Part 8 (1/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[12] A short list of books on child activity in the home is appended at the end of this chapter; a fairly complete list, long enough for any family, will be found on p. 117 of _The Church School_, by W.S. Athearn.

[13] See W.N. Hutchins, _Graded Social Service for the Sunday School_.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HOME AS A SCHOOL[14]

The home is so mighty as a school because, requiring little time for formal instruction, it enlists its scholars so largely in informal activities. It trains for life by living; it trains as an inst.i.tution, by a group of activities, a series of duties, a set of habits. If the home is to prepare for social living it will be most of all and best of all by its organization and conduct as a social inst.i.tution.

-- 1. AN IDEAL COMMUNITY

For the purposes of society homes must be social-training centers; they must be conducted as communities if their members are to be fitted for communal living. No boy is likely to be ready for the responsibilities of free citizens.h.i.+p who has spent his years in a home under an absolute monarchy; or, as is today perhaps more frequently the case, in a condition of unmitigated anarchy. A free society cannot consist of units not free. The problems of parental discipline arise and appear as persistently irritating and perplexing stumbling-blocks in many a home simply because that home is organized altogether out of harmony and relation with the normal life in which it is set. Society environing the home gives its members the habits of twentieth-century autonomy, individual initiative and responsibility, together with collective living and working, while the home often seeks to perpetuate thirteenth-century absolutism, serfdom, and subjection. In social living outside the home we learn to do the will of all; in the home we attempt to compel children to do the will of one.

-- 2. COMMUNITY INTERESTS

The home organized as a social community will give to every member, according to his ability, a share in its guidance and will expect from every member the free contribution of his powers. Its rules will be made by the will of all, and its affairs governed, not by an executive board composed of the parents, but by the free partic.i.p.ation and choice of all. The young will learn to choose by choosing; will learn both how to rule and to be ruled by a share in ruling.

To be explicit, suppose a piece of furniture is desired for the home.

Two plans at least are possible: first, the ”head of the home” may go forth and purchase it without consulting anyone, or after advising with the other ”head”; or, second, before a purchase is made, the wisdom of such an addition to the furniture may be suggested in the open council of the whole family and the purchase discussed and determined by all.

Such councils, usually coming at or after the princ.i.p.al meal, freely partic.i.p.ated in by all, give even to the youngest a sense of the cost of a home, of the care that goes into it, with, what is more important, a sense of a share in these cares and costs; they cultivate habits of prudence, of consideration of a matter, of steady judgments, of deference to the wishes and wisdom of others. Of still greater importance is another practical issue of such a plan--that every member of the household has a new sense of proprietors.h.i.+p with deepened responsibility. Instead of thinking of any household possession as father's or mother's, or even mine, it becomes _ours_. The parents no longer need to say, ”Children, do not mar the furniture; it costs money to replace it.” The children know that already, and they have the same pride in the home possessions and the same desire to preserve them as they have in that which is peculiarly their own. A habit of mind results from such a course so that, by thinking in terms of common possession of the best things of life, there is cultivated that respect for the rights of others which is simply right social thinking.

The same plan could be pursued in relation to almost every interest of the family--as the planning of the annual vacation and outing, the holidays, picnics, and birthday celebrations, the church and religious exercises. Above all, in the last mentioned, this social spirit may be cultivated. The father may cease to be the ”high priest” for his family and become a wors.h.i.+per along with the other members. The effect will be that his children are more likely to stay as wors.h.i.+pers with him than if they gazed on him as on some lonely elevation, unrelated to them in his religious exercises. The reading, the song, the prayers, the comment and discussion, the story-telling, and all that may make up the regular specific religious activities of the family should be such that all may have a share in them. Nothing could be finer, diviner, and bring larger helpfulness for social living than the attempt of the least little lisping child to throw herself into the unified family act of prayer, as when one little tot, unable to say the Lord's Prayer, united in wors.h.i.+p at the time of that act by saying, as reverently as possible, ”One, two, three, four, five,” etc., up to ten. The ability to count was her latest accomplishment; counting to ten was bringing the very best thing she then had and, in the act of family wors.h.i.+p, offering her part to the Most High. A fine sense of wors.h.i.+p and a desire to be one with the others in this united, communal service prompted the partic.i.p.ation.

