The Boy and the Sunday School: A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday School with Teen Age BoysAlexander, John L.
Religion
The Boy and the Sunday School: A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday School with Teen Age Boys
Alexander, John L.
Sunday schools
The types which have been discussed will generally work out all right
and find their places in the various social strata in the community in
which they live. The unfortunate boys, however, are handicapped
tremendously by their environment and surroundings, and it will often
become a part of the Teacher's work to help secure a change in these
environments. Boys of very wealthy parents and boys from homes of
poverty are usually sinned against by their parents. The parents of
both are either so busy making money and spending it in the social
whirl, or so pushed by the pangs of hunger and the fight for life, that
the children who are brought into the world are left either very much to
themselves or to underlings who have very little interest in the boy's
welfare. It is these neglected boys that oftenest produce our great
criminals. All boys of this type somehow or other are tied together. The
neglected boy generally becomes the delinquent and the delinquent boy
the criminal, so that what might be said about one might also be said
about all. This class constitutes our national deficit when we come to
consider our assets in manhood, and the Teacher can do a tremendous
thing here by helping to form the undeveloped wills of these unfortunate
fellows.
THE DEFICIENT AND THE DEPENDENT
The deficient boy and the dependent are really out of the scope of the
Teacher. The dependent class will have to be taken care of by the
charitable institutions of the State, and the deficient boy because of
his lack of mental development will always be a ward of the community.
THE WAGE-EARNER AND THE OVERAMBITIOUS BOYS
The wage-earning boys and the boys of overambitious parents or those who
are overambitious themselves need all the help and sympathy that they
can get from a Teacher. The father who is pushing his boy because of his
own ambition will very often need to be talked to by the Teacher or his
friends, and given an understanding of the crime he is committing
against his own child. The overambitious fellow who is pushing
everything aside for a definite thing in life will often have to be
talked to in the plainest language by the Teacher to get him to see his
other responsibilities and duties in life. The wage-earning boy who
works from early in the morning until late at night to keep bread in his
mouth and breath in his body will compel the Teacher, if he is really
thoughtful, to give up some of the things which he has already held
dearest and possibly lead his wage-earning boy into outdoor activities,
even on the half holidays which he would naturally spend in the circle
of his own family.
THE STREET, FOREIGN-BORN AND NEGRO BOYS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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