Religious training in the school and home; a manual for teachers and parents

Front matter

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■JOFPUMJ^

Sneath, Elias Hershey, 185

Preface

The aim of this book is to supply teachers and parents with a handbook for moral and religious training in the school and home. It has been written in connection with the preparation of The Golden Rule Series — six books embodying a graded system of moral instruction (Sneath, Hodges and Stevens), and The King's Highway Series — eight books embodying a graded system of moral and religious instruction (Sneath, Hodges and Tweedy). This Manual is based on a similar one — Moral Training in the School and Home (Sneath and Hodges). However, six new chapters have been added, certain portions omitted, and the remaining material revised, readjusted, and thoroughly adapted to religious instruction. The book may be used either independently of, or in connection with, The King's Highway Series. The authors earnestly hope that the Manual may be of genuine service to teachers and parents.

E. Hershey Sneath.

George Hodges.

Henry Hallam Tweedy.

Chapter I II III

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Table Of Contents

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Importance of Religious Training in the Home and School l

Importance of Religious Training in the Home and School (Continued) . . .15

Chapter II Importance Of Religious Training In The Home

and IN the school (Continued)

Life is the greatest of all universities; and for a child this has two main departments, the home and the school. Of these the home is the more important. It is from this that the boy has received his heredity, that great gift which may be either a blessing or a curse. All the responsibility which rests upon a man and woman before marriage and during the period when they watch for the coming of the little stranger; all that training needed to make a gentleman, which Holmes said should begin with his great-grandfather; all that preparation for Christian living which in the case of Timothy had its source not only in his mother but in his mother's mother — this by many is neglected through ignorance or carelessness or the betrayal of life's greatest trust.

All the more reason, then, why the child's environment in the home should have the parent's most careful study and co-operation. By this in all probability the main course of his career will be determined. In it he is being hourly and unconsciously shaped and developed by those who are his most effective teachers and who ought to be the wisest and best of friends. The parental vices, upon which Bushnell lays his finger with the kindly severity of the spiritual surgeon — the provocation of the child to anger; too much prohibition; the harsh, tyrannical government which results in making God not a Father to be loved but a tyrant to be feared; extreme difficulty to please; the tendency to hold displeasure too long; over-anxious concern; tests of character inappropriate to age and temperament — these and other faults must be rigidly excluded. As for the parental virtues, they are being observed by the keenest of eyes, and listened to by the sharpest of ears.

And not only does the child observe and listen; he directly and consciously as well as unconsciously imitates. Are the father and mother kind and patient and just? The child will become more and more kind and patient and just. Are they irritable, given to wrangling, blind to any save their own interests? He will grow like them in his heart. If God enters as a vital factor into their intercourse, He will be a living Father; if He appears as only a kind of gigantic fairy on Sunday, without reality except in the wonder world of Church and Sunday School, He will be of as little importance as the Santa Claus, whom the boy long ago laid aside. If the parents pray, the child will pray; if they only tell him to pray, he may obey from necessity, but it is doubtful whether prayer will take a strong hold on his life. The father and mother may look upon themselves as " saved "; but the child asks naturally, " Saved from what, and to what?" Are they delivered from worry and anxiety, from gossip and slander, from harshness and snobbishness, from selfishness and deceit? The test is pragmatic. The text-book is a parental incarnation. The outcome is a full-grown moral and religious experience or a baseless dream.

To become a parent, then, is necessarily to assume the divine calling of the teacher. Willy-nilly we must for a time, at least, become the chief educators of a child of God. In this education it will not be enough to tell him what to do, or to teach him why he ought to do it, or to govern him, to say nothing of wheedling and cajoling and bribing him, until he does with weak or bad motives the good things that the parent wishes him to do. The most effective way to lead a child into the paths of righteousness is to travel those paths oneself. The virtues of kindness and courtesy, respect for property rights, honesty, prudence, frugality, generosity, active co-operation in social relief work and in the task of missions — all these must be not only inculcated but illustrated. Training in the appreciation of the aesthetically true and lovely, the development of the sense of dependence upon the mysterious unseen as well as of the sense of duty to the tangible and the seen, out of which is to grow the man's vital and intelligent religion, must begin and be carried on by the parents in the home.

