Religious Education in the Family Part 9

3. What are the advantages which the home has as a school?

4. How do homes train for the responsibilities of citizenship?

5. Can you describe any plans of community councils in the home?

6. How would you promote community service in the family?

7. What are the dangers of unsocial and selfish lives growing in the home?

FOOTNOTES:

[14] This chapter is, with the publisher's kind permission, taken, with sundry minor changes, from the author's pamphlet, _The Home as a School for Social Living_, published by the American Baptist Publication Society in the "Social Service Series."

CHAPTER IX

THE CHILD'S IDEAL LIFE

The modern child is likely to miss one of the great character enrichings which his parents had, in that he is in danger of growing up entirely ignorant of the poetic setting of religious thought in historic and dignified hymns. The great hymns have done more for religious thought and character than all the sermons that have ever been preached. Even in the adult of the purely intellectual cast the hymn, aided by rhythm, music, repet.i.tion, and emotion, is likely to become a more permanent part of the mental substratum than any formal logical presentation of ideas. How much more will this be the case with the child who feels more than he reasons, who delights in cadence and rhythm, and who loves a world of imagery!

-- 1. SONG AND STORY

Very early life's ideals are presented in poetic form; plays, school-life, love of country, friendships, all take or are given metric expression. So, for children, hymns have a perfectly natural place. The child sings as he plays, sings as he works, sings in school, and, as long as life and memory hold, these words of song will be his possession; in declining years, when eyes are failing and other interests may wane, fragments of childhood's songs and youth's poems will sing themselves over in his memory; while in the years between how often will some stanza or line spring into the focus of thought just at the moment when it can give brave and helpful direction!

Those years of facile memorization should be like the ant's summer, a period of steady storing in mind of the world's treasures of thought. No man ever had too many good and beautiful thoughts in his memory. Few have failed to recall with grat.i.tude some apparently long-forgotten word of cheer, light, and inspiration stored in childhood. The special virtue of the hymn, among all poetic forms of great thoughts, is that memory is strengthened by the music and the thought further idealized by it, while frequent repet.i.tion fixes it the more firmly and repet.i.tion in congregational song adds the high value of emotional a.s.sociation.

But what kinds of memory treasures are being given to the modern child in the realm of religion? In by far the greater number of instances in the United States neither church nor Sunday school nor home brings to him any knowledge of the great hymns of religion.[15] In the churches that use these hymns the child is frequently not in the Sunday services; he is in the children's service or the school, while in the majority of churches a weak-minded endeavor for amus.e.m.e.nt has subst.i.tuted meaningless rag-time trivialities for rich and dignified hymns. Perhaps the custom of encouraging congregations to jig, dance, cavort, or drone through the frivolities of "popular" gospel songs is only a pa.s.sing craze, but it is a most unfortunate one; it tends to divorce worship and thought, to make worship a matter of purely superficial emotions, and to form the habit of expressing religion, the highest experience of life, in language, often irreverent and almost always trivial, slangy, or ridiculous. It is an insult to the intelligence of children to ask them to sing

We're pilgrims o'er the sands of time, We have not long to stay, The lifeboat soon is coming, To carry the pilgrims away.

It is the duty of parents to know what their children are learning in the Sunday school. Not only are they often missing the opportunity to lay up the treasure of elevating, inspiring thoughts; they are acquiring crude, mistaken, misleading theological concepts in the hideous, revolting figures of "evangelistic songs"; they are storing their minds with atrocities in English and in figures of speech; they are acquiring the habits of sentimentality in religion and inhibiting the finer, higher feelings. They are blunting their higher feelings by repeating incongruous and nauseating figures of being "washed in blood," or they are carelessly singing sentiments they do not understand.

What can the family do about this? It ought to a.s.sert its rights in the church. It ought to protest and rebel against the debauching of mind and the degrading of religion (all for the sake of selling trashy books at $25 per hundred). A parent would do better to keep his child from church and Sunday school than to permit his mind to be filled with the sanguinary pictures of G.o.d, the mediaeval theology of the modern songbook, and its offenses against truth in thought and form. But the family can work positively and more effectively by providing good hymns for children in the home.

-- 2. TRAINING IN SONG

Almost without exception all children will sing if encouraged early in life. In the family group one has only to start a familiar song and soon all will be singing. It is just as natural to sing "Abide with Me" when the family sits together in the evening as it is to start "My Alabama Choo-choo." Children like the swing of "Onward, Christian Soldiers" just as much as in the northern states they like "Marching through Georgia."

If they do not know the hymns the home is the best of all places in which to learn them.

