Sunday-School Success

Chapter XXV

Side-Tracking the Teacher

Even the poorest teacher has a right to the course he has marked out for himself; even the smartest scholar has no right to side-track him.

Some scholars side-track their teacher merely to show that they understand how to use the switch; others do it by simply fooling with the switch, in pure carelessness and thoughtlessness; others really wish to bring the teacher nearer some private interest of their own.

Their motive must determine your treatment of them,—whether it is to be the bruskness that rebukes conceit, the firm patience that resists carelessness, or the considerate postponement of questions that are prompted by a need.

But so far as its effect on the lesson is concerned, it makes no difference whether the teacher is side-tracked by a switch of gold or one of brass,—the lesson is "held up," and often permanently.

It is not always easy to tell when these question-switches are open, and when they are closed,—when they will side-track you, and when they will merely salute you with a friendly rattle and let you pass; the tokens are not so definite as on the red and white faces of the switch indicator. And yet you cannot engineer your class far without wrecking it, if you do not learn to read these question indicators, and tell at a glance whither they will send you.

But what is the use of reading them, if you are to be at their mercy anyway? How shall we circumvent these mischief-making switchers?

Some would abruptly take away their switch-keys, and practically dismiss them from the force; that is, they would prohibit questioning altogether. But this is capitulating to the problem. Some would swing smilingly off upon the side-track, as if they had intended to go there. But that is surrendering their preparation. Some would rush precipitately into the side-track and through it, expecting to find at the other end a switch back to the main track. But thus the lesson is usually derailed.

On the railroad, of course, there is authority; but in the Sunday-school the less appeal to authority the better. No, the likeness, to a large extent, stops here; for in the Sunday-school the only way to deal with a scholar who side-tracks the train is to win him by friendly arts to become your helper rather than your hinderer.

In the first place, many a lesson is side-tracked because the main track is not made sufficiently plain to the scholars' apprehension. When the lesson winds like a snake, with a purpose known only to the teacher (if to him), small blame to the scholars if they switch it off the wrong way by a question. Strike out in a bee-line at the start, and stick to it. No one will then ignorantly side-track you.

In the second place, many a lesson is side-tracked because the teacher does not act as if he cared whether he ever arrived anywhere or not. Lackadaisical in manner and matter, his carelessness provokes equal carelessness in his scholars. Let him, on the other hand, appear to be eagerly on the scent of some truth, on the track of some fact, following the path of some event or demonstration, and his scholars will, in the main, be "forth and right on" with him.

In the third place, many a lesson is side-tracked because the scholars are not on the side of the teacher. Of course, when the two parties are at cross-purposes, things run no more evenly than they would if the engineer of a train were out of touch with his crew. The teacher must get up an esprit de corps, a class spirit, or his class will be perpetually flying off from him on a tangent. His scholars must be interested in him, if they are to be interested with him. He must draw them to himself, or they will never pull together. Friendship in his crew must take the place of authority in the railroad crew; and the more friendship, the less side-tracking.

In the fourth place, there must be frankness of speech. A misplaced switch on a railway, if it provoked no further collision, would at least provoke a clash of words. There is no reason why, if a question is too far aside from the main purpose of the lesson, the teacher should not frankly say so. He may lay it away in his mind for later discussion; he may promise to talk it over after the session; but no fear of being thought incompetent, or unsympathetic, or arbitrary, should induce him to turn aside from his one purpose. The wise teacher will make many exceptions, of course, to every rule; but nevertheless, a rule of the wise teacher it must be, to say to every irrelevant question, kindly and tactfully, yet firmly, "Get thee behind me." For the half-hour is all too short. The impressions made are all too confused. The instruction given is all too fragmentary. However wise and earnest the individual moments may be, there is danger that the half-hour may pass into oblivion at once, unless these individual moments have been wise and earnest to some single, distinct end.

There is a place for switches in our Sunday-school lesson. The train must be made up. Side excursions must often be made. There are sundry connecting lines whose cars must be switched in. But in genuine Sunday-school railroading there must be no delay upon side-tracks. Let all teachers, as far as possible, run express.

Chapter XXVI

The Problem of the Visitor

The analogy for the class-building of some teachers is the arch. Every scholar is needed in his place, or the class-work collapses; and of course there is no room for a visitor. The analogy for the true class is the electric circle. Join hands all around, and ever room and electricity for one more.

