Chapter 12

#7. Opportunities of the Beginners Age.#--(1) _Shaping character through influence._ There are two ways of touching a life--the one through definite instruction, which must be understood to avail anything; the other through unconscious influence which is felt, not necessarily comprehended. The mind of the beginner is awake and active, but he can grasp little instruction beyond simplest facts about concrete things. Right and wrong, unselfishness, love, all the abstract standards and principles of life, he cannot comprehend intellectually, but he absorbs the influences that go out from them, and what is felt is always more powerful than that which lodges only in the head. During the first six years of life the child is peculiarly sensitive to every influence that comes to him out of his environment, and these,--not instruction,--determine what he shall be. No amount of teaching upon the subject of flowers and birds and trees can arouse the joy and gratitude which a drive through the country on a glorious spring morning awakens. No number of lessons upon self-control will make the impression upon the heart which the sight of it in another makes. The child cannot understand the nature and necessity of reverence, but he will feel it, if that be the influence of the Sunday-school hour.

(2) _Shaping character through imitation._ The actions in this period which result from instruction are few compared to those which come from the instinct of imitation; therefore what the teacher is unable to do through precept she can accomplish through the power of example and story.

(3) _Imparting simple spiritual truths._ These must be truths with whose earthly likenesses the child is familiar. This will make possible stories of God's power as Creator, his love and care as Heavenly Father, stories of Jesus as the loving Friend and Helper of little children, and the necessity of obedience to his commands.

#8. Needs of the Beginners Age.#--If the opportunities of this period are to be realized, four things are necessary:

(1) _A Christlike teacher._ While influences go out from everything,--people, circumstances, conditions, even inanimate, senseless things,--a human life radiates the strongest influence. It has a twofold effect upon a little child: he not only feels the influence, but it also moves him to imitate the person. He may forget the lesson, he may not have comprehended it at all, but he has absorbed the teacher during the hour and he will try to reproduce what she has said and done even to her very tone, expression, and manner. If his model be a gentle voice or a loving word, the very act of imitating it makes him gentler and more tender, and what exhortation may not secure, influence and imitation will bring. Therefore a teacher will do her strongest work with a beginner by being like Jesus Christ.

(2) _A suggestive atmosphere._ Atmosphere represents the sum total of all the influences at a given time. The soft music of the organ, the dim light, the stillness, the attitude of prayer, all create an atmosphere to which reverence and worship are the natural response. In confusion and bustle, with loud voice and impatient movement on the part of the teacher, there could be only restlessness and irreverence and inattention on the part of the child. The atmosphere must suggest to the pupil that which the teacher desires from him, be he beginner or adult, for feeling and action are more influenced by atmosphere than admonition. The greatest work for the hour will have been accomplished if the child shall feel that the Lord was in that place, though he knew it not, intellectually.

(3) _Right direction of activity._ The activity of the child may prevent his receiving any benefit from the instruction, or it may be the most effective means for fastening impressions. It is such a constant and prominent factor in the problem of the hour's work that the teacher must plan beforehand just how it shall be directed. In addition to opportunities for general movement, such as rising for songs, or marching, every thought given to the child should have some action immediately connected with it as far as possible, both to help him remember it and make it easier for succeeding actions to follow. For example if the lesson is upon helpfulness, each child should be led into doing something for his neighbor before he leaves. A prayer attitude should accompany prayer. As this is the rhythmic period, motions which the children themselves suggest may accompany the songs. The results of directing the activity into helpful channels will be found in better memory of the lesson and in the starting of right habits of action.

(4) _An imitable activity in the lesson._ In simplest facts set forth in a story of a person, not in exhortation, the lesson must make vivid and attractive an activity which the child can imitate. The more realistic the portrayal, the more surely will the child attempt to reproduce it.

#9. Difficulties in the Beginners Age.#--The difficulties of this period arise largely from the child's immaturity and are to be overcome by adaptation of methods and instruction.

(1) _Restlessness and lack of self-control, making sustained attention impossible._ A program consisting of brief exercises, varied in character, full of interest, and permitting frequent movement, will meet this condition.

(2) _Limited experience and scanty store of ideas._ This necessitates careful selection of teaching material, that spiritual truth outside the child's comprehension be not forced upon him, since he can grasp only that which is like something that he knows.

(3) _A limited vocabulary._ This calls for watchful care in language, particularly lest a familiar word be used in a sense unfamiliar to the child.

(4) _A conflicting home atmosphere._ When the child absorbs influences that lack Jesus Christ during seven days in the week, only a teacher filled with Divine life and power can effect counter-conditions more powerful in the brief time of her contact.

