SPECIALIZATION IN SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHING

REV. RICHARD MORSE HODGE, D.D.,

DIRECTOR OF EXTENSION COURSES FOR LAY STUDENTS, UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK CITY

1. Sunday-school teachers should be allowed to specialize as Sundayschool workers, and be relieved of other responsibility in church work. 2. Ought Sunday-school teachers to attend a second church service on Sunday, or the midweek service as generally conducted, when one or both of the evenings might prove invaluable for study in preparation for Sunday-school teaching?

3. Pastors commonly lament that they have not the time to conduct a teachers' training class, while they nevertheless are conducting two public services on Sunday and a third one during the week, all of which are practically the same kind of a service. Why should not the second Sunday service in some cases, and more generally the midweek service, be devoted to Biblical expositions in course and lectures in religious education?

4. Teachers cannot specialize in the knowledge of children or the methods of teaching without a grading of the school. How long a teacher should preside over a single class is a mooted question. The shorter the term, the more the teacher can specialize; and the longer the term, if the teacher be not outgrown in the meantime, the better will the teacher know the individual pupils, and the more intense may be his influence over them. Considering that the teacher holds class but once a week, a term of two years for a class under one teacher is productive probably of the best results.

5. For the sake of the pupils it is even more necessary to grade the curriculum than to grade the classes. Even if the Sunday school itself be not graded, it is of the utmost importance to grade the Bible and other subject-matter to meet the respective intellectual interests and spiritual needs of pupils of different stages of maturity. Bible stories, particularly the stories of Jesus, should be taught during early childhood; Old Testament history, from the Exodus to the time of Christ, from the tenth to the twelfth year of age; the life of Christ and the teaching of Jesus, followed by the lives and teachings of the apostles from the thirteenth to the sixteenth year- the vital period for conversion; the history of the Bible canon and of the revelation of religion, during the two years following; and the study of separate Bible books,

after the eighteenth year. The division of the Bible and other subjectmatter necessary into two-year periods, one for each teacher, enables them all to specialize upon a comparatively small portion of what needs to be taught in the school as a whole.

6. Sunday schools may have teachers of special subjects, who may go from class to class to direct the teaching of Biblical geography, manual work, church history, missions, or for the telling of stories that may reiterate what may be taught out of the Biblical material by the regular teachers of the classes. Educational experts engaged in such work in public and private schools may be found for this service. Frequently a superintendent of public schools, for instance, may be secured as a supervisor of a Sunday school, to introduce grading or manual work. It will require less of his time than it would be necessary for him to give if he were a regular teacher of a class. He may serve efficiently as a supervisor, even if he cannot attend the school every Sunday. Indeed, he may serve more than one Sunday school at a time in this capacity.

7. The specialization of Sunday-school teaching both reduces the scope of knowledge required of each teacher and makes the amount. that each has to learn so definite that the pursuit of study in training classes, by correspondence study or home reading, becomes at once less discouraging and more feasible. Teachers will study with a concentration and assiduity not to be approached under any other system of Sunday-school organization. This has been abundantly proved in experience. I know a church where the Sunday school was graded last autumn, and before Christmas the pastor had a waiting list of teachers, none of whom happened to be a day-school teacher. These candidates are required to pass examinations before they are permitted to teach in the school.

8. The specialization of teaching is seen to be a question of school organization.

X. CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE YOUNG MEN'S
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS

EDWIN F. SEE,

GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, BROOKLYN,

NEW YORK

My purpose is to survey the present status of religious education in the Young Men's Christian Associations of North America, and to analyze the attitude of these Associations, as indicated by their doings and literature, toward religious education. The paper will be largely devoted to religious education in the Young Men's Christian Associations through their Bible-Study Department. A brief survey of those educational and scientific principles which are recognized and observed in other phases of its work will be helpful by way of introduction.

