THE CHIVALRIC IDEA IN WORK WITH BOYS

REV. FRANK L. MASSECK

PASTOR CHURCH OF OUR FATHER, SPENCER, MASSACHUSETTS; NATIONAL KING OF THE KNIGHTS OF KING ARTHUR

Every person who comes into intimate contact with boys, whether as parent, teacher, or friend, realizes the truth, emphasized in Gulick's "Studies of Adolescence," the " spontaneous tendency of boys in pubescent years to develop social and political organizations." Mr. Sheldon, in The Institutional Activities of American Children," shows that the tendency to spontaneously imitate every form of adult organization is manifest before the age of ten, and that only about thirty per cent of the large number of children whom he observed had not belonged to some such organization. After ten, the boys cease to imitate adult societies, and tend to form social units characteristic of the lower stages of evolution, pirates, robbers, soldiers, savages, where the strongest and boldest is the leader. At this point is found the danger of this instinctive tendency. President Hall says: " Especially in city life, the boy is divorced from the steadying laws of recapitulation which insure emergence in due season into a higher state, and so is all the more plastic, helpless, disoriented, and in need of succor. In decadent country communities, with fewer and feebler offspring, with lax notions of parental discipline, such associations often break out in hoodlumism, and in many unsettled portions of the country a semi-savage state of society results. Under all circumstances the boys left to themselves tend to disorder and trivality. Hence, in large part, comes the immeasurable waste of adolescent life."

These are the facts. What is now proposed as a remedy? President Hall says: "All social life should be organized about youth like placenta, and should restore, if possible, all the lost phyletic elements that are needful, while adult leaders should strive to ripen that deep and lasting friendship which the young so readily develop, with lifelong and enthusiastic gratitude for those that really serve them. Every adolescent boy ought to belong to some club or society marked by such secrecy as is compatible with safety. Something esoteric, mysterious, a symbolic badge, countersign, a lodge and its equipment, and perhaps other things owned in common, give a real basis for comradeship, and cultivate a peculiar form of group-honor. The prime purpose which should determine every choice of matter and method is moral, viz. so to direct

intelligence and will as to secure the largest measure of social service, advance altruism, reduce selfishness, and thus advance the higher cosmic order. Youth loves combat. Its very best safeguard and its highest ideal is honor, and this has its best expression in what may be called the ethnic Bible of the Saxon race in its adolescent stage, the literature of chivalry. I am convinced that there is nothing more wholesome for the material of English study than that of the early mythic period in Western Europe. I refer to the literature of the Arthuriad and the Sangrail. We have here a vast body of ethical material, characters that are almost colossal in their proportions, incidents thrilling and dramatic to a degree that stirs the blood and thrills the nerves. It teaches the highest reverence for womanhood, piety, valor, loyalty, courage, munificence, justice, and obedience. The very life-blood of chivalry is heroism.”

This is the ideal remedy proposed. Twelve years ago, Dr. Forbush began a practical experiment at realizing this ideal, and President Hall says, "This idealized court of King Arthur is the very best form for this age." It is interesting to know that others, unconscious of what Dr. Forbush has already so well done, have had visions of a similar work, and made some progress towards realization. Only the other day a letter came into my hands, from a clergyman in Chicago, who had almost worked out a practical scheme before he learned of the Knights of King Arthur. In England, Dr. Paton has evolved the "Boys' Life Brigade," in which he endeavors to teach boys to develop, relieve, and save life, rather than to destroy, which is the tendency, at least in the various forms of military organizations. Out of this, Dr. Paton had come to propose a "Court of Honor," which would seek to develop the highest life and aspiration in the heart of the boys. These and various other attempts to the same end show us so clearly that the prophecy of the reign of Arthur is being realized in our time. Many of these workers are now allying themselves with the Knights.

But now comes the practical question, How does the chivalric idea work out in practice? For reply, I will give you some illustrationsTM taken from the records of our Castles. The oldest living Castle is Roseville No. 44, in Newark, New Jersey. The leader is a lady. For nearly nine years she has been working with the boys who have successively come under her influence. By means of drills of various kinds, and with games, the boys have been attracted to the meetings. They have helped buy a carpet for the church, and now are at work on the mortgage. Cake and cream have frequently been enjoyed. The object," Boys for Christ," has ever been kept in view, and tact

fully a word has now and then been spoken. Miss Jones writes, "It is difficult to measure the growth of character. But I believe no good influence has been lost. I have seen the boys made purer by meeting together as a K. O. K. A.”

A Baptist minister in Nashville, Tennessee, writes, "I do very little preaching to the boys. I think the best thing is to tie them to the church. and myself, and let them feel that about the church may be found the most wholesome life for a boy. I am aiming at forming a bond, rather than piling up statistics as to how many moral lessons I swathed them with. I believe this course was amply justified when, at the close of a special series of meetings which I myself conducted. and in which I asked the special sympathy and support of the Castle, fourteen of the members united with the church. But that is not all. We supported a boy in school last year, furnishing him also with books. We believe in the K. O. K. A. and wish it many summers."

