QUESTIONS

1. Classify questions according to the use to which they are put. State the aim of each class of questions.

2. What six great requirements must good questioning conform to?

3. Why should technical expressions and big words be avoided in putting questions?

4. Why should the question contain no figures of speech?

5. Illustrate the different forms of double questions. Show why each is objectionable.

6. What are some of the ways in which a question may wrongly suggest its own answer?

7. In Fitch's illustration of a lesson about the parable of the Good Samaritan, point out the differences between the right and the wrong way of asking questions.

8. What are some of the ways in which the teacher may encourage his pupils to guess at answers to his questions?

9. What do you understand by the requirement that a question should have apperceptive and associative value?

10. Describe some devices of method by which the teacher may retain the interest and attention of the whole class as he asks questions.

II. Why should the pupil be permitted to ask questions?

12. Why is it wrong to ask questions from a printed or written list? 13. What is the function of the review? What, then, should be the character of review questions?

14. What is the function of the examination? Discuss the utility and desirability of examinations in the work of the Sunday school.

LESSON XIX

THE CLASS AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION

Now, as we approach the end of our course of study, it is time to put to ourselves again the question with which we began: What is our aim as Sunday school teachers? What is the work we are set to do? We then answered: It is both to instruct and to train our pupils, that we may help them develop into the right sort of persons. That answer remains true. But it is in itself too general. We are now ready to inquire more particularly into its meaning, and to get a more definite conception of just what it involves.

Three conceptions of the Sunday school have been held in recent years. They can be no more concretely set forth than in the "Survey of the Present Sunday School World," presented to the second annual convention of the Religious Education Association :

"Three ideals seem to dominate the Sunday school worldthe social, the educational and the evangelistic. Schools are classified as working under any one of these three, not by the entire absence of the other two, but by their emphasis upon one of these ideals.

"(1) The social ideal regards the school as an aggregation of persons, a field for the operation of movements of various kinds that will interest the members. Success is measured by numerical standards. Some of the largest schools in the world belong to this class, though, as a whole, it includes the fewest in number. There is more or less educational and evangelistic work, but these schools are not organized about either of these ideals. The school itself, with its own esprit de corps, is the main thing.

"(2) The educational ideal claims an increasing number of schools. They are organized with reference to the study of all matters bearing upon the religious and moral welfare of the scholar, according to the most improved modern methods. Intellectual equipment is here a prime consideration. Into such schools the paid teacher has already made his advent. They strive to profit religiously by the advance of general educational

movements, are found chiefly in centers of intellectual activity, and are officered and instructed by those whose personal interest in the educational aspects of religion is very keen.

“(3) The evangelistic ideal is overwhelmingly ascendant. Its aim is to secure a spiritual experience for the scholar conforming to the standards of the church with which the school is connected, to lead him to the public confession of that experience according to the rites of the church controlling the school, and to train him in the life to which he has thus been introduced. Within this ideal there is a varying degree of emphasis on the study of the Bible. In some schools (a) the educational element is reduced to a minimum as an effective factor in the experience sought. The teachers are rather preachers, or dealers in second-hand homiletics. Other energies than the scholar's personal search for Scripture truth are impressed into service. In other schools (b) the strongest emphasis is laid upon the honest study of the Scriptures as the most effective method of bringing the instrument of the Holy Spirit into direct and transforming contact with the life of the scholar. This study is depended upon as the most efficient discipline in helping the pupil to realize and enthrone the religious element of his nature. Between these two extremes there are (c) schools that greatly vary in their reliance upon Bible study in its relation to what is commonly called conversion.