The father and mother, moreover, must have a care not only concerning their words and acts but concerning the very atmosphere of their living. The child breathes this and responds to it morally and spiritually as his body does to the foul air of the tenements or the bracing breezes of the hills. They have in their keeping the hours which psychologists mark as the most valuable and impressionable — the first in the morning, when the mood and impulse of the day is often determined, and the last in the evening, when some transforming thoughts and ideals may be carried into the land of dreams. The table talk may contribute largely to the best of educations. It is as easy here to speak of the things worth while as to indulge in the ordinary chitchat over the nothings of thoughtless conversation; and in the happy fellowship of the meal history and current events, travel and science, art and religion, civic philanthropies and missionary enterprises may all be brought to bear upon the mind of the child. The house which enshrines the home, as in the case of the church edifice, is by no means unimportant. The neatness and orderliness of living room and of yard, beauty of shape and harmony of tone in the furnishings, the books upon the shelves and tables, the pictures on the walls, all have their influence. In brief, the child in the home is in the greatest of moral and religious universities. Outwardly he may seem to be indifferent or even rebellious; but the influences exerted there consciously and unconsciously sink deep into the matrix of his thought-life and feeling, fashioning the man and shaping the career and determining the achievements that are still to be.

In the light of all this we are faced by the lamentable fact that so many of our homes are moral and religious failures. Some parents seem to be quite indifferent to their own obligations and to their children's needs. The attempt to place the responsibility upon the shoulders of nurses and tutors is a poor makeshift. Such substitutes for parental training are about as satisfactory as orphanages are for homes. To postpone the work until the preparatory school and college is as rash as it is foolish. " Let a child wait until he is grown and then choose his own religion," said an English statesman in the hearing of Coleridge. Coleridge made no reply but led the speaker out into his garden. Looking around upon the bare ground he said quietly: " I have decided not to put out any flowers and vegetables this year, but to wait till August and let the garden decide for itself whether it prefers weeds or strawberries." The blind optimism, which seems to feel that the moral and religious training of the child will care for itself, ends all too soon in disaster. The business of growing good men and women will no more care for itself than the business of making a fortune or winning a success in any profession will care for itself. Our immoral, irreligious, inefficient parents are our greatest national menace; our greatest glory and strongest fortress is the Christian home.

Next to the home in importance is the school; and here we can but touch upon a much discussed problem — the moralising of the school curriculum and its relation to religion. That the school ideally, however it may be limited practically, should play its full part in the moral and religious training of our children goes without saying. It forms the second greatest department in the child's university. Here the larger portion of the time not spent in the home is passed. Next to the parent in the child's interests and affections is the teacher. Next to the house in which he lives the most important building in the world for the boy is that in which he goes to school. For his moral and religious development the school tasks furnish some of the most fruitful opportunities. Any attempt, therefore, to eliminate the school from the moral and religious training of the coming generation cannot but have most unfortunate and costly consequences. So far as religion is concerned, we feel obligated in our American public schools to pay them; and we are paying them. With the moralising of the curriculum, for a time, at least, and possibly permanently, we must rest content.

This is both possible and inevitable. Not to do it well is to do it badly. Under any conditions the work is done. Our wisest educators are welcoming the task and giving it their fullest endeavors. On the scholastic side they recognise that the aim of education is not merely the acquisition of knowledge, nor the preparation for earning a livelihood, but the formation of a character, the fashioning of a fully developed and rightly directed will. Induced or spontaneous and impulsive right action must be organised into right habit, intelligently appreciated and permanently chosen; and the school life of the child must afford occasion for making such choices, forming such habits, testing moral judgments, until the path of virtue is as desirable and lovely as it is clear. On the side of the child these wise educators recognise that the moral powers are the noblest and most important parts of our human nature. To fail to develop and direct these is to turn loose upon the world abnormal and defective individuals, citizens who are both undesirable and dangerous. " Why," asked Rufus King, in a celebrated school case in Cincinnati, " should I be taxed to educate my neighbour's child, if the education you give him only makes a little rascal twice as sharp, without any protection to my throat?"

The evils from which our nation suffers most are not material and physical but moral and spiritual. The dangers which she has most cause to fear are not the dreadnaughts of foreign nations but the diseases of the body politic, which may cost her the loss of her own soul. No one can read without a shock of horror the statistics gathered by social students. The ravages of vice and crime, the awful toll collected by dissipation, the spectacle of ruined homes, the uncovering of weltering masses of social pollution and of political corruption are terrible. And the cure for them is not more and better reform schools and penitentiaries, in which unfortunately too few are either reformed or made penitent. It is more and better moral training in the home and public school.

Our democracy makes large demands for service upon its citizens. They must be ready to give accurate and trustworthy testimony in our courts of justice. Unless excused they must serve on juries, which shall deal with the lives and property of their fellows, and settle questions concerning their rights and liberties. At elections they must cast their ballots, wisely or ignorantly, honestly or dishonestly; and this affects the nation's policies and destinies. If elected to office they must and should be fitted to discharge its duties in honour and efficiency. For all these tasks mere intellectual training is not sufficient. Moral qualifications are of paramount importance; and these qualifications will necessarily and inevitably be very largely determined in our schools. " The school is society shaping itself," said an American educator. The German maxim runs, " What you would have appear in the life of the nation you must put into the schools."

The nation, then, that would save itself from destruction, to say nothing of rising to higher and nobler existence, must see to it that its instruction is moralised and socialised, and that the environment of its school children is wholesome and effective. Mere ex cathedra statements of ethical principles, given by teachers who neither through sympathy and skill preach powerfully, nor through the beauty of their own lives illustrate persuasively and convincingly, are of course largely impotent. " The inculcation of moral laws," writes Professor Dewey, " is no more likely to make character than is that of astronomical formulas." To Professor Roark we are indebted for the story of one high school boy who announced his expulsion by saying, " I got fired, but I got 98 in ethics! " It is only where in all ways — through the school architecture, the care of buildings and grounds, the pictures on the walls, the daily discipline, the interpretation and application of the lessons studied, systematic training in morals rather than in ethics, and the example set — the beauty of holiness, moral wholeness, is incarnated that the nation's great work of growing righteous and efficient men and women can be accomplished.

But moral and secular education is not enough. For as has been said, the child is not only moral but religious. To leave all religious training out of the school naturally tends to make the pupil not only un-religious but anti-religious. Such education, moreover, does not meet the highest needs either of the individual or of the nation. Nevertheless, the principles of Protestantism as well as of democracy have made necessary the secularisation of the public school. Judge Orton, in a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision, says : " So long as our Constitution remains as it is, no one's religion can be taught in our Public Schools."

While recognising the present necessity, the fact remains that education is part of a life process. In the words of President Butler, " It is the adaptation of a person, a self-conscious being, to environment, and the development of capacity in a person to modify and control that environment." * In the same article the writer analyses civilisation into five elements — science, literature, art, institutional life, and religious belief; and asserts stoutly that " to omit any one of these is to cripple education and to make its results at best but partial." Judged by such a standard it is clear that our public schools give but an incomplete education. The great element which Martineau defined as " a belief and worship of Supreme Mind and Will, directing the universe, and holding moral relations with human life," is omitted; and without this, as Martineau held, man is maimed and civilisation is unintelligible. The great problem, then, which confronts those eager for the best and most complete education of our children, is not religion and education but religion in education. Here the status of our American schools falls below that of the Old World.

In England direct religious instruction is given both in the " provided " schools — those founded by the state — and in the " non-provided " — those founded by religious organisations but enjoying state aid. This instruction may not be denominational

1 Butler, in Principles of Religious Education, New Yofk, 1901, pp. 4, 6.

and is voluntary, being given at the beginning and at the close of the day, so that children, whose parents so desire, may absent themselves. No creed, catechism or church formula may enter into this training; but there is usually a hymn, a prayer, and a Scripture Lesson, taught with as great care and thoroughness as any other lesson of the day. The teachers are instructed to make these practical and to emphasise not narrow, theological dogmas but the broad, underlying, fundamental religious truths.

In France there is no religious instruction in the secondary schools. More time, however, is devoted to education in morals and more thorough instruction in this department is given than in any other great nation with the exception of Japan; and while the appeal is to the moral rather than to the religious sanctions, duties toward God are included in the official programme, even though to those apparently little time and attention are given.

A similar attempt in Japan to educate the people in morals entirely divorced from religion is an admitted failure. Since the new educational code of 1879, and the rescript of the Emperor in 1890, the Japanese system has been the most sincere and thorough-going attempt in all the world to accomplish this feat. Yet in spite of all the teaching some authorities note a growing laxity of morals in the great student body. A. Pieters, who is in close touch with the situation, writes : " No doubt the moral teaching is interesting and effective in the lower grades. It is often said, however, by both teachers and pupils, that as the latter grow older the moral teaching loses both interest and power. A student once said to the writer, ' Of all studies ethics is the most tedious. Our teachers tell us that we must be honest, truthful, virtuous — all of which we know very well; but they impart to us no moral power to do these things.' "

In Germany just the opposite plan is followed. Formal instruction in morals is not included in the curriculum, but the children are brought under the most rigid system of religious instruction in the world. The subject of religion holds the first place in the programme of study, officially and practically. The first hour in the morning is assigned to it. The teachers are those regularly appointed for secular instruction and are carefully trained for the task. Unfortunately the German system suffers from too much creed and catechism. Professor Kirschner, of Berlin, describes it as a " surfeit of religious doctrines, maxims, hymns, forms, ceremonies." Another student of the situation writes : " Instruction in religion is absolutely indispensable; but the existing instruction is completely out of harmony with the best thought of the day and stands in need of radical reform. As a result the religious instruction is not closely enough related to modern life and thought, while in some instances the course given stifles the religious spirit and does not encourage morality."

In our own land education is a local matter, and the community follows its own sweet will. In some states the attempt has been made to furnish direct moral training. North Carolina is contented to require that her teachers "encourage morality "; while West Virginia goes so far as to charge " all teachers, boards of education, and other school officers with the duty of providing that moral training for the youth of this state which will contribute to securing good behaviour and manners, and furnish the state with exemplary citizens.''

As for direct religious training there is little or none. One educator estimates that in about seventy-five per cent, of the " opening exercises " a Bible reading will be found, sometimes with the use of the Lord's prayer and certain religious and patriotic songs. No state legislature has ever passed a law specifically excluding the Bible by name from use in the public schools, though some forbid the " sectarian use " of it. In nearly one-quarter of the states there are enactments to prevent this. In Pennsylvania, for example, a law was passed in 19 13 making it compulsory for every teacher in a public school to read without comment before the pupils not less than ten verses daily from the Bible, the penalty for failure to do so being dismissal. Most of our state constitutions forbid sectarian religious instruction in the public schools, while about one-half exclude books which further the doctrines of any particular religious sect.1

1 In Arizona, California, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New York and Washington the reading of the Bible in public

Interesting plans of a more positive and progressive character are being discussed by various educational and legislative bodies. The State Teachers' Association of Colorado has passed resolutions commending " to the Sunday School for classes of high school grade the recognised standards of the North Central Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges; that, when these standards have been attained, it recommends that high schools give credit for Bible study of corresponding grade in the Sunday School, to an extent not to exceed one-fourth unit for each year's work." In Indiana and North Dakota high school credits are given for the study of the Bible as literature outside of school hours. New York City furnishes religious teaching without charge out

schools has been officially discountenanced but not wholly discontinued. In Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming there is nothing in the state laws, court decisions or official opinions for or against the practice; but custom is against it, and such reading is probably very rare. In Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Vermont Bible reading is customary but by no means universal. In Arkansas, Idaho, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Utah, and Virginia the State Superintendent of Education has given a favourable opinion; while Supreme Court decisions in Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin have favoured the reading of the Bible without comment. Specific statutes permit the practice in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and New Jersey. Only South Dakota allows Bible reading with unsectarian comment. In Colorado, mentioned in the text, Bible reading is not customary, but credits are given for outside Bible study. The only States in which Bible reading in the public schools is required by law are Massachusetts, since 1855, and Pennsylvania, since 1913. For summary, see " The Bible in School Plans of Many Lands," by Wilbur F. Crafts, pages 6 and 73.

of school hours in school buildings, skilled public school teachers supplementing the Bible readings required in all the public schools by instruction in the pupils' own faith.1

As for the much discussed Gary School Plan, there is no introduction of religious instruction into the public school system. The authorities do not in any way " control, supervise, support, or patronise the church schools. The pupil is merely enabled to attend religious instruction during school hours because his parents by written statement withdraw him for the hour in question from the public schools. He may use the hour as his parents please, for music lessons or to help in the house work. No credit is given for studies pursued in the church schools. There are really two sets of schools in Gary, whose only relation is the dove-tailing of the time schedule." 2 Nevertheless, the plan does make possible for those who desire it daily denominational Bible study in churches and synagogues during school hours, and pastors of all faiths are permitted to make unsectarian addresses in the schools.

