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Then why not make that course such as to command the respect and interest of this class of students?

Great efforts have been made to interest young people in correspondence courses, and the possibilities in this field were so large that the result has been a tendency to pull all correspondence instruction down to the level of the young people who wish to give only a few moments a day to the work and have no serious or lasting purpose in it. The work for this class of students may well be done in the field, not of correspondence instruction, but of non-resident study and reading

courses.

It is also true that the study and reading courses which have been outlined for young people and for popular use have in many cases been prepared by persons who understood neither the importance of proper pedagogical method, nor of the proper selection of material, but I think that it will be acknowledged by those who have examined what may be termed the reading and study courses of some of the larger organizations, that much better work has been done in this department than in what may be more strictly termed correspondence instruction. Here will be found the most excellent courses of the Young Men's Christian Association, the Epworth League, the Baptist Christian Culture courses, and the Outline Study courses of the American Institute of Sacred Literature, and others too numerous to mention. It is in the grade above this, and in the courses intended for those who wish to teach, that the standard needs to be made much higher.

It will be admitted that we have mentioned three desirable points upon which should be established standards for correspondence work in religious education, viz.: 1. A nomenclature which shall adequately define to the public; 2. The confinement of the privilege of offering courses to institutions of recognized educational standing and resources; and 3. The lifting of the grade of work offered to such a place as will command the respect of the constituency for which it is intended. What steps can be taken by the Religious Education Association toward bringing about the recognition of these standards? This is a problem to be solved, but it would seem that one element in the solution would be the use of the same courses by different organizations. When one good course has been prepared upon a subject at great expense and labor, why is it not feasible for other institutions to make an arrangement by which they may avail themselves of the same course? The use in common of both courses and instructors might be arranged by several institutions.

At all events, should there not be a board or committee of the Religious Education Association which should pronounce upon correspondence courses, upon reading courses, and upon study courses, and give the stamp of its approval or disapproval in each case, aiming to bring those which do not meet the standards up to them, and to direct and concentrate attention on those which have borne the test of examination? The valuable investigations presented in Mr. Cuninggim's paper would give the basis for the work of such a board or committee.

And what are the questions which this board or committee should ask?

I.

Is the course under consideration well worked out in method? 2. Is the material for study the best for its purpose?

3. To what class (professional, non-professional, correspondence, study, reading) does it belong?

4. Does it meet a need in the field of religious education?

5. If a correspondence course, will an expert instructor be provided?

It would not be the province of such a committee to distinguish between schools of thought as such. The most conservative as well as the most liberal parties should have the privilege of presenting courses for examination, and the decision of the association should be made on the basis of the five questions suggested.

XVI. SUMMER ASSEMBLIES

SUMMER SUNDAY SCHOOL INSTITUTES

REV. E. MORRIS FERGUSSON

TRENTON, NEW JERSEY

In this discussion of the summer institute as a means of Sunday school progress, let us first consider the problem of reforming the Sunday school teaching force. Thousands of individual teachers there are, of course, who might well, for that matter, consider the problem of reforming us; but that the teachers as a body need lifting to a higher pedagogic level, hardly needs argument.

The first - that is, the most obvious need of the teachers is information and mental drill. They are ignorant of so many things,the Bible, pedagogy, child psychology, and so on. The first, because the simplest step in the helping of the teachers, therefore, has always been to teach them. Normal and teacher-training manuals have been multiplied for more than a generation, and through the use of them great good has undoubtedly been wrought. But they have all been projected upon the assumption that we the writers, advocates, and teachers of these manuals — know what the teachers need to learn; and that is a good deal to assume, as some pastors are, in position to testify. When you undertake to sound the depths of some teachers' Bible ignorance, it is well to be provided with an extra line. Yet are we not told to begin with the known before proceeding to the unknown? Most, if not all, of the current plans for reforming the teachers through normal classes of teachers conducted locally on the basis of a text-book, are convicted at least of inadequacy, out of the very pages they essay to teach.

Text-book instruction, therefore, must be supplemented by conference instruction, such as is gained in an institute or a convention, where many teachers from different schools come together. Here a wise instructor, by various devices of questioning, can draw out enough of the teachers' individualities, and can so follow past experiences in the handling of like conferences, as to make a fairly close joint between the pupil's knowledge and the new truth the leader has to teach.