I do not mean to imply that the visitor is not a problem. He is an intrusion on your familiar little group. He is a foreign and constraining element. He is a problem, however, that you cannot get rid of, but must solve.

Utilize the visitor. Go to work in such way as to transform him into a scholar; or if circumstances forbid that, at any rate win from his visit fresh interest and inspiration for the class. Every visitor is an angel of opportunity, entertained—how often!—unawares.

Let your reception of the visitor be to your class an object-lesson in Christian courtesy. If he comes in alone, and awkwardly drops into a distant seat, do not wait for the busy superintendent to get around to him. If he is of fit age for your class, drop everything,—the most valuable lesson you could be teaching is not so valuable as this practical example,—and go to the stranger. Introduce yourself cordially to him, and him to the rest of the class, or, at any rate, to his neighbors.

Sometimes resign the pleasure of seeking the visitor yourself, and send some persuasive scholar, thus letting him have a taste of the joy of giving invitations. Possibly it will help him into the habit of giving invitations outside.

Get your scholars to hand the visitor a lesson leaf or a Bible. Show them that he is their visitor as well as yours. They will soon learn to be delightfully courteous. But an iceberg teacher makes an iceberg class.

And now you are on trial before your class. They will judge you by the interest or the apathy of the visitor. They are watching him, ready to be ashamed or proud of you.

Yet do not fear your visitor. He may come from a better school and a better teacher. He may be critical and sneering and skeptical. Nevertheless, he is your opportunity. Rejoice in it.

If he is a better scholar than any in your class, what a valuable and inspiring example he may be made to them! If a poorer scholar, what an opportunity to make your class feel the joy and power of teaching some one!

If he is sneering and critical, the indignation of the class will bind them more enthusiastically to you. If he is skeptical, what a chance for examining and strengthening foundations!

The visitor is a mine of new ideas and experiences. Old thoughts take on novel forms when fitted to him. His questions and answers exhibit needs in your own class, unobserved because unfamiliar. His ways and words freshen the stagnant class atmosphere.

And so he is your chance to get out of ruts and into new ways and moods. Bless Providence for him, and question him vigorously, making use of him to the utmost.

Two cautions, however. Let your questioning be very clear. He is unused, remember, to your little mannerisms, and must not be confused by idiosyncrasies. And in your exultation over him do not neglect the others, nor seem to change your plans for the visitor, or to be striving to show off before him.

Final advantage of the visitor: Teach your scholars to ask him heartily to come again, not forgetting to do so cordially yourself. Committees on church extension, remember, are trained in the Sunday-school.

Thus you see that the value of the visitor does not depend upon the visitor so much as might be imagined. Yet just a word on how to visit well.

Go to give good. Take hearty interest in the lesson, and have some thought to add to the discussion. Better yet, have some earnest question to ask. And ask it. If you come from another school, consider yourself a Christian ambassador bearing greetings of brotherly good will and common endeavor.

Go to get good. Be unobtrusive and teachable. And especially, show that you have received good. Express appreciation, after the lesson, to teacher and scholars. Then will you be blessed, and, changing the meaning of the word "visitation," these words from the Wisdom of Solomon may be applied to you: "In the time of their visitation they shall shine, and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble."

Chapter XXVII

"Under Petticoat Government"

One of the brightest women in the United States, a woman well known to the Protestant churches of the world, was groaning to me the other day: "What shall I do with those boys in my Sunday-school class? They are just at the age when they think they know a little more than any woman. They need a man. Don't you think the superintendent ought to remove them from under petticoat government?"

This cry, that came so strangely from a woman of her ability and fame, comes also from a throng of baffled Sunday-school teachers. The answer would be easy, if there were anything like as many good Sunday-school teachers among the men as among the women. As it is, however, most boy classes must be assigned either to a distasteful petticoat government, or to an incompetent pantaloon government, or—cast adrift until, long years afterward, they drop anchor in the haven of matrimony, and happily, perchance, appear once more in the Sunday-school, in the "Bible class."

The remedy, however, though not easy, is manifest. The boys do not need a man, but they do need in their teacher certain manly qualities that could be incorporated in a woman's teaching. These qualities all women whom the Lord of the Sunday-school has set over a class of his boys, should seek to get.

