Religious Education in the FamilyCope, Henry Frederick
Religion
Religious Education in the Family
Cope, Henry Frederick
Families -- Religious life; Religious education
For youth there are few effective schools, outside the home, other than
the streets and the places of commercialized amusement. Even where the
other agencies of training are used, such as college, classes, and
associations (such as the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A.), life, at that
period, needs the restraints on selfishness that come from family life,
the refining and socializing power of the family group.
§ 2. SPECIAL NEEDS OF YOUTH
What are the special needs of youth upon which the family may base a
reasonable program for their higher needs?
First, the need of sound physical health. This is a period of physical
adjustment. Rapid bodily growth is nearly or quite at an end; new
functions are asserting themselves. The new demands for directed
activity may, under the ambitious impulses of youth, make undue drafts
on the energies. The apparent moodiness that at times characterizes this
period may be due to poor health. The moral strain of the period will
need sound muscles and good health. Parents who would sit up all
night--perhaps involuntarily--when the baby has the colic treat with
indifference sickness in youth and too readily assume that the young
man or the young woman will outgrow these physical ills. But bodily
maladjustment or incapacity has most serious character effects. To live
the right life and render high service one needs to be a whole person,
with opportunity to give undivided attention and undiminished powers to
the struggle of life.
Secondly, this is peculiarly the period of the joy of friendships. The
social nature must have its food. This young man has discovered that the
world consists of something besides things; it is full of people. He is
just learning that they are all persons like himself. He enters the era
of conscious personal relationships. He would explore the realm of
personality. He touches great heights of happiness as other lives are
opened to him. It is all new and wonderful, this realm of personality,
with its aspects of feeling, thinking, willing, and longing.
§ 3. MAINTAINING FRIENDSHIP WITH YOUTH
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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