1. In the Physical Department. It is noteworthy that this Department was the first among the phases of Association activity to come to a conscious formulation of the scientific principles underlying its most successful work. The following are a few of these principles: (1) The conception of man as a unit, and the allied conception of the relation of the body to the mind. At the International Convention of Young Men's Christian Associations in Philadelphia, in 1889, Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick made the first formal statement of these facts as applied to the Associations. The conception of man as a unit, and of the Association as a unit in working for the upbuilding of man, was then first formulated for the Associations. The triangle, standing in its three sides for the physical, the mental, and the spiritual, was then suggested as an Association emblem. (2) Coincidently with the formulation of this principle came the adoption of the kindred idea of all-around physical development as opposed to specialties in sport. The Associations began to urge that competition should be adapted to the average rather than to the exceptional man, and their scheme of physical education planned to induce him to give attention to his weak rather than to his strong points. (3) The element of play in systematic physical education followed as a recognized principle in this department. That element which has come to be so largely utilized in the pedagogy of the kindergarten was here introduced to relieve the tedium of physical exercise and to give zest and attractiveness to the ordinary processes

of physical development. (4) One more principle might be named in this connection, namely, measurements according to an anthropometrical standard. A manual for physical measurements was published by the International Committee in 1892, and on the scientific basis thus established the physical examinations in most of the Young Men's Christian Association gymnasiums in the country are conducted, and so are brought into uniformity with scientific standards. The service rendered by these measurements to the Physical Department are not unlike that rendered to the Educational and Bible-Study Departments by the uniform examinations to which reference will soon be made.

2. In the Educational Department. Here we have time to fasten our attention only upon the evening classes as a phase of the educational work of the Young Men's Christian Associations. The Educational Department has been practically re-created on the basis of pedagogical principles since 1893, when Mr. Frederic B. Pratt, of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, became Chairman, and Mr. George B. Hodge, Secretary of this Department for the International Committee. Evening classes, which were previously regarded largely as places of resort to attract young men from places of vice, without losing this preventive aspect, were reorganized on the basis of acknowledged educational principles and have since come to be recognized as an educational agency in the Educational Bureau at Washington. Some of the principles referred to are as follows: (1) The adaptation of courses of instruction to the characteristics and needs of students, involving careful assignment of applicants to classes which they are fitted to enter and promotion according to merit. (2) The maintenance of a high standard by means of examinations and the granting of certificates, which now have a recognized value among over one hundred of the leading universities and colleges of the country. (3) The employment of competent teachers. One thousand four hundred and thirty such teachers were paid by the Young Men's Christian Associations of the United States and Canada, during 1903, amounts aggregating $111,190. (4) The encouragement of thoroughness. The attempt is no longer generally made to build up a large enrolment at the expense of quality of work. In the interests of thoroughness students have been dissuaded from identifying themselves with more than one or two classes at a time. Although 30,622 were enrolled in these evening classes last year, and the number is increasing year by year, this increase has been in face of the adoption of a system of educational fees in addition to the regular membership dues of the Association whereby this number of students last year paid nearly $85,000 for the privileges of classes with which they were identified.

3. In social activities. Social affiliations have been recognized in the extending of privileges in separate buildings to special classes of men, as railroad men, students, soldiers, sailors. The same principle has been observed in the arrangement of privileges within the individual buildings, under clubs of various kinds, in accordance with the sociological principle of "consciousness of kind." It must be confessed that the Associations are but simply entering upon the scientific formulation of their social activities, and that in this section of their work they have not advanced to that degree of certainty and accuracy which characterize their operations in the other departments of their work. There are two ways of regarding the agencies above described in their relation to religious education: (1) There is doubtless a general recognition among all members of the Young Men's Christian Associations of the fact that these agencies-physical, educational, social-constitute a congenial environment into which the agencies of religious education may be effectively introduced. While not uniformily recognized as distinctively religious agencies in themselves, they are regarded as offsetting hostile influences in the lives of young men, and as providing an atmosphere favorable for the conduct of religious activities. Mr. Fred B. Smith has given, perhaps, the best expression to this conception in saying: "When a man can be brought most nearly to his normal physical condition, he is the most susceptible to definite religious influences. The man of abnormal physical life is an easy prey to evil influences. The overdeveloped man in physical existence is about the last man to be reached in definite spiritual life. It becomes oftentimes equally true of the man who is struggling with some physical ill, that the impairment of these physical powers makes him more in danger of falling into the manifold temptations that he must meet. The Young Men's Christian Association movement stands for normal physical development, thus bringing the man as nearly as possible to his best, and opening the channels for religious life. The educational features are also based upon the value of self-improvement among young men, and when that process begins in their lives, it is only a question of how long it will be in the rising scale of their lives before they will be led to realize that the supreme attainment of life is to be a follower of Jesus Christ." (2) But among some representatives of the Young Men's Christian Associations there is doubtless an acceptance of a distinctly religious value per se in these physical, educational, and social agencies. To such, man is a unitbody, mind, spirit. Religious education is a part of general education. Whatever, therefore, makes for the betterment of young men and boys physically, intellectually, or socially, makes also for their religious