The most obvious of them, I think, is a certain dignity and reserve that show themselves as well in refraining from scolding as in declining to pat on the head or hold by the hand. Boys of the undefinable age we are talking about highly appreciate the title "Mr." Their greatest horror is petting; their greatest aversion is nagging. A young man, set to teach a class of boys, will approach them with a sense of comradeship; will at once make himself, if he is a teacher at all, "hail fellow well met" among them; and yet, as the boys say, "there is no nonsense about him."

It is far better—bad as that is—to talk over the heads of boys than to talk down to them. It is far better to use too few words than too many. If a teacher would hold boys, she must be concise, straightforward, businesslike. Indeed, the latter adjective comes near to being the key to the situation. Boys dislike fussiness, and wordiness, and beating about the bush. Woman teachers that are eager for boys' souls will take a long step toward their astonished approbation if they school themselves to brevity, dignity, and "business."

Set the boys to work. Imitate common-school methods. In the public school woman teachers hold the boys, and win their honest hearts. It is largely because here there are definiteness of purpose and firm continuity of aim. Boys are easily mastered by a taskmaster who is master of her task. Boys that cannot be won by Sunday-school preaching are readily won by Sunday-school teaching. Lay down a distinct course of work, with a goal in fair view, and they will gird up the loins of their minds; but they refuse to follow you in aimless wanderings through a thicket. To learn in chronological order the seventy-five prominent events in Christ's life; to trace through the Bible the doctrine of the atonement; to commit to memory every Scripture passage bearing on the temperance problem; to write a six-hundred-word abstract of the Book of Genesis; to make a classification of the Psalms by topics; to compile the Bible proverbs that have to do with money and wealth-getting; to make a diagram graphically depicting the history of the Old Testament Hebrews; to write out the Ten Commandments, and place in parallel columns the New Testament enlargements and interpretations thereof,—these are samples of the work boys would like to do. They would give high praise to a teacher who conducted them through such tasks. They would say that she "meant business."

And that leads me to mention another point in which woman teachers are more likely than men to fail, though both are far too weak,—the use of evidence, of proof. This is a hobby of mine, but it is the boys themselves, and recollections of my own boyhood, that have set me on the hobby. Wherever a thing is susceptible of proof, boys want it proved to them. If it is not susceptible of proof, they want that proved to them, also. Woman's traditional "because" does not commend itself to the lawyerlike boys. Fresh from their botany in the public schools, they refuse to take on faith the Cana miracle. Ready for their physiology or physics the next day, they want more proof than a "say so" that a leper was ever healed by a word or that Peter really walked on the waves. "It is in the Bible" is not enough; they must know why they must believe the Bible.

Now I am not so foolish as to advise any one to suggest skepticism to a boy, and I know that there is a way of handling Scripture evidences that serves rather to raise doubt than to confirm faith; but I have enough of the boy in me to be sure that in no way can a teacher more highly exalt both herself and Christianity in the eyes of the boys than by insisting on the reasonableness of both. I had the best of Sunday-school teachers, quite a score of them, women and men; yet until full manhood I wrestled all alone with a concealed and absolute skepticism that would not down until I had hunted out for myself the many overwhelming proofs of the resurrection of Christ. If any of my twenty teachers had set those proofs with lawyerlike force and directness before my boyish mind, I should have been saved some very dark years that came near making an infidel of me altogether. Because I think that boys feel this need of proof and evidence more than girls, and that women are less ready to meet the need than men, I have ventured to add this suggestion to my list.

And that list may close with only one point further. Boys like to be taught by men, because through men they get a telescope-view into the life-work that lies before them. Men teachers draw their illustrations from mannish things, from business life, from inventions, from politics, from commerce, from the law. Where a woman might illustrate dishonesty by apple-stealing, thereby causing every urchin before her to exclaim "Chestnut!" under his breath, a man would be more likely to make some discussion about watering stock or falsifying entries. A man is more likely than a woman to render Scripture vivid and practical by reference to current events, dropping a word here and there about the war between China and Japan, about Gladstone's retirement, about the Manitoba school question, about the Honduras lottery,—just a word, but the boys prick up their ears. A woman might compare Gideon with David, but a man would be far more likely to compare him with Parkhurst.