A large section of real family life is missing in families that do not sing together. A home without song lacks one of the strongest bonds of family unity, and the after-years will be deprived of a memory dear indeed to many others. Days often come when the wheels of family life seem to develop friction, when little rifts seem to throw the members far apart, but the evening song brings them together. The unity of action, of feeling, the development of emotions above the day's irritation and strife, all help to new joys in family living.

We may well think of the fine songs and the great hymns together. There is no fixed wall between "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory," and "The Son of G.o.d Goes Forth," nor between "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Jerusalem the Golden." The modern home has the musical instruments to lead in song--though they are not always essential--and lacks only the planning and forethought to develop the joys of song. It must provide the thought that applies the simpler forms of musical expression to the sweetening and enriching of life.

Let no one say, "My family is not musical." That simply means that your family does not take time for music and song. Build on the training in patriotic and folk-songs given in the schools; sing these same songs over in the home and then a.s.sociate with the best of them the best of the hymns. Cultivate the habit of binding the whole realm of feeling in music together, the hymns and the songs, to make religion mean beauty and devotion and to make the finer sentiments of life truly religious.

This costs time and thought. Someone must plan that the books of songs and hymns are provided, that the opportunity is given, and that wise, un.o.btrusive leadership is there. Have ready several copies of the book containing the best hymns. Think out your plan of procedure in advance, selecting the songs, or at least the first one. Then at the right time simply begin to play that song and you will scarcely need to invite the children to sing with you.

Should anyone doubt whether children will enjoy singing good hymns, he may purchase a few records for the phonograph, for example, "O Come All Ye Faithful," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "O Zion Haste," "Holy, Holy, Holy," "Abide with Me." These will suit those of from ten upward; younger children will enjoy "Can a Little Child Like Me," "Brightly Gleams Our Banner," "Jesus Loves Me." "I Think When I Read That Sweet Story," and "For the Beauty of the Earth," though they will join gladly in the other hymns. Or, instead of using the phonograph, sit down quietly at the piano and play these hymns, with just enough emphasis for the children to catch the rhythm, and they will soon be standing at the piano singing with you.[16]

-- 3. PLAY ACTIVITY

The child is a playing animal. Play is not an invention of the devil, designed to plague parents and to lead children to waste their time. It is nature's best method of education, for when a child plays he is simply reaching forward in his activities to the realization of his ideals. Play is idealized experiences. There is always a significance of wider and maturer experience in children's play. Therefore the family must find s.p.a.ce and time and adaptation of organization to the child's need of spontaneous, free activity in play.

The special religious value of play lies in the fact that the child in his games is experimenting with life, learning its lessons; especially is he learning the art of living with other lives. It is our religious duty to see to it that our children become used to living in society by playing in social groups. Scarcely anyone is more to be pitied than the lonely child standing in the corner of the playground, able only to watch the games, because parental prohibition has already made him a solitary and unsocial creature.

The educational potencies of play are so great that we dare not leave its activities to chance. Parents must study the power of play, its psychological and educational values, in order to direct its activity to the highest good.

The adequate care of a child's play-life will involve, in addition to the trained intelligence of the parents, provision for s.p.a.ce in the house and also outdoors, willingness to subordinate our peace and our pleasure to the child's play at times, a reasonable though not necessarily expensive provision of play materials, attention to the character of the plays and playmates. The home will not lose its harmony and beauty if it is filled with playing children. Its function has to do with their development rather than with the preservation of chairs.

I. References for Study

H.F. Cope, _Hymns You Ought to Know_, Introduction. Revell, $1.50.

W.F. Pratt, _Musical Ministries_. Revell, $1.00.

H.W. Hulbert, _The Church and Her Children_, chap. x. Revell, $1.00.

II. Further Reading

For a list of great hymns see _Hymns You Ought to Know_, edited by Henry F. Cope, and mentioned above. It contains one hundred standard hymns with a brief account of each hymn and of each author.

E.D. Eaton, "Hymns for Youth," _Religious Education_, December, 1912, VII, 509.

See report of the Commission on Worship in the Sunday School, in _Religious Education_, October, 1914.

Read especially the chapter on this subject in H.H. Hartshorne, _Worship in the Sunday School_. Columbia University, $1.25.

III. Topics for Discussion

1. What special advantages do songs and hymns have in their pedagogical power?

2. What hymns do you remember from childhood? In what way are these hymns valuable to you?

3. What changes would you like to see in the hymns the children learn today?

4. What difficulties do you find in training children to sing in the home?

5. Is it worth while to teach children to play? What games have special educational value? What games have religious significance or value? Give reasons for your opinions.

FOOTNOTES: