Sunday-School Success: A Book of Practical Methods for Sunday-School Teachers and OfficersWells, Amos R. (Amos Russel)
Religion
Sunday-School Success: A Book of Practical Methods for Sunday-School Teachers and Officers
Wells, Amos R. (Amos Russel)
Sunday schools
Go to give good. Take hearty interest in the lesson, and have some
thought to add to the discussion. Better yet, have some earnest
question to ask. And ask it. If you come from another school,
consider yourself a Christian ambassador bearing greetings of
brotherly good will and common endeavor.
Go to get good. Be unobtrusive and teachable. And especially, show
that you have received good. Express appreciation, after the lesson,
to teacher and scholars. Then will you be blessed, and, changing the
meaning of the word "visitation," these words from the Wisdom of
Solomon may be applied to you: "In the time of their visitation they
shall shine, and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble."
Chapter XXVII
"Under Petticoat Government"
One of the brightest women in the United States, a woman well known to
the Protestant churches of the world, was groaning to me the other
day: "What _shall_ I do with those boys in my Sunday-school class?
They are just at the age when they think they know a little more than
any _woman_. They need a man. Don't you think the superintendent ought
to remove them from under petticoat government?"
This cry, that came so strangely from a woman of her ability and fame,
comes also from a throng of baffled Sunday-school teachers. The answer
would be easy, if there were anything like as many good Sunday-school
teachers among the men as among the women. As it is, however, most boy
classes must be assigned either to a distasteful petticoat government,
or to an incompetent pantaloon government, or--cast adrift until, long
years afterward, they drop anchor in the haven of matrimony, and
happily, perchance, appear once more in the Sunday-school, in the
"Bible class."
The remedy, however, though not easy, is manifest. The boys do not
need a man, but they do need in their teacher certain manly qualities
that could be incorporated in a woman's teaching. These qualities all
women whom the Lord of the Sunday-school has set over a class of his
boys, should seek to get.
The most obvious of them, I think, is a certain dignity and reserve
that show themselves as well in refraining from scolding as in
declining to pat on the head or hold by the hand. Boys of the
undefinable age we are talking about highly appreciate the title "Mr."
Their greatest horror is petting; their greatest aversion is nagging.
A young man, set to teach a class of boys, will approach them with a
sense of comradeship; will at once make himself, if he is a teacher at
all, "hail fellow well met" among them; and yet, as the boys say,
"there is no nonsense about him."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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