And now my point is that the boy needs both,—both David and Parkhurst. There is no reason why the woman teacher cannot give the boy everything he could get from a man teacher, and more. It is easy to appear to a boy quite a Solon regarding current events. It is not so very hard, by the exercise of a consecrated imagination, to place yourself by the boy's side on the outskirts of the great, wide world of busy activities he is soon to enter, and feel his impatience to be there and his hunger for any tidings from that charmed country. Show him how Christianity untangles the skeins of business, is the master-key to all true politics, the foundation of law, the compass of commerce, the force of civilization. Read the newspapers wisely, and find out what is going on in the world. Read wisely the hearts of your boys, and find out what is going on in that world. Lift manfully over both worlds the banner of Christ.

One point at a time, with cheerful persistence, the teacher that "means business" will win for her teaching these adaptations to the needs of her boys. And in the process, losing nothing of womanliness, she will have nobly broadened her own life, while as its result she will have won a double hold, both a woman's hold and a man's hold, on the hearts of the boys.

Chapter XXVIII

The Teacher's Three Graces

The teacher's manner must be heart-born. It must not become mannerism, which is head-born, and never reaches hearts. "Manner maketh the man," and also the teacher,—half-way, at least. If we suspect, however, that our manner is defective, the manner itself is the last thing to look at; we must look at our heart. That is the place to get the change.

Three heart qualities produce the ideal teacher's manner. One of these is earnestness. If you would make on your scholars an impression that will last beyond the hour, you yourself must be deeply impressed with the eternal years. To move their life, keep before you their death. That is hard to do, when confronted by such abounding youthful vigor and vitality. Become an advocate, a pleader, with eternal life as the stake. Learn to know deeply the great central truths of sin, atonement, sanctification. Aim at radical and positive results in confession, testimony, spirituality, character, and conduct, and press toward these as the genuine verdict on your teaching.

The second quality is cheeriness. We are prophets of awful alternatives, but we are also ministers of the most blessed joy. Happiness is the best recommendation of Christianity. In it center all the Christian evidences. Learn by heart all the promises; they are better teaching weapons than the prohibitions and warnings. Keep a smile very close to the surface, and improve every fair chance to laugh. The teacher that is in earnest, need never be afraid to be merry. Permit no exaggeration of the facts of wickedness, either in them or in others. The more stormy the day and the fewer in attendance, the cheerier be you.

The third quality is sympathy. The true teacher has, or gets, the poet's ability to project himself into the lives of others. He keeps invisible, tactful antennæ playing in all directions, feeling this one's coming embarrassment before it arrives, conscious of that one's eager assent before it lights his eyes, exploring homes and occupations and character in order to adapt question to scholar. Without argument or plan, but by instinctive appreciation of differing personality, the true teacher assumes dignity with this pupil, bonhomie with that. So far is he from treating all alike, that he never treats even the same person in the same way two days in succession, knowing, by feeling rather than theory, that no one—especially no child—is the same person two days in succession.

These are the teacher's three graces: earnestness, born of faith and unsatisfied until it has inspired an equal faith; cheeriness, born of hope, and hope-creating; and sympathy, born of love, which is the greatest of all. These in the heart blossom outwardly into the perfect teaching manner,—earnestness to arrest, cheeriness to attract, and sympathy to hold. "Covet earnestly the best gifts."

Chapter XXIX

Something to Belong to

I believe in the organization of Sunday-school classes, because it fosters class spirit. If it is a good thing to have a class, it is a good thing for the class to have a spirit. This class spirit should promote the school spirit, just as the esprit de corps of a company enhances the loyalty of soldiers to their regiment.

When a scholar has signed a constitution, he feels that he belongs to the school. Lacking this feeling, he will not be long with the school or with anything else.

In the simple constitution of my class (which is a class of young men) are provisions for a porch, a lookout, and a social committee.

The porch committee watches the morning congregation for strange young men, and invites them to come to Sunday-school. The lookout committee seeks throughout town and church for permanent additions to the class, whom, through its chairman, it proposes for membership. This is a great gain. When a teacher urges people to join his class he is inviting them to the gospel, certainly, but he is also inviting them to himself. In the first cause he is as bold as a lion, but in the second many a modest soul is naturally, even though foolishly, bashful. Happy the teacher whose scholars are zealous in this vital service, for him so delicate and for them so blessed!