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 chapter on Bible Study will likewise fit into the rural situation.
No matter whether the boys be urban or rural, they demand Bible Study
that will fit into their religious, developing needs. Perhaps Bible
Study courses with rural application need to be arranged, and I am led
to believe that the illustrative material should be vastly different
from that used for city boys, and of a rural character. However, there
has been too much written and spoken of the difference between rural and
urban boys. The differences discovered by the writer seem to be all in
favor of the country boy--more wholesome surroundings, more quiet and
less nerve-destroying interests, and more time, because of fewer
commercial amusements to really discover things for themselves. The
average rural boy has read more and knows more about current events than
the city-bred lad. The country boy should not be provincialized by his
Bible Study, or anything else. He should be given as large a touch with
the world of men and letters as any one else. The illustrations used in
Lesson Helps, etc., should have some bearing on the life he leads, that
the application of the study may germinate in his daily life, else the
study will have little meaning, but he needs no separate, distinct
courses. It is not a different selection of material, but a different
treatment that is needed. The Denominational Leaders will sooner or
later be forced to heed this cry from the largest section of the Sunday
school field. Until they do Graded Lessons will not gain materially in
the open country.
On the other hand, where there is only one group of adolescent boys in
the Sunday school, Graded Lessons are practicable, as well as necessary
to the best religious development of boyhood. The grading is cut down to
a minimum, and it merely means fewer classes studying the same lesson.
It would mean just the one group, with a new course each year. The
difficulty is not with the lessons, but with the school officials and
the teacher.
The chapter on Through-the-Week Activities is very applicable. The gang
will get together some time, on Saturday night, if not at another time.
The Young Men's Christian Association County Work Secretaries are
getting the boys of the open country together for week-night meetings
without trouble. "Get something doing" and see how quickly the rural
boys will get together. These activities again will differ greatly from
those of city boys. There will be great emphasis on the Social and
Mental as against the Out-of-Door doings of the urban adolescents. The
principle already laid down, to let the boys themselves decide the
activity, will settle this difficulty at the start.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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