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
So as to the chapter on the Teen Age Teacher! Boys and men are the same
pretty much, wherever they live. They may be more deliberate, less
showy, and steadier in some places than others, but we cannot admit
inferiority or lack of interest on the part of the splendid rural boy.
He is filling the big jobs in our cities today, and will as long as the
cities last. The teen age teacher in the rural school needs to master
himself for his task. He is doing a bigger piece of work than his
brother of the city school. He is preparing men for urban leadership.
To make a long story short, the parts of this book that deal with the
small group are applicable to the rural Sunday school. The teen age
teacher in the rural school should begin with these, and maybe after a
while he will see opportunities for larger groupings. The Young Men's
Christian Association County Work Secretary certainly is. Inter-Sunday
school work is possible by the Sunday school forces themselves.
A fitting close to this chapter is the challenge to the teen age
teachers of the rural schools, which Mr. Preston G. Orwig has hurled at
North America:
"Every rural school has its quota of workers who are, perhaps
unconsciously, limiting their own usefulness, as well as retarding the
progress of the school, by meeting every new plan of work proposed with
the statement that, 'That plan is all right for the city, but it won't
work here because we have so few members and our people live so far
apart.' With the exception of the man who constantly reminds us that 'we
did not do it this way thirty years ago,' and who, in some cases, is
really a menace to the work, there is no greater obstacle confronting
workers in rural schools.
"In a recent conference of Secondary Division workers in rural Sunday
schools, a speaker was advocating the necessity of recognizing the
fourfold--physical, mental, social and spiritual--life of the scholars,
in planning for the work of the class. The tremendous opportunity of
teachers for reaching adolescent boys for Jesus Christ, through their
physical and social instincts, was emphasized. Luke 2:52 was quoted to
clinch the argument. In the discussion that followed everybody seemed
satisfied that a broader policy of work should be pursued. At this
juncture a man in the audience arose, and, in a most uncompromising
manner, attempted to show that it was useless to promote such methods
for rural schools, as the scattered population and limited membership
made it impossible to develop the work along the lines proposed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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