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CHAPTER XXII.

THE WILL IN SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHING.

SUGGESTED READINGS.

TALKS TO TEACHERS. James. pp. 22-45; 169-175. *TEACHER TRAINING. Roads. pp. 93-95, 78-81.

UP THROUGH CHILDHOOD. Hubbell.

THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. Gordy. pp. 152-163, 305-328.
THE MORAL INSTRUCTION OF CHILDREN. Adler.

A STUDY IN CHILD NATURE. Harrison. Chapter VI.
ELEMENTARY PSYCHOLOGY. Thorndike. pp. 185-190, 298ff.
MORAL EDUCATION. Spencer. pp. 161-218.

THE INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION. Laurie. pp. 218-238.
SELF-CULTURE. Clarke. Lecture 17.

PSYCHOLOGY AND THE PSYCHIC LIFE. Halleck. Chapter XIII.
CHARACTER. Marden.

CHARACTER. Smiles.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION. Seeley. pp. 218-232.
*CHARACTER BUILDING. Coler. pp. 17, 72, and 81-94.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION. Harris.
THE SEVEN LAWS OF TEACHING. Gregory.

Moral Training is thus Will-Training.

p. 300.

We have told you that Action is in general the result of Habit; that Habit is the result of Attention to particular and definite Ideals or Ideas; and that Voluntary Attention is the result of definite Willing. It is then ultimately deliberating over the case, fitting it to a diverse number of ideas, reflecting until the right idea comes into the centre or focus of the Attention, and then definitely holding it there firmly, until we act upon it. The moral act is simply holding fast to the idea. Other ideas, in the margin, incompatible with the desired one, are banished, and die out. The attended-to-one becomes more vivid, more intense, and bursts out into action. "To think, then, is the secret of the will, just as it is the secret of the memory.

"Thus your pupils will be saved, first by the stock of ideas which you furnish them; secondly, by the amount of voluntary attention that they can exert in holding to the right ones, how

ever unpalatable; and thirdly, by the several habits of acting definitely on these latter."

Training of the Will.

We have noted that the Stress and Storm time sees the birth of two new factors, most influential for future good or evil, Will and Judgment. Hitherto the child's life has been chiefly one of Feeling, guided as he has been almost blindly by Emotions and Impulses. He has not had the light of Intellect to guide him. Will has not been dominant, perhaps chiefly because Intellect and Reason have not been there to stir it. He has been wisely held in check by Divine Providence until development fitted him to care for himself. Animal Instinct has protected him. He has been practically an animal; now he becomes a man, with Intellect and Will in the ascendency. The Will must be trained, rather than broken. This is done, more or less consciously, by the presentation of vivid examples that hold and attract the mind and bestir action. Prompt decision, the habit of doing unpleasant things the moment we see them in our judgment to be right, without risking long deliberation and hesitation; the resolve never to break IDEALS, nor suffer an exception to a noble conception, such things in life soon go to form a strong, decisive Will. Stubbornness is not strong Will, but the contrary, a Will too weak to do what is right and proper.

Froebel, in his EDUCATION OF MAN says: "Nine-tenths of the intemperate drinking begins not in grief and destitution, as we often hear, but in vicious feeding."

Who has not noticed in children, over-stimulated by spices and excesses of food, appetites of a very low order from which they can never again be freed-appetities which, even when they seem to have been suppressed, only slumber, and in times of opportunity return with greater power, threatening to rob man of all his dignity and to force him away from his duty?

Miss Harrison says: "The danger of wrong training lies not alone in the indulgence of the sense of taste. Testimony is not wanting of the evil effects of the cultivation of the relish side of the other senses also.

"Do you not know who are usually the over-perfumed women of our land?' asked I. 'And yet I know scores of mothers

who unconsciously train their children to revel in an excessive indulgence in perfumery.'

"Nor does this far-reaching thought stop with right and wrong training of the senses. The mother who praises her child's curls or rosy cheeks rather than the child's actions or inner motives, is developing the relish side of character-placing beauty of appearance over and above beauty of conduct. The father who takes his boy to the circus, and, passing by the menagerie and acrobat's skill, teaches the boy to enjoy the clown and like parts of the exhibition, is leading to the development of the relish side of amusement, and is training the child to regard excitement and recreation as necessarily one and the same thing.

