to be fruitful. It has definite goals. It knows how many children and young people there are in the community, how many are outside of any religious school, and how many the church ought to count among its constituency. It feels responsibility for reaching and helping all who are in spiritual darkness. It aims to gather in all the children and youth who can rightfully be claimed as a part of its constituency. A church carrying on a program such as has been pictured has an organized program, but it has something else. A good organization helps to make such church activities possible, but there must also be an administra¬ tive force somewhere behind the activities serving as their guide and their inspiration. An able administrative force functioning through an equally able supervisory agency as its executive branch is the second important item in a church program of education that is dynamic and effective. We shall hear more of this aspect of the matter in the next chapter. ' CHAPTER VI Setting up the Necessary Administrative Machinery CHAPTER VI Setting up the Necessary Administrative Machinery M ODIFICATIONS of the plan of organization sug¬ gested in the preceding chapter and certain changes in the plan of administration to be set forth in the present chapter will doubtless have to be made in churches enroll¬ ing less than two hundred members in the Sunday school. These modifications need not be such as to hinder seriously the general scheme, even in the smaller churches. The principles laid down need not be sacrificed. Certain departments may have to meet together because of lack of suitable rooms for holding separate sessions, and other like adjustments will doubtless need to be made. It is believed that every church can have and ought to have the general administrative features to be set forth in the following paragraphs. A lack of administration and supervision has charac¬ terized the educational undertakings of the Church. Sometimes this lack has been well-nigh total, in so far as supervision is concerned, and often the only administra¬ tive activity has consisted in an annual meeting of the teachers and officers of the Sunday school to elect officers. The Sunday-school superintendent has all too often done no supervising whatever of teachers and instruction. He has been only a presiding officer for the “opening exer¬ cises” and a kind of handy man for such tasks as the securing of teachers for teacherless classes when the Sun¬ day gathering has shown that the teaching force is de¬ pleted. The failure of the Church to recognize the Sunday school as the teaching session of the Church and to give this 93 Chart IV ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION OF A CHURCH SCHOOL WHICH CARRIES ON A UNIFIED PROGRAM OF RELIGIOUS EDU¬ CATION FOR AN INDIVIDUAL CHURCH SETTING UP ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY 95 teaching session adequate supervision has resulted in some unfortunate conditions in many congregations. It has led to a semi-independence, or sometimes to a total independence, of the Sunday school. The Sunday school manages its own affairs, elects its own officers, chooses its own teachers, raises its own funds, and decides every detail of its program without consulting the church in any way. Possibly it reports to the annual meeting of the church something of its activities for the year that is past and in rare cases lays before this meeting something of its plans for the future. The governing board of the church has in most cases a kind of hazy relationship to the Sunday school and nominally the acts of the Sunday school are subject to approval by the governing board, but in reality the two have almost nothing to do with each other. Sometimes when the governing board of such a church undertakes to establish some sort of authority over the Sunday school, there is trouble. The Sunday school has become accus¬ tomed to independence. Why should some other body claim authority over a phase of church work which it does not help to finance? Sometimes the members of the govern¬ ing board are ignorant concerning fundamental matters of religious education. Many churches have found a happy solution of these problems by creating a body which is to have as its one task the administration of religious education in the church. The task is important enough to entitle it to such a recognition. This body has usually been called the church council of religious education. Such a council is helpful, even when the church does little in the way of religious education besides conducting a Sunday school. It becomes a necessity for churches which have come to see their educational work as one task and which have de¬ termined to bring some sort of unity into a somewhat chaotic situation. 96 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION The Church Council of Religious Education On page 94 is a graphic representation of the administra¬ tive and supervisory scheme .for a church school which carries on a unified program of religious education for an individual church. A glance at this chart will reveal the fact that the church council of religious education is the administrative agency created by the church for the efficient carrying on of its educational work. It is the organ through which the church functions as a teaching force. 1. Constitution of the council. Such a council is usually made up of representatives from the governing board of the church, from the Sunday school, the Young People’s organizations, the missionary societies, and all other agencies which have responsibility for a part of the educational task. Chosen for their interest in religious education and for their demonstrated ability in carrying on some phase of educational work, such a body is qualified to give efficient administrative attention to the teaching ministry of the church. Moreover, since this is their one task, they can give it their undivided attention and can be held responsible for its success. 2. Work of the council. The council usually looks after such matters as the securing of adequate funds for carrying on the school of the church. This is best done by putting the church-school expenses into the general budget of the church. Where this is done, the council still has the task of determining the detailed items of the educational budget of the church and of presenting this budget to the church meeting and of securing its adoption. An important task of the council is the making of surveys which will reveal the religious educational conditions of the community which the church is seeking to serve and which shows the church its definite constituency. SETTING UP ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY 97 3. Committees of the council. Church councils usually carry on much of their work through committees. Some of the committees commonly formed are indicated below: a. Committee on the selection of teachers. This committee has charge of the task of securing suitable teachers for the whole educational program of the church. When the church has a director of religious education it is customary for this official to nominate teachers to this committee. After considering the qualifications of these prospective teachers, the committee makes its recommen¬ dations to the council. b. A committee on surveys. This committee has re¬ sponsibility for the gathering of information concerning the, religious educational conditions in the community as has been indicated in a preceding paragraph. It should give to the council accurate and detailed information concerning the number of children in the community who are receiving religious instruction and the number who are outside of the church schools, the number of children and youth who are rightfully considered a part of the constituency of the church, the kind of educational in¬ fluences which exist in the community in the form of commercialized amusements, and many other matters of a similar character. c. A committee on housing and equipment. This committee is charged with the responsibility of securing for the church school suitable rooms and suitable equip¬ ment for carrying on educational work with success. They should study the problem of religious education from this viewpoint, so that they know what kind of seating arrangements are best for different departments, what floor space should be secured for each pupil, and what equipment is needed in the way of wall maps, sand tables, stereopticons, and so forth. 98 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION d. A finance committee. The work of this committee has already been mentioned in a preceding paragraph. It is usually one of the most important committees of the council for it has the difficult but important task of raising the church to an adequate appreciation of the importance of religious education, to a genuine apprecia¬ tion which will express itself in a respectable financial support for this great task. e. A curriculum committee. As the number of courses available for religious instruction is rapidly increasing, the difficulty of selecting the best course for any church is corre¬ spondingly increasing. Every church should have a body of people whose business it is to familiarize themselves with curriculum materials intended for church-school use. Even after a course of study is chosen by the council, the work of a curriculum committee is not ended. It would still have the task of seeing that all the materials of the cur¬ riculum are made available for all the classes and that helpful and correlated supplementary work is provided. /. A committee on public-school relations. When a church undertakes week-day religious instruction it is helpful to have a committee which represents the church in its dealings with the public-school authorities. This committee works out time schedules with the public- school principals and supervisors, determines what credits shall be given, and what reports of church school activities are to be given to the public-school authorities. g . A committee on grading and promotions. This committee, together with the director of religious edu¬ cation, has charge of all matters concerning the grad¬ ing of the pupils and the promotion of pupils from grade to grade. h. A social committee. The social life of the church school is one of its chief educational influences. The Social Committee of the council usually has charge of all SETTING UP ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY 99 social affairs, such as picnics, which affect the church school as a whole. Subordinate organizations usually have their own Social Committees for the planning of such matters as affect their own members only. i. A committee on interdenominational relationships. An individual church cannot usually do its own edu¬ cational task well without entering into working re¬ lations with churches of other denominations. Some¬ times it is highly desirable that certain phases of leader¬ ship training be undertaken interdenominationally. There are agencies like the Sunday School Associations which are helpful to all denominations and which churches of all denominations ought to help support. These inter¬ denominational relationships are best handled when the council of the individual church has a committee which makes this matter its particular business. This committee finds out about the different interdenominational agencies and recommends for support and for cooperation those of evident usefulness and demonstrated ability. The preceding list by no means exhausts the number of matters which can profitably be referred to committee action by the council. The list is intended to give only some of the outstanding needs and to name the committees which practically every council will need. Committees may, of course, be created as there is need for them. The Director of Religious Education The work of supervising the educational program which it has planned is of such fundamental importance that the church council needs an executive officer for the task. A supervisor or director of religious education is chosen and given the task of carrying into execution the measures proposed by the council. This task is one of utmost importance and its opportunities are second to none in 100 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION the whole field of Christian service. It ought to be made possible as a life work for young people who are nobly longing to make their lives count most for the Kingdom of God. Churches that are able, and there are tens of thousands of these churches, ought to employ a fully trained director of religious education and give him a living wage. Churches that cannot afford a full-time director ought to be banded together in such a way that each church may have part of the attention of a full¬ time director supported by the group. If it can do no better, a church should secure the services of a part-time director of its own and pay him a part-time salary. If a church really cannot pay anything for a director, it should engage the services of the best volunteer leader it can secure and give him the responsibility for carrying into execution the educational measures which the church formulates through its council. Possibly this director of religious education will be the Sunday-school superinten¬ dent, but let his sphere of activity be wider than the Sun¬ day school, as wide as the whole educational task of the church, and let him really supervise. 1. The greatness of the office. A glance at the chart on page 94 will reveal the position of central importance occupied by a director of religious education. He is the executive representative of the council and responsible to that body. Through the council he is responsible to the church. He is a member of all committees. He has supervision over the threefold educational program of the church. He supervises the instructors of the training schools, he is at the head of the central program of information, worship, and expression, and he has the oversight of the teachers of the week-day session of the church school, the Sunday session, the expressional session, and the vacation session. He is director of the program of cooperation with the home which the church SETTING UP ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY 101 maintains as a part of its educational work. Through all these agencies and through their corps of teachers, super¬ intendents, and instructors, the influence of the director passes to every pupil of the school. But this is not all. Every able supervisor does something besides supervise. He comes into living contact with individual pupils of the school. This important relationship is a part of the administrative plan which we are considering. The director is the representative of the council and of the church in the relationships which these organizations have with individual pupils. 2. Assistants of the director of religious educa¬ tion. The church needs not only a director of religious education but also a supervisory organization of which the director is the head. In such a scheme as we have been considering there would need to be a supervisor of the school for leadership training, a superintendent for the central program of instruction, worship, and expres¬ sion, and a director of the program of cooperation which the church carries on with the homes of its constituency. In a large church all these heads of the threefold program would need assistants, and the superintendent of the central program would have under his leadership full departmental organizations with superintendents and other officers. The scheme may be worked out as fully as the needs of the situation seem to require. 3. The director and the teachers. One of the greatest needs of religious education is that of skilled and sympathetic supervision for the teaching force. This need is being met in churches which have made a place in their educational program for a director of religious education and which have been fortunate enough to se¬ cure the right person for the place. Such a director makes it one of his major objectives to help teachers to more efficient teaching. He visits classes and afterwards has 102 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION personal interviews with the teachers whose classes he has visited. He commends them for excellencies. He points out needed improvements in classroom manage¬ ment and better ways of presenting lesson materials. He meets his teachers both individually and collectively and seeks to deepen the spirit of consecration as well as to raise the general educational efficiency. 4. The director and the school secretary. The records of the Sunday school and other educational agencies of the church are the educational bookkeeping of the church. Good bookkeeping is quite as essential in the enterprises of the church as it is in business enter¬ prises. The school secretary is therefore one of the chief helpers of the director of religious education. Accurate information should be gathered concerning every pupil, and this information should be made available in con¬ venient form. Records of the progress made by each pupil should be a part of the secretary’s storehouse of in¬ formation. Data regarding the twenty matters listed below will usually be needed concerning the pupils of the school: 1. Full name of pupil. 2. Date of birth. 3. Name of father. 4. Name of mother. 5. Number of brothers and sisters. 6. Ages of brothers and sisters. 7. Foreign-born or native-born: (a) pupil; (b) father; (c) mother. 8. Residence. 9. Employed or in school. 10. Member of Sunday school. 11. Member of Church. 12. Grade in public school. 13. Church of parents. SETTING UP ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY 103 14. Organizations of which pupil is a member. 15. Absences. 16. Tardiness. 17. Date of joining class. 18. Date of promotion or withdrawal. 19. Attend week-day sessions. 20. Attend expressional sessions. 5. The director and the council. Since the direc¬ tor is the executive officer of the council, he will make frequent and full reports to that body. He will cover in this report such matters as enrollment in the various educational agencies of the church, attendance upon classes, tardiness, cooperation of the teaching force, and other like matters. He will make such recommendations for new types of work, reorganization, or changes in the working force of the church school, as he has come to believe necessary. 6. The director and the pastor. The director of religious education ought to be something more than the pastor’s handy man. He should have a responsibility and a task which is all his own. Since the pastor is the leader of the church in all its activities, he is over the director of religious education also; but a wise pastor will give large liberty to a helper who bears such wide responsibility as the director of religious education must bear. Although the pastor is leader, he is likewise an associate with the director. The pastor will have a large part in carrying out such a program as has been outlined in this chapter. His will be the all-important task of quickening those deep religious emotions without which the best forms of organization and the most elaborate systems of administration count for nothing. The aid of a good church organization for religious education and the assistance of an educational specialist as a director of the church school gives the 104 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION pastor a chance to become a more potent force than he could otherwise be in the educational work of the church. He is relieved from certain details that he may make his personality widely felt in every department of the work. His great opportunity comes when the results of religious teaching are beginning to bear fruit, when young lives are feeling the call to a close walk with God which has become possible with the soul-expanding growths of later child¬ hood and early adolescence. It is here that the pastor comes in as the chief specialist in the whole educational scheme of the church. He conducts the communicants’ class in which the preparatory stages of religious educa¬ tion are rounded out and souls brought into living and last¬ ing allegiance to Christ and his Church. CHAPTER VII Choosing and Arranging Curriculum Materials CHAPTER VII Choosing and Arranging Curriculum Materials T HE curriculum of a church school includes not only the lesson materials, which are intended as a basis of information concerning religious matters, but also all the training in worship and the practice in Christian living which the church school must furnish if it is to be largely successful. It includes all the materials and activities which the church employs in its teaching task. The curriculum of a church school is therefore the answer of that church to the query, What shall we teach; and how shall our teaching be made effective in the life and conduct of our pupils? The choosing of curriculum materials and the arranging of these materials into an orderly system is thus seen to be a matter of fundamental importance in the planning of an effective system of religious education. Some principles which will help church-school workers to choose suitable curriculum material and organize it into a suitable system are to be given in this chapter. 1. Biblical material should have a central place in the curriculum. There are many reasons why Biblical material should have a central place in the curriculum. Perhaps the fundamental reason is found in the fact that the church school aims to teach not onty a system of ethics, but a system of ethics having its source in a quick¬ ened and developed religious consciousness. The church school which is conscious of its highest offices aims to modify conduct by leading pupils into those religious experiences which are more potent conduct controls than anything we have yet discovered. 107 108 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION The Bible is in a peculiar sense the Book of the Christian religion. It records the religious experiences of a race of people who came through much struggle and affliction to a clear and ethical monotheism and who came to have a strong hope for a divine Deliverer. It tells of the coming of the Saviour of the world, of his life of purity and service, of his death on the cross for the redemption of mankind from sin, and of his resurrection to an endless life of sover¬ eign power. It tells of the early followers of the Saviour who built the foundations of the Church through labor and persecution. Now it is the goal of Christian religious education to lead people not only to know about this Saviour, but also to know him, in such an intimate and personal and mys¬ tical way that he enters into their thoughts and their conduct as the controlling factor of their lives. Any system of education which omits this goal ought not to be regarded as Christian. It may have excellent plans and suitable materials for developing the moral life to a certain extent, but if it does not exalt Jesus as Saviour and Lord, it will certainly fall short of laying a sure foundation for morality and universal brotherhood. We are, therefore, justified in maintaining that the Bible is something more than one of many sources from which materials suitable for religious education may be drawn. It is the source of such materials. It is so essential that it ought to be central in the curriculum, so important that other materials ought to be considered as mere aids in emphasizing and illustrating the truths which the Bible sets forth. 2. Graded Bible lessons should be provided. The fact that the Bible is so important in religious education does not free us from the obligation to teach it in the best possible way. Rather because it is so important we are under the greatest possible obligation to teach it in CHOOSING CURRICULUM MATERIALS 109 the best way known to us. It must be taught in harmony with the laws of sound pedagogy and not in defiance of them. The Uniform Lessons which held almost undis¬ puted sway in the Sunday schools for nearly a half century were sadly lacking because they were ungraded. The Bible contains suitable educational material for the infant and for the philosopher, and for all people who come in between these extreme limits, but the material must be selected and arranged in lessons suited to the different stages of mental and spiritual development of the persons to be taught. 3. All parts of the Bible which possess distinct edu¬ cational value should be included. A course of Bible lessons which is to be the basis of instruction covering the years from infancy to maturity ought to cover all parts of the Bible which have distinct educational value. The Uniform Lessons erred here likewise and they erred grievously. In fifty-two years they touched at least once some thirty-five per cent of the whole Bible. Sixty-five per cent was not touched even once. Some of the ne¬ glected portions are of the highest teaching value. The teachings of great prophets like Amos, Micah, and Jeremiah were touched upon very lightly, if at all. Note these sublime words of Micah. “ Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first¬ born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God? ” This is unquestionably one of the greatest passages in the Old Testament, yet it was not studied once in the Uniform Series of lessons during a period of fifty-two years. 110 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION Jeremiah’s great utterance concerning the new covenant, Jer. 31:31-34 was studied just once during the same period. Most graded lessons do much better in this matter. They include, not thirty-five per cent of the Bible, but about sixty-five per cent. The necessity of choosing so far as possible only such Bible material as could be taught to all ages held the Uniform Lessons down to a quite Chart Showing the Use Madle of Biblical Material in the International UniformLessona rn Forly-six\ears.from 1872tol917 key Material not used at all 81 Material used twice. 0 Material used once 0 Material used three or oo»e times Q C4'yrtgl>t.l»??.fcy W £ narrow range. The Graded Lessons, being freed from this necessity, naturally included a far greater amount of Biblical material. 