#10. Results to be Expected in the Beginners Age.#--Summing up the results already suggested, the work in the Beginners department will make its impress upon the feelings of the child, primarily. He will have learned some truths about the Heavenly Father, and his Son Jesus Christ, and there is an intellectual value in these. But this value cannot compare with that of the love and trust which come unconsciously, yet really, into his soul, if the teacher has done her work with God.

Test Questions

1. In what two ways may life be touched?

2. Give illustrations of what is known as "unconscious influence."

3. What methods accomplish more than precepts with Beginners?

4. What spiritual truths can be taught in this period?

5. Name four needs of the Beginners Age.

6. What is meant by "atmosphere"? How utilized?

7. How may the child's activity be given the right direction?

8. Name four difficulties in the Beginners period.

9. How may restlessness be overcome?

10. What special care is needed in the teacher's choice of words?

11. What are some of the results to be expected in the Beginners Age?

Lesson 4

The Primary Age--Six to Nine

#11. General Characteristics of the Primary Age.#--The Beginner is easily traced in the Primary child, but more developed and stronger. Two general characteristics may be specially mentioned:

(1) _Broader interests._ Curiosity is increasingly active concerning things with which the senses come in contact, yet the child in the Primary period is able to reach beyond that which he can see or handle. He cares nothing for abstractions like missions, or patriotism, or temperance, but his interest is genuine in the people and actions back of the abstraction. It is a law of the soul that interest in a certain thing will extend to other things related to it. This makes it possible for the teacher to take the child far into the field of knowledge, provided the starting-point be something in which the child is naturally interested.

(2) _Greater mental power._ While the child does not reason as an adult, he enjoys thinking for himself. The Primary teacher who gives him predigested lessons, tells him everything in the picture, asks no questions, and does not lead him on to arrive at any conclusions for himself, not only fails to obtain results that are possible, but really retards the child's development. Personal effort must precede increase of strength in soul as well as body.

#12. Special Characteristics of the Primary Age.#

(1) _Physical activity._ In place of the restlessness of the preceding period, activity directed toward more definite ends appears. It is very important that the activity be expended rightly, since its use in every action strengthens some one of the rapidly forming habits.

(2) _Power of perception._ This is the ability of the mind to understand the sensations which senses and nerves send to the brain, or to interpret their meaning; as, for example, to know that the round yellow ball is an orange, or to recognize the different details in a picture. Perception grows constantly more quick and active as the child's store of knowledge increases. Two things must be remembered: (_a_) the teacher must be sure that the first idea of anything is the correct one, for it will be eradicated with difficulty, and upon it all future thinking in that line will be based; (_b_) since each sensation produces an idea embodying itself, and it is on these ideas that the soul is nourished, character must grow in quality like its food. "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."

(3) _Memory._ The mind has greater power to retain that which is given to it than in the preceding period, though it holds these facts disconnectedly rather than related into systematic knowledge, as they will be later. But this power of retention must not be abused through storing memory with a quantity of useless material. That which is impressed upon the plastic, non-resisting cells of the child's brain ought to have some immediate meaning and value for the life at a time when the intellectual and spiritual needs are so many.

(4) _Imagination._ This is the power of the mind to make living and real that which is not present to the senses. It is one of the most striking characteristics of the Primary period and one of the most important as well. The imagination works only with concrete things in childhood, making new objects out of the old, making the story and the mental picture as real as the tangible experience, making Jesus an actual present Helper and Friend. Later it will work with abstract ideas and ideals of life formed from the pictures it has cherished.

#13. Opportunities of the Primary Age.#

(1) _Character building through the mental picture._ Abstract ideas about which the mind reasons do not have power over the soul of the child. It is the vivid picture which imagination holds that arouses the feeling and impels the action. So great is the power of the picture that the teacher need not exhort and admonish concerning what ought to be done. She only need set forth the action in a story that appeals, and imagination will do the rest. While very many of these pictures come unconsciously to the child from his environment, it is the privilege of the teacher definitely and carefully to provide the highest type of mental picture through the well-selected story, in order to secure the finest action.

(2) _Increased knowledge of Bible facts._ The lesson may contain more than in the earlier period, because the child's interest in details has increased and he has greater power of attention. It is important to note, however, in what the increase may consist. It is not in the number of truths presented in the lesson, but in the number of details concerning the one truth for which the lesson stands. Since the mind has developed new power to hold the impressions which are made upon it, Scripture verses containing fundamental truths, like God's love and care, the duty of love toward him and others, and the necessity of obedience may be given, with explanation, for memorizing.

