A social theory of religious education

Front matter

New York

State College of Agriculture

At Cornell University

Foreword

What consequences for religious education follow from the now widely accepted social interpretation of the Christian message ? The present work is an attempt to answer this question.

The answer is not simple. For the social message does not require us merely to insert this or that new duty into our present scheme of living, but also to judge every detail of conduct from a higher point of view. We are required to organize the whole of life upon a different level.

It would be strange indeed if the new meaning that this gives to every-day affairs did not change our outlook upon child life. If we are to be logical and practical in our social Christianity, we must revise our policies with respect to children at least as much as our policies with respect to adults. The chapters that follow undertake to show the directions that this revision will need to take.

As we proceed, it will appear that the whole perspective of religious education undergoes a change. The central purpose, to begin with, grows more specific because the nature of goodness is seen to be as concrete as the neighbor who lives next door. Christian experience comes out of the clouds, because in our dealings with our brother whom we have seen we are dealing with the Father whom we have not seen — yes, we here come into relation with what is deepest in his character and purposes. To Christian ears these statements do not sound strange, perhaps, yet when they are applied to the religious life of the yoimg they do sing a new melody. A profounder significance attaches to the will of a child, and especially to his relations with persons, whether children or adults.

All the plans and methods of religious education have now to be reorganized with reference to these social relations and

vii viii FOREWORD

experiences. A new measure is provided for the material that goes into the curriculum of instruction. Organizations that undertake to educate, whether the family or the 6hurch, meet a different test from that which has been traditional. Theological and ecclesiastical types take on new meaning, and they encounter demands that they have not always foreseen. The educational relations between state and church, likewise, have a different look when we approach them from the standpoint of a thoroughly socialized religion. Not less true is it that emphasis now shifts from one part of educational psychology to another.

Through my whole discussion there runs a conviction that within Protestantism there is, or is coming to be, a distinctive religious principle, that of a divine-human industrial democracy. "My Father worketh even until now, and I work." I believe that here the Christian religion contains a permanently progressive element, and therefore a motive for self-criticism as well as for criticism of "the world." Religious education, consequently, is here thought of not merely as a process whereby ancient standards are transmitted, but also as having a part in the revision of standards themselves.

Another conviction that controls my discussion is that educational organization and methods are not static tools, like saws and hammers, which are indifferent to the structures that they build, but living and moving parts of the collective life. A democracy cannot afford to use in its public schools the methods that an autocratic state finds adapted to its purposes. When the purposes of society are transformed, education must be made over. Protestantism cannot make Protestants of its children by the methods of Catholic teaching. A divine-human democracy cannot grow up through educative processes that have in their nostrils the breath of autocracy.

These are themes of high intellectual interest. They are also religious issues of the greatest import. They have a direct bearing upon even the ordinary duties of religious educators. The humblest worker will do better work if he knows the why and the whither of it than he will if he merely follows some

FOREWORD ix

prescription. Therefore I hope that this book of mine will be found practically helpful by those who, bear the heat and the burden of the day in the schools of the church, as well as by those who guide congregations or whole communions.

As my study of this theme has progressed, I have been more and more conscious of the magnitude of the problem, and of its unending ramifications. I cannot hope to have said the last word, nor to have escaped error, but I dare to hope that others will be stimulated to face the issues and to declare their own convictions. I trust also that my faults will be judged in the light of the fact that this is the first attempt to work out in a systematic way the consequences that will follow for religious education when it is controlled by a fully social interpretation of the Christian message.

While these chapters have been in progress the wail of children in the lands at war has been in my ears, a wail for the fathers of whom they have been bereft, a wail for bread, a wail for a decent world in which to grow up. To my thinking it is a cry from all the children of the world for the sort of education that faces, and understands, the great madness that is abroad, and not only understands, but also knows the resources of human nature and of religion. Even while I have been writing about educating children in the love that loves to the uttermost, I, as a citizen of the United States, have gone to war I I am so bound into one with my neighbors that I cannot, if I would, act as a mere individual; and my neighbors and I, who constitute the United States of America, are so boimd up with neighbors beyond our national boundaries that our "moral destiny is intertwined with theirs. We and they must rise together, or we shall not rise at all. Forward, out of nationalism, with its limitations upon brotherhood, into world society I But we are partly of the past, "red in tooth and claw," and only partly of the ideal future. With our hands we fight our brothers; with our hearts we abhor fighting. 'Wretched men that we are ! Who shall deliver us out of the body of this death ? '

The future of society depends upon the sort of social education that we think it worth while to provide.

X FOREWORD

Any reader who is familiar with present movements in educational thought will perceive, as this work proceeds, how much I owe to writers who have had in mind the public schpol rather than religious education. I am indebted most of all to John Dewey, who is foremost among those who have put education and industrial democracy into a single perspective.

G£OBGE A. CoE.

GtiEiiBOBA, California, May 12, 1917.

CONTENTS vxas

Foreword vii

Introduction

CHAPTBB

I. Why So Much Theorizing? 3

Part I The Social Standpoint In Modern Education

II. General Exposition of the Social Standpoint 13

III. The Philosophical Setting of the New

Social Ideals in Education 25

IV. The Place of the Individual in a Socla.lized

Education 38

PART II THE SOCIAL interpretation OF CHRISTIANITY

REQUIRES SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION IN

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

V. The Aims of Christian Education .... 53

VI. The First Essentials of an Educational

Plan 64

S3 xii CONTENTS

CHAFTEB PAQB

VII. The Educative Pkocess is Religious Experience 74

VIII. The Church as Educator 85

IX. A New Theory of the Cuertculum .... 97

PART III THE psychological BACKGROUND OF A SOCIAL- IZED religious EDUCATION

X. The Social Nature of Man 119

XI. Children's Faith in God 138

XII. The Religious Limitations op Children . 147

XIII. The Struggle with Sin 164

XIV. The Learning Process Considered as the

Achieving of Character 184

Part IV

the organization of a socialized religious education

XV. The Christian Reorganization of the

Family 207

XVI. The Church School 226

XVII. Educational Relations between State and

Church 248

XVin. The Denominational Department of Religious Education 266

XIX. Beyond the Denominations 283

CONTENTS xiii PART V

CHAPTER FAQB

EXISTING TENDENCIES IN CHRISTIAN EDUCATION VIEWED FROM THE SOCIAL STANDPOINT

XX. The Roman Catholic Type 295

XXI. The Dogmatic Protestant Type 304

XXII. -The Ritualistic Protestant Type .... 316

XXIII. Educational Tendencies of Evangelicalism 324

XXIV. Educational Tendencies of Liberalism . . 335

Index 357

INTRODUCTION

Chapter I Why So Much Theorizing?

Have we theory enough akeady? Whoever makes a reflective choice between educational ends, and then determines by systematic analysis what are in general the means whereby the chosen ends can be most certainly and most economically reached, has a theory of education in the sense in which the term "theory" is used in this work. A theory of education, then, is simply knowledge of what we as educators want and how to get it.

A committee was discussing plans for a training institute for workers in religious education. "What we want," said one member of the committee, "is something practical. We don't want theories." To this another committeeman replied: "What have you against theories? We have practice already, and practice is what makes all oiu: trouble. Theory is the thing we need. We're perishing for want of it I" Doubtless the first of these men meant to stand for applied knowledge as against ineffective thinking, while thp second meant to stand for applied knowledge as against ineffective practice. Both really wanted theory in the present sense of the term.

Of theory in this sense we can never have too much. That we have, in fact, altogether too Uttle of it — that our workers do not discriminate with sufficient care either ends or means, do not think enough upon what they are about — is certain. An enthusiastic young student of religious education, upon a visit of observation to a certain Sunday school, asked the superintendent: "What is the purpose of this school?" The superintendent hesitated, requested that the question be repeated, family discipline that defeated their own aims have dominated theories of such discipline. Many a parent has conscientiously made goodness unattractive to his children, and then recommended that all parents go and do likewise ! Many a progressive-minded Sunday-school worker unconsciously bends his standards to fit Sunday schools as they are. He has a theory, but it is not sufficiently critical.

The consequence of this is that the cause of religious education requires the repeated reopening of matters that seem to be already settled. The reason is not that revolutions are desirable, but that our thinking, being under the influence of our own defective past, never reaches a point where it can properly say: "Here I have reached finality; here revision will never be necessary." This is the pride that goes before a fall. The spirit of true theorizing is humble. It says to itself: "In all probability my present views of religious education are a mixtmre of truth and error. Let me, then, scrutinize them once more, and may the succession of scrutinizers never fail !"

The main problem is how to make Christian education sufficiently, as well as efficiently, Christian. We should stumble into a total misconception if we were to think of a theory of religious education as an attempt to control religion from outside itself, as, for example, by mere speculation. No, it is an attempt to judge our religious performances from within religion. Christian education is to be thought of as through and through the Christian religion in operation. Its methods are to be scrutinized and revised from the sole point of view of religious effectiveness. Its aims also are to be weighed in religious scales, and no others.

Not only do old methods come to us bringing hay, wood, and stubble along with precious metal, but the same is true of old purposes. They, also, as well as methods, have to be "trued up" from time to time, partly because we forget something that came to us in the hoiu* of spiritual vision, partly because insight into the meaning of life does not attain fixity in any generation. There are depths in the Christian message that our fathers' plummets did not sound; there are depths that will remain unknown until generations yet to be born shall ask their own fresh questions. Accordingly, when we reflect upon the existing aims of Christian education with a view to revising them, we are engaged in an attempt to make them more Christian. We are not satisfied to become more efficient upon yesterday's religious level; we aspire to raise the level itself. Our problem is to make Christian education as Christian as possible. The application of this remark to the situation of the churches to-day is unmistakable. The aims and methods of Christian education, as of church life in general, that this generation inherited were predominantly individualistic. We have been so taught as to think of the great salvation as a rescuing of individuals, each by himself, from the guilt and the power of sin, and of establishing them, each by himself, in the way of righteousness. When Canon Fremantle gave us the phrase "the world as the subject of redemption" we had to think twice before we could see just what it meant. For most Christians were still thinking of the increase of Christ's kingdom in terms of a mere census, a mere count of individuals rescued out of an evil world. But our generation has come to see that the redemptive mission of the Christ is nothing less than that of transforming the social order itself into a brotherhood or family of God. We are not saved, each by himself, and then added to one another like marbles in a bag or like grains of sand in a sand pile. A saved society is not made by any such external process. We are members one of another in our sins, and we are members one of another in the whole process of being saved from sin. I cannot go alone either toward or away from the kingdom, for it is my relation to some one else, a relation of help or of hinderance, that_determines the direction that my own character is taking. " In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." For us of the present generation the duty of making Christian education sufficiently Christian will mean bringing it into line with this social message.

Love as an inclusive law for education has not been worked ^ out in theory or tried in practice. This is an astonishing thing to say, but it is strictly true. We have endeavored to include love within education as one item among many, but we have not taken it as the higher and inclusive conception by which to determine our aims and by which to test our methods. We have been accustomed to start the educative process outside of the act of loving, say in some dogma or religious rite, expecting somehow to get inside love at some later time. We have not thought of method as systematized love producing its like, that is, as the divine social order, aheady started on earth, and here and now giving children a place and an incentive to grow within itself. We have not conceived religious education as itself a part of the campaign for the social righteousness that the law of love requires, or as an actual initiation into the social relations that belong to the citizens of the kingdom. Eather, we have assumed that the campaign for social righteousness is an affair of adults exclusively. We have even hesitated to bring it to church with us lest it should disturb reposeful contemplation of God. As if we could contemplate the Father without thinking about that upon which his heart is set, or as if he himself could have peace of mind only by taiking a vacation from the rest of the family !

Here and there, in fragmentary ways, we have begun, it is true, to experiment with lessons that touch upon love in action. Social-service activities, moreover, have here and there become a regular part of the educative procedure. But as yet these are additions to presocial religious education, or palhatives of it, rather than an attempt to socialize the whole control. Thorough socialization will require a fresh approach to the curriculum as a whole. It will require us to re-examine the organization of religious education in order to see whether the social relations in which the child is here aheady placed do themselves train him in active love and in methods of co-operation. It will require us to scrutinize every detail of teaching method to see what sort of social relation it involves between teacher and taught, and between pupil and pupil. Here, surely, is need for a theory of religious education.

The theory of public education is undergoing a transformation that is of the utmost significance for the churches. The old assumptions of public education, like those of religious education, were individualistic. The day school was expected to put the pupil into possession of certain tools (as reading and writing), and to impart a certain minimum amoimt of useful knowledge (as geography)j all of which was thought of as preparing him to live as an individual. To-day we cannot I think of the public schools as having any smaller task than that of preparing young citizens for living together. Moreover, we are engaged, in both theory and practice, in bringing school training closer and closer to the every-day occupation of a citizen, his labor for a livelihood.

The growth of the social idea and of the industrial idea in public education is significant for the churches in several ways. In the first place, humanitarianism is getting a new organ, one that promises to become immensely efficient. The state can hardly train its citizens in the art of living together without teaching, more or less, the brotherhood that is of the heart. Nor can this teaching go very far before it awakens thought upon the ancient injustices that persist in society. Moreover, when the school, with this growing social outlook and inlook, is brought close to the industries, it is bound, sooner or later, to interpret to our whole people, either intentionally or otherwise, the meaning of " the food which perisheth," the significance of labor, of income, and of wealth. All these are ancient interests of the Christian preacher, and they are present, vital concerns for Christian teaching, whether of adults or of children.

What shall the churches do, then, with respect to these new developments in the theory of public education? How can we be unmoved by what is going on ? If we really believe in the axioms of Christian living, we cannot be indifferent. Nay, we whose consciences are just now being pricked by the neglected social elements in our religion, if we have even a moderate amount of practical sense, must take our place as citizens beside those who have seen a social vision in public education. We must try to understand what the vision saith; we must support and encourage the reformers in their hard task, and we must gladly tax ourselves for public education as we have never taxed ourselves before.

But we shall not empty out of the church into the state school the whole function of social education. Rather, we shall define and realize more definitely than ever before the educational implications of the old faith that God himself is love. Gladly co-operating with every one who endeavors to put the love of one's neighbor into education, we shall go on to probe the educational significance of the two great commandments in the Christian faith. For us there must be a theory and a 'practice in which the love of God to us and our love to him are not separated from, but realized in, our efforts toward ideal society, the family or kingdom of God. Such a theory of Christian education we have not as yet.

Four components of educational theory. The divisions adopted by each writer upon this subject are likely to depend more or less upon his notion of convenience in exposition. But the following components will be foimd in one or another form in any broad analysis:

(1) An indication of the kind of society that is regarded as desirable.

(2) A conception of the original nature of children.

(3) A conception of the sorts of indimd/ual experience that will most siu-ely and economically produce in such children the kind of sociality that is desired.

(4) A statement of at least the more general standards and tests by which one may judge the degree to which these sorts of experience are being provided by any educational institution or process.

All four of these parts of a complete theory will be found in the following pages, though not in this precise order. In a general way. Chapters H to V, inclusive, concern the first point; Chapters X to XIII, the second; Chapters VI to IX and

Chapter XIV, the third, and the remainder of the book the fourth. But I have made no effort to schematize my treatment. Rather, I have endeavored to be concrete, even though thereby problems crowd together somewhat, and even though the same problem appears more than once.

Chapter II General Exposition Of The Social

STANDPOINT

Various uses of the tenn education. Education, in the broadest sense of the term, takes place wherever a plastic mind acquires a set of any kind. It is often said, for example, that a child receives much of his education from contact with nature — ^from falls and bruises, obstacles and achievements, and the beauty of natural scenery.

In a less broad sense, education lies in the contribution made by society to the set of a mind. Again and again has it been pointed out that only through association with his elders can a child attain to civilized life at all. The total difference that such association makes in the organization and outlook of his mind may be regarded as the education that he receives. The ways in which society forms an individual are, however, in large measure unsystematic and even unintended. The "social inheritance" of an American child, for example, includes the influence upon him of all such things as sights and sounds upon the street; newspapers; public amusements; political contests; business and social customs; waves of public opinion; home conditions — ^indeed, the influence of every man and of every "man way" that he meets.

As far as these things — any of them — are controlled for the purpose of giving a set to young minds, we have education in the third and strictly technical sense.

It is with education thus technically understood that the present book is primarily concerned. Often, indeed, we shall find ourselves analyzing the unintended influence of men and women upon children, but always for the sake, ultimately, of more clearly defining our deliberate purposes. Deliberate educational purpose underlies many undertakings besides schools. A family is an educational institution. The same can be said of certain phases of the public library, the art museum, and the natural history collection of to-day. For they arrange their possessions and advertise them in part with the young in mind, and they even provide trained instructors. The children's room, the children's adviser, and the story hour in the modern library are educationally eloquent. The playground movement likewise is educational in the strict sense, for it accepts the axiom that facilities for play should be so organized that the players will form socially valuable habits.

The position of the churches in this constellation will have our attention after a time. But even this partial and merely representative list of the educational institutions of modern society would be defectively representative if it did not mention juvenile courts and new types of law concerning children and youth. When a child violates a law or an ordinance, an enlightened legal system no longer merely inflicts pain and deprivation upon him because of his past, but considers how to form him into a good citizen. To this end, physical, mental, and social diagnosis is employed to discover the causes of the delinquency, and then the offender is sentenced to be educated by the most skilful methods that science can devise! This blending of the conception of justice with that of education is extending itself to various parts of law. The abolition of child labor, and the restriction of labor in the adolescent years, have an avowedly educational motive, as have ordinances that regulate the relations of children to the streets and to public amusements. We are, in fact, moving toward the notion that society, wherever it is in contact with children and youth, should be a consciously educational force — in short, that the yoimg should be constantly at school merely by virtue of their presence in our civilization.

Society is not merely one educator among many; it is the prime educator within all educational enterprises. If teachers, parents, librarians, story-tellers, playground directors.

judges in juvenile courts, and legislators who press for child- N labor laws will but reflect upon their educational enterprise, i they will perceive that it is not their own. They act as agents / for society. This means not only that they labor toward social/ ends, but also that the power that does the work is one or\ another social influence operating through them. This is obvious in the case of all who are employed by state or church, but it is true of the others also. A parent teaching his child a grammatical form, or manners at table, or a standard of moral conduct, is himself at the moment under the control of his group in respect both to what he teaches and to the fact that he teaches anything at all. Moreover, the effectiveness of his teaching depends in large measure upon the existence of a social environment that backs it up. In a profound sense, then, \ the educator in all education is society. This proposition is not invalidated by the incompleteness of our social integration — our divisions into parties, social classes, and churches — with the resulting ambiguity of the term "society." For in each of these groupings the educational worker is moved by his group consciousness, and he endeavors to give effect to the things that bind him to his fellows, be the fellowship narrow or broad.

"Unfolding the powers of the child" is an inadequate conception of the work of education. Since society is the educator, we may ask next. What is society about when it educates ? It is dealing, of course, with unfolding powers or growth. But every child has many powers, better and worse. It is the essence of education to discriminate between them, and while promoting the growth of some, to prevent the growth of others. The same distinction has to be made when we meet the statement that the aim is to help children toward " self-realization," for behind this statement lies the unexpressed assumption that there are different sorts of self that an individual may become, and that education must give the advantage to some of these as against others.

What education does is, in a word, to bring the child and society together. It increases one's participation in the common life. It puts a child into possession of the tools of social intercourse, such as language and numbers; opens his eyes to treasures of literature, art, and science that society has gradually accumulated through generations; causes him to appreciate such social organizations as the state, and develops habits appropriate thereto; prepares him to be a producer in some socially valuable field of labor, and evokes an inner control whereby he may judge and guide himself in the interest of social well being.

Education aims at "social adjustment and social efficiency." This phrase represents the strong reaction of recent years against all formal conceptions of education, that is, conceptions that involve no notion of guiding the young in the social application of the powers that education brings out. To define the aim of education as the unfolding of children's powers is like saying that the purpose of a railroad is to cause cars to move from one place to another. What the cars carry and whither they are going are the important considerations. The strains that have developed within our industrial and civic life since the coming of machine manufacture, steam transportation, and the massing of the populace in cities have compelled us to see that the attitudes and the outlook of children with respect to their fellow men are the prime concern of schools. At the same time, poverty on the one hand, and the increasing specialization of occupations and of industrial and commercial processes on the other, have convinced educationists — that is, those who investigate education and promote educational standards — that every child ought to receive assistance in the selection of his occupation, and also specific preparation for skilful work in it. The more democratically minded among us are coming to think of the future in terms of industrial democracy, an organization of producers governed by producers. Hence it comes to pass that progressive schoolmen are largely occupied at the present moment with problems of occupational training and vocational guidance.

Scarcely more than twenty-five years ago educationists were still disavowing industrial ends, which they distinguished from those of "general" culture. Manual training was in some of the schools for the sake of formal mental discipline and the teaching of numbers, but avowedly not as an introduction to fundamental processes in manual industries. I remember a time when college heads turned up their noses at "bread-andbutter education." If the blindness of some efforts at the " practical" partly justified this scorn, it in turn was blind in that it saw not the social-ethical significance of earning one's living by daily toil in one's trade or profession.