4. Two types of grading. Sunday-school work has developed two distinct types of graded lessons. One is known as the Closely Graded System, the other as the CHOOSING CURRICULUM MATERIALS 111 Departmental Graded System. The Closely Graded System provides for a different lesson subject for each class of the school. The Departmental Graded System provides for a different lesson subject for each depart¬ ment of the school. The Closely Graded System has the advantages arising from the fact that it leads each pupil through a graded and progressive series of lessons which are taken in the same order by every pupil through the school. The Departmental System has the advantages which arise from having the same lesson theme for a whole department. This enables the departmental super¬ intendent to make the songs and the whole service of worship contribute potently toward imparting the truths of the selected lesson. It also facilitates the correlation of the instruction with the expressional program, because under this plan all the classes of a department can meet together for their expressional meeting and have for their consideration subjects growing out of their Sunday- school lesson, and out of their week-day lesson if the church maintains a week-day school correlated with the rest of the educational program of the church. The Departmental System is helped by the fact that there is possible not only a grading of lesson materials, but also a grading of instruction. Grading of the latter type has its limitations, it is true. The efforts of a teacher will not make a satisfactory lesson for the Beginners out of a lesson which is pecularily fitted for adults; but the efforts of a teacher to grade her instruction are sufficient to fit a given lesson suitable for Primary pupils to any one of the three Primary ages. 5. Bible material should be emphasized and illus¬ trated by extra-Biblical material. The teaching process must begin with the known and proceed to the unknown. Bible times are far away. Customs of that day and customs of our day differ the one from the other. 112 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION In order that the Bible truth may be fully grasped, the teacher often must use as illustrations the customs and events with which the pupils are familiar. This does not mean that these extra-Biblical materials are superior to the Bible materials or a substitute for them. It means that the extra-Biblical materials are used as aids in teach¬ ing Bible truths. All the rich treasures of art, literature, and song are thus given a rightful place in the curriculum of the church school. To include them in the right way is not to teach less Bible but more. 6. Handwork and dramatization. What has been said of extra-Biblical lesson materials is equally true of such activities as handwork and dramatization. Handwork may be made a powerful ally in teaching the Bible. Children who have built a model of Solomon’s Temple under the direction of a skillful teacher have gained a fuller knowledge of certain Biblical matters than that possessed by half our ministers. Dramatization of Bible stories helps the pupils almost to live again the experiences which the Bible narratives recount. With such matters as have been mentioned in mind, we shall be wise if we do not hastily condemn religious teachers who are using handwork, dramatization, and much extra-Biblical material in their school work. They are very possibly teaching the Bible more effectively with these aids than it could be taught without them. A good many zealous advocates of a type of Bible teaching which excludes all extra-Biblical material are in reality more anxious to promote their own interpretations of Bible material than they are to secure an independent and extensive knowledge of the Scriptures on the part of their pupils. 7. The curriculum should be pedagogically com¬ plete. The curriculum should make adequate pro¬ vision for all phases of the religious ‘educative process. CHOOSING CURRICULUM MATERIALS 113 An effective program of information-giving is important, but it is not all that is necessary. The memorizing of Bible passages and a knowledge of the Bible narratives is a foundation for religious education. Such knowledge will probably influence conduct to some degree, but an educational program which stops with the giving of in¬ formation will not do as a working basis. We must have not only the imparting of information but also training in worship and a program of activities which enables our pupils to put in practice the truths we are trying to teach. Religious education on an abstract information basis has been one of the chief defects of the teaching program of the Church. The three phases of the educative pro¬ cess, information, worship, and expression, must not only be present in the program, but must be present in right proportions and as related parts of one program. The training in worship is most effective when it grows out of the information which is being given at the time when the worship-training efforts are being put forth. The ex- pressional activities are most potently educative when they are grounded in an adequate body of informational material and have been born in a stirring of the religious emotions. 8. The curriculum should be complete as to sub¬ ject matter. Certain matters, more or less closely related to Biblical instruction, have often been set apart for special emphasis in the teaching of the Church. Among these subjects are missions, temperance, stewardship, world citizenship, and others. Efforts to promote these matters in the schools of the church have led to no little confusion. Let us take missionary education as an illustration. It has often happened that missionary education in the church schools has been promoted by some agency of the Church which does not have charge of constructing the 114 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION general curriculum of these schools. Hence, missionary education comes in as an added and unrelated item of the curriculum. A missionary superintendent is appointed to promote missionary education in an individual church. She devises plans for accomplishing the task assigned her. Perhaps she secures “five missionary minutes’’ in each Sunday-school session and tries to give the pupils the missionary education they need by a light sprinkling of information on the subject of missions once a week and for five minutes at a time. This is better than nothing, perhaps, but it is an almost impossible teaching arrange¬ ment. Perhaps the missionary superintendent undertakes more ambitious plans. She seeks to create organizations independent of the Sunday school which will give a larger and more efficient education in missions than can be crowded into a Sunday-school program which has already been made up and is already too full for the time available. She creates a series of missionary organizations which will gather into mission study classes all the constituency of the church from the infant classes to the adults. She sets in motion this educational machinery, independently of the other educational agencies of the church. The organizations succeed in reaching about ten per cent of the girls and women of the church. The remainder of the church-school pupils get only a scattered and incidental information concerning this great phase of the Church’s task. Perhaps the missionary superintendent tries another plan and organizes a “School of Missions” which meets every night for a week or so and has classes for old and young. Some of these mission schools have been quite suc¬ cessful in reaching the church-school pupils and real educa¬ tional work has been accomplished. None, however, have reached all, or anything near all, of the church-school CHOOSING CURRICULUM MATERIALS 115 pupils, and the time devoted to the study of this important subject is still inadequate. The missionary task of the church cannot be taught in any of these ways so effec¬ tively as its importance demands. What is needed is for all agencies of the denomination to get together and build a church-school curriculum in which all subjects such as missions are given a place and an emphasis in proportion to their importance. Each of these subjects would thus be made a part of the religious education and training of every pupil of the school. Subjects could be emphasized whenever the lesson ma¬ terials made such emphasis natural and effective. Im¬ portant subjects could be given extended periods in which they could be fully treated. There is always a need for Church specialists and there would still be a place in the educational program of the Church for such organizations as mission study classes. Pupils would enter these classes for special training in some field where they expected to give their largest ser¬ vice to the Church. The larger part of the student body would be given such an education in each special subject as is necessary for every intelligent and active member of the Church. Such matters as missionary instruction, stewardship, and world friendship are necessarily closely related to expressional activities. None of them can be really taught apart from a program wherein the truths imparted are given expression. Missionary instruction is incom¬ plete without missionary offerings. Instruction in stew¬ ardship is useless if it does not lead to the formation of the habit of regular, intelligent, and proportionate giving. World brotherhood is only a fairy picture if pupils do not practice it with their neighbors who are of another race or another tongue than themselves. It is just here that the present plan of assigning such 116 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION subjects to special organizations shows a fatal weakness. These organizations maintain some sort of expressional activity and the securing of offerings for their special cause may be one of their main objectives, but how much more effective they would be if their expressional program were a part of a general expressional program of the church school which included all the pupils of the school! 9. Lesson materials should be put out in attractive form. The custom of putting out Sunday-school lesson materials in periodical form has been practically universal among the Protestant denominations of America. Lately there have been signs that some denominational publish¬ ing houses are beginning to abandon this plan. The Sunday-school quarterly is open to serious objections. It does not command the respect of church-school pupils. Quarterlies are neglected and mistreated where attrac¬ tively bound textbooks would be given more respectful treatment. Pupils throw them away, lose them, some¬ times wantonly destroy them. The effect of a paper- bound quarterly, not overly well printed, sometimes with advertisements on the back cover, is to cause pupils to rate religious education a good deal below secular educa¬ tion. In public school they are given textbooks well bound, well printed, and with attractive illustrations. When these pupils are given Sunday-school quarterlies which fall far below the public-school textbooks they very naturally come to feel that religious education is a matter of little importance; that the Sunday school is not a real school. The periodical plan of issuing lesson materials is apt to lead to poorty planned and inadequate lesson treat¬ ment. Lesson writers know that they are working up a lesson which will be used on one Sunday only and then in all probability thrown away. The result is almost inevitably a less creditable production than when the CHOOSING CURRICULUM MATERIALS 117 lesson writer knows that the lesson is to be used for a series of years. The periodical plan ties the lessons to a fixed time schedule. It makes no difference whether the lesson is mastered or not, the lesson for the next Sunday is assigned and dated and must be taken at the prescribed time. Uncompleted lesson materials must go by the board so as to make ready for the fixed schedule. Public-school education could not be successfully conducted on such a plan. The public-school teacher knows that if a lesson is evidently still untaught, she must teach it before going on; it is a link in the chain of lessons, and if one link be left out or poorly constructed, the chain will be weak or useless. It is true that dated and labeled lessons save the teacher the trouble of keeping track of the lessons and the supervisor the labor involved in keeping all the classes together, but this small convenience is purchased at a great price, for it often means a broken and incomplete presentation of the lesson course with its consequent failure to give the pupil religious culture of much value. The periodical plan is expensive. Quarterlies are used at best only during the three months when the lessons they contain are running. After that they are out of date and become useless rubbish. Public-school text¬ books are generally used until they are worn out. This defect of the quarterly results in a waste that is really serious. It wastes lesson materials and it wastes the efforts of lesson writers; it wastes the money of the Church. It is true that the profits from the sales of periodical educational literature often go to support some missionary undertaking of the denomination, but this does not excuse the waste involved in the plan. The Indiana Survey of Religious Education revealed the fact that in that state the Sunday-school lesson materials of a child cost as much per year as the lesson materials of a sub- 118 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION ject pursued five periods a week in the public schools. Lesson materials for a one-hour-a-week church school course cost as much as lesson materials for a five-hour-a- week public-school course. The periodical plan of issuing lesson materials, therefore, causes the churches to pay five times as much as is really needed for the supplying of lesson materials to their pupils, and the materials furnished are not very satisfactory at that. 10. Bound textbooks of religious education. Be¬ cause of the facts which have just been mentioned, many denominations are beginning to issue bound textbooks for use in their church schools. The Presbyterian Church is issuing the Westminster Textbooks of Religious Educa¬ tion. This is a complete course, covering all ages from the Primary Department through the Intermediate Department. Books for departments beyond the Inter¬ mediate Department are being planned. These text¬ books are planned to embody the curriculum ideas set forth in this chapter. Other denominations are issuing lesson courses in the bound textbook form. CHAPTER VIII Recruiting and Training the Teaching Force CHAPTER VIII Recruiting and Training the Teaching Force I T has been estimated that sixty-five per cent of the efficiency of a school depends on the teaching force. The remaining thirty-five per cent is divided between such items as the curriculum, equipment, system of grading, and other like matters. It is therefore a matter of primary importance for the church school to have an efficient corps of teachers. An adequate, consecrated, trained, and experienced teaching force will accomplish much even under the handicap which unsuitable buildings and meager equipment are apt to impose upon the church- school enterprise; but if the teaching force is not what it should be, no other item of the program, no matter how excellent it may be, will make up for the defect. Excellent courses of study are of no value without a teaching force capable of carrying them through. Good equipment is a waste if teachers do not know how to use it. Well-laid and carefully executed plans for increasing enrollments in the church school often come to naught in the end because teachers fail to interest and hold the pupils who have been enrolled in the “drive” for new members. So it behooves every church school to look well to its teaching force, making earnest effort to secure the right kind of teachers and to train them for an increasing efficiency in their chosen field of service. Teaching Force Needed for a Unified Program of Religious Education in an Individual Church A considerable corps of teachers will be needed for a unified program of religious education such as has been 121 122 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION outlined for the individual church in preceding chapters. The plan will require at least five groups of persons whose work will be largely of an educational nature. 1. The Sunday-school teachers. The Sunday school, or Sunday session of the church school, will require a teaching force for each of its departments. The depart¬ mental organization gives teachers an opportunity to become specialists in the instruction of some grade, or group. They are thus enabled to develop a higher type of skill than would be possible without the departmental organization. Each department usually has a principal teacher, or superintendent, under whose direction the other teachers work, who is their helper in times of diffi¬ culty or perplexity, who makes it a part of her task to train the teachers of the department for higher efficiency. 2. The week-day teachers. Since the week-day session of the church school bears the burden of informa¬ tion-giving, the teachers of this session need to be well- trained and experienced. They will have much larger classes to manage than the Sunday-session teachers have. If the church school expects public-school time and public- school credit, its educational program must be kept up to public-school standards. The task of reaching and maintaining these standards will rest largely on the teachers of the week-day session of the church school. The number of week-day .church-school teachers re¬ quired will depend upon the time of meetings for the week-day classes and the arrangements which are made with the public schools. If no public-school time is used and the pupils all come at once after the close of the public schools, and all the Sunday-school pupils come, the teaching force of the week-day session will need to be nearly as large as the teaching force for the correspond¬ ing departments of the Sunday session. Many times, however, arrangements are made with the public schools RECRUITING AND TRAINING THE FORCE 123 whereby the pupils come to the churches one class at a time. In this way, one teacher is meeting in some church schools as many as six or seven hundred children every week, giving them one hour of religious instruction each, and doing all the work herself. 3. Teachers and parents’ classes and visitors in the home. Those w r ho conduct parents’ classes will of course be doing definite teaching work. Those who visit homes for the Cradle Roll or for the Home Department will not be conducting class instruction, but they will need much of the teacher’s skill and may therefore be classed as a part of the teaching force of the church. 4. Instructors in the leadership training courses. Teaching in the normal classes of the church is a task which calls for the specialist in Bible, in pedagogy, in child psychology, and in other subjects a knowledge of which is necessary for the successful church-school teacher. The church must seek for this office those who are making religious education their life work and who have specialized in some phase of the subject. 5. Superintendents of the expressional sessions of the church school. There is no more difficult or im¬ portant task in the whole school of the church, than that which rests upon the superintendent of the young people’s expressional organizations. This task requires teaching ability of the highest kind. The superintendent must guide the activities of the organization without seeming to do so. The superintendent must round out the teach¬ ing process by bringing it to pass that the information given in other sessions of the school and the emotional responses which have been raised in answer to such in¬ struction are wrought out into life habits and enduring elements of character. 124 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION Qualifications of the Teaching Force The opportunities of the religious teacher are so great, the responsibilities of the religious teacher so weighty, and the task of the religious teacher of such importance, that high standards for the teaching force of the church school ought to be set up and maintained. Strength of character and scholarly attainment are alike needed. Not all, but some, of the more important characteristics of the teaching staff of an individual church are listed in the following paragraphs. 1. The teachers of the church school need to be consecrated to their task. Church-school teaching, when it is well done, brings some of the deepest satisfac¬ tions of which we have any knowledge. The true religious teacher feels something of the joy of the Apostle John who wrote to a former pupil saying, “ Greater joy have I none than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. ” Nevertheless, church-school teaching requires such pa¬ tience, perseverance, and piety that only those who are truly consecrated to the task can make a real success of their work. The teacher teaches more by personality than by formal instruction; the first essential for the church-school teacher is, therefore, purity and nobility of character. 2. The teachers of the church school need to be trained. Church-school teachers need to know the Bible thoroughly, because the Bible is at the center of the course of study. They need to understand their pupils thoroughly, because the thoughts and emotions and aspirations of the pupils are the materials out of which they are to rear men and women of noble character and Christlike lives. Church-school teachers need to be trained, because training eliminates blunders and mis¬ takes. We do not desire for our children a physician who is known to make frequent blunders. We demand a RECRUITING AND TRAINING THE FORCE 125 trained specialist. Why should we have more concern about the bodies of our offspring than we have about their souls? 3. The teachers of the church school ought to be experienced. In pioneer days inexperienced teachers were permitted to take charge of some of our public schools. The custom is now practically abandoned in all states of the Union. Teachers must have experience in teaching before they assume the responsibilities of a public-school teacher. They go into classes and teach under the oversight of a critic teacher. They learn to teach before they are given full standing as teachers. Some such plan is being worked out in many churches. In these churches the superintendent does not go to the Bible class and call for volunteer teachers and then lead some new recruit to a teacherless class, trusting that the interval of time necessary to pass from the Bible Class to some other department of the school, will be sufficient to make a teacher out of one who has never faced a Sunday-school class before. Teachers in these schools are carefully selected usually from among the young people; they are given instruction in a normal class; then they enter some department as helpers and are gradually given larger and larger responsibility as their experience increases. One of the religious educational heresies which ought to be eradicated from our thinking is the evidently widespread belief that anyone can teach a Sunday-school class. 4. Church-school teachers ought to be organized. Modern industry has made organization a necessity. Not so very many years ago a skilled workman turned out a finished product which was almost entirely his own creation. If the workman happened to be a watchmaker, he made the watch from start to finish. Now the skilled watchmaker is responsible for only a small part of the 126 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION mechanism which makes up a watch. He is only one cog in a vastly complex machine which is engaged in making watches. Something of the same division of labor has come into education. Teachers have become specialists. Each is responsible for some small part of the educative process. The farther this process of specialization goes, the greater is the need for a strong organization which binds together the teaching force and unifies the program of teaching. Churches have found it helpful to unify their educational program, not only by creating a strong administrative and supervisory organization, but also by organizing a teachers association, to include all having to do with carrying on the educational task of the church. Such an organization enables teachers to discuss their problems together. It helps to create that spirit of fellowship in service which is essential for high standards of excellence in teaching. In such an organization the experiences of individual teachers are made the possession of the whole teaching staff of the church. A teachers associa¬ tion within the individual church makes for professional efficiency on the part of individual teachers and a pur¬ poseful and unified program for the church. Sources of Supply for the Teaching Force of the Individual Church The problem of securing an adequate and efficient teaching force is one of the most serious elements of the whole educational task of the individual church. It is im¬ portant because without the right kind of teaching force nothing else counts for much. The problem is all the more serious because so few churches have any syste¬ matic way of dealing with it. Most churches practice little or no foresight in the matter. They wait until a RECRUITING AND TRAINING THE FORCE 127 class is without a teacher and then depend on some such expedient as a general announcement from the pulpit stating the fact that teachers are needed in the church school and that somebody ought to take up the task. Churches which* realize that the teacher pioblem is con¬ tinuous and which have a special committee to look after the matter have much less trouble in maintaining an efficient teaching staff than is the case with churches having no such committee. A few of the sources from which teachers of the church school may be secured are as follows: 1. Public-school teachers. It is probable that the most efficient teachers of the church school are to be found among those who are teachers in the public schools or have had experience in public-school teaching. Many public-school teachers teach in Sunday schools. When the week-day church schools meet in out-of-public-school hours, many public-school teachers are employed to give the week-day teaching in the church schools. Public-school teaching is an arduous task, it is true, and yet if the church schools are so organized as to require only a half hour, or a little more, from each public-school teacher, the added burden is not so heavy as to make the participation of the public-school teachers in church- school activities impossible. 