Moxcey, Girlhood and Character. Dawson, The Child and His Religion. Forbush, The Boy Problem. Richardson (Editor), The American Home Series. Richardson, Religious Education of Adolescents. CHAPTER III THE FOURFOLD FOUNDATION[1] [1] The point of view and in some degree the outlines of this and several following chapters have been adapted from the author's text "Class-Room Method and Management," by permission of the publishers, _The Bobbs-Merrill Co._, Indianapolis. All good teaching rests on a fourfold foundation of principles. These principles are the same from the kindergarten to the university, and they apply equally to the teaching of religion in the church school or subjects in the day school. Every teacher must answer four questions growing out of these principles, or, failing to answer them, classify himself with the unworthy and incompetent. These are the four supreme questions: 1. What definite _aims_ have I set as the goal of my teaching? What _outcomes_ do I seek? 2. What _material_, or _subject matter_, will best accomplish these aims? What shall I stress and what shall I omit? 3. How can this material best be _organized_, or arranged, to adapt it to the child in his learning? How shall I plan my material? 4. What shall be my plan or _method of presentation_ of this material to make it achieve its purpose? What of my technique of instruction? THE AIM IN TEACHING RELIGION First of all, the teacher of religion must _have_ an aim; he must know what ends he seeks to accomplish. Some statistically minded person has computed that, with all the marvelous accuracy of aiming modern guns, more than one thousand shots are fired for every man hit in battle. One cannot but wonder how many shots would be required to hit a man if the guns were not aimed at anything! Is the analogy too strong? Is the teacher more likely than the gunner to reach his objective without consciously aiming at it? And can the teacher set up for attainment as definite aims as are offered the gunner? Do we _know_ just what ends we seek in the religious training of our children?