Another pastor, in a town where all the influences are opposed to church membership, and in a church which had never had a male under twenty-one unite with it, after three years of work, saw four of the boys take their positions at the altar, one of whom afterwards entered the Divinity School, and will shortly be ordained as pastor of a large church. Another of the group has been for four years superintendent of the Sunday school. These results were accomplished in the face of ridicule, derision, and scorn.

Ministers and teachers all over the country confess that with the Castle they are able effectively to reach boys who could not be touched by the Sunday school, or any form of young people's religious organizations.

In a little town of northern Vermont, where the boys were notoriously vulgar, obscene, and impure, the Baptist and Congregational pastors united and formed a Castle. In less than a year the influence of that little group of lads had almost purified the entire boy-life. Cigarette-smoking ceased. Profanity was seldom heard. Impurity was driven out of sight. So great was the transformation, that business men on the street commented upon the fact, and showed their appreciation of the wonderful work by receptions to the members of the Castle, these unexpected attentions serving still further to increase the good influence of the order.

THE CIVIC IDEA IN WORK WITH BOYS

MYRON T. SCUDDER

PRINCIPAL, NEW PALTZ NORMAL SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY

The civic ideals of any nation are greatly influenced by the geographic conditions of the territory inhabited by that nation. Guyot says that because of the continental structure of Asia, the civilization of the races on that continent became arrested in their development. The civic ideals of its races are archaic; they reached a stable equilibrium centuries ago, and are hopelessly ineffectual from progress. With Europe the case is different. For its physical features, including so many peninsulas well guarded by mountain barriers, yet permitting easy intercourse by water, make it "specially fitted to foster the formation of distinct nationalities, each developing in a special direction." It supports strongly centralized governments or monarchies, in which political individualism and a spirit of altruism could have but little play. But for America, particularly in the "noble domain of the United States," the geographer claims a grand function. This country, because of its extraordinary wealth of resources and physical features (great reaches of country interlaced by navigable rivers with no serious mountain barriers), tends to create mutual interests among all the peoples who come here, fosters internal commerce, unites rather than separates peoples, and checks the formation of local nationalities. America is therefore the Amalgamator of races, the continent of altruistic democracy.

Thus, unavoidably, are bred civic ideals differing from those of other nations, and vastly more complicated for the individual citizen, and demanding a higher degree of political intelligence. Into these civic ideals, the youth of our country must be most carefully inducted. The task is herculean, and all the more so because of the unique structure and composition of the national government. In a great nation composed as this is of a number of small nations, the principle of local autonomy and state sovereignty necessarily clashes with the principle of a centralized government at Washington. To insure survival and strong growth, our youth must be prepared to participate intelligently, loyally, unselfishly, and honestly in the struggle between these two principles. But how shall this be done? The educators of youth have an extraordinarily difficult task on hand, and unfortunately the pedagogy of the subject is not yet worked out. The teaching of a very intricate subject

is further complicated by the necessity of considering the laws of mental growth and the nature of the youthful mind as it passes rapidly through the various phases of its development. Perhaps we shall eventually devise a scheme for teaching civics, based on the historic order of development of governmental machinery, leading from the simple one-man power of primitive man, up through a simple democracy like that of the Indian tribes, to the more complicated intertribal relations, not yet representative in form, shown in the stories of Siegfried, Ulysses, etc., on to the feudal system and then to colonial government, where the principle of representation becomes a necessity, and following this by village or county organization, finishing up with municipal government. Such a scheme certainly opens up a field of great promise and of unbounded research and work for framers of courses of study!

The American boy, then, and the American girl too must from the very start be made acquainted in one way or another with American civic ideals, and, what is more, they should have early experience in devising laws and ordinances for self-government, as well as practice in obeying and enforcing the same. While this is of special importance, because of our republican form of government, it is also an essential in the development of the kind of character needed by American youth. In this country, we feel the necessity of appealing to the individual's own will in order really to govern him. We see that "self-government makes a man strong and fit for life, while will, coercion, or government from without renders him unfit for self-regulation." Wise government of our youth, that is, a government in which they themselves may really participate, will tend to establish habits of self-control, obedience to law, and thoughtfulness of others' welfare. Is it not therefore, both absurd and wrong to rear the future citizens of a representative government under a form of school government which is little better than despotism '(for where in the world is there a more arbitary rule than is shown in the school-rooms in which young Americans spend so many of the formative years of their lives?)—a despotism which at least has too often failed as utterly as any despotism can fail to develop in the individual that rational sense of responsibility for himself and for others which is one very important safeguard of democratic institutions?

Each school then, and we may say, club or other similar organization, may profitably seek to provide not only an object-lesson in the forms of government, but actual practice in exercising the rights and duties of citizenship. Sporadic attempts in this direction have made their way from time to time to public notice, coming generally from some college, like, for instance, the once far-famed Amherst plan, but it was not until the valuable lesson taught by the George Junior Republic, and by the