2. Those who have had public school experience, but who are not teaching at present. In practically every community may be found persons who have once been public-school teachers but who have ceased to be engaged in that task. Some have married and become mothers. These are often better fitted for the teaching task because of the experiences they have had in rearing their own children. Sometimes by granting some com¬ pensation churches have been able to secure these ex¬ public-school teachers. The small amount of money 128 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION earned by teaching in the church school has often enabled a mother to employ some help at home which releases her for the teaching task, at certain hours of the week. 3. Students in colleges. Churches located near colleges and other higher educational institutions some¬ times secure efficient teachers from among the students of such institutions. Especially is this apt to be possible when the college maintains a department of religious education. Since many progressive colleges are organiz¬ ing such departments, this source of supply ought to become more and more important year by year. Many colleges make actual experience in conducting a church school a part of their curriculum for students in the department of religious education. Individual church schools thus become the laboratories in which the students secure a part of their training for their calling. The Training of Church School Teachers The Protestant Church is making some progress toward solving its teacher-supply problem by setting up agencies which will train church-school teachers. This would seem to be the ultimate solution of the matter, but until the system is more complete and extensive than at present, it will be necessary to rely, in part, on securing teachers and supervisors for the church school from among those who have been trained for such work in the public schools and like educational institutions. The normal schools of the Protestant Church are of three types. Each of these types will have a place in a system capable of supplying the Church with an adequate and efficient teaching force. 1. Teacher-training in the individual church. All except the most unprogressive churches are doing something toward training teachers for their educational RECRUITING AND TRAINING THE FORCE 129 task. In churches where this work is clone most effi¬ ciently, there are classes for present teachers and classes for prospective teachers. A definite course of Bible study, religious pedagogy, child psychology, and like subjects, is laid out and creditable work in these subjects is required for graduation. There are very few churches, however, which can carry on such schools as are able to do all that ought to be done toward preparing teachers and supervisors of religious education. They are a help, but they cannot usually give those extensive courses of study and that expert supervision which is needed for the leaders of education in the general field and in the individual church. The religious educational task is second to none in im¬ portance and we must have schools for preparing religious educational experts which rank with our greatest medical and greatest law schools in the extent of the curriculum materials they provide and in the personnel of the faculty they employ. 2. Teacher-training in interdenominational or community schools. It often happens that a higher type of work is possible when the churches of a community work together in teacher-training than when each church carries on its work alone. This is due to the fact that a much more extensive course of study is usually possible in the interdenominational school than in the individual church school for teacher-training. A more experienced faculty can often be secured for the interdenominational school than can be secured for the individual church school. And yet it is not often that work of really college grade can be done even in the interdenominational or community training school. Such schools are helpful, and they have demonstrated their efficiency in many communities, yet they are not a full solution of the teacher-supply problem. 130 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION 3. Departments of religious education in colleges and theological seminaries. There is a growing opportunity for young people to take up religious educa¬ tion as a life work. This makes it necessary for the Church to maintain educational institutions which will enable .young people to obtain suitable preparation for entering upon religious education as a life calling. It is evident that such preparation cannot be obtained in any school for teacher-training maintained by an indi¬ vidual church, or in such a school maintained by the churches of a community in interdenominational co¬ operation. The task of preparing leaders for religious education in denominational activities, and even in the individual church, must rest upon schools which are able to give a thorough and fundamental training for this great task. Our church colleges and theological seminaries are the logical agencies for this task. It is to be regretted that the task has been so largely neglected by both. Church colleges have often tried to copy the great state institu¬ tions of higher learning and have overlooked this vastly important phase of educational work which was peculiarly their own. Theological seminaries have too often made almost no effort to fit candidates for the ministry to assume the educational leadership of an individual church; but there is evidence that both of these institu¬ tions are awaking to their responsibility for training the educational leaders of the Church. Shall the Teaching Force of the Individual Church Be Paid? The question as to whether the teaching force of the individual church ought not to be paid is receiving atten¬ tion in religious educational circles to-day. Churches RECRUITING AND TRAINING THE FORCE 131 are beginning to lose faith in the volunteer teaching force as the universal agency of religious education among Protestant bodies. It is pointed out that Robert Raikes began his Sunday schools with paid and trained teachers. The Sunday schools grew so rapidly that trained teachers could not be secured and money could not be obtained to finance the movement on a paid basis. As a temporary expedient, volunteer and untrained teachers were secured. That which was intended to be a temporary arrangement has become practically universal among Protestant churches and it has until recently been regarded as the normal and permanent plan. It has been urged that religious teaching must be on an unpaid basis in order that religious teachers may give whole-souled and unselfish devotion to the task. We have come to a place in religious education where grave questions are raised concerning this theory. The volun¬ teer system does not always secure devoted and unselfish service. It is now thought possible that a system under which teachers receive pay might mend matters some¬ what in so far as devotion to duty is concerned. The theory that religious teachers must not be paid lest they become selfish seems to be closely akin to that other theory, now happily almost extinct, that the pastor of a church must be paid a starvation salary to keep him from becoming mercenary. A desire for money reward is not the only temptation which church-school workers have to overcome. There are other temptations in the work just as subtle as the temptation to become mercenary, and perhaps they are more common. Taken, all in all, there seems no good reason why churches which are able, and parents who are able, should not pay for the religious instruction of the chil¬ dren entrusted to their care. The volunteer system of religious teaching has led to conditions in the Church 132 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION which are little short of scandalous. It seems certain that churches which would accomplish the educational task in such a way as to secure large and permanent re¬ sults must come to the place where they are willing to pay for the supervision of their educational work and for such phases of it as week-day religious instruction. The question is not so much whether they can afford to do this as whether they can afford to pursue any other policy. One thing is certain: the church which has a future is going to have a more efficient educational pro¬ gram than any church has at the present time. If that higher efficiency demands a paid teaching force, the change from a volunteer teaching force to a force which is paid will be made. The church is coming to the place where it will no longer tolerate an inefficient educational system which enrolls somewhat less than half the children of the nation and fails to bring into Church membership more than fifty per cent of the children it enrolls. CHAPTER IX Providing the Physical Conditions Necessary for Successful Teaching CHAPTER IX Providing the Physical Conditions Necessary for Successful Teaching T HE teaching program of the Protestant Church has been an approximate failure. It has not failed en¬ tirely, for the educational agencies of the Church, not¬ withstanding the fact that they are so largely neglected, are still the most important recruiting force of the Church. Not only are the largest number of additions to the Church brought in mainly through the Sunday school and other like agencies, but the most permanent and the most valuable additions are secured in the same way. It cannot be said, therefore, that the Sunday school and the other educational agencies of the Church are failures. It can be said, however, that they have failed approxi¬ mately, when we compare their accomplishments with the whole task for which they are intended. The educa¬ tional agencies of the Protestant Church are intended to bring religious instruction to all children and youth who can be legitimately claimed for Protestantism. They are enrolling less than one half of these children and young people for whom they are responsible. They reach effectively less than one fourth of the children and young folks rightly belonging to Protestantism. This is approxi¬ mate failure. It is so nearly a failure that it would not be tolerated in any enterprise other than the teaching function of the Church. It would not be allowed to exist in the public-school system of even our most back¬ ward states. It would mean the speedy ruin of any business enterprise if it were only about twenty-five per cent efficient. 135 136 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION The major cause of this approximate failure is doubtless due to an inadequate, largely untrained and unsupervised rapidly changing, and consequently inefficient teaching force. The next most important cause is doubtless poor teaching conditions. Under this term we would include poor and unsuited church-school buildings, meager equipment, scanty time, and the many hindrances to an efficient educational program which grow out of the deplorable custom of trying to support the school of the Church out of the penny offerings of the children. If a church has looked after the teaching force somewhat after the fashion suggested in the preceding chapter, its next task is to provide good teaching conditions for the teachers it secures. It is a waste of time and money to train efficient teachers for the school if we are expecting them to teach in unsuitable rooms, >vhere perhaps a half dozen or more teachers are trying to conduct classes at the same time. It is useless to expect even the best of teachers to accomplish much if they have no suitable teaching materials and are given such a meager amount of time, and time which is so poorly suited for teaching, that the educative process is made practically impossible. Church School Buildings The new era in religious education is making itself seen in the types of buildings now being erected for church purposes. There is hardly a church plant now under construction in which serious attempts have not been made to secure suitable rooms for the church school. Thousands of church buildings are being remodeled with the same end in view. In almost every case where church buildings are being remodeled the change has been under¬ taken for the purpose of securing better housing for the educational agencies of the church. These buildings were PROVIDING THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS 137 built some decades ago with the primary end in view of securing adequate room and equipment for the preaching services of the church. They are still adequately equipped for this phase of church work, some of them more than adequately equipped in so far as auditorium room for the preaching services are concerned; but they are being changed to secure better teaching conditions. As to the results of the efforts of those church people who are tearing down and building anew their church plants, it can be said that their intentions are good. Moreover, it is a hopeful sign. Building church plants in such a way as to secure accomodations for a real church school is such a recent movement that we must not be discouraged if some of the structures are somewhat surprising and of questionable value for the purposes their builders had in view. 1. Evolution of the church-school building. The development of church-school building plans has been going on for a hundred years or more in our country. At first there was only the church auditorium, with its pulpit on a raised platform in front and its rows of pews. The Sunday school met in the church auditorium. Then there began to be churches built with a “lean-to” Sun¬ day-school room for “the Infant Class.” In time this addition to the church building assumed larger propor¬ tions. Out of it grew the “Akron Plan” of Sunday- school building, a horseshoe-shaped affair with the class¬ rooms spread in a semicircle in front of the superinten¬ dent’s platform. The Akron church-school building was built for that type of Sunday school in which everything centers about the superintendent, in which the opening and the closing exercises are the big events of the program and classroom instruction takes a minor place. Sunday schools have changed—at least some have—and the modern school of the church majors in classroom work by the 138 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION teachers, not in platform work by the superintendent. The Akron Plan has undergone a surprising number of modifications, but it is now seen to be fundamentally unsuited for a church school which wishes to do the best possible work. 2. Departmental assembly rooms. The rise of the Sunday-school department as the educational unit on which the work of the church school is based and the introduction of graded lesson systems spelled the doom of the Akron Plan. Church-school buildings are now being constructed with separate assembly rooms for each department. The departments of these church schools meet separately, except on special occasions when the school assembles as a whole in a large church-school auditorium or in the auditorium of the church. In its own assembly room each department has its own opening service of worship and praise. 3. Separate classrooms. The best church-school buildings have separate classrooms opening off from the de¬ partmental assembly room, but separated from it by doors and soundproof partitions, if not by a hallway. These separate classrooms are needed especially for classes in the Primary, Junior, Intermediate, and Senior Depart¬ ments. The Beginners do not greatly need separate class¬ rooms and in departments above the Senior separate rooms are not so important as in the departments which have been named. 4. Sliding, rolling, or folding partitions are a fail¬ ure. All movable partition devices have been found so un¬ satisfactory that it would be well for those who are planning church-school buildings to leave them out of the building plans which they adopt. These partitions cannot be made soundproof. Their primary purpose is to enable church- school leaders to throw all the classrooms into one big room where the superintendent can speak to the whole PROVIDING THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS 139 school at once. They seek the ends sought in the Akron Plan, and they have become unnecessary with a more pedagogical organization of the church school into de¬ partments where the major teaching effort is made in departmental services of worship and classroom instruc¬ tion. 5. Church-school building standards. Helpful sug¬ gestions as to how church buildings should be constructed have been prepared by several denominations. Some denominational leaders have constructed church-school building standards which deal with such matters as the location of the church-school building, its general appear¬ ance, space available for each pupil, sanitary arrange¬ ments, lighting, heating plant, stairways, and many other items of importance in a church-school plant. Some of these standards are made on the thousand-point plan and the number of items included is large, but not one item is unimportant. Those who have charge of the erection of a church-school building should secure one of these thousand-point standards and seek to construct their church-school plant as nearly as possible in harmony with its specifications. Church School Equipment Modern educational methods make suitable equip¬ ment essential. Some of the best methods of teaching cannot be used without the right kind of apparatus. An enthusiastic teacher might still be able to teach chemistry without a laboratory and zoology without specimens, but he would have to teach these subjects in a way that is now regarded as archaic and his results would not be so great as they could have been with a like effort made effective by suitable educational equipment. Church- school teaching is of too much importance to be done in 140 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION an archaic fashion in order that a few dollars may be saved by going without the equipment which would make modern teaching methods possible. Because they are coming to see the truth of what has just been said, progressive churches are providing sand tables for their primary children, maps and charts and objects from mission lands for their Junior and Inter¬ mediate pupils, and reference libraries for their teaching force. They provide materials for handwork and make use of the potent educational possibilities of the stere- opticon and the moving-picture machine. They equip a gymnasium so that church-school pupils can obtain wholesome recreation under conditions that are not demoralizing. 1. Good equipment is necessary to efficient Bible- teaching. Some good people seem to have the mistaken notion that the more educational equipment the church provides, the less the instruction in the Bible is apt to be. Quite the opposite is true. Good equipment enables the. capable teacher to teach the Bible effectively. Children who have seen the town of Nazareth and its vicinity through a set of stereoscope pictures, who have looked at pressed flowers of the very kind which the Boy Jesus loved and which were gathered on the Nazareth hills, who have made with their own hands a small model of an ox yoke such as Jesus made, have come into the posses¬ sion of a wider, deeper, truer, and more conduct-con¬ trolling knowledge of certain Biblical material than they could have gained by mere word-of-mouth instruction. They have learned through their eyes and their hands, as well as through their ears, and their knowledge is conse¬ quently more complete. 2. Good equipment is not expensive. Many churches provide little educational equipment because they have taken it for granted that the securing of such things for PROVIDING THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS 141 their school is financially impossible. This is not often the case. Of course a moving-picture outfit would cost a good deal, but there are a good many valuable articles which would cost hardly anything and which thousands of churches do not have. Any man who is handy with tools can make a good sand box in an hour or so, and there are other kinds of equipment just as easy of construction. Pupils can make much of the equipment required by a church school if they have the guidance of a teacher who knows what is needed. Adequate Time for Teaching An adequate provision of time for the teaching process is absolutely necessary. There can be no substitute for it. The better prepared the teaching force, the more will adequate tune for instruction be needed. The better the curriculum and the more complete the program of information, worship, and expression, the greater will be the need of time. The more complete the educational equipment, the more will time be needed for its use in the educative process. Every church should address itself at once to the task of securing adequate and suitable time for religious instruction. 1. Enough time cannot be secured on Sunday and Sunday time is not the best time for certain phases of the task. Sunday is already overcrowded with Church activities. A little more time for teaching has been secured by lengthening the Sunday school or by setting up some sort of combination service in which the Sunday school is merged with the morning preaching service. Most of the churches, however, which have tried such plans do not think that they have found a solution to the problem of securing adequate time for religious education. Some families have formed the 142 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION habit of giving up Sunday afternoon and evening to the culture of home life and the plan is to be commended, and church programs ought not to make such a family custom impossible. Taken all in all, it seems probable that the Church is giving about as much educational work as can well be done on Sunday. Many religious educa¬ tors are coming to believe that the Church should use such time as is available on Sunday for training children in the spirit and the forms of worship, leaving the task of information-giving very largely to week-day religious instruction. Sunday is peculiarly suited for a program of training in worship. It is not altogether suited for a thorough program of instruction. The week-day school is better suited for instruction. Children come in their working clothes. It is their regular schooltime. They can engage in handwork and other activities which help to complete the educative process. 2. Public-school time is the best time for educa¬ tional work and the church has a right to a share of it. Religious education is of too much importance to be crowded into the fatigue time and the recreation time of the child. The public schools have possession of that part of a child’s waking hours which is best suited for educational work, but it is not an unreasonable request for the churches to ask the public schools to give up a part of this time in order that religious instruction may be given under favorable conditions. The public schools ought to do it, because religious instruction will supply an element in the child’s education which the public schools cannot supply and which is essential to any adequate educational system. Many public-school edu¬ cators, realizing that there can be no efficient teaching of patriotism and no sure grounding of the pupil in moral habits apart from the culture of the religious faculties, are gladly welcoming the offered cooperation of the PROVIDING THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS 143 churches in the educational task. Week-day religious instruction has had its beginnings with public-school teachers and superintendents and they have continued to be its warmest friends and most loyal supporters. The Church has a right to the child’s best time, not only because of the importance of the contribution which the Church can make towards the child’s education, but also because of certain historical facts. It is not so very long ago that the whole of education was a Church task. The taking over of the educational task by the State is a comparatively recent event. The history of education under State control has shown that the State did not take over the whole task, and that it cannot under our system of government. Since a part of the educational task has remained with the Church and that part is second to no other in importance, has not the Church a right to ask for a portion of the child’s educational time which so recently belonged wholly to the Church? 3. Public-school time can be granted for week¬ day religious instruction without inflicting any in¬ jury upon the public school. Scores of communities have been granting public-school time for religious instruction given by the churches and the system has not lessened the efficiency of the public-school program. In most cases it has not even raised problems of serious proportions. On the contrary, many public-school teachers and principals have found that the arrangement has distinct advantages for their work. The moral problem is the most important matter with which the public school has to deal. A church school which touches the religious emotions, and nurtures them, helps the public school in its most difficult task, and many public-school teachers are conscious that this is true. 4. The churches must do creditable work if they expect to receive public-school time. It is only 144 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION right that the public schools demand efficient instruction on the part of the churches if they are to yield time which is already being used for the profit of the child. Time which is being used profitably must not be given up to an institution which will use it unprofitably. Churches must take their educational task more seriously than they have been accustomed to do if they are to have this con¬ cession on the part of the public schools. They ought to show a course of study which is comparable with public- school courses of study. They ought to employ a teach¬ ing force which is up to public-school standards of com¬ petency. That will mean a trained and experienced teaching force. In most communities it will mean a paid teaching force. Adequate Financial Support Churches must be brought to the place where they are willing to give their educational work more adequate financial support than it is now receiving. They have not been educated in this direction, but rather away from it. The penny-offering basis on which the Sunday school has been run, with its system of wholly volunteer service, has had a bad effect on the situation. Churches have come to believe that the use of any considerable amount of money for the religious education of the children of the Church is not to be expected; whereas, in fact, money can hardly be spent for a nobler cause. The situation is really astonishing. Churches give thousands of dollars to missionary enterprises in other lands, much of this money going into educational work in the foreign field, but when these same churches are asked to give a hundred dollars or so for some phase of their own educational task, the request is looked upon as unreasonable. 1. Doing its greatest task in a slipshod way. The spiritual nurture of childhood is the greatest and most PROVIDING THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS 145 important task of the Church. Protestant Churches have been working at the task in a slipshod way. Their methods have been slovenly, archaic, half-hearted. Their policies have been shortsighted and based on ill- advised councils. Can all these ills be cured without the expenditure of more money on education? He who says that if they cannot be cured without the expendi¬ ture of more money, they must remain uncured, knows little about the Pearl of great price and the standards of value which were set up by the Man of Nazareth. 2. Can the church afford not to put more money into its educational work? When the subject of financial support for the church school comes up, people are apt to ask, first of all, whether the Church can afford to put more money into educational work. Perhaps we should be wiser if we asked ourselves, first of all, whether the Church can afford not to do this. There is a good deal of evidence to show that economy in this field is of the “penny-wise-and-pound-foolish” kind. Empty church pews and depleted church treasuries have some direct connection with a poorly planned and in¬ efficiently conducted church-school system. Church at¬ tendance is largely a matter of education, and when people do not form the habit of going to church when they are young, they seldom become regular church attendants after they are mature. An educational system conducted by the church which reaches only a small part of the children it ought to reach, and which is attended irregularly by most of the children who attend at all, is training up an adult generation of nonchurchgoers. A carefully planned and faithfully executed program for reaching the children and for training them in worship and stewardship will do more to fill the churches and to solve their financial problems than anything else the churches can do. CHAPTER X Establishing Right Relations Between the Church School and Its Constituency CHAPTER X Establishing Right Relations Between the Church School and its Constituency E FFECTIVE teaching is very largely the result of right relationships between the school and its con¬ stituency. The constituency of a church school consists of those who are enrolled as pupils and those who ought to be enrolled as pupils, together with the whole member¬ ship of the church carrying on the school. Parents and guardians of children who are enrolled in a church school ought also to be regarded as a part of the church-school constituency, even though they are not members of the church with which the school is connected. Right relations between a church school and its constituency would therefore include such matters as the enrollment of pupils, the attendance of pupils, the orderly conduct of pupils while in attendance upon church-school classes, the interest of pupils in the curriculum provided for their instruction, the attitude of pupils toward the church school, the cooperation of the pupils with the teaching and supervisory agencies of the school, and the attitude of the general membership of the church toward the educational program which the church is carrying on. Most of these items receive careful attention from public- school educators. They find a prominent place in public- school standards. They are of even greater importance in religious education than they are in secular education, yet the writer does not know of any Sunday-school standard that names even one of them among its items of things regarded as needful for successful religious educa¬ tion. 149 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION 15(* Enrollment It is estimated that there is in our country an army of over fifty million people who have no connection with any religious organization. This army of the unchurched has resulted largely from the failure of the church schools to reach their constituency and their failure to hold for any extended time many of those who are enrolled. If the public schools and other schools of our country which give secular instruction were reaching less than half of the pupils of school age, a few generations would see our nation degenerate into one of the most illiterate of the nations considered to be civilized. A similar failure of our church school has already gone far toward making us a nation of spiritual illiterates. 1. It is the duty of each church school to find out what its constituency is. The failure of the church school to reach its constituency has been largely due to the fact that in most cases the church school has had hazy ideas as to what its constituency really is. Most church schools have thought of the constituency of a church school as the pupils who are enrolled, together with an indefinite number of people who ought to be enrolled in the church-school classes. The vagueness concerning the latter group ought to be cleared away by every church school as a first step toward a real accomplish¬ ment of its task. Sunday schools are accustomed to display on a bulletin board figures giving information concerning certain matters deemed to be important. There are few Sunday schools which do not give some such data as the following either on their bulletin board or in the report read by the secretary: Number Enrolled. 510 Attendance To-day. 206 Attendance a Year Ago To-day. 203 ESTABLISHING RIGHT RELATIONS 151 Offering To-day.$8.26 Offering a Year Ago To-day.$8.75 Teachers Present. 15 Teachers Absent. 12 Each Sunday school ought to have, in addition to the above, a statement as to the number of people of the community for whose spiritual instruction the Sunday school is responsible. If this item came first in the list, the bulletin boards of our Sunday schools would usually begin somewhat after the following fashion: Number of Pupils in the Constituency of the Sunday School.1210 Number of Pupils enrolled in the Sunday School. 510 2. It is not difficult to find out what the constit¬ uency of a church school is. A few days spent in a careful house-to-house canvass will reveal the church- school constituency of every church in the community. The constituency of any church school will consist of the families which are members of the church which carries on the school, the families which express a pre¬ ference for that church, and a certain part of the people who say they have no preference for any church, but who are evidently in need of religious instruction and who rightfully belong to this particular church school because of their nearness to it, their religious lineage, or other general relationships with it. Every community needs some such religious educational survey as will reveal the facts which have been indicated and the survey should be made often to keep such information full and up-to-date. 3. It is the duty of every church school to set up machinery for reaching its constituency. There are communities in our country where one hundred per cent of the children are receiving religious instruction most of 152 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION them both in Sunday school and in week-day church schools. Such communities have purged themselves of the disgrace which attaches to a community in which less than half the children are receiving religious instruc¬ tion. In the communities making this good showing the results have been attained by systematic effort. Lists have been compiled showing the name, address, age, and church relationships of every child in the community. Every child’s name has been placed upon some individual church-school list as a part of the constituency of that school. Committees from the several church schools have called in the homes which have children and young people who are not attending any church school. By going at the task in this systematic way and by deter¬ mining beforehand which church school has the prior claim on each child, satisfactory results have been attained and competition between church schools has been eliminated. That which has been accomplished in these few communities can be accomplished, at least approxi¬ mately, in all communities where similar effort is made and similar plans put in operation. Attendance Another formidable obstacle to church-school efficiency consists in the low average attendance. American children attend Sunday school, on the average, half the time. Sunday-school-teaching is difficult at best, owing to the six-day interval between lesson periods. When this interval is doubled, the educative process becomes practically impossible. Children who attend Sunday school half the time get little real religious education in the Sunday-school classes. A low average attendance of the Sunday-school pupils is especially disastrous in communities where the Sunday ESTABLISHING RIGHT RELATIONS 153 school is the only agency for giving public instruction in religion. If the Sunday-school instruction is supple¬ mented by week-day religious instruction and the attend¬ ance at the week-day church-school classes is kept up to a high average, the low average attendance of the Sunday school is still serious but need not be disastrous. The serious¬ ness of the Sunday-school situation is reduced still more when the expressional organizations of the church are so planned as to enroll all the Sunday-school pupils and to carry on a program of activities correlated with the Sunday- school work. A high average attendance in the expressional organization under such a plan of correlation as has been suggested, Sunday school, week-day church school, and expressional organizations working on a unified program, reduces low attendance in the Sunday school to a place of almost minor importance. A child enrolled in Sunday school and attending half the time, of course, misses half the instruction given in the school, and the educational result is far less than half what it might have been be- because the educative process is broken. Let us suppose that the same child is enrolled in a correlated church school with a Sunday, a week-day, and an expressional session. Suppose that the child still attends the Sunday session only half the time but is regular in attendance at the other sessions of the school. The child will, under this plan, miss not one half, but about one sixth of the edu¬ cational program of the church school. For a church- school pupil to be present at five sixths of the church- school sessions, is not an ideal situation, but it is a situa¬ tion under which education is possible. It is well to keep these facts in mind in our efforts to secure an efficient educational system. Conditions in American life are such as to make a really satisfactory Sunday-school attendance doubtful of attainment. But if Sunday-school attendance is raised to as high an average as possible and 154 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION if the Sunday school is correlated with other educational agencies in which a higher average is secured than seems to be possible in the Sunday school, an efficient program can be attained, and lack of high average attendance in the Sunday school will not defeat the goal for which the church school strives. 1. Methods of securing regular attendance. Since attendance upon church-school classes is voluntary, in the sense that the decision to be present or absent rests with the pupil or with the pupil’s parents, it is usually a good thing for the church school to use devices suited for securing regular attendance. Systems in which buttons, pins, and other tokens of approbation are given to pupils have been helpful in church schools where they have been used vigorously and wisely. They have certain defects, however. They do not appeal to the highest motives. They are apt to inspire only a part of the student body, and that part is apt to be least in need of such inspiration. 2. An efficient church school is the best means of securing regular attendance. Good teaching is the best means of winning new recruits for the church school and it is the best means of holding them. No system of rewards can make up for a deficient program of instruction poorly carried out. Drives for new mem¬ bers and contests between rival classes, or rival schools, often bring in floods of new church-school members; but the new recruits are lost quite as suddenly as they are gained, and the last state of the church school thus be¬ comes worse than the first. Campaigns for increasing church-school enrollment have thus come somewhat into disrepute and there are a good many things to be said against certain methods which have been used in such efforts. The sudden loss of new pupils is often due, however, to the fact that the church school did not have ESTABLISHING RIGHT RELATIONS 155 a teaching program which was fitted to hold the new recruits rather than to any defect in the methods used to secure the increased enrollment. Punctuality The efficiency of many church schools is marred by the fact that a large proportion of the teachers and pupils are habitually late. Tardiness is watched with constant care in the public schools. Means are found for practi¬ cally eliminating it there. No public school could make any reasonable claim to being standard if its pupils were in the habit of coming late. Tardiness is far more serious in the church school than it is in the public school. The time of the church school is so meager at best that a few minutes lost through tardiness is a serious matter. The tardy pupil misses a part or the whole of what ought to be the most important part of the church-school session, the opening service of worship. He also frequently dis¬ turbs the whole school by his untimely arrival in the midst of the opening service. 1. Causes of tardiness in the church school. The best way to cure tardiness is to search out its underlying causes and then work for the removal of these causes, one by one. Tardiness on a large scale in the church school is often traceable to the school itself. If the Sun¬ day school is scheduled to begin at 10 A. M. and it habitu¬ ally begins at about seven minutes after ten, it is quite certain that pupils will fall into the habit of dropping in about 10:15. Tardiness grows in the church school because no notice is taken of it. In public school, teachers "make a fuss” when a pupil comes late and the pupil is moved to make an added effort to be punctual. Tardiness sometimes results because pupils and their parents fall into the habit of thinking that it is all right if the pupil 156 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION reaches his class in time for the study of the lesson. The opening service is not duly appreciated. The remedy lies in making the opening service so important and so interesting that pupils will know that they are missing something by being tardy. 2. Public opinion the best cure for tardiness. Many devices for the cure of tardiness have been proposed and tried. Some have been of demonstrated value. The best cure of tardiness in the public school has been found to be the creation of a public opinion throughout the student body which makes the tardy pupil feel that every tardiness discredits him in the eyes of his fellow students. There are public schools where tardiness is exceedingly rare, because it is regarded as a disgrace to be late at school unless there is some unavoidable cause of delay. Orderly Conduct There can be no teaching of much value unless pupils are orderly and attentive. One of the first things a trained supervisor of education notes on entering a school¬ room is the condition of the room as to order, interest, and attentiveness. He knows that if there is disorder and confusion and lack of attention and evident absence of compelling interest, the teaching process is not going on as it should. He knows that the teacher is wasting her efforts and that the pupils are getting less than they should get out of the recitation period. Disorder has been a prevalent foe to church-school efficiency. Like so many other defective relationships heretofore noted in this chapter, disorder is more deplorable in the church school than in the school which ministers to the secular education of children. Worship is an important part of church-school activity and worship and disorder cannot go on together. ESTABLISHING RIGHT RELATIONS 157 1. Church-school teachers ought to be strict disciplinarians. It is a part of the task of the church- school teacher to maintain order in the schoolroom. To let children run wild in the school of the church is a great mistake. It is doing a wrong to all the children in the school. It wrongs the obedient child who comes from a well-governed home and who is inclined to be reverent in the church school; but it wrongs still more the unruly child who is the creator of the disorder. Church-school discipline must not be harsh, but it must be firm, even, and persevering. Fears that the pupils will leave the school if they are kept under firm discipline are almost wholly groundless. Children come to admire and respect teachers who control them with kind but unwavering firmness. They lose respect for teachers, and for a school, when they can do as they please. It seems certain that ten children leave Sunday school because the order is poor for every one who leaves Sunday school because the teachers are too strict. 2. An orderly church-school program will help pupils to be orderly. The church-school program is often carried on in such a way as to make disorder among the pupils almost inevitable. If a half dozen classes are gathered within a small space and each teacher must shout a little louder than his colleagues in order to be heard, disorder and inattention will necessarily result. If the superintendent carries on a disorderly opening service, broken by intervals when he is seeking for a song or conferring with some of his helpers while the opening service runs along without a leader for a while, the dis¬ order of the opening of the school will be carried over into the classroom periods, and it will take a skilled teacher to win the quiet and attention necessary for the study of the lesson. 158 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION 3. Good teaching is an almost sure cure for dis¬ order. Skilled teachers can make the recitation period so interesting that most of the pupils will forget to be disorderly. But let the teacher grow dull and his pre¬ sentation of the lesson uninteresting and vigorous young minds will quickly find something interesting with which to busy themselves. Good teaching is an almost sure cure for disorder. It is not absolutely sure, because there are pupils of a mischievous turn of mind who are deter¬ mined to try a teacher out and who are likewise deter¬ mined that they will not be interested. Often these mischievous youngsters are among the best pupils in the class when they learn that their teacher is wise enough to insist on good order in the class and strong enough to secure it. Loyalty We might sum up the relations which ought to exist between a church school and its constituency in the fine word “ loyalty. ” Loyalty to the church school on the part of the pupils, their parents, and the whole member¬ ship of the church, will go far toward removing every difficulty which has thus far been mentioned in this chapter. Loyalty to the church school sets teachers, officers, pupils, and friends of the school at work recruiting new members. Loyalty to the school cures a low average attendance, and, when rightly appealed to, wipes out tardiness. Disorderly conduct that is really dangerous is usually tainted with some disloyalty to the school or some contempt for its methods of carrying on its work. The heart of youth is so naturally inclined to be loyal that it is strange that the church school has not made more of this opportunity for getting a strong hold on its pupils. 1. Church-school loyalty can be cultivated. People are instinctively loyal to that in which they have ESTABLISHING RIGHT RELATIONS 159 a share and to which they are closely related. Give the pupils such a part in the conduct of the church school that they will come to feel that it is their school, and they will be loyal to it. The student body should be given representation on the governing board of the school. Pupils should be represented in departmental organiza¬ tions. In many schools some form of student govern¬ ment has been found to work well and to result in a strong sense of loyalty among the pupils. Pupils must come to feel toward the church school the kind of loyalty they feel toward their nation when they say understanding^, “This is my own, my native land.” 2. Loyalty must be wisely directed. Even such a noble characteristic as loyalty may be so misdirected that it becomes a menace to the church school. It has occa¬ sionally happened that shortsighted Sunday-school teachers have so fully developed the loyalty of their pupils and confined it so exclusively to the class of which these pupils were members that a practical disloyalty to the school as a whole, and to the church which was carry¬ ing on the school, has resulted. Sometimes outside organizations have set up their plans within the individual church and brought about a condition of divided loyalty which is unfortunate. It would be well for all church-school teachers to deter¬ mine that the loyalty of their pupils shall not end with the class organization or with the teacher of the class, but that it shall go on and become an abiding loyalty to the church school as a whole, to the church which supports the school, to the Kingdom of God which the Church is seeking to set up in the world, and to him who is the Head of the Church and the Founder of the Kingdom. Loyalty which does not reach this goal has suffered from arrested development. ' ■ CHAPTER XI The Central Program of Information, Worship and Expression CHAPTER XI The Central Program of Information, Worship, and Expression I T is coming to be recognized that the individual church has a threefold task in education. As has been sug¬ gested in a preceding chapter, this threefold task consists of a program of religious education in the home which is carried on under the inspiration, guidance, and assist¬ ance of the church; of a program of leadership training maintained by the individual church working independ¬ ently or in cooperation with other churches, and of what we have called a central program of information, worship, and expression. It is with this last-named phase of the educational program of the individual church that we are to deal in this chapter. Practically every church carries out this central program in some form. It may have only a Sunday school and preaching services, yet through these two agencies it seeks to give religious information, to develop the spirit of worship, and to lead people to give expression to their religious life in acts of service and in the maintenance of high standards of character. Most individual churches, however, have many agencies of education, and a problem of major importance in religious educational circles just now is how to bring all these agencies into an orderly educational system for the individual church. A long step toward the development of a unified program of education for the individual church has been made by the organization of what have come to be called correlated schools of religious education. In these schools the work of the Sunday school, the week-day church school, the 163 164 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION Christian Endeavor societies, and the club activities are brought under one governing body, have a central program of information with which the worship services, and the expressional activities are correlated, and strive together, without overlapping or competition, for the attainment of certain common goals. This central program has to do, of course, with the whole range of Sunday-school membership from the Beginners to the oldest members of the Adult Depart¬ ment. In religious education, the great opportunity for the majority of people lies between the age of six years and about the age of seventeen years. In the public school this is the span of life from the first grade to the end of the high school. In the church school it covers the ages from the first year of the Primary Department to the last year of the Senior Department. It is for this group that the correlated school plans to furnish a unified and efficient program of religious education. It is in this period that a strong program of education must be furnished by the church if the religious educational task is to be done in a satisfactory way. It is here that more time for religious education is most sorely needed. It is here that adequate supervision and trained teaching must be supplied if the church school is to rank with the public school as an educational institution. Under the correlated school plan, the week-day church school becomes in reality the week-day session of the church school, the Sunday school becomes the Sunday session, the Christian Endeavor society the expressional session, and the daily va¬ cation Bible school the Summer session of the church school. All these sessions are parts of one school, they are under one administrative and supervisory body; their organization is uniform—Juniors, Intermediates, and other like terms refer to definite groups of the church school, which are the same groups in all sessions of the school. There is THE CENTRAL PROGRAM 165 one curriculum, parts of which are assigned to the various church-school sessions. How these various agencies, or sessions of the church school, work together in a unified educational program will now be considered. The Week-Day Session The number of communities carrying on week-day religious instruction increased fourfold during the school year of 1921-1922. The increase of the movement is shown in graphic form in the chart on page 166. The chart also shows that growth of each of the three church-school types. Type I or the individual church tj^pe of week-day church school, is that form in which week-day religious instruction is given as a part of the educational program of an individual church, the week-day church school being under the control of the church in the same way that the Sunday school is under the control of the church. Type II, or the denominational community type of week¬ day church school, is like Type I in so far as the week-day church schools are concerned, but there is an overhead interdenominational organization which has general and advisory oversight of the week-day work of the churches. This organization attends to such matters as the securing of public-school time for religious instruction to be given in the churches, and public-school credits for work ac¬ complished in the week-day church schools. Type III, or the interdenominational plan for week-day religious education, differs from the two preceding types in that the week-day religious instruction is under the control of an interdenominational board, or council, made up of representatives from the churches. In this type there is one course of study for all the week-day church schools in the system, one governing body, and one supervisory agency. Under this plan there can, of course, be no very 166 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION close unity between the Sunday schools and other educa¬ tional agencies of the individual church and the week-day church schools. At least, this is not possible just now because of the great diversity of lesson materials used in the Sunday schools of the various denominations. The week-day church-school movement seems to be developing in the direction of the individual church-school Development of Ween Day Church School Types type. This is doubtless due to the fact that this type enables an individual church to incorporate week-day religious instruction into a unified program of religious education. A similar movement took place with regard to the Sunday schools nearly a hundred years ago. They began outside of the churches and were gradually taken over by the churches and made their main educational agency. The same movement is going on with regard to * THE CENTRAL PROGRAM 167 daily vacation Bible schools. So it is a safe prediction that the churches will make week-day religious instruc¬ tion a definite part of a unified program of education which they maintain either individually or, in certain phases, cooperatively. 