The Boy and the Sunday School Part 17

2. Pa.s.s white cards, as soon as the colored ones have been properly filled; or, better yet, place a white card in each banqueter's program and challenge to service and training.

3. Write to each chosen representative before the first called meeting, enclosing credential card to be signed by the superintendent of the school, the pastor of the church, and write to each of these men enclosing the plan of the Crusade.

=First Meeting of Council=

Do not allow more than two weeks to pa.s.s until the Council meets to lay its plans. Strike, and keep on striking while the iron is hot.

_The Follow-Up_.--Call at once a meeting of the older-boy representatives on the Inter-Sunday School Council. Do not call in the men until later. This is an =Older Boy Movement=, and you are going to get the Older Fellows in the Sunday school to go after the Older Fellows out of the Sunday school. Impress upon the Council that this is their job and whatever success is achieved will be due to their efforts. Let a clean-cut spiritual atmosphere prevail at these meetings.

You will find that the boys are there for business.

It is suggested that the meetings be held Sat.u.r.day evening, beginning at 5:30 with supper, to cost not more than fifteen cents per plate.

_First Meeting_.--Don't rush things. You will gain much by making the fellows feel that you are all working this problem out together and that the prayerful cooperation of every member is necessary. Don't stampede the meeting with a lot of elaborate plans. If you have any plans, turn them over to the Council by way of suggestion, and let that body use its own judgment. Everything that is done by the Council should emanate from its members. It is suggested that the purpose and program of this meeting should be somewhat as follows:

(a) Statement of purpose of Council.

(b) Trace connection of Council to International work (i.e., Council, City Secondary Division Committee, City Secondary Division Superintendent, County Secondary Division Superintendent, State or Provincial Secondary Division Committee, State or Provincial Secondary Division Superintendent, International Secondary Division Committee, International Secondary Division Superintendent, etc.--this to show them that they are officially related to a world-wide movement).

(c) Fellowship and "Get Together."

Be sure to have Adult members at this meeting.

_Second Meeting_ (two weeks after first).--

At this meeting discuss:

(a) Importance of cla.s.s organization--each member urged to get to work at once in his local school.

(b) Age limit of cla.s.ses now in the organization.

(c) Outline possibilities of Council for promotion and all-round physical, mental, social and spiritual activities of teen age fellows of the Sunday schools of the city.

(d) Discuss the idea of the census survey.

These two meetings will pave the way for the third and following meetings. Don't meet simply for the sake of holding a meeting. Let your fellows feel that when a call to meeting is received it is important.

_Third and Subsequent Meetings_

1. Lay your plans carefully for the census-taking, then complete the job quickly.

2. a.n.a.lyze the cards and distribute to the organized cla.s.ses. Their work then begins. Encourage regular reports on the work of the cla.s.ses at each meeting of the Council, the school representatives reporting.

3. Plan for the execution of the Missionary, Purity and Temperance Programs.

4. Extend the Council's field until it covers the common physical, social, mental and spiritual activities of the community teen age boys.

5. Plan for regular Conference or Banquet Programs.

6. Ultimately the entire common Sunday school athletic and social life of the community would center in the Inter-Sunday School Council.

_Meeting of Superintendents_

It is suggested that at this juncture a meeting of Sunday school Superintendents be called for the purpose of thoroughly acquainting them with the plans of the Council. This will secure the cooperation of the Superintendents, which is most essential. The effort to get the Superintendents behind the work will be more successful if the city be divided into sections and a Superintendents' meeting be held in each section. These meetings can be made very helpful.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON BOYS' CRUSADE

High School Student Christian Movement Series:

Bulletin No. 1. The Local Organization (.05).

Bulletin No. 2. Typical Const.i.tution (.05).

Bulletin No. 3. The Inner Circle (.05).

International Secondary Division Leaflet, No. 5 (Free).

XV

s.e.x EDUCATION FOR BOYS AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL[10]

There can be no adequate comprehension of the physical side of boyhood if the s.e.x element be left out. In fact, we have discovered for ourselves that this is the very element that const.i.tutes the real problem of boyhood; for until the idea of s.e.x enters into the boy's consciousness we are only dealing with an infant. It is the gift and power of self-reproduction that changes the selfish, individual existence into the larger, altruistic life. It is this that compels gangs and team-work and the instinctive desire to negate self in service for others. It is this that forms the basis for the tribal or community desire; and on it, understood or not, is built all further achievement.

The real value of a brave to his tribe begins with the support of his squaw, and the modern boy gets his importance among us, when, because of bodily function, he awakens to the consciousness of the meaning of the home. This comes gradually at p.u.b.erty or adolescence with the knowledge of the s.e.x purpose. And it is the quality of this knowledge, its purity and fear and regard, that makes the lad a worthy member of the larger whole, or a peril.

Knowing this as we do, is it not a matter of some wonder that we have never really made any systematic effort to instruct the boy concerning his wonderful power? Very few fathers give their sons any guidance along this line, although they do so quite freely on every other subject. Of course, it is a sacred, delicate subject from which we naturally shrink, but it is overmodesty to allow a lad to fall into the abuse of his manhood, either alone or in twos, when a wise word, spoken in time, would save the smirch on two lives or more. In fact, we are beginning really to understand that it is just as imperative for us to teach a boy how to live his life with the utmost happiness as to show him how to procure the wherewithal to feed his body. For this reason it is being advocated today that the boy should be given explicit instruction as to the care of the organs of reproduction and detailed information as to the functions of these organs, and many are doing this.

Our boys today are eating freely of "the knowledge of good and evil,"

and they are not as innocent as we could wish them to be. They are not ignorant of the processes of life because we have said nothing concerning them, but their knowledge is partial and faulty and clouded with misinformation.

A few years ago a body of men were discussing this very thing in New York City, and one of them suggested that every one present write on a piece of paper the age at which he had his first s.e.x knowledge and pa.s.s it to the head of the table. The average age named by this group of interested men was six and a half years. Not one of these men, either, had ever had a single word spoken to him on this all-important subject by any adult. Their knowledge was of the street. Is it any wonder, then, that boys stray, mar their own lives, betray confidences and innocence and become moral lepers, feeding like parasites on the fairest of our communities?

Instruction in the processes of the function of reproduction would help many a boy to a clean partic.i.p.ation in and a happy understanding of the home. The divorce evil and the necessity of a large number of surgical operations among women, to say nothing of the so-called social evil, would be greatly lessened by such instruction. The father, of course, is the proper person to deal with this question.

=Parents and the s.e.x Problem=

When parents understand s.e.x influence they will more than half meet the problems of the teen age. To rightly instruct along s.e.x lines and so prepare boys and girls to meet the teen period is almost completely to meet the teen problem.

Social and economic changes have moved this generation a full hundred years ahead of our fathers. The change, however, has a moral menace in it, for the slow but sure ways of the old-fashioned home with its genuinely moral atmosphere have nearly slipped us. Today boys and girls are herded together by the compulsion of the times and moral ideas are in danger of being warped and twisted. Everything about us today is more complex than formerly, and the more complex things become the more we herd together. Ma.s.s life is common and growing--in education, in the schools and in play life, in the big public playgrounds. Religious activity, in spite of the group tendency toward the small group, is still in the ma.s.s--Christian Endeavor, Sunday school groupings, etc.

With the growing a.s.sumption of week-day activities on the part of the church, the moral peril increases.

To offset this increasing social danger s.e.x instruction is an insistent necessity. Boys and girls must be taught to see themselves as members of society with all that that implies. To do so means a knowledge of self and s.e.x and their functions and responsibilities. The sources and processes of life must be intelligently understood and thus respected.