In general it is safe to say that where direct moral instruction is attempted it is usually incidental and unsystematic, while direct religious training is practically a negligible quantity. If religion is appreci-

1 Wilbur F. Crafts, The Bible in School Plans of Many Lands. See also, " Report of the Commission on Christian Education to

the Quadrennial Meeting of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America," St. Louis, Mo., December, 1916.

2 Coe, Religious Education, April, 1916.

ated, it is evidently viewed as the exclusive task of the home and of the church, teachers in the public schools being expected to maintain a kind of religious neutrality, neither furthering nor hindering the great work. After a survey of conditions in various countries Professor Charles De Garmo writes: " From the standpoint of the development of religious intelligence, the American system must be pronounced the most fragmentary, partial, inefficient, haphazard system in the world." *

The result of all this is that as a nation our progress in morals and our growth in religion have not been commensurate with our intellectual achievements and our advance in technical skill. Many of our boys and girls grow up believing that religion has no intrinsic and necessary place in real life. Those who champion it are to their minds peculiar and erratic, not quite normal. The supernatural, to use that much abused word, becomes to them almost synonymous with the superstitious. Anything which is tinged with the mystical, which cannot be reasoned out logically and plotted geometrically and proved scientifically, is negligible if not queer. Religion may belong to sainthood, but they have no desire to be saints, at least the kind with which art and story have made them familiar. It may be ornamental as a social frill, a means of entering one section of what L termed " good society "; but so far

1 De Garmo, in Principles of Religious Education, New York, 1901, P- 63.

as they are concerned, that is all. The life of Jesus is not synonymous with their ideal. In fact, the real Christ is to them practically unknown. Their conception of Him is as unlike the original as the paintings of the early Italian school or the drawings in the catacombs. The Master appears in their eyes as the wan ascetic, the sentimental dreamer, the heavenly herald of an impractical code of ethics and a teacher of a theological system which the world has outgrown. Naturally the church for them ceases to function. It is a social club, a purveyor of pious platitudes, apparently a comfort and a joy to the select few who are emotionally excitable and mentally credulous. But for practical men of the world, for all thinkers familiar with science and philosophy, it may safely be allowed to pass out of their lives.

All this is as lamentable as it is ignorant. The religious conceptions of such uninstructed and undeveloped boys and girls belong in the same category with some of their definitions. In one school a mosquito was described as the child of black and white parents, while a monastery was characterized as a place for keeping monsters!. All this would be humorous if it were not so tragic. For it is the ranks of the religiously neglected which furnish us, for the most part, with the citizens who are content to appropriate and enjoy all the material benefits of the twentieth century while they practice the morals of the fifteenth and scoff at what they mistakenly imagine was the religion of the fifth. They are largely responsible for the men and women who condone if they do not practice our social vices, and who approve in deed if not in theory the methods of unscrupulous business, the principles of Machiavellian diplomacy, and the ethics of the superman. They are the folk who maintain the negative in the debate as to whether a manufacturer can be honest and succeed in commercial undertakings, and who are not shocked when it is proclaimed that the Golden Rule has no place in politics. In them the great aim of the best and fullest education has not been attained. Intelligence in regard to the most vital matters has not been developed, the Christian spirit has not been nurtured, the habit of Christian conduct has not been inculcated and ingrained. The cost is terrible. That we are paying it is apparent. What we shall pay if the present attitude continues is not pleasant to contemplate.

Here for the private school is an opportunity of which the best are availing themselves. In such institutions morality and religion may enter not only the curriculum but the whole life of the student body; and where this is true the results are gratifying in the extreme. In some denominational institutions the error of the German system is repeated. The boy and the girl enter college weary of a surfeit of catechism and church service, and leave college persuaded that a religion which proved to be so unsubstantial in the light of modern science and philosophy, and so impractical in the daily experience, is as valueless as it is unreal. But where morality is firmly based and religion clearly and wisely interpreted, the student finds that every year brings him into a larger experience of a " power not himself that makes for righteousness," and through the fellowship of genuinely religious companions and teachers enters himself into a living communion with the " personal Spirit, perfectly good, who in holy love creates, sustains and orders all."

This has been called the century of the child. The result of the work of educators from Rousseau to Montessori has been to centre our attention as individuals and as nations upon our most hopeful fields, our most priceless possessions. The prophetic promise that " a little child shall lead them " has always been true and always will be true. Who else can? The highway of the world's future follows necessarily the trail blazed by the hands and trodden by the feet of our children; and we are responsible for seeing to it that this trail in home and in school is none other than the King's highway, " the highway of our God."