1. Relations with the public schools. It is very helpful for the church school to have a plan of cooperation with the public schools whereby pupils are dismissed from the public schools at stated periods in order that they may receive religious instruction in the church schools. Public-school credits for the work done in the church schools is not so important as public-school time, but it is helpful, especially in high-school classes. 2. Teaching force. Since the week-day session of the church school is charged with the main part of the infor¬ mational program, its teachers must be skilled educators. If the church school is to secure and keep time concessions from the public-school authorities and is to do work worthy of public-school credit, there must be efficient teaching. This will mean a trained and experienced teaching force, and efficient supervision. In most com¬ munities this kind of teaching and this kind of supervision must receive financial compensation. There are week¬ day schools in which excellent work is being done by volunteer teachers, but these schools are an exception and their number is small. 3. The curriculum. The course of study for a week¬ day church school which performs the function of a week¬ day session for a correlated school of religious education in an individual church must be a part of the general church- school curriculum. The material for teaching will, of course, be graded, either after the closely graded plan or after the departmental graded plan. The latter plan has certain advantages in a correlated program, because under this system of grading it is possible for the whole depart- 168 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION ment to worship together in a service centered on the general lesson topic for the week. It is also possible under the departmental lesson plan to have one expressional organization in which all the pupils of the department meet to join in practical discussions concerning the truths taught in the week-day meeting and on Sunday and to carry out plans growing out of the religious truths they have learned. 4. The daily program. In most schools the week-day session begins with a short period of worship in which pupils have a share. Some schools spend a, few minutes each day in memorizing Scripture, or in the study of great hymns of the Church. The main feature of the session is the lesson period of from twenty to fifty minutes. The length of the lesson period is determined by the age of the pupils. The method is suited to the capacities of the pupils, stories being used largely in the lower grades and topical discussions in the higher grades. Handwork suited to emphasize and explain the lesson is usually made a feature of the lower grade work. Sometimes the objects made by the pupils are sent to hospitals, orphanages, or mission fields, and the handwork is thus given added educational value. 5. The place of meeting. When pupils are dismissed from the public schools one class at a time, in order to give them a chance to go to the church schools, the place where the church-school classes are held must be con¬ veniently near the public-school building. If the pupils are dismissed from the public schools the last hour of the public-school day, the church schools may be at a con¬ siderable distance from the public-school buildings since the pupils go from the churches to their homes. 6. Good teaching conditions. Since the week-day session of the church school is to be up to public-school standards, good conditions for teaching will need to be THE CENTRAL PROGRAM 169 provided. The classes will need to be comfortably housed in rooms that are suitable for teaching activity. The work must not be allowed to suffer because of the lack of suitable equipment. The Sunday Session In the correlated school the Sunday session is made primarily responsible for the training of the pupils in worship. The lesson materials are chosen, whenever possible, with this end in view. Information is, of course, not excluded, but the main objective of the session is the awakening of the deeper religious emotions and their expression in praise and devotion and Christian fellow¬ ship in worship. 1. An opening service of worship in each depart¬ ment. Whenever the size of the Sunday school is such as to make it advisable, and the arrangements of the church building make it possible, each department has its own opening service of worship. Pupils are given a large share in this service. It is only thus that they can receive real training in the forms and in the spirit of wor¬ ship. In many schools pupils take up the offering in this opening service. They join in unison prayers following the superintendent of the department or a teacher. Some pupils have become accustomed in these opening services to lead in public prayer. This can be accom¬ plished without their becoming priggish; neither is it necessary for the child’s participation in worship to be only an imitation of the worship forms of older people. Both these faults may be avoided by the efforts of com¬ petent teachers. 2. A service of worship in eafch class. Each Sunday- school class may be made a prayer group. The class presents some conditions for training in worship which 170 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION are more favorable than the conditions in the depart¬ mental opening service. The class meeting is not so public as the departmental meeting. Timid pupils take part more readily because this is true. The teacher comes into more personal touch and into closer sympathy with each pupil than it is possible for the leader of the departmental service to do. There is no reason why the Sunday-school lesson period may not become an agency for the development of worship second only to family devotions in the home. 3. The devotional study of great hymns. The Sunday session of the church school is peculiarly suited to the devotional study of the great hymns of the Church. Many of the greatest truths of the Christian religion are admirably expressed in song. The songs of the Church begin to have power over life even when they are still very imperfectly understood by the child. The melody and a word comprehended here and there will write deep impressions on the soul of a boy or a girl; but when the hymn is explained, its truths illustrated, and its words fully memorized, the hymn becomes a source of character control far beyond that which is possible with an imperfect understanding of it. Many of our greatest hymns are best presented in connection with the Biblical setting where they peculiarly belong. Any youth who can enter sympathetically into the story of young Jacob in his lonely night at Bethel can comprehend the fundamental truths contained in the hymn, “ Nearer, my God, to Thee.” The hymn and the story belong together, and when they are taught together each will help to make the other more impressive. The Expressional Session As has been stated in a preceding chapter, a program of expression is a matter of very great importance in THE CENTRAL PROGRAM 171 religious education. Without such a completing of the educative process as is possible when religious truth is given expression in action, religious information is apt to result in a barren intellectualism, and religious emotion is apt to degenerate into erratic emotionalism. A good many churches are still without any definite 'plans for this important phase of the educative process. Many other churches are still carrying on their expressional work as though it had nothing to do with the educational effort of the various other agencies of the church engaged in the teaching task. The central principle of the correlated school lies in a plan to make the expressional activities a definite carrying over into life and character of the religious truths taught in the week-day sessions of the church school and the definite control of conduct by motives which have sprung from the emotionalizing of religious ideas in wor¬ ship. The correlated school is built on the belief that an idea emotionalized becomes an ideal, and that an ideal given expression becomes a habit, and that right habits lay the foundations of righteous character. 1. The expressional session is the pupils' own meeting. The development of self-expression and religious initiative has always been the strong point of the expres¬ sional organization for young people. The expressional meeting has been their own. The need for a tactful superintendent for the expressional meetings of Juniors and Intermediates is a need which is never absent, but the best superintendent is the one who can guide and govern without seeming to do so. It is customary and desirable that some member of the student body should preside at the expressional meeting. Pupils usually take turn in leading the meetings. The expressional meeting deals with the problem of applying religious truth to life. It is, therefore, adapted to the use of what has come to be called the problem-project I 172 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION method of teaching. The putting into practice of the truths which have been presented in the other ses¬ sions of the church school will often lead to under¬ takings which will cover several weeks or even a longer period. 2. Skilled superintendence for the expressional session indispensable. There is no part of the church- school program which requires the guidance of skilled educators more than does the expressional session. If the educative process falls short here, the religious knowl¬ edge gained will fail to have its full fruitage in conduct control. The superintendent must have that creative genius which is able to seize upon present situations and mold them into potent educative forces which will result in high types of religious life and righteous character. The superintendent of the expressional meeting needs to know young life profoundly and to be of that type of personality which wins the respect of children and youth thus controlling these young folks potently through the development of inner impulses. 3. The expressional phase of religious education includes social and recreational activities. The expressional program is best administered when it touches all phases of the pupils’ lives. The goal is the applica¬ tion of the principles of Christianity to the whole of life. Expressional activities must therefore go beyond the mere discussion of religious truth and a few projects intended to fix these truths in the life habits of the pupils. Boys’ clubs, girls’ clubs, and such other social organiza¬ tions, are in certain churches being made important factors in the expressional program of the correlated school. There are opportunities in athletics and in other forms of recreation for the practice of religious living. The skilled superintendent finds in these daily experiences of the pupils the very best opportunities for giving re- THE CENTRAL PROGRAM 173 ligious truth that expression which will make it a lasting power in the lives of the young people. The Summer Session The daily vacation Bible school movement has called the attention of church people to the opportunity for supplemental religious education in the summer vacation season. A standard vacation Bible school held for five weeks in the summer gives as much time for religious education as is given in a whole year of Sunday-school work, and the vacation school has the added advantage of a good teaching arrangement, the recitation periods being long enough for a full and varied program and coming on successive days. It is not strange that the vacation school movement has spread so rapidly, seeing that with a comparatively simple effort a church can practically double its time for religious education by organizing one of these summer schools for children. The only strange element in the situation lies in the fact that many churches have not seized this opportunity for supplementing the work of their Sunday schools. 1. The vacation school is most beneficial when it is made a part of the educational program of the individual church. There may be communities where the interdenominational vacation school is preferable to the vacation school which forms a part of the teaching program of an individual church. This is sometimes the case in foreign-speaking sections of our cities. In small towns which are shamefully overchurched it is sometimes better for all the churches to go together and have one strong vacation school than for each church to have a small and poor school of its own. In the typical American community, however, the vacation school which forms a definite part of the program of an individual church seems 174 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION to be the preferable type. The movement is certainly setting strongly in the direction of this kind of school. Churches are taking over the vacation school as a part of their educational program and are seeking more and more to correlate its work with the work of other educa¬ tional agencies in the church. 2. The vacation school is peculiarly fitted for cer¬ tain types of educational work. The longer daily ses¬ sions of the vacation school and the fact that the classes meet on consecutive days make it possible to do certain kinds of educational work in this school which are difficult or practically impossible in the week-day and the Sunday session. Certain types of craft work, such as the building of a model of Solomon’s Temple, can be accomplished in the vacation school without much difficulty. There is time enough to accomplish something definite every day and the short time which intervenes between the working periods does not result in a loss of interest. The commingling of story, song, play, and handwork in a vacation school is quite in accord with modern ideas as to what education at its best ought to include. The vacation school, therefore, gives the teachers an oppor¬ tunity to guide the pupils into project activities which will have potent educational value. It is the opinion of the writer, however, that educational projects are most potent when they are builded on such a foundation of information and worship and expression as has been suggested in preceding paragraphs. He believes, there¬ fore, that the projects of the vacation school will be most useful when they are the natural carrying over into life of the religious truths which have been made clear and impressive and in a measure conduct-compelling in the regular work of the church school. Projects lose much of their value when they are not an integral part of a reli¬ gious educational program having orderly instruction. THE CENTRAL PROGRAM 175 The Advantages of Such a Central Program of Information, Worship, and Expression as Has Been Outlined in This Chapter In closing it may be useful to sum up some of the definite advantages of the plan we have been considering. It is not offered as a cure-all for every ill with which the educational work of the Church is afflicted, but it has demonstrated its ability to meet successfully some of the major educational problems of the church and it has gone a considerable way toward their full solution. Any plan which has such a record deserves careful considera¬ tion from all who have this great task of the church at heart. 1. The correlated church school has done much to secure more adequate time for religious education. How to secure more adequate time for religious instruction is a major problem in the educational work of the Church. In many churches working under the old plan of inde¬ pendent educational agencies, ninety per cent of the church-school pupils attend only the Sunday school. Thus a large majority of the children and young people dependent on that church for religious education receive only fifty-two hours of religious instruction in a year, and this only on condition that we consider the Sunday school as having sixty minutes of educational value and on the further condition that the pupils attend every Sunday. By putting on the plan above suggested some churches have been able to make a time provision for religious education as indicated below: A three-hour-a-week correlated school (Sun¬ day school, week-day church school, and Christian Endeavor societies) for forty weeks. . 120 hours 176 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION Sunday school and Christian Endeavor for twelve weeks in summer. 24 hours Vacation Bible school, five weeks, 3 hours a day, five days a week. 75 hours Total for one year. 219 hours 2. The correlated church school secures a unified program of education for the individual church. Such a central program of information, worship, and expression as we have been considering makes it possible for the individual church to set up definite and common goals for all its educational agencies. It removes those overlappings which have proved so wasteful under the system of uncorrelated agencies. It brings about a division of labor which enables every agency to do more efficient work. It works toward the development of a church-school consciousness which eliminates competi¬ tion on the part of the various educational agencies of the church and develops a loyalty to the school as a whole and a loyalty to the church which supports the school. 3. The correlated church school helps the church to secure a better teaching force. In these schools the supervisor and the week-day teachers are usually trained educators who receive financial compensation for their work. Put teachers of this type into a unified program of religious education with teachers in the Sun¬ day school who have received little or no training and some interesting problems will begin to emerge. If church leaders have the perseverance and faith to see the plan through, the result will be highly beneficial. The Sun¬ day-school teaching will be raised to new levels because the Sunday school is now a part of a church school having other sessions in which work of high merit is being done. 4. The correlated church school enables an THE CENTRAL PROGRAM 177 individual church to provide its pupils with an educational program which is pedagogically com¬ plete. Under the old plan of uncorrelated agencies, ninety per cent of the church-school pupils receive little besides a meager smattering of information concerning religious truths. Under the correlated plan numerous churches are already reaching almost ninety per cent of their pupils with a three-hour-a-week program of in¬ formation, worship, and expression. 5. The correlated church school helps the indi¬ vidual church to reach children and youths who are spiritually neglected. Mention has already been made of the vast army of children and young people in our land who are growing up in spiritual illiteracy. Var¬ ious remedies have been proposed for this perilous situa¬ tion. Attempts have been made to set up religious schools on a community basis independent of the churches. There are those who seem to think that Bible-reading in the opening sessions of the public schools is the supreme need. The writer is of the opinion that what is most needed, and what will do most to change the present situation, is for each and every church to put on a program of religious education which is extensive enough and efficient enough to command the respect of children, young people, and parents. If the plan we are consider¬ ing can accomplish this end, or even make progress in that direction, it is worthy to receive the careful attention of all right-thinking people. CHAPTER XII The Program of Cooperation with the Home CHAPTER XII The Program of Cooperation With the Home H OME influences are more potent for good or evil than any other influences that ever touch human life. This is due to the fact that the environment of the home touches the soul of the child in its earliest and most plastic years. Home environment consists, likewise, in contacts which are more intimate, personal, and con¬ tinuous than any other contacts of life. The home was the first educational agency and no other organization can ever be made a substitute for it. The Church will never be able to accomplish its educational task without a program of cooperation with the homes of the church- school pupils. The organizing and putting into operation such a program is one of the outstanding needs of our times. The relationships between the church school and the homes of its pupils have long been left to accident. Few churches have had any definite provisions for estab¬ lishing the relationship on a right basis. Here and there churches have been an exception to the rule. They have sought to enlist the home in the educational task, have made persistent effort to set up goals which were common to the home and the church, and have worked for a program of child nurture wherein the church and the home work in cooperation. In some cases the results have been remarkable. It has been shown that religion in the home is a cure for sick churches; that it will even raise them from the dead. A brief statement as to methods used in those churches which have found ways of cooperating with the homes of their church-school pupils is the object of this chapter. 