"There are indications that the social, educational and evangelistic ideals will be combined with careful regard to their proper relation and proportion in the school of the future. Each asserts an aspect of the school that is real and essential. But the best work can be done only when the ideal is sharply defined."*

In our study thus far we have laid all emphasis upon the educational ideal and the distinctly educational type of the evangelistic ideal. Our fundamental conviction has been that the Sunday school is a school.† It is now time to correct the seeming one-sidedness of this position. The Sunday school is indeed a social institution and an evangelistic agency, as well as a school. A true interpretation of its educational character must include the social and evangelistic motives. But

*Bitting: "Survey of the Present Sunday School World," Proceedings of the Religious Education Association, 1904, p. 218.

†See Lesson XII., Section 1.

neither the social nor the evangelistic ideal is rightly conceived in the statement above quoted. Neither is there stated in terms sufficiently objective. This thesis we shall seek to explain and justify in this chapter and the next. In this we shall think of the Sunday school as a social institution, and in the next, of its evangelistic work.

1. A new social consciousness is characteristic of the life of our day.

(1) We have come to see that human nature is essentially social. Aristotle said that "man is by nature a political animal"; Paul, that "none of us liveth to himself." But the conditions of modern life have given to these words a depth of meaning that they could not have for the men of an earlier time. Men were never so interdependent as now. The differentiation and specialization of industry, the massing of population in great cities and the ever-closer knitting of interests the world over by commerce and quick communication, make it impossible for one by himself to gain any fullness of life. It is only in association with his fellows that man becomes man. indeed "every one members one of another."

We are

(2) The conscience of the world has awakened to the duty of social betterment. However true it may be that society is what individuals make it, it is no less true that individuals are what society shapes them to be. Within our own day this thought has become a conviction. It has aroused men to new duties. We are living in the idst of a great ethical revival. We have come to feel moral responsibility, not simply for the relief of the poor and sick and oppressed, but for the social conditions that cause poverty and disease and permit injustice. We are not content merely to heal the consumptive; we wage war against tuberculosis, the preventable disease. We do not stop with sending nurses to care for the sick babies of the tenements; we work for sanitary homes, pure milk and public playgrounds. We seek, not merely to save the sinner, but to strike at the roots of the sin; not merely to reform the criminal, but to prevent his ever being led into crime. These are days when life is indeed worth the living. Human interests have immeasurably widened and deepened within a generation. Opportunities for service to God and to humanity are greater than ever before. The moral horizon has broadened. To the beauty of individual goodness the vision of the Spirit has added the

*This statement must not be construed as a criticism of Dr. Bitting or his position. His task, in a "Survey of the Present Sunday School World," was to picture actual conditions; and his picture is true. Our point is that both the social and the evangelistic ideal ought to be more objectively conceived.

sweep and perspective of social righteousness. We are beginning to understand what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God.

(3) Education to-day is socially motived. The last decade has witnessed the "socialization of the school."

(a) The ultimate aim of education is the development of socially efficient men and women. **

...

"Education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. . . . The community's duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. The teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life. . . . I believe that in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God." †

(b) The method of education is determined by its social motive. "We learn by doing." Since the school is meant to develop social efficiency and the spirit of helpfulness, its methods must appeal to the social instincts of the pupil. It must find things to do that will enlist his cooperation, and provide social situations that will call forth his latent powers. It must treat him, not as a servant, but as a son. It is this change of atmosphere and method, quite as much as that of subject-matter taught, that differentiates the public school of to-day from that of a generation ago. In place of the more formal of the old studies, there are manual training and domestic science; instead of the rigid "position" which the teachers of yesterday enforced upon us for sake of health and comeliness, there is the school gymnasium; and where once the birch rod ruled, there is now pupil self-government. The school has indeed become "a genuine form of active community life," in which the teacher is no longer despot, but leader and inspirer. Its atmosphere is that of the home.

(4) True religion works toward a social end. The prophets were preachers of social righteousness. Jesus' conception of the kingdom of God was that of an ideal social order, wherein men fulfill their son *See Bagley: "The Educative Process," pp. 58-65.

† Dewey: "My Pedagogic Creed."

Dewey: "The School and Society," p. 27.