"Even our Sunday Schools, with their prizes and exhibitions and sensational programs, are not exempt from the crime. I have seen the Holy Easter festival so celebrated by Sunday Schools that, so far as its effects upon the younger children were concerned, they might each one as well have been given a glass of intoxicating liquor, so upset was their digestion, so excited their brains, so demoralized their unused emotions. Need I speak of the relish side of the dress of children? John Ruskin, the great apostle of the beautiful, claims that no ornament is beautiful which has not a use.”

Self-Denial.

Professor Jones writes: "Involved in the very heart of life itself is another principle as fundamental as self-assertion. It may be called self-surrender or self-sacrifice. Whatever it is named, it is the altruistic attitude and endeavor. It is not a late reversal of Nature's ordinary law, struggle for existence, as some have supposed. It is not something which has come in 'afterwards.' It is structural, like the other principle. Without surrender and sacrifice nobody could be a person at all. The world through and through has its centripetal and centrifugal forces, and chaos would come if either force vanished. Those who have called self-surrender irrational or super-rational have failed to note that bare self-assertion is just as irrational. No real personal qualities could be won on either tack pursued alone.

"We have come upon one of those deep paradoxes of life.

To become a person one must both affirm and deny himself. One involves the other. They are not totally different things. They are diverse aspects of the same thing. They belong together as indissolubly as the two sides of the board do. To get we must also give, to advance we must surrender, to gain we must lose, to attain we must resign. From the nature of things life means choice and selection, and every positive choice negatives all other possibilities. Every choice runs a line of cleavage through the entire universe. If I take this I give up that."

Desire and Will.

According to Miss Slattery: "We may say, speaking broadly, that desire when analyzed is made up of impulse and appetite. The cravings of the animal system demanding satisfaction constitute the appetites with their long train of results both good and evil. The imitative movements, the strange promptings to action without definite purpose, the things which the child does because he feels like it,' these make up impulse.

"As we attempt to develop the will along right lines we come to realize that it means persistent encouragement of the inclinations toward the good, and starving and weeding out of inclinations toward the bad. When a child is hungry, he craves food; when thirsty, drink. He is driven toward gratification of the desire that he may be satisfied. If the food and drink are of the right sort every part of his physical being develops and he is a healthy, natural, growing child. The child craves companionship, active pleasure, love. He could not name these desires; they are vague. Impulse spurs him on to seek companionship and pleasure, and if the result satisfies, he will seek it again in response to another impulse. If the companion and the pleasure be of the right sort, natural growth and real development of this part of his nature will follow. Whenever a child feels desire for a thing, believes he can secure it, and so seeks it, a definite act of the will takes place.

"As I note carefully the general trend of his appetites and impulses as seen in his actions, the desire is born in me to so train the child that the lower desire shall be ruled by the higher, until principle becomes more and more the basis of action; I desire to so train his will that it will grow strong enough to

control. If I could do this I should give him a perfect will; all I can hope to do is to get as near the ideal as possible.

"As his teacher I am responsible for neither his inheritance nor his home training. I am responsible for what I do and fail to do with him while he is in my charge, and for what training. it is possible for me to give him indirectly through my influence and example.

"However, teachers can make a child see vividly the consequences of evil acts and, although he must always learn through experience largely, the teaching has its influence. If this teaching is coupled with strong, positive instruction the better impulses and desires can be awakened. By example and story, by illustration verbal or blackboard, by question and suggestion, by discipline, by environment so far as he can influence it-in every possible way the teacher must study to create a desire for the very best. Indeed I am convinced that the teacher's business is just this: to create and encourage desire for the best things in life."

Choice and Decision.

Professor William James states: "Writing is higher than walking, thinking is higher than writing, deciding higher than thinking, deciding 'no' higher than deciding 'yes'—at least the man who passes from one of these activities to another will usually say that each later one involved a greater element of inner work than the earlier ones, even though the total heat given out or the foot-pounds expended by the organism may be less. Just how to conceive this inner work physiologically is yet impossible, but psychologically we all know what the word means. We need a particular spur or effort to start us upon inner work; it tires us to sustain it; and when long sustained, we know how easily we lapse. When I speak of 'energizing' and its rates and levels. and sources, I mean therefore our inner as well as our outer work."

Strengthening the Will by Pledges.

Professor William James says regarding the above: "The memory that an oath or vow has been made will nerve one to abstinences and efforts otherwise impossible; witness the 'pledge' in the history of the temperance movement. A mere

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