181 182 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION 1. The place of the pastor in a program of church- school cooperation with the homes of its pupils. Many pastors believe that they accomplish their greatest work through contacts with the home life of their people. It is there that they teach the Christian religion most effectively. The relationship of the pastor to family life is peculiarly close. At times of marriag e, the birth of children, sickness, death, the baptism of children, and when children unite with the church, the pastor has an opportunity to nurture the religious life of the home. Pastors can do much toward the creation of home religion by preaching series of sermons on such topics as the family altar, the religious nurture of children in the home, and Christian ideals of marriage. It would be a wise move on the part of our theological seminaries if they would put in more thorough courses intended to fit prospective ministers for more efficient contacts with the homes of the congregations they are to serve. If the pastor is a specialist in child psychology, he can find opportunities for service in practically every home where there are children. Parents are often perplexed by the spiritual problems involved in rearing their children. They have no ready source of information concerning such matters. If a child’s eyes are afflicted with some malady, there are specialists who can give the needed assistance, but if the child’s soul is becoming afflicted with some malformation, where shall the parents go for advice and expert assistance? They are in most cases thrown back on their own, sometimes costly, attempts to find a remedy by experimentation, or they accept the advice of other people whose knowledge is no more re¬ liable than their own. So great is the pastor’s opportunity in the homes of his congregation that he needs a corps of assistants, in order that the church may make the best use of this PROGRAM OF COOPERATION WITH THE HOME 183 important opportunity for establishing the Christian religion in all the earth. The pastor makes a mistake if he neglects his opportunity to reach his people through their homes, but he likewise makes a mistake if he tries to occupy this important field all by himself. He does his work best when he is in close touch with some of the agencies of the church which have as their goal the en¬ couragement of religion in the home. The superintend¬ ents of the Home Department and the Cradle Roll Department, the visitors of these departments, and the teachers of parents’ classes are in a peculiar sense the pastor’s assistants. In churches where these agencies are well organized and ably led, the pastor and his people are brought into closer relationships than are usually possible without the aid of such organizations, and the church touches the spiritual life of the community in a more vital way than is the case where the relationships between church and home are left to accidental contacts. 2. The Home Department. In an efficient church school this department has a wider field of usefulness than the originators of the Home Department had in view. The sphere of this department has widened with its growth. The Home Department began as an effort to enroll in classes for Bible study those who found it impossible to attend Sunday school. This is still an important phase of the Home Department’s work, but it has assumed other kinds of service which are also of much importance. In many churches the Home Department has become the educational agency of the church which carries on a varied program of cooperation with the homes of the church’s constituency. Its task is so to link the religious and social life of the home to the life of the church that there will be one program for the conquest of the community for the Christian religion. Its task is to restore that close relationship between church and home which helped 184 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION to make the Apostolic Church so potent in the days when the first Christians were “day by day, continuing sted- fastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and single¬ ness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to them day by day those that were being saved. ” Acts 2:46, 47, and margin. 3. The Cradle Roll Department. The work of the Cradle Roll Department is closely related to that of the Home Department, and the two types of work are often combined in one organization designed to reach all phases of the home life. The Cradle Roll Department has as its objective the spiritual nurture of the child in its earliest years, namely from birth to the age of three. It is a significant fact that the Church has come to recognize the importance of these first years in a child’s life and has made efforts to minister to the spiritual needs of these little ones through a program of religious nurture in which Church and home cooperate. It is not so very long ago that religion was considered a matter quite unrelated to anything in the lives of children who had not arrived at “the age of accountability.” The change indicates that the influence of child psychology is being felt in the Church. We might have understood without the aid of the psychologists, however, if we had comprehended what Jesus meant when he said that the Kingdom of heaven belongs to babes and solemnly warned adults against allowing anything to exist which would cause one of these little ones to stumble. If the Cradle Roll Department is to accomplish a task at all commensurate with its opportunity, it must do something more than secure the names of a few babies, display them on a roll in the Beginners room, and send the babies a post card on their birthdays. The things PROGRAM OF COOPERATION WITH THE HOME 185 named are a beginning, but fall far short of what can be done and ought to be done through the Cradle Roll Department. There seems to be a prevalent notion that the function of the Cradle Roll is “to keep in touch with the babies until they are old enough to come to Sunday school.” This goal is of importance and a Cradle Roll is worth while if it does nothing else than maintain a point of contact between the Church and the child which gives some promise that the child will ultimately be brought under the teaching of the Church. The possi¬ bilities of the Cradle Roll, however, so far transcend this somewhat remote objective that other goals need to be kept in view by the Cradle Roll workers. The Cradle Roll is the agency of the Church for reach¬ ing the child through its home life from the very begin¬ ning of its existence. What goes into the first years of life goes into the whole of life. The Cradle Roll superin¬ tendent and her helpers are given an opportunity second to none. The opportunity is so important that it demands special skill, persevering diligence, and wide knowledge on the part of all who undertake the task of using it for the good of the Church and the establishing of God’s Kingdom in the world. The Cradle Roll visitor needs to know how to give council on matters of the home life which are peculiarly personal, and she will need to be tactful, as well as well-informed. Parents need help that they may understand how to care for their babies. The physician can give advice as to the child’s physical needs, but the child soon comes to have other needs besides those of a physical nature. How to deal with children’s fears; how to overcome violent fits of anger; what to do with the child who sulks; what kinds of pictures little children enjoy; what songs they love; these and many other problems the skilled Cradle Roll visitor can help parents to solve. 186 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION 4. Parents’ classes. People are pretty well agreed that the task of parents is the most important in the world. Not only great men like Abraham Lincoln but also the multitudes say that prenatal influences have been the most potent of all factors that have molded their lives. In general, great tasks are thought to require long and thorough preparation. Men are not allowed to become members of Congress until they are well along in middle life, because the makers of our Constitution considered that years of preparation and experience were necessary for the lawmakers of the new nation. The home maker needs a wisdom in some respects greater than that needed by the lawmaker, but our civilization seems to be built on the theory that the high duties of home and parent¬ hood need no preparation. When the Church fully recognizes that home-making and parenthood involve the greatest and most important tasks in human life, and that the Church is the agency responsible beyond all others for preparing people for these tasks, the Church will set about preparing the agencies suited to give the preparation needed. Present- day parents’ classes are a small beginning of what seems destined to become a large and definite phase of the ministry which the future church will render to humanity. What is now general in the teaching concerning parent¬ hood will become specific. The membership of most parents’ classes is at present confined to people who are already parents, in fact, usually to those who are mothers. Such a program of parent training is not nearly so extensive as it should be. Paternal delinquency in parental matters is more prevalent than is maternal delinquency. We need classes for parents who are fathers. It likewise is too late to give the best preparation when people are in the midst of the problems of parenthood. Such educational effort is PROGRAM OF COOPERATION WITH THE HOME 187 helpful and well worth while even though late, but it falls short of being an adequate preparation for parent¬ hood. If the training of a child should begin a hundred years before the child is born, it seems certain that the training of the child’s parents ought to begin before they are face to face with problems which they do not know how to solve, but which must be solved in some way or other immediately. Training for parenthood should be definitely begun with young people who are in their teens. This is the great educational period and the matter of parenthood is so important that it ought to be taught at a period of life when the learning capacity is at its maximum. Nature has indicated the proper time for the presentation of the subject. The first glow of adolescence with its rapid development of the ideal-forming capacity is the time to give young people dreams of the home life which is to be, dreams which they are to make come true in the years of manhood and womanhood which lie ahead. The writer is fully aware that such forward-looking is tabooed in certain religious educational circles. We are told that the child is living a real life in the years of child¬ hood and that it is not the office of the religious educator to help him to prepare for the life which he is to live in the future, so much as to help him to live “ adequately ” in the present time. The theory rests on superficial conceptions and is eminently fitted for producing a genera¬ tion of shallow-minded pleasure seekers. There can be no truly “adequate” living on such a basis. Adequate living for to-day is that kind of living which is a prepara¬ tion for to-morrow. Souls which really live are conscious of God’s promises for the coming years; they see them and greet them from afar. Living in the present world can be adequate for creatures made in God’s image only when eternal life lies in view. Of these forward-looking 188 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION people we are told that “God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city.” 5. Parent-teacher associations. During recent years successful attempts have been made in many communities to bring public-school teachers and the parents of public- school pupils into closer relationships. The movement began with- certain superintendents of public-school sys¬ tems. These superintendents saw deeply enough into life, and understood the nature of education fully enough, to realize that the education of a child could not be at its best without a completely unified program. They realized that parents are potent factors in the education of their children and that if the educative process were to become perfect there must be complete cooperation be¬ tween the parents of public-school pupils and the teachers of public-school pupils. They found that such coopera¬ tion was almost nonexistent; that most parents did not know the teachers of their children when they met them on the street. These public-school superintendents sought a remedy for the situation which was hindering their work. They organized parent-teacher associations. In these organizations teachers and parents get acquainted with one another. They talk over their problems together. They come to understand each other. In some com¬ munities problems of discipline have practically dis¬ appeared because parents and teachers have cooperated in bringing about higher standards of conduct among pupils. The effect is seen in higher academic standards likewise. Parents have come to know enough about the educational aims of the public schools to enable them to cooperate intelligently with the teachers in the educa¬ tive process. Seeing the good effects of parent-teacher associations in the public schools, certain churches began to form PROGRAM OF COOPERATION WITH THE HOME 189 similar organizations for the teachers of their Sunday- school classes and the parents of their Sunday-school pupils. The experiment has demonstrated that such organizations can be very helpful in religious education. Indeed, they are more sorely needed in the church school than they are in the public school. Public-school teachers can get along much better without cooperation with parents than can church-school teachers. The subjects they teach are more apart from the home life of the pupil than are the subjects taught by the church-school teachers. Public-school teachers can get along without the help of the parents in the teaching process, for they have the pupil under their care several hours a day and several days in a week, whereas the church-school teachers have such a limited amount of time for teaching that their work is sure to suffer if it has no supplementing in the home. 6. A unified program of cooperation with the home needed . The best results can hardly be secured if the agencies which have been considered in this chapter work independently of one another. The pastor’s work in the homes of his people will be more effective if he uses such agencies as thejHome Department and the Cradle Roll to learn about special cases of need and unusual oppor¬ tunities for service. Parents’ classes running inde¬ pendently of the other agencies will find that the re¬ cruiting of members is a heavy task; but when they are connected with such organizations as the Cradle Roll and the Home Department, the activities of these agencies naturally result in increased membership for the class. Parent-teacher associations prosper most when they maintain close relationships with the other agencies of the church. This department of the church program of religious education is probably best brought into unity by having 190 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION a Committee on Church Relations with the Home formed under the church Council of Religious Education. It has also been found helpful to have some one person who is to supervise all phases of this program of church and home cooperation in religious education. In churches employing a director of religious education, this task very naturally falls upon that official as a part of his general supervisory duties. If the church has no director, it is sometimes thought best to give the whole home and church program into the hands of some person who will have responsibility for this one phase of the educational program. CHAPTER XIII The Program of Leadership Training CHAPTER XIII The Program of Leadership Training A LL plans for improving the educational program of the Church lead up ultimately to the problem of leadership. Without efficient leaders to put them into practice the best laid plans come to naught. The train¬ ing of leaders is therefore a matter of much importance to the individual church. It is sometimes said that the training of its educational leaders is wholly a task of the individual church. Such an opinion would seem to be the result of an inadequate conception of the magnitude of the leadership training task of the Church. It is too large a task to be left entirely to the individual church. It is a task calling for the cooperation of the individual church with other churches and with the colleges, semi¬ naries, and training schools of the denomination to which the individual church belongs. Although the individual church cannot successfully undertake the whole task of training the educational leadership which it needs, it can accomplish an important part of that task. It can hardly undertake to give a director of religious education that wide and thorough preparation which he needs for his important task, but it can undertake with some degree of confidence the task of training its own teaching force, the leaders of its young peoples’ organizations, and the departmental superintendents of its church school. Leadership Training Which the Individual Church Can Carry on Independently A church school cannot be carried on under rules that are unalterable. Nevertheless it can almost be laid 193 194 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION down as a rule that everyone assuming an office of respon¬ sibility in the church school should receive training for the efficient accomplishment of the task to be assumed. Untrained teachers and leaders in the church school is the usual situation; trained leaders and trained teachers are the exception. We can say this much, at least; that conditions ought to be reversed; trained workers ought to become the rule and untrained workers the exception. 1. The minimum: a one-year training course. Most denominations are now providing their churches with one-year courses intended for teacher-training. These courses undertake to cover the more essential subjects such as Bible, elementary psychology, religious pedagogy, and the organization and administration of church schools. Such a course is unquestionably in¬ adequate, but it is better than no training at all. If the knowledge of the prospective church-school leader is to be confined within the covers of one little book which deals with so many subjects in such a necessarily brief way, such a course would seem to fall so far short of what is required that its usefulness might appear questionable. But this is seldom the case. Most people who enter a training class will have accumulated already a consider¬ able store of information and acquired some skill con¬ cerning educational matters. One of the chief values of a training course is the fact that it furnishes a central and organizing principle about which knowledge pre¬ viously gained is brought into some sort of a system and thereby made usable. This service of a training course may be quite marked even though the course be confined to a small volume which can be covered in a compara¬ tively short period of instruction. 2. A three-year training course. Most denomina¬ tions are likewise providing teacher-training courses covering three years, or more. These are, quite naturally, THE PROGRAM OF LEADERSHIP TRAINING 195 far superior to the one-year courses, since they give an opportunity to present the necessary subjects at some length. Some churches have found it an excellent plan to select certain students from the Senior Department of their church school and organize them into a leader¬ ship training class to meet at the regular Sunday-school hour. They let it be understood that it is not merely a teacher-training class, but intended for all who would fit themselves for leadership in any sphere of church activity and for leadership in other fields of endeavor. These churches have found that such a class, efficiently taught, almost eliminates the leadership problem from their educational program. Other churches have put on three-year courses, not primarily for prospective teachers, but for those already engaged in teaching. The leadership training work in this case, is, of course, carried on at some hour other than that of the church-school sessions. It may be said that every church school of any size ought to maintain both types of work. There ought to be a class for present teachers and there ought to be a class for prospective teachers. The former is necessary for church-school efficiency in the present; the latter is necessary for any firm confidence in the future. Leadership Training Which the Individual Church Can Carry on With Other Churches During the past few years community training schools of religious education have been established in consider¬ able numbers and in various parts of the country. In these schools the Protestant denominations of a community put on a leadership training program together. Leader¬ ship training has thus become one of the most promising fields of interdenominational cooperation. Where these 19G A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION schools are conducted in a true spirit of interdenomina¬ tional comity and no one denomination tries to dominate the movement, the plan has distinct advantages. 1. A larger enrollment of students. The interde¬ nominational training school usually enrolls a larger num¬ ber of pupils than the individual church training school is able to reach. The inspiration which comes with num¬ bers is thus often gained through the operation of the training school on an interdenominational basis. A larger enrollment means more classes and a more diversified curriculum and more opportunities for specialization. All these advantages tend to put the interdenominational training school on a high educational basis. 2. A larger and stronger faculty. The larger enroll¬ ment of the interdenominational school usually results in more adequate financial support than can be given to the individual church training school. With larger financial support a larger and stronger faculty are made possible. Men and women who are making religious education their life work are thus secured as professors in the school. Specialists in various phases of religious education become members of the training-school faculty and thus an educational system of large merit is built up. Diplomas are granted for the completion of the course and the church school begins to reach a stage of develop¬ ment where it compares favorably with the normal schools which are intended to prepare public-school teachers for their life work. 3. Community religious educational activities. The community training school is usually carried on under a community board, or council, of religious education. This community council often carries on other religious educational activities besides the training school. Com¬ munity pageants are prepared, community singing insti¬ tuted, and community picnics planned. A wide brotherli- THE PROGRAM OF LEADERSHIP TRAINING 107 I ness of spirit is thus encouraged among the children and young people of the whole community, an educational result of no mean value. 4. Other interchurch educational activities. In almost every community there are Sunday-school con¬ tentions and religious-education institutes where oppor¬ tunities for leadership training are offered. Individual churches often take advantage of these opportunities by sending delegates who bring back suggestions for new and better plans which are applicable to their own church- school problems. Many churches have found young peoples’ summer conferences helpful in securing a trained leadership for their educational enterprises. Whether these conferences are on the interdenominational plan or are entirely de¬ nominational, they usually offer courses in Sunday- school organization and management, courses for pros¬ pective teachers, and courses for departmental super¬ intendents. By taking advantage of these interchurch agencies and these denominational agencies for leader¬ ship training, the individual church is able to supplement effectively its own program. Leadership Training Which the Individual Church can Carry on With the Colleges, Train¬ ing Schools, and Theological Seminaries of Its Own Denomination None of the agencies heretofore mentioned can do all that needs to be done toward training educational leaders for the Church. Leaders of religious education, at least those who make this a life work, need a preparation as extensive and as thorough as that which is being given in our best schools of medicine, of civil engineering, or of 198 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION law. No individual church can give such training, neither can the churches of a community working to¬ gether. It is a task for denominational colleges, training schools, and theological seminaries. This task of pre¬ paring the leaders who are to make religious education a life work is, nevertheless, one in which the individual church has an important part. 1. Encouraging individuals to choose religious education as a life work. The choice of an occupation is one of the most momentous choices of life. It is so important that vocational guidance ought to be furnished by every church. It is so important that it ought not to be left to the caprice of the individual or to the acci¬ dental tendencies of environment. It is so important that it can be made with confidence only when the deep religious emotions of the soul are involved in the choice, when the ears of youth hear the silent voice which whispers, “ This is the way, walk ye in it. ” To teach young people how to hear and know and obey the voice of God in the time of great life decisions is one of the educational tasks of the individual church. Religious education ought to be held up before young people as one of the most promis¬ ing fields of life service. Every church ought to be a recruiting agency for the teaching ministry of the church. 2. Encouraging the higher educational agencies of the church to take up the task of training leaders for educational work. In neglecting to provide courses for the training of leaders in religious education, denominational colleges have missed one of their greatest opportunities for service and one which belongs peculiarly to them. In failing to provide studies which will fit people for educational leadership, theological seminaries have failed to give ministers a part of training necessary for the highest success in their calling. But the blame for these failures does not rest entirely with the institu- THE PROGRAM OF LEADERSHIP TRAINING 199 tions named. It rests in part with the individual church. Church colleges and theological seminaries are responsive to the sentiments of the individual churches of the de¬ nomination with which these educational institutions are connected. If the churches really demanded ministers who are able to give a church educational leadership, as well as to preach good sermons, theological seminaries would soon be paying more attention to this type of work. If all individual churches which are financially able were employing directors of religious education to lead and supervise their church-school activities, church colleges would soon be organizing departments of religious educa¬ tion and training schools for Christian workers would multiply and flourish. 