Prior to the need for teaching is the need for awakening. Our teachers, most of them, know far more than they have the heart to teach. Their conception of the teacher's call of God, of the divine

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verity and significance of their message to their pupils, and of the personal sacrifice and consecration without which pedagogical formulas are Hamlet un-Hamleted, these conceptions need to be remade in many a soul that now contentedly plods on and deems its Godappointed duty fully done. What class, meeting for half an hour after prayer-meeting, will stir to this awakening? What, but the mingling with a great company, each of whom has made sacrifices to come and more sacrifices to stay, and among whom are kindred spirits whose friendship, newly formed, shall spur and encourage with recital of like difficulties more bravely met and more gloriously overcome? And if, before this company, comes one and another whom all honor as teacher without peer, shall not the life-power of such a speaker be used of the Spirit to reach and transform dull lives and dead ministries with a power that is not in books and methods?

The summer Sunday school institute has proved itself by far the most potent force thus far developed for the spread of the idea of grade classification among the Sunday schools and the teachers. Beginning with the primary teachers, already so classified, it has now developed, or powerfully aided in developing, two other classifications, the junior teachers above the primary department and the beginners' or kindergarten-grade teachers below, and is now struggling with the much more complex task of segregating the intermediate teachers of the next grade above, representing the early adolescent pupils. Beginning with the representatives of the large and fairly well organized Sunday schools of the cities and towns, its influence on this line is steadily reaching the small schools of the country, where grade work is just as needful, but where methods, appliances, and plans must be modified to so much greater extent by the personal factor and the limitations of architecture and resource.

As fast as the classifying or placing of the Sunday school teacher is accomplished or with any definiteness projected, there is a call for leaders, and there begins to be created a supply of leaders able to respond to the call. The grading of the Sunday school calls for grade leadership; and the leader is almost always within reach, though frequently not in view. Your future junior department superintendent, who five years hence will be at the head of a well-drilled force of junior teachers, and giving to your boys and girls of nine to twelve a reasonably complete and correlated Bible and church education for the three or four years of that period, may now be teaching a class of senior girls, or be serving as assistant in the primary department. Find her, and send her to one of the summer institutes now being multiplied in

the land. Put her in touch with the leaders who have found one another, and whose eager desire to pass on the good they know waits only your co-operation in getting her within their reach. Do not expect her to fit herself for this high, self-sacrificing and permanent service at her own charges, but pay her way out of your school funds, and add the needed money for such books and printed tools as the literaturecounter of the school will show and the instructors recommend. Then, when she returns, give her a chance, and she will not be disobedient to her heavenly vision. And when the officers of your state, county, district, or city Sunday school organization recognize in her the helper they need in extending these new ideas and this new spirit to less favored workers in their field, encourage her to respond, knowing that most of what she has learned was taught her by those who gave their services then as freely as she is asked to give hers now.

But the institute lasts but for a week. You can get busy mothers, and teachers, and housekeepers, with a few preachers and one or two business men, to come together at an attractive watering-place for a week; and while they are there, if they are the real people and not a make-believe school recruited from the locality by posters and pulpit notices, you can hold them tight in any weather to a programme that covers two full sessions of every day. We have sent home many a student from our seductive seashore spot who never saw salt water till after five o'clock in the afternoon, except through the auditorium windows. But after the week, what then? The management of the institute must face this problem, and the answer involves the next need of the teacher - organization. Teach them how to form local unions, meeting weekly in their own town, give them materials, programmes, courses of study; send an 'expert to help them to organize, and to speak at their annual institute; and, in return, invite their union representative to sit with you in planning for next year's summer school sessions, and ask their help in securing a goodly number of new students therefor. In this reciprocity of service is the promise of permanent life, and of the ever-widening extension of the ideas for which the organization stands.

It remains to add a few suggestions to those who feel moved to put these recommendations into practice. But first let us face the question which some are already formulating: Is not this enterprise very much the same as the Chautauqua Assembly movement, and does not at least the Bible-teaching and Sunday school department of such an assembly do practically the same good as that for which you aim? No; for two principal reasons: (1) It does not reach the people we

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