(3) _Service prompted through imitation and personal influence._ The activity should even now be tracing pathways in the brain that shall mean life habits of loving service for others. There is this difference, however, between service in childhood and later. The motives must now be supplied and strengthened by others; later the promptings will come from within.

#14. Needs of the Primary Age.#--In addition to the needs mentioned in the Beginners period, and which still obtain, there are two to be especially borne in mind.

(1) _The absolute necessity of knowing how to make spiritual truth live in story form._ The child can receive it in no other way, and there is therefore no substitute for a rightly prepared story given by a spiritually prepared teacher.

(2) _The necessity for the child to learn obedience in the use of his activity._ This is to be secured not by force, but because the one to whom it is to be rendered wins it through love and the power of personality.

#15. Difficulties in the Primary Age.#--There will still be difficulties in attention and in confining the instruction to that which the child can really grasp, but the greatest difficulty will center about the activity. Yet the whole problem will be solved with no harsh question of discipline if the child is kept constantly busy with that in which he is interested.

#16. Results to be Expected in the Primary Age.#--If the teacher has met her opportunity, there will be growing love to Jesus Christ, the beginning of service for him, and deep down in the soul of the child an increasing store of material out of which life ideals are to be fashioned in the days to come.

Test Questions

1. Name two general characteristics of the Primary Age. What years are included?

2. How are the child's broader interests shown?

3. What method of teaching can hinder the child's growing mental power?

4. Name four special characteristics of the Primary Age.

5. What is meant by power of perception? Illustrate it.

6. How may memory be abused?

7. What is imagination?

8. Name three opportunities of the Primary Age.

9. What does a well-defined mental picture lead to in the child's mind?

10. Why may a lesson contain more than in the Beginners period?

11. How does the source of motives toward service differ in childhood as compared with later life?

12. Name two needs of the Primary Age.

13. Name some of the difficulties.

14. What results may be expected?

Lesson 5

Junior Age--Nine to Twelve

#17. General Characteristics.#--A broad survey of this period reveals the fact that in a peculiar way God is preparing life for entrance upon the larger opportunities and responsibilities of maturity. There is new physical strength, new intellectual vigor, greater power of absorption and assimilation, a wider diffusion of interest. The curiosity of earlier years becomes a real spirit of investigation along lines of interest, and questioning, not alone to find out facts, but also foundations of belief begins to appear. The individuality of each child stands out more distinctly and emphasizes itself in two marked ways--first, the desire for prominence, and, second, an independence of spirit and action. Yet, with all this independence, the boys and girls are easily dealt with if authority is administered by one whose personality has commanded respect and love.

#18. Specific Characteristics.#

(1) _Energy,--physical and mental._ Though this has already been referred to in a general way, it must have special mention as one of the most marked and important features of the Junior period. Physical vigor is apparent in the force of bodily movements so trying to sensitive nerves--God's provision for the excess of nervous activity. It also appears in the type of games belonging to this period and the intensity with which they are played. The new mental power is evident in the ability to perform more difficult and complex mental tasks, to reason more clearly, and to attend more closely.

(2) _Development of the social instinct._ These years mark the rapid development of insistent and insatiable desire for close companionship with others. There are no standards of attainment nor social distinctions according to which friends are chosen. The "gang" or the club is based entirely on kinship of spirit among those of the same age and sex. Often geographical lines enter in, and the boys of a certain street or district will band together, and not uncommonly be the sworn enemies of other gangs for no more valid reason than love of contest, growing out of the instinct of rivalry. But this martial aspect of gang life is not a characteristic of all the social tendency of the period. There is a drawing of child to child for peaceable purposes, the joy of common sympathies and interests and the fun of expeditions and good times together. This social awakening is God's plan for leading the life into larger relationships preparatory to taking its place in the world. What the companionship is in its influence upon character and ideals is the serious question for the home and the Sunday-school teacher.

(3) _Hero-worship._ This is pre-eminently the hero-worshiping period, with all that means in incentive to effort, in patterns of life, in imitation, in character-building. In mature years, the ideal of life is either a composite from many lives or, if it be one individual, a dissected individual, certain qualities picked out for admiration and emulation,--and over the rest, a mantle of charity. This analysis of character and discrimination is possible only to an intelligent and developed life. The child accepts his hero in his entirety. Whatever he does is right and is the goal of effort in imitation.