3. Encouraging training schools to enlarge their work and to put their teaching on the highest educational basis. Nearly all the stronger denomina¬ tions of the country have within the past few years established training schools for Christian workers. The chief aim of these schools is the preparation of leaders for the educational agencies of the Church, though they seek also to train young people for other branches of Church work. Many of these schools have not yet reached a high standard because of meager financial support on the part of the denomination which created them. They cannot pay salaries which enable them to secure the best teaching talent available. They are often housed in buildings unsuitable for educational purposes. Their life for the most part is a struggle for existence. No institution can do its best work under such conditions. It is time for Protestant churches not only to organize such schools but also to give them that support which will enable them to become educational institutions of the highest possible efficiency. We have noted other in¬ stances where the educational work of the Church suffered / 200 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION because a just appreciation of its importance was lacking, but these struggling training schools of Protestantism are perhaps more pathetic evidences of this condition than anything heretofore noted. The program of every in¬ dividual church should include a plan for cooperation with all these institutions of higher learning whereby the educational system of the denomination to which both the church and the schools belong may be lifted to a higher plan. 4. Practice teaching indispensable. Secular educa¬ tion took a long forward step when David P. Page and Horace Mann organized the first normal school having classes for practice teaching. Up to that time prepara¬ tion for teaching had been confined almost wholly to an attempt to master the subject matter to be taught. It was taken for granted that if a person knew a subject, he could teach it. The public-school leaders of that time were just beginning to note the fact that this rule did not work. They found certain people of excellent academic standing who made a failure of their attempts to teach. They Came to the conclusion that there were certain phases of the teaching process which could not be taught from books; that they must be learned through experience. Wise Church leaders will not build their leadership train¬ ing program on conceptions which were passing away in public-school circles a hundred years ago. They will make provisions whereby prospective teachers can gain experience in teaching and managing a church-school class before being given full responsibility for that difficult position. The unselfish desire to serve, which was born of a love for God and a love for children, has often been crushed out in heartache and remorse as some untrained church-school teacher wrestled Sunday after Sunday with an unruly class of youngsters who were not really bad at heart but only trying out their teacher, as all children THE PROGRAM OF LEADERSHIP TRAINING 201 will, to see whether she was fully competent for the task she had undertaken. Few Sunday-school pupils will stick to a class where the order is poor. The result, therefore, has been wasted time, the loss of pupils from the school, and a teacher discouraged and ready to quit, simply because the church has not exercised common sense and forethought in the preparation of leaders for its educational work. 5. Departmental helpers. The providing of practice work for prospective church-school teachers is com¬ paratively easy. The church school lends itself to plans looking toward this end. Every departmental superin¬ tendent needs numerous assistants. These helpers may well be chosen from among the young people of the church who show an aptitude for educational work. If these helpers are gathered into a teacher-training class where the subject matter of religious education is taught and the basis of educational theory is mastered, their work as helpers in the church school will come in as a fitting supplement to their course of preparation for educational leadership. 6. A corps of substitute teachers. It is an excellent plan to have a corps of substitute teachers who take charge of classes from which the regular teachers are temporarily absent. Opportunity is thus given the prospective teacher to gain experience which is invaluable. By beginning in classes where matters of discipline are simple or largely absent, the substitute teacher may be given tasks that are progressively harder and harder. A good many distressing failures in church-school teaching have resulted from the custom of superintendents of putting any teacher they could lay hands on into any sort of class that happened to be without an instructor. Now it happens that the toughest classes of the Sunday school are most apt to be teacherless, and thus it results 202 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION that the inexperienced person who is rash enough to undertake the management of a Sunday-school class without having had previous experience often gets into trouble and forthwith and forever afterward avoids a task in which he might have found great reward and in which he might have accomplished great good, had the Church had any sensible plan for meeting one of its most constant and most important educational needs. CHAPTER XIV The Relation of the Individual Church School to Other Educational Agencies CHAPTER XIV The Relation of the Individual Church School to Other Educational Agencies HE educational program of the Church has often -L failed to be effective because the efforts of the Church, meager at best, were lost in the vast complex of educational influences thrown about the American child. The influence of the street, the moving-picture show, and the daily paper, have had a larger place in the life of the child than the Sunday school and the church service, consequently the teaching of the Church has fallen short of a controlling influence over life and conduct. If religious education is to be made effective, it must not only be given a larger place in the life of the child, but there must also be less antagonism on the part of other influences which touch child life. Influences which are anti-religious must be so far as possible eliminated. The church school has thus a double task with regard to the other educational agencies which touch childhood and youth. It must wisely cooperate with and encourage all that is good in the influence of the home, the public school, and the community, but it must wage relentless warfare against all that blights child life and brings the educational efforts of the church to naught. 1. The church and the home. The program of co¬ operation which the church ought to carry on with the homes of its constituency has been discussed in a pre¬ ceding chapter. It remains to be said, however, that the Church must labor for the elimination of evil influences from home life if the educational efforts of the Church are not to meet with defeat in numerous instances. In 205 206 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION battling against divorce and the social evil and the drink evil the Church is safeguarding its educational program from failure due to the bad environment about its pupils. It is a disastrous mistake for the Church to fall into that habit of mind which thinks of religion as having little to do with the righting of the present world order. 2. The church and the public schools. We have not yet evolved an American system of education. The problems which resulted from the separation of Church and State in America have not yet been solved. We have gone far enough toward the solution of the problem to see that four educational influences must cooperate in the education of the American child, if we are to secure results that are reliable and desirable. These four agencies are the home, the Church, the public school, and the community. These four agencies have potent influence over the developing lives of children and young people. They must be brought into harmony and into cooperation. If our public schools cannot teach religion under the Constitution, let the teaching of religion be a task of the home and the Church. Let the public schools cooperate with the home and the Church by yielding a portion of the school day that pupils may receive religious instruction under favorable conditions. A refusal of the public schools to cooperate in such an important matter as the training of their pupils in the practice of religion would indicate that our public-school authorities are spiritually shortsighted and quite lacking in ideals. It seems certain that the public-school teachers and superin¬ tendents make up the greatest body of idealists in America and that we can, therefore, depend on them for hearty cooperation with the Church and the home in the spiritual nurture of childhood. Experience is proving that this confidence in the public-school teaching force of America is not misplaced. The movement for a larger program RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHURCH 207 of religious education began with them and they have been its most faithful promoters. In New York City, four thousand public-school teachers have banded them¬ selves together to secure more adequate and more efficient religious education for the Protestant children of the city. They give of their time and their service because they are idealists who know that there is no true education which neglects the nurture of the religious capacities of pupils. It seems a little strange that the teachers have been distinctly in advance of the ministers in the move¬ ment for a larger effort to teach all nations the things which Jesus has commanded us. Although the teaching force of the public schools and universities as a rule is to be depended upon for coopera¬ tion with the Church and the home in the educational task, it must be admitted that this is not universally true. There are public-school principals and superin¬ tendents who are opposed to any cooperation with the agencies which have the religious nurture of the child in view. Not all public-school teachers are idealists, even if the teachers as a body make up the greatest group of idealists in the land. In the case of city superintendents and state superintendents the danger of an educational leadership devoid of spiritual vision is still more evident. Our public schools have not been entirely freed from political control in some cities and in some states and the superintendents who owe their positions more to shrewd political maneuvering than to high ideals are usually the ones who see no need for religious instruction. In a few of our public institutions of higher learning which are supported largely or entirely by taxation, there have been a few professors who have not hesitated to commend in their classes conclusions which are atheistic. Some of them have gone out of their way to scoff at the fundamental beliefs of the Christian Church. It seems 208 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION strange that the American public should be so tolerant in such matters and should consider such teaching to be within the rights of “academic freedom.” If the teach¬ ing of religion in our tax-supported institutions of learning is illegal, surely the teaching of irreligion ought not to be considered permissible. Enough has been said to indicate the writer’s belief that the Church has a right to insist that the public- school curriculum be not a refutation of the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith. The matter is somewhat » _ difficult, it is true. The Church must not repeat the blunder which it made in the days of Galileo. It must not undertake to dictate in the settlement of questions of purely scientific nature. Nevertheless, the rule works both ways. Churchmen make grievous blunders when they undertake to be dogmatic in matters of science or history. Scientists and historians make blunders equally grievous when they become dogmatic in matters which are primarily spiritual and religious. 3. The church and the educational agencies of its denomination. Most denominations have organized a board, or agency of some other name, which is charged with the responsibility for educational leadership within the denomination. Such a board selects and arranges curriculum material to be recommended to the churches. It serves as a clearing house for information concerning educational matters. Its representatives come in contact with the educational work of various churches in different sections of the country and they make this information available for all the churches of the denomination. They visit individual churches, giving expert assistance in the organization of educational agencies. They help to carry on institutes and conferences wherein the workers of the individual church receive training and inspiration for their tasks. RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHURCH 209 It is a wise policy for the educational leaders of an in¬ dividual church to keep in close touch with the educational board of the denomination to which the individual church belongs. They are thus brought into contact with the whole field of educational progress within the denomina¬ tion. Better methods are thus made available for the individual church as soon as they have been tried out and found to be helpful. The church-school leaders take new courage as they come to feel themselves a part of one great organization which is working for the same ends as the individual church school. It is a good thing for each church school to have a part in supporting the educational board of its own denomina¬ tion. Offerings given by pupils for the support of re¬ ligious educational work at home and abroad have dis¬ tinct educational value. If a church school helps to support a Sunday-school missionary on the frontier the pupils of that church school gain a larger conception of the importance of religious education than they would be apt to gain otherwise. 4. The church and interdenominational educa¬ tional agencies. Much of the promotion of religious education in America has been done by interdenomina¬ tional religious educational agencies like the various Sunday-school associations. Since every church school owes much to these interdenominational organizations it is only right that they should receive generous support from church schools. The participation of a church school in these wide fields of service where people of many denominations are working in cooperation for the attain¬ ment of common goals is an important educational in¬ fluence. It tends to give a sense of the largeness of the task before the Christian church and of the advantages of all Christian believers working cooperatively in the tasks which they can do best by working together. 210 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION Interdenominational community organizations for the encouragement of’ religious education have been mul¬ tiplying of late. To hold aloof from such cooperative efforts of Protestantism would seem to be a mistaken policy for the church school of any evangelical denomina¬ tion. This does not mean that church schools should always, or generally, turn over such tasks as the giving of week-day religious instruction to some interdenomina¬ tional community agency. The task may sometimes be done more efficiently by allowing each church to take up this work and make it a part of its own unified program than by putting on an interdenominational course of in¬ struction which is not adjusted in any way to what the church schools are already doing. 5. The church and extradenominational educa¬ tional agencies. There have sprung up in our land many agencies which do religious educational work, but which cannot be called interdenominational, since the denominations have no direct connection with them or control over them. It must be confessed that these organizations have come into existence in response to educational needs which the Church was neglecting. They have often been distinctly helpful to the Church by blazing the way to new and better methods. Never¬ theless, their presence results in some rather puzzling problems. Sometimes they maintain educational activ¬ ities which are in competition with the church-school activities, thus alienating pupils from the churches and ultimately defeating one of the most important goals of religious education, namely, the bringing of every pupil into a permanent relationship to some church. They are thus apt to result in additions to that already large body of people who are of high character and who really ought to be active Church members, but who have lost all vital connection with the agency which more than any RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHURCH 211 other, except the home, is responsible for their uprightness of life. When the extradenominational agency projects its organization within the individual church, other condi¬ tions quite as unfortunate as those which have been mentioned are apt to arise. The program which is in¬ troduced is not properly correlated with the educational activities of the church. Sometimes a divided loyalty results which is a distinct hindrance to the work of the individual church. When this condition is reached, the participation of the outside organization in the task be¬ comes of decidedly questionable value. Many leaders of extradenominational agencies are seeing this, and it is a hopeful sign that they are making their own programs flexible enough to enable them to be adjusted to the program of the church, and are insisting that their sphere of usefulness lies in the rendering of assistance to churches rather than in putting on programs which compete with the church programs. 6. The church and the community. Modern civilization has brought about the communization of life to a remarkable degree. Community agencies have taken over tasks once performed within the family. The public-school system is nothing less than a plan whereby families cooperate in a communal system whereby their children are taught together in buildings specially con¬ structed for school purposes and in classes taught by persons who have made special preparation for the teach¬ ing task, instead of being taught by the parents at home. Public libraries have made private libraries largely un¬ necessary, thus supplanting a privately owned element of environment with one that is publicly owned. Trade schools have replaced the old order in which the son was the apprentice of the father. The fireside is replaced by a furnace in the basement of an apartment building in 212 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION which dozens of families live. Family recreations have given place to the varied commercialized amusements of the city, the town, and the country village. This communizirtg of life has affected education pro¬ foundly. Those who have made most careful investiga¬ tions concerning the matter state that the educational influences about the American child stand in the follow¬ ing order in so far as their power over the development of character is concerned: first, the home; second, the public school; third, the moving picture; fourth, the Church. Think what this statement means. It means that within the last decade the moving-picture show has crowded in ahead of the Church as an educational in¬ fluence in the life of the American child. It means that certain people, some of whom are of unsavory reputation, are more powerful teachers of American children and American youth than all the preachers and Sunday- school teachers, than all the priests and teaching sister¬ hoods of Roman Catholicism, than all the rabbis of Judaism. It would seem to be clear, then, that if the teaching program of the Church is to maintain even its present status, the potent influences of community agencies must be brought to a state where they will not neutralize the educational influence of the Church. The Church must continue that fight against evil which it has waged strenu¬ ously in every century of its history which was marked by real progress and spiritual victories. The Church must be thrilled with the righteous wrath which stirred the soul of its Leader when he said, “ Whosoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it were better for him if a great millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. ” But the Church must do something besides fight; it must work. Some churches are making the mistake of RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHURCH 213 assuming that a vigorous fight against evil educational influences will take the place of a positive and efficient program of religious education carried on by the Church. It is easier to fight, especially if the battle takes the form of a wordy warfare, than it is to buckle down to a hard task which requires enduring patience and discourage¬ ment-defying optimism and self-sacrifice and a determina¬ tion which never gives up. A pastor can never discharge his duty in the matter by quixotic attacks upon the moving-picture people if he at the same time allows his church to go along with an educational program which is archaic in its methods and absurdly inefficient, as measured by the results attained. Many churches are finding that by providing children and young people with wholesome amusements and opportunities for social activities they can overcome many of the more objectionable features of community life. The time was when the church was next to the home the most dominant influence of the community. In the church the social life of the neighborhood had its center. Efforts are being made to restore the church to this place of influence which it once occupied. These efforts have been so far successful in a number of com¬ munities that the plan is demonstrated to be practicable. So we may say that the church which is in the vanguard of educational progress has a program of activities which more and more tends to restore the church to its former place as a community force second only to the home. i CHAPTER XV Checking Up the Results CHAPTER XV Checking Up the Results A LACK of definite goals as to enrollment, attendance, and educational accomplishment has been a grave defect of church-school administration. Even when some attention has been paid to the major objectives for which the church school should strive, the church school has frequently failed to develop any suitable method of checking up results, so as to show what progress was being made. Secular educators have of late been de¬ veloping a science of education. They make much of tests and systems of measurements. The church school needs a system of measurements quite as much as the public school needs a system of measurements, but up to the present the church school has not tried to find out anything definite and reliable concerning the results of the teaching in its classes. It is admitted that spiritual values do not submit readily to tests and measurements, but the church school has not even tried to determine whether its pupils were being given an intellectual under¬ standing of spiritual truth. Sunday-school teaching has failed to an alarming degree in its efforts to give children and young people a knowledge of the Bible. To a considerable degree this failure is due to the absence of any system of examinations whereby the teacher can determine the intellectual grasp of the pupil on the facts of Bible history and Bible doctrine. In the public schools promotions are determined by the intellectual accomplishments of the pupils. This is hardly ever the case in the church school. Promotions in the church school are based on the age of pupils, or 217 218 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION sometimes to a certain extent on the pupil’s desire to he in some class where his chums are enrolled. Since the primary objectives of the church school are not intellectual but spiritual it comes to pass that the church school needs machinery not only for testing the intellectual progress of its pupils but also for testing their spiritual progress. This second task is more difficult than the first, but it is, nevertheless, essential. If the church school runs along without trying to find out what it is accomplishing by way of giving its pupils an in¬ tellectual grasp of religious truth, and by way of develop¬ ing in its pupils religious ideals and habits of righteous conduct, the church school will continue to be deplorably inefficient. The workman who pays no attention to the product of his labor will make no progress in the attain¬ ment of skill. One of the greatest benefits of a church council of re¬ ligious education lies in the fact that a functioning organi¬ zation of this kind usually checks up the work of the church school at certain stated intervals. It sets up goals for the church school and keeps them in view. It measures from time to time the progress which the church school is making toward the attainment of the goals which have been set up as the chosen objectives of the school. It is a good thing for the church school to face once in a while some of the questions which are to be taken up in the following paragraphs. 