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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

This book contains no bibliography and no list of references for each lesson. It is to be hoped, however, that each training class will secure a little reference library, and that each teacher will read at least one book bearing upon the development of the pupil, and one upon the work of the teacher. The following books are recommended as a compact list, all of which a class might well own:

To be read in connection with Part I. :

Harrison: "A Study of Child Nature."
Forbush: "The Boy Problem."

Coe: "The Spiritual Life."

Addams: "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets."

To be read in connection with Part II. :

Burton and Mathews: "Principles and Ideals for the Sunday
School."

Du Bois: "The Point of Contact in Teaching."
Bryant: "How to Tell Stories to Children."

Hervey: "Picture-work."

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Coe : Education in Religion and Morals."

For those who wish to know more about psychology and its application

to teaching:

James: "Talks to Teachers on Psychology."

Horne: "The Psychological Principles of Education."

PART ONE

THE PUPIL

The Pupil and The Teacher

PART I-THE PUPIL

LESSON I

THE TEACHer's Work AND TRAINING

1. What is your aim as a Sunday school teacher? What is the work that you are set to do?

You must do more than instruct. It is not enough to give your pupil a knowledge, however true and full, of the Bible, or of Jewish history, or of Christian doctrine. He might get to know all these things without doing anything worth while. You must reach his life and mold his action.

Yet you must do more than train your pupil in right habits of action. Animals can be trained. You want, more than the action, the will behind it. Your pupil is to become capable of acting for himself, in a voluntary, self-initiated expression of what he knows and believes. Huxley spoke unworthily when he said that if anyone could wind him up like an eight-day clock, and guarantee that all his life he would do nothing but perfectly right actions, he would close the bargain and be wound up at once. The mechanically perfect Huxley would be, not a man, but a clock in human form. Character is something which each must make for himself.

As a teacher you aim, then, to develop a personality. You want your pupil not simply to know, but to live Christianity. You want him not merely to do right deeds, but to do them of his own will, knowing what he is doing and why he is doing it, and loving the right for sake of the Father who gave him that freedom. There is but one real test of a teacher's work. God and men alike will ask you that one question. It is not, "What have you taught your pupil to know?" or, "What have you trained him to do?" but, "What sort of person have you helped him to become?"

2. Personality grows naturally. You cannot build it within a pupil by mechanically cementing ideas one upon the other as though they were bricks. The youngest child in your class already has a personality of his own-living, growing, maturing. And, like every other living thing, it has its laws of life and growth and development. Just as the body develops in accordance with the laws of its nature, so the mind develops from the blank of babyhood to the self-reliant personality of complete manhood in accordance with definite laws which by nature belong to it. If you are going to help a child become the right sort of person, you must understand these laws, just as truly as the gardener must understand and use the natural laws of plant development.

It is the aim of this book to tell you, in a plain and simple way, what these laws are and how you may use them. Its first part—The Pupil-gives the laws themselves. It is a description of how personality grows. The second part-The Teacher-applies these laws to your work. It deals with the principles of teaching.

3. The teacher needs, above all else, to understand children. But that is not easy. Children are not "little men" and "little women.” They differ from adults, not simply in size and strength, but in the very quality of their powers. Growth to manhood and womanhood involves a change as real as that from caterpillar to butterfly, even if less obvious.

The body of a child is, in all its proportions, unlike that of a grown person. Relatively to the rest of its body, the head of a baby is twice as large as that of a man, and its legs but two-thirds as long. Proportionately, its brain is six times as heavy as the man's, but its muscles weigh only half as much as his.

The mental difference is even greater. The child has, of course, a less wide experience, and consequently fewer and less adequate ideas. His mental faculties, again, have not reached their full growth. But this is not all. A child's whole way of looking at things, his feelings and interests, his instincts and desires, are different. He sees the world in a perspective of his own.

In late years, many trained observers have studied children, seeking to learn the fundamental characteristics of each stage in their development. The more important results of this systematic child-study are summed up for you in the first part of this book. You will need to supplement it, however, with your own study and experience. Observe children for yourself, especially in their spontaneous plays and games, Be mindful of the possibility that you may misinterpret their

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