Parent and Child - Child Study and Training Part 16

You remember in "Pilgrim's Progress" that when Christian had left the Interpreter's House, he strayed away and went down into the Valley of Humiliation, where he walked between the snares and was in danger of falling into many a pitfall; there he wandered through darkness; there he could not see the Delectable Mountains any more, and there he fought with Giant Apollyon for his life; but when Christian pa.s.sed that way he did not find it half so bad by any means. He had a companion by the name of Great Heart, remember, and Great Heart said to him, "Do you know that the soil of this valley is probably the most fertile that the crow flies over?"

The Valley of Humiliation, my friends, stretches sharp and clear athwart the life of every man and woman between the Interpreter's House of his early education and of his dreams and visions, and the Delectable Mountains, and we all have to depart to it whether we will or no, and it is the most fertile soil that the crow flies over, for in that Valley of Humiliation men's muscles and nerves become steel, and man becomes the shadow of the great rock in the Weary Land, and through heartaches the man and the woman are made the soldiers and the choice heroes of Jehovah Himself. It is into that Valley of Humiliation that the boy and the girl are going to go from school after they leave you, and you must fit them for it; many of you know well enough what it is and know what help they need.

You have read, all of you, a good many times probably, this marvelous pa.s.sage from Isaiah: "They that trust in the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." I never thought what that meant until one morning in college chapel our president turned to us and said: "Most of you think that is an anti-climax," and we would say: "Why, of course, for a man cannot fly like the eagle. He can walk down hill, what is the use talking about that walking down hill." The old man shook his head and said: "No, no. Anybody can fly like an eagle in his imagination; when we are beginning any new work or any new study or anything new, we fly; but after a time we cannot fly any more, we come down to a run; and the man who wins out is not the man who can run, but the man who can 'walk and not faint,' for that man has the endurance that we want."

There was a time some years ago--that has gone by too, thank fortune--when we used to paraphrase things; that is, turn very good English into very bad English. You wish to have a boy or girl catch the spirit of the poem, do you not, to find in it inspiration and power, to find a beauty in life that never was on sea nor land? A sweet voice is a very excellent thing in a woman, and a very unusual thing in a man. The eye is not the grandest sense organ we have; the ear is the path-way to the heart, and that is what you want to understand. Did you ever try reading a beautiful poem or story aloud to your children at your fireside or to the cla.s.s and put your very life's blood into it? I remember some things that a little girl teacher in Ma.s.sachusetts read to me a great many years ago, and there is a dent in my old heart still. Try it some day. They cannot understand the poem, but they feel it. It has gone deeper than the intellect. It has gone into the heart and through the heart, it has got hold of the will and it has transfigured the spirit and the whole being. In this way you are certainly teaching literature; n.o.body can deny that. You have awakened a new interest. You lead and inspire the adolescent to share your very best and highest enthusiasm. After you have done that a few times your pupils will demand the best; they won't be content with anything poor.

The highest human thing in the end is character, and character is formed very early, very shortly before the boy leaves the high school. Just how it is formed I do not know, but I know one thing, that while I cannot tell anything about how successful a man will be intellectually in life from what he does in college, or, sometimes, I cannot tell very much about how large he will grow mentally, I know that boy will not rise very much higher morally than he stands in college when you send him there. If, then, he has secured a moral training and influence, I firmly believe he will stay so.

If he does not come to us in that shape the probability is that he never will change for the good, but if he is filthy he will remain filthy still.

His character is made very largely in the high school.

How can you reach it? I think you can reach it a good deal through literature. I do not see how anybody can read Mr. Hawthorne or Mr. Emerson, and not long to be a gentleman, and feel as if he would like to be worthy to kiss the hem of the garment of those literary gentlemen. You can read history. You can make history a dreary chronicle. You can learn of kings who never ought to have been born, and when they died, when they ought to have been dead fifty years before, and all the long list of battles fought which never ought to have been fought. You can make it just such a weary chronicle. You do not, nowadays, thank fortune; I have seen teachers that did. Or you can make that history the Eleventh Chapter of Hebrews, and you can write your own Eleventh Chapter of Hebrews, if you will, for that chapter never was intended to be finished; and if you cannot add to it with your pioneer history of those who fought their way across the plains here fifty or more years ago, then you are teaching history to mighty little effect to this generation here in Utah. The whole story is just this, if you can saturate your pupils with the character of just such men and women as that, then you have trained a generation of heroes and n.o.body can spoil them.

That is what, it seems to me, Mr. Martineau means in that dark pa.s.sage, "We shall never have a proper system of education until we have a proper religion." We are a good deal lacking in the study of the Bible nowadays.

We go to it to prove the text, to "break the scales" of our adversaries, and for other purposes. I do not use it for that purpose myself. If you will read that old book until you can walk the street arm in arm with Gideon and David and Jepthah and old Samson, too, yes, heaven bless him, and Moses and Samuel, the prophets, then we are reading it to some purpose.

Until you know them all as your best friends, you have not begun to read that book; for that is what it was intended for. The Bible is an advanced text book of biology, the science of life. If you will train your boys and girls to walk the streets and live with the heroes of the world, make them form an intimate friendship with them, then you have trained those boys and girls to be heroes themselves.