The physical element enters largely into the ideal of this period because of the prominence of the physical in the child's life, and, unhappily, physical and moral strength are not always balanced. Too much of the literature written to supply the ravenous desire of this age for reading portrays physical strength in criminal and in daredevil molds, and the moral side of the ideal is not only unfed, but perverted. The Sunday-school teacher must help the home at this point to supply the boys and girls, through books and living personality, with all the elements of worthy and imitable ideals, since the task of finally shaping these ideals lies in the years just beyond.

(4) _Memory in the height of its power._ The broader the responsibilities to be assumed, the greater the demand upon the soul's resources to meet them. Just at the threshold of a larger life, the mind comes into its greatest power of retention. During the years from about nine to fifteen, conditions never to return so favorably make possible the fullest, broadest, and more accurate storing of the mind. The exact wording of a passage of Scripture is as easy to secure as the general sense of its meaning. Whole chapters do not tax the pupil beyond his mental ability. The mechanical, literal side of instruction, which deals with maps and names and facts about the Word, written and incarnate, should now be given. Held tenaciously and exactly in memory, they will reveal the spiritual treasure they contain to the larger spiritual vision of the next period. The careful selection and explanation of that which is to be memorized, so necessary in the preceding period, is not as necessary during these years. The enlarged experience of the child will make some meaning inhere in everything which is brought to him, so that it is not the dead weight it would have been earlier. Yet an abundant supply of food, intellectual and spiritual, for the present needs of an active, investigating, and tempted life must not be overlooked in eagerness to store for the future.

(5) _Habit formation._ The two physical conditions necessary for habit formation, easily impressed brain cells, and activity making these impressions, are at their best during this period. Every time an act is performed, a nervous force passes through the brain, stimulating nerves and muscles to action, and leaving the trace of its passage. Each repetition of the action deepens the tracing, until little pathways are established, and the nervous force follows these naturally and involuntarily. Sooner than is realized the pathway is so deep that only by effort can a given thought or nervous stimulus express itself in any other way than by passing through the accustomed channels out into the old action,--and this is habit.

The early stages are easy, usually unconscious, but any change when the path is deep and the cells hardened means greatest effort, and often unavailing struggle with self. The drunkard who in his sober moments implores the saloon-keeper to refuse him liquor, no matter how he may plead for it later, reveals the fact that habit or the tendency to follow the old brain paths may become stronger than desire and will and all outer human influence and incentives combined. Therefore the habit-forming period, when pathways may be traced in any direction, becomes one of the most responsible and wonderful of the life.

Test Questions

1. What are some of the general characteristics of the Junior Age? The years included?

2. Name five specific characteristics of the Junior Age.

3. How does energy show itself at this time?

4. What are some of the signs of the social instinct?

5. What is the great purpose of that instinct?

6. How may hero-worship be used by the teachers?

7. What teaching material is peculiarly well suited to the memory-activity of this period?

8. What is the process by which habit is created?

Test Questions for Review

Lessons 1 to 5

1. Give several reasons why it is important for the Sunday-school teacher to know the pupil.

2. How may the teacher best come to know the pupil?

3. What are the special characteristics of children of the Beginners age?

4. How would you develop true faith in a child?

5. What is the difference between influence and precept? Illustrate both.

6. How would you guide a child's activity in the right direction?

7. What results may properly be looked for in the Beginners age?

8. What general difference is there between children of the Beginners and the Primary age?

9. Describe and illustrate perception, memory, and imagination.

10. What is the difference between children's and grown people's motives for service?

11. Mention several characteristics of the Junior age.

12. What is the social instinct, and how does it show itself?

13. What sort of teaching material is well adapted to the Junior age?

Lesson 6

Junior Age (Concluded)

#19. Opportunities of the Junior Age.#--No period offers opportunities bearing more directly and openly upon the formation of character than the Junior period, when manhood- and womanhood-to-be are so rapidly determining. Out of these opportunities five may be selected as most significant:

(1) _The opportunity to gain spiritual ends through social means._ The more a teacher can enter into the fun-loving, companionship-craving side of the pupil's heart, the greater his power over that life for distinctly spiritual things. It is after the party or the picnic or the tramp together that the personal message can be spoken.

(2) _The opportunity to arouse and to guide the pupil's effort through heroic ideals._ Sermonizing on what they should do is practically valueless with boys and girls of this age, for considerations of duty weigh little until the larger moral consciousness of the next period. Furthermore, they live but for the day, and do not appreciate the relationship between present action and future character. What they may do later as a result of their own convictions and understanding, they may be inspired to do now through the hero who has aroused their admiration and desire of imitation.