1. Is the constituency of the church school being reached? Let us suppose that the council of religious education for an individual church school has met at about Christmas time. The church school has been in full operation for nearly three months. In the latter part of September a survey of the church-school constituency was made. The name, address, and age of every person who could be rightfully claimed as belonging to the con- CHECKING UP THE RESULTS 219 stituency of the church school was secured. These names were classified, lists of prospective pupils being given to each department. Departmental leaders were directed to put in operation such movements as they deemed wise for the winning of those who ought to become pupils of the church school. Now the council has met to check up on the results of these efforts. The director of religious education has been in touch with the various efforts being made for the increase of the church-school enrollment. He is now ready with a report which shows the accomplishments of the various departments. He has constructed graphic charts which help to make the results plain to all. There is enthusiasm in the meeting, for the church school is flourishing. The director points out the large success of certain depart¬ ments and explains the methods employed to secure these results. Departmental leaders exchange ideas. Certain families have proved to be particularly unresponsive to the approaches of the church-school representatives. These cases are discussed and all the available informa¬ tion concerning these families collected. Plans are laid for the completion of the task of enrolling the full con¬ stituency of the church school. Matters have been checked up. The school knows how it is getting along in so far as reaching its constituency is concerned. Leaders have gained new skill in their task of reaching those who ought to be enrolled in the school of the church. 2. Is the teaching academically effective? The same council has met some two or three months after the meeting which we have described in the preceding para¬ graphs. The director has been centering the efforts of his departmental superintendents and teachers not so much on the matter of new enrollments for the school as on raising the teaching to a high standard. The church school is striving to attain an efficiency in teaching which 220 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION will put it in the same class as the public schools. The director has had many meetings with superintendents and teachers, and general principles have been discussed. He has visited classes, observed the teachers at work, and has had personal conferences with individual teachers, pointing out more efficient ways of conducting recitations and commending them for points of excellence in their work. There has been a general review of the curriculum material for the year, and mid-year examinations in all departments have been given. The director has analyzed and tabulated the results. He has examination papers on exhibition showing what pupils have accomplished by way of mastering the Biblical material assigned to each department. Perhaps some class from the school has been invited to the meeting, and the members now repeat some of the memory work for the period under review or answer questions on the curriculum material asked by various members of the council. The church school has proposed to teach its pupils certain things. In this meeting the governing body of the school is checking up results, in so far as the giving of religious information is concerned. The meeting gives an opportunity for the consideration of the curriculum material and for the exchange of ideas concerning methods of teaching. If the returns of certain departments show that the pupils enrolled have not mastered the curriculum materials assigned, arrange¬ ments are made for a thorough review, in order that the pupils may not move forward to new phases of the curric¬ ulum leaving unmastered material behind them. Some pupils have shown that they are unable to do the work in the department where they are enrolled and their transfer to some other department is provided for. Other pupils have shown that they can advance more rapidly CHECKING UP THE RESULTS 221 than the general membership of their department and they are forthwith promoted to some class where they can get the largest possible good from the church-school system. 3. Is the church-school program producing spiritual results? The church school is nearing its close and the council has met to consider whether the program which the school has been carrying on for the past months is attaining the great objective, namely, the bringing of the church-school pupils into a spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ which manifests itself in their lives and in their conduct. How many of the church- school pupils have united with the Church ? How many are now in the pastor’s communicants’ class ? How many have signed cards expressing their desire to live as Christians? These and similar questions are taken up. The director has definite statistics as to all these important matters. During the latter part of the church-school year he has been leading his superintendents and teachers in an earnest and persistent effort to bring every pupil in the school to a deeper acquaintance with the Saviour. It has been the goal of the school to win for Christ and the Church every pupil who is twelve years of age, or older. A Decision Day has been carefully and prayerfully planned. The matter of a life decision for the Christian religion has been presented earnestly, in the depart¬ mental meetings by the superintendents, and in the various classes by the teachers. All the pupils who have expressed a desire to live as Christians have been en¬ couraged to join a class taught by the pastor and looking toward Church membership. In this class the pastor has seized this opportunity of supreme importance. He has made diligent preparation for meeting these young people, as conscientious preparation as he gives to the preparation of his sermons which are to be delivered on occasions of unusual importance. 222 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION Other results besides additions to the Church are checked up. How about the expressional work in the various departments? How many pupils will take part in public discussion of topics? How many will lead the meetings? How many will lead in public prayer? What work of a missionary nature is being accomplished? Do the pupils seem to be taking an increased interest in altruistic undertakings? Do pupils conduct themselves in accordance with the Golden Rule when they are in the church school, in the home, and at play with one another? What do parents say regarding the church school as an agency for securing right conduct on the part of their children? Do the public-school teachers find church- school pupils more orderly, obedient, and kind than is the case with children who are not enrolled in any church school? These and many other questions have been investigated by the director and he has evidence to show what is being done in these matters of such spiritual importance. The council is brought face to face with facts. It is shown wherein its program of education for the church is succeeding and to what extent it is succeed¬ ing. It is also shown wherein this program is failing and to what extent it is failing. A basis is thus laid for wise plans and efficient activity for the future, a basis which is wholly necessary for any larger success and which can be laid in no other way. 4. All phases of the educational task to be checked up. What has been said in the preceding paragraphs has to do chiefly with what we have called the central program of the church school. The church council has the over^ sight of the entire educational program of the individual church, however, and it is the duty of this body to check up the results attained in all phases of the task. It re¬ ceives through the director reports concerning the leader¬ ship training program of the church. It knows how many CHECKING UP THE RESULTS 223 teachers of the church school are pursuing courses which will fit them for larger and better service. It knows how many prospective teachers are enrolled in the courses of its training school. It keeps itself informed as to courses of study which are pursued in the training classes. It finds out about individual pupils in its normal classes, and notes the evidences of their increasing skill to teach and control the various classes of the school to which they are assigned for substitute teaching. The council keeps in touch with the program of co¬ operation which the church school carries on with the homes of its constituency. It notes whether the Cradle Roll activities and the Home Department activities are drawing church and home more closely together. It knows how many families in the constituency of the church have family worship, and whether this number has been increased, or not, by the church-school activities of the year. It checks up the results of the parents’ classes, inquiring as to number of parents enrolled and their general opinion concerning the helpfulness of the class discussion. It undertakes to evaluate the parent-teacher association program and decides whether the church- school teachers and the parents of the church-school pupils are being brought into closer fellowship through the activities of this organization. The council makes inquiry as to the relationships ex¬ isting between the church school which it represents and other religious educational agencies. It seeks to find out whether the church school is doing its share for the pro¬ motion of religious education in the denomination to which the church school belongs and likewise whether it is doing its share toward supporting necessary and helpful interdenominational agencies. Every council of religious education which has had the oversight of an individual church school for a year or 224 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION more and has had the executive assistance of a director of religious education should be able to give satisfactory information concerning the influence of the church school which they represent over the community in which the church school carries on its task. Church schools exist not only to help individuals onward to a higher life, but also to help whole communities in a similar manner. The council should be able to give reliable information as to whether the church school has curbed undesirable and commercialized amusements, as to whether such matters as the keeping of the Sabbath are being conserved and as to whether a community spirit of fellowship and help¬ fulness is being developed. 5. Bringing the educational program up to an adopted standard. In the next chapter of this book a thousand-point educational standard for an individual church school is presented. It is offered as a suggestion concerning the goals for which every church school ought to strive. One of the first tasks of a church council of religious education ought to be the construction of some such standard as that which we are to consider in the next chapter. It need not be this particular standard, indeed, the standard will be more valuable if it is produced largely by conferences in the council than it will be if it is taken over ready-made from the suggestions made in this book. Churches which have constructed educational standards really worth while have followed certain principles and it is well for the council which is considering the formulation of a church-school standard to keep these principles in view. The standard should express the council's conceptions of what the church school ought to be in its equipment, curriculum, teaching force, organization, administration, supervision, and in its relationships to the home, the public schools, and the community. The creation of a CHECKING UP THE RESULTS 225 standard should be the setting up of ideas. That which is evidently needed for a full efficiency of the school should find a place in the standard whether it seems possible of present attainment or not. It is a good thing for a council to set up a standard which must be striven for through many years. Low and easy standards for the church school cheapen one of the most sublime of all the tasks which God has given to men, namely, the task of nurturing young lives in the deep things of the spirit. The standard should be kept constantly before the church school so that pupils and teachers may understand its suggested goals and strive for their attainment. From time to time special emphasis may be laid upon the attainment of different provisions of the standard. The opening of the church-school year is a good time to under¬ take the bringing of the church school up to standard in matters of enrollment. Towards the close of the church- school year it is well to give special attention to the attainment of the spiritual goals which the standard sets forth. The standard need not be an unchangeable statement of the educational goals which the church school has in view. It ought to be subject to revision and amendment as the church-school leaders learn of better objectives and better plans of attaining them. Care should be ex¬ ercised lest the attainment of the standard become an end in itself. Sunday schools have sometimes fallen into this fault in their efforts to become standard schools. They have for example organized a Home Department with a few members and have carried it on in a careless way in order that they might claim this item of the standard. Church- school leaders ought to remember that the standard is only a means to an end and that this end is an efficient, well-organized, and adequate educational system which will reach the entire constituency of the church school. CHAPTER XVI A Thousand-Point Standard for Church School Which Carries on a Unified Educational Program for an Indi¬ vidual Church ■- ' . I CHAPTER XVI A Thousand-Point Standard For a Church School Which Carries on a Unified Educational Program For an Individual Church I. Organization. (100 Points.) 1. Church school organized to carry on a central program of information, worship, and expression; a program of leadership training; and a program of cooperation with the home. . . .25 points. 2. Departments separately and fully organized with superinten¬ dent, assistant superintendent, secretary, teaching force, and other officers. (Ten departments as named on page 76).30 points. 3. Student departmental organizations in Junior, Intermediate, Senior, Young People’s, and Adult Departments, with president, vice president, secretary, and other officers.20 points. 4. Boys’ clubs and girls’ clubs in the Junior, and Intermediate Departments, as sections of these departments.15 points. 5. All classes in the Senior, Young People’s and the Adult Departments organized, as sections-of these departments 10 sections Total for Organization...100 points. II. Administration and Supervision. (100 points.) 1. A church council of religious education composed of representa¬ tives from the governing board of the church, from the student body, and from the working force of every agency of the church which carries on educational work.25 points. 2. A director of religious education. (If volunteer service 5 points; part-time paid service, 15 points; full-time paid service 25 points).25 points. 3. Efficient supervision. Superintendent, or director, visits classes, observes the work of teachers, gives personal advice, holds teachers’ meetings for general discussions.20 points. 4. Adequate and permanent records. Information gathered con¬ cerning the name, address, parents’ occupation, parents’ nationality, age, grade in school, attendance, punctuality, Church relationship, and promotion of all pupils; this information preserved in per¬ manent form.10 points. 5. Administration maintains hearty cooperation with denomina¬ tional and interdenominational educational agencies. Financial support given to the educational board of the denomination and to such interdenominational agencies as the Sunday School Associa¬ tions. Information concerning the educational work of the denom- 229 230 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION ination and concerning such organizations as Sunday School Asso¬ ciation made a part of the informational program of the school .... 20 points. Total for Administration and Supervision.100 points. III. Curriculum. (100 points.) 1. Graded Lesson Materials. (Either closely graded or depart- mentally graded.).20 points. 2. A curriculum which is pedagogically complete, that is, which emphasizes information, training in worship, and expressional activities as essential to the educative process. If these phases of the educative process are present but not correlated into a uni¬ fied system, credit to be as follows: information, 4 points; worship, 4 points; expression, 4 points. If the three phases are correlated in a central program for the departments from the Primary to the Senior, a total of 25 points.25 points. 3. A curriculum which is complete as to subject matter. Essen¬ tial elements to be credited as follows: (a) Course fundamentally Biblical. (11 points.) ( b ) Missionary instruction. (2 points.) (c) Study of great hymns. (2 points.) (d) Temperance instruction. (2 points.) (e) Stewardship instruction. (2 points.) (/) Church history. (2 points.) ({7) Vocational guidance. (2 points.) (h) Personal work. (2 points.) Total points for a curriculum complete as to subject matter.25 points. 4. Lesson materials for pupils with maps, illustrations, and attrac¬ tive appearance.15 points. 5. Teachers’ helps with suggestions concerning the lesson goals and concerning methods of teaching particular lessons.. . .15 points' Total for Curriculum.100 points. IV. The Teaching Force. (100 points.) 1. A teaching force adequate as to numbers (the term “teach¬ ing force” as here used includes the instructors in the leadership training program, the various departmental superintendents the supervisors of the expressional organizations and the visitors for the home work, as well as the teachers of the Sunday session and the week-day session of the church school).10 points. 2. A consecrated teaching force; this consecration shown by regular and prompt attendance at classes, carefully prepared les¬ sons, and earnest efforts to secure the spiritual growth of pupils .... 25 points. THOUSAND-POINT STANDARD FOR CHURCH 231 3. A trained teaching force; at least one year’s training for all Sunday-school teachers and visitors in the home-work program; three years’ training for all departmental superintendents and week¬ day session teachers. These same requirements, with additional work in religious education, for all instructors in the leadership training school.15 points. 4. An experienced teaching force; all teachers, superintendents, visitors, and instructors with at least one year’s teaching experience before being given full responsibility for a definite part of the teach¬ ing task of the church.10 points. 5. Paid teachers for the week-day classes (may be part-time employees'of the school).20 points. 6. An organized teaching force; teachers meet for conference and for their growth in educational proficiency through systematic study of the Bible, pedagogy, and educational psychology. io points. 7. A corps of substitute teachers; the primary object of this body to be the preparation of teachers for the school through the securing of teaching experience in classes from which the regular teacher is absent.10 points. Total for the Teaching Force.100 points. V. Housing, Equipment, and General Financial Support. (100 points.) ' 1. The church-school building.40 points. (a) Near center of population which makes up church-school con¬ stituency, away from car lines if possible.(8 points.) ( b) Light, heat, and sanitation; no artificial light needed in day¬ time, good lighting system for night; satisfactory heating plant, such as steam, hot-air, or hot-water system; sanitary conditions as regards toilets, ventilation, and cleanliness. (8 points.) (c) Departmental assembly rooms; separate rooms for the assembling of all departments from the Beginners to the Adult Department. (10 points.) (d) Separate classrooms for all classes from Primary to Adult Department; no movable partitions. (8 points.) (e) Gymnasium and club rooms. (8 points.) 2. Equipment.20 points. (а) Chairs and tables, or desks for all pupils. (8 points.) (б) Maps, charts, pictures, sand tables, objects from mission lands, etc. (4 points.) (c) Teachers’ professional library. (3 points.) (d) Stereopticon or moving-picture machine. (3 points.) 3. General financial support.40 points. (а) Church school supported out of general budget of the church. (15 points.) (б) Offerings of pupils used for benevolent purposes and church budget and made part of the expressional program. (10 points.) 232 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION (c) Financial support generous enough to enable the school to employ trained and experienced teachers for the week-day sessions, a paid director of religious education, and to supply such equip¬ ment and such lesson materials as are necessary. (15 points.) Total for Housing, Equipment, and General Financial Support.100 points. VI. Right Relationships with the Church-School Constit¬ uency. (100 points.) 1. An annual survey which reveals the constituency of the church school, names, ages, addresses, church connection, etc.18 points. 2. Enrollment by the end of the church school of at least 90 per cent of the church-school constituency as revealed by the survey ... .21 points. 3. Attendance equal to ninety per cent of the possible attendance revealed by the enrollment.20 points. 4. Punctuality; up to the average of the public schools of the community.7 points. 5. Loyalty; loyalty to classes and teachers passing on into loyalty to the church school, the individual church, the Church universal, and to Jesus Christ as Lord of life; no loyalty that is divided be¬ cause of outside allegiances.12 points. 6. Orderly conduct; the conduct of pupils up to the best public- school standards as regards courtesy, quiet, attention, and interest ... .22 points. Total for Right Relationships.100 points. VII. The Central Program of Information, Worship, and Ex¬ pression. (100 points.) 1. The week-day session.25 points. (a) Week-day classes for pupils of Primary, Junior, Intermediate, and Senior Departments. (3 points.) (6) Class meets for at least one hour each week. (3 points.) (c) Public-school time for class. (4 points.) (d) Public-school credit in Senior Department. (2 points.) (e) Week-day instruction correlated with Sunday school and expressional organizations. (6 points.) (/) Major emphasis on information. (1 point.) (g) One hundred per cent of the Sunday-school pupils enrolled in the week-day classes. (6 points.) 2. The Sunday session.25 points. (g) At least sixty minutes of educational work. (3 points.) ( b ) Training in worship through religious services in the de¬ partments and in the classes. (15 points.) (c) Sunday-school work correlated with the week-day work and the expressional work in the Primary, Junior, Intermediate, and Senior Departments. (7 points.) THOUSAND-POINT STANDARD FOR CHURCH 233 3. The expressional session.25 points. (а) Sessions of at least one hour a week, in which opportunity is given to pupils to take part in the meeting, and to plan for service activities in which the truths studied are given expression. (10 points.) (б) Club sessions of at least one hour a week, with program of rec¬ reational activities as an integral part of the central program of the school. (9 points.) (c) One hundred per cent of Sunday-school pupils enrolled in expressional session. (6 points.) 4. The vacation session.'..25 points. (a) At least twenty teaching days of two and one-half hours each. (5 points.) (b) Program which supplements the regular church-school program. (3 points.) (c) Enrolls at least seventy-five per cent of all pupils in the Primary, Junior, and Intermediate Departments of the church school. (4 points.) (d) Handwork used to illustrate Biblical material. (4 points.) (e) A vacation camp of at least one week, and enrolling at least 75 per cent of the Intermediate and Senior Departments. (9 points.) Total for the Central Program.100 points. VIII. The Program of Co peration with the Home. (100 points.) 1. Pastoral work.25 points. (a) Family religion emphasized in preaching. (5 points.) (b) Family religion emphasized in pastoral visitation. (6 points.) (c) Instruction for contracting parties at marriages. (4 points.) (d) Instruction of parents at the baptism of children. (5 points.) (e) Efforts to cultivate religion in the home when children of the family make a decision for Christ. (5 points.) 2. The Home Department.25 points. (а) Parents and others who belong to the church-school constit¬ uency but who for any reason cannot attend, enrolled for Bible study. (12 points.) (б) Visitors encourage family prayers and other religious observances in the home. (13 points.) 3. The Cradle Roll.25 points. (а) Names of all babies of the church-school constituency se¬ cured for the Cradle Roll. (10 points.) (б) Birthday cards and other gifts sent to babies. (3 points.) (c) Visitors give parents counsel in the problems pertaining to the early life of the child. (12 points.) 4. Parents’ classes or mothers’ class.15 points. 5. Parent-teacher association.10 points. Total for the Program in the Home.100 points. 234 A PARISH PROGRAM OF EDUCATION IX. The Program of Leadership Training. (100 points.) 1. A school for present teachers.25 points. 2. A school for prospective teachers.25 points. 3. A three-year course made available.20 points. 4. Provisions for practice teaching.20 points. 5. Church cooperates with interdenominational training agencies, such as the Sunday School Association program of teacher-training and the community training school if one exists.10 points. Total for Leadership Training.100 points. X. Definite Spiritual Results. (100 points.) 1. A program of educational evangelism with definite appeals for a decision for the Christian life resulting in open confession of Christ by all pupils of the Intermediate Department and beyond .... 50 points. 2. All pupils of the Intermediate Department and beyond brought into Church membership, through a definite preparatory course of instruction led by the pastor.15 points. 3. Family worship established in all homes where one or both parents are members of the Church.10 points. 4. The whole constituency of the school tithers, or proportion¬ ate givers. 10 points. 5. Spiritual fruits of the church school seen in an increased interest in missions, world-wide philanthropy, and community betterment.15 points. 100 points. Total for Spiritual Results Grand Total. 1000 points. Date Due 4/ j