Did you ever try reading to them the defense which old Socrates makes, which Plato wrote down for us? I do not know whether Socrates ever said it, but it was worthy of him. Read it to your boys and girls some day. See what they say about the Apology. And read the Crito. Let them sit with Socrates in his prison there on the hillside and listen to his discussion, until, as he says, he hears the voice of the law ringing in his ears and he cannot hear anything else, and stays on to die. When the prison door is opened for him to walk out, provided he would walk out with dishonor, he will not go.

Let them see the old hero die in Athens as the sun goes down. You have not only awakened a new interest, you have evoked a higher life, and that is what we are after, that is what you and I are here for, that is the only way in the end to beat the record. That is the essential power of great leaders, of great prophets, and of great teachers, and the seat of it is in their personality.

I don't know what I am talking about there either, for personality defies a.n.a.lysis and it defies resistance. It leaps from soul to soul just like an infection. We hear a great deal about the infectiousness of bad things and people are always talking about infectious disease and of corrupting influences in the world and all that sort of thing. Do you suppose the Lord has made this world so that everything that is bad is contagious and everything that is good is not contagious? Are you going to slander the Lord like that? It is about time that we wake up to the fact that the real genuine article of goodness is a good deal more contagious than smallpox.

Heroism and hero-worship is the central thought of history from the time of Gideon to the time of Sheridan, and down to our present time. Virtue, we must remember, should strike just like electricity from a dynamo. You remember that was the continual word of that Great Master of ours. Someone in the crowd has touched me, Virtue has gone over into somebody else.

Virtue has gone out of me; strength has gone out of me and gone over into somebody else. I am talking about something that I do not understand; but something that you will know. Have you never, at the close of the day, when you were tired, discouraged, wondered whether it is worth while to keep up the fight? When you had been knocked flat and were pretty sure you were out, and then you sat down for a little time by some strong man or strong woman, and probably they did not say a great deal to you. They were men and women of few words, and you did not say a great deal to them, but after a little it began to come upon you that come what would you would fight again? Courage had come into you. You do not know where it came from, or how it came in, but you borrowed it and you go on your way the stronger because of the infection from that strong man.

We must be healthy and strong and sympathetic. We must be a child with the child and a boy with the boy, and yet we must lead and not follow. We must be firm and patient and hopeful and courageous, and we must infect these boys and girls with the very best that we have in us and something that is a little better yet, and how are we going to get it? Why, we must be continually infected from others; that is the only way. I don't care how big your reservoir is, your irrigation reservoir, if there isn't a stream going into it, it is going to be empty sometime. Look out for the streams which come in from the hills and the heights of glory into your lives.

This is the glory of our life and our work. You are making the youth of the twentieth century, as I said to you, and you are doing something grander; for every bit of good that you give here in Utah will spread back to us in Ma.s.sachusetts and you are moulding the race into conformity with that which is deepest and most permanent and most eternal in environment, and hence all the powers of Nature are on your side.

"We are two," said Abbe Bacha to Mahomet, as they were plodding from Mecca to Medina. "No," answered Mahomet, "We are three. G.o.d is with us." We cast in our efforts with this grand tide of events which is sweeping on toward a better age and better race, and we cannot fail. Therefore, let us gird up our loins, be strong and of a very good courage; for, as I have said to you once before, you shall lead these little people into the land of hope and promise which the Lord swore unto their ancestors, their fathers, that He would surely give them.

GENERAL SUBJECT

_The Adolescent, or High School Age_

Read carefully the foregoing lecture on "Growth During the High School Age," by Dr. Tyler, for all these succeeding lessons.

LESSON VI

ATHLETIC NEEDS OF BOYS AND GIRLS

1. What steps have ever been taken in your community to provide for proper athletic sports for the young? What success came of these efforts?

2. Give two reasons why wholesome physical recreation is necessary for growing children.

3. What games and sports do you consider best for boys? For girls? Why?

4. What dangers come from uncontrolled athletics?

5. What do you think about the value of school athletics that develop only a team?

6. What can be done, (1) by the parents, (2) by communities,

(a) To provide for wholesome games and sports for all the children?

(b) To provide proper leadership and supervision of these things?

(c) To regulate the excesses and check evils of the athletic spirit?

(d) To provide proper places in which to play?

LESSON VII

SOCIAL NEEDS

1. During what years does the desire to be with "the crowd" manifest itself most strongly in boys and girls?

2. What difficulties come to the parents in the management of boys and girls during this time?

3. In what ways can parents best exercise control over the companionships of their children during this vital period?

4. In what ways can the social needs of boys and girls be provided for in the home?

5. How far can and should parents go in partic.i.p.ating in the pastimes of their children? What can be done to keep up the spirit of companionship between parents and children?

6. What can communities do to put down the "street corner" habits and the "hoodlumism" that comes of the boy gangs?

7. What pastimes and practices can be fostered to bring about a higher-minded companionship among young people?

LESSON VIII

KEEPING OUR BOYS AND GIRLS AT HOME

1. What are the first indications that our home is losing its hold upon our boy? Our girl?