Environment fixes largely the companions of the girl, and her place in
the social scale predetermines to some extent how she shall play. If
she is in a home where the family is closely related to the church in
all departments of its active work and life, the church becomes her
natural social center. Its entertainments, suppers, young people’s
socials, etc., furnish the means for her amusement and the place where
she may form friendships. If she is a working girl boarding in a
strange city or living in a home in no way connected with the church,
unless the Y. W. C. A. through the gymnasium or other classes reaches
her, where shall she find her social center where she may enjoy the
society of other young people, form friendships and have a good time?
In summer the public parks answer that question. In winter, the
skating rink, “the dancing party,” the moving picture show.
If the girl lives in a happy home surrounded by wealth, together with
culture and refinement, her social life will be guided and guarded
during her teens and she will be helped to have a good time. If she be
that happiest of all girls, the one whose own home is the social
center, where music, games and fun abound, and where friends are
always welcome, she is safe. Such homes might solve the whole problem,
but there are not enough.
When the teacher looks seriously at the social side of her girls in
their teens and realizes the craving of the whole nature for
companionship, laughter and fun, she finds it hard to say “Don’t” even
to the things of which she does not personally approve, because she
must meet the question clear and frank, “What _can_ I do then?” That
question has been answered, so far as the church is concerned, only
here and there. Some splendid and successful attempts have been made
that give us hope for the future.
Most Sunday-school teachers of girls in their teens have awakened
recently to the fact that unless the demands of the social side be
satisfied in a sane, healthful way, the girl’s spiritual nature
suffers, and the mental and physical as well.
When once the teacher really sees it she can no longer be content to
meet the interested members of her class just an hour on Sunday, to
discuss the lesson of the day. The crowded parks, the trolleys, the
“parties,” the call of the great demanding whirl of amusements from
Sunday to Sunday, presses upon her soul. She learns how her girls
spend the week end and the evenings and then she throws herself, her
knowledge, her skill, her time, into the scales, hoping where she
finds girls in the danger zone to turn the balance in favor of clean,
safe, sane pleasure.
Any teacher willing to make a little investigation will be surprised
to learn how many of the girls enjoying the kind of amusements which
do not make for sound moral health, were at ten or twelve regular
members of the Sunday-school, and how many still come occasionally.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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