-- 3. COMMUNITY SERVICE

Community service may be cultivated in the home. Here is the ideal social community, where there are neither parasites nor paupers, where all give of their best for the best of all. No one doubts that the baby gives its full share of happiness and cheer, and the aged their offering of consolation and experience; but the difficulty is supposed to be with the lad and the girl who would rather play than work. Usually this is because the habits of co-operation in the life of this community have been too long neglected. The small boy or girl had no share in its work.

Parents are too busy to think through the matter of finding suitable duties for all. It is so much easier to do things one's self, even though the child misses the benefits of partic.i.p.ation. More frequently the blame lies in the fact that parents desire to s.h.i.+eld children from labor. Some would have them grow up without knowing what they count as the degradation of toil. But a boy who knows nothing of the ”ch.o.r.es” has missed half the joys of boyhood, and has a terribly hard lesson ahead of him when he goes out to relate himself to life. No matter what one's station may be, there is a part to be played, and one's piece of work to be done. The greatest unkindness we can do our children is to train them to lives that do not play their part. The home is our chance to train a man to harmonious usefulness in his world. Not only should the family train to social co-operation and service, but it should train to efficiency therein. Do not let your child's duties become a farce; let them exact as much of him as the world will exact also; that is, efficiency, accuracy, thoroughness, and fidelity.

-- 4. A SCHOOL OF SOCIAL MINISTRY

The family trains lives for social ministry. The unsocial lives come out of unsocial homes. The home that exists for itself alone trains lives that exist only for themselves; these are the homes that throw the sand of selfishness into the wheels of society; they ultimately effect social suicide through selfishness. The att.i.tude and atmosphere of the home are of first importance here. As we think, so will our children act. If the home is to us a place without responsibilities for the neighborhood, without duties to neighbors, without social roots, then it is a school for industrial, commercial, and social greed and warfare. As we think in our hearts and talk at our table, so are we educating those who sit thereat.

If we would have our homes really efficient and worthy agencies for education in social living, the first thing to do is to seek the social atmosphere, to cultivate all those influences which young lives unconsciously absorb. We all know that character comes through environment in large measure, and that the mental and spiritual environment is by far the most potent. Here is something that affects us more than the finest or poorest furniture and that gives the real zest and flavor to any meal. The choice of our own reading enters here, not only the matter of reading in sociology, but of all reading, as to whether it blinds with cla.s.s prejudices, intensifies caste feeling, or atrophies social sympathy by pandering to selfishness and sensuousness.

The control of our own feelings and judgment enters here. Do we sedulously cultivate charity for others? Do we stifle impatience, bitterness, cla.s.s feeling? Do we guide the conversation of visitors and the family group so that antisocial pa.s.sions are subdued and a spirit of brotherly love and compa.s.sion for all is cultivated? Here men and women have opportunity to give evidence of a change of heart; here they need that awakening to social consciousness which is a new birth, a regeneration into the life of the Son of Man who came to give his life.

By its active ministry the family is training for social living. When a child carries a bowl of soup to some sick or needy one, he learns a lesson never to be forgotten. The memories of hours of planning and preparation for some neighborly service--the making of bread, the packing of a box, the preserves for the sick--s.h.i.+ne out like suns.h.i.+ne spots along childhood's ways; they direct manhood's steps.

We are gradually learning that social duties are not learned save through social deeds; that even the most carefully prepared and perfectly pedagogical systems of instruction fail, standing alone. The college student uses the laboratory method in his sociology--though we know that sociology may be as far from social living as the poles are apart. The Social Service a.s.sociation of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation has given up attempts to teach social duty in favor of the plan of undertaking specific pieces of social activity. The home must adopt the laboratory method. The important thing is, not what the father or mother may systematically teach about the social duties of the children, but what kinds of service, of ministry and normal activity they may lead the children to; that is, in what ways they may all together discharge their functions in society.

-- 5. FAMILIES AS COMMUNITY FACTORS