Junior Age (Concluded)

#19. Opportunities of the Junior Age.#--No period offers opportunities bearing more directly and openly upon the formation of character than the Junior period, when manhood- and womanhood-to-be are so rapidly determining. Out of these opportunities five may be selected as most significant:

(1) _The opportunity to gain spiritual ends through social means._ The more a teacher can enter into the fun-loving, companionship-craving side of the pupil's heart, the greater his power over that life for distinctly spiritual things. It is after the party or the picnic or the tramp together that the personal message can be spoken.

(2) _The opportunity to arouse and to guide the pupil's effort through heroic ideals._ Sermonizing on what they should do is practically valueless with boys and girls of this age, for considerations of duty weigh little until the larger moral consciousness of the next period.

Furthermore, they live but for the day, and do not appreciate the relationship between present action and future character. What they may do later as a result of their own convictions and understanding, they may be inspired to do now through the hero who has aroused their admiration and desire of imitation.

(3) _The opportunity to establish right habits of life._ The pathways of service through which the Christian life ought to express itself must be definitely and painstakingly traced in this period and the next. Motives for the action may not be the highest, and must often be supplied by another. For example, the daily Bible reading that ought to be prompted by real love for the Word later may now be done for love of the teacher--or because the promise was given, but in any event it is leaving its indelible impress--and making the "Quiet Hour"

more a.s.sured in the future.

(4) _The opportunity to build Bible knowledge into character._ Impressions are necessary and effective in their place, but something more definite is needed for stability of character. The opportunity of supplementing impressions with facts is the one offered by this Golden Memory period. Two points should be noted:

/# (_a_) The mind is growing in its power to a.s.sociate facts.

The a.s.sociation of events around a person or a place is easily made now, and toward the end of the period sequences of time and cause and effect are grasped.

(_b_) The Holy Spirit can bring to the remembrance only that which has been in the mind. Therefore the teacher who stores the memory at this time with Scripture pa.s.sages makes it possible for G.o.d to speak to the heart in later years.

(5) _The opportunity to lead to open confession of Jesus Christ._ This is not to force, it is not to play upon the child's emotions, and lead him to do that which has no foundation in a consciousness of his own relation to Christ, but something is radically wrong in the home and something lacking in the teacher's work, if the boys and girls do not really love the Lord Jesus in this period. They do not understand it all, but the essentials of a Christian life they may have,--love, faith, penitence for wrongdoing, and the desire to serve Christ. Their experience cannot be that of an adult, for they have not his insight.

But just as surely as the love and caress of the child is precious and acceptable to a mother even before there can be any comprehension on his part of the sacrificial character of mother-love, so is child-love precious and accepted with the Master even before the child grasps the great spiritual contents.

#20. Needs of the Junior Age.#

(1) _The presentation of Christianity as something to do rather than to be._ The boys and girls do not live in inner experiences in these years, but in outward, energetic action; therefore, what they may do for Jesus Christ and others needs emphasis. This presentation also includes a Christ who appeals to boyhood and girlhood, the wonder-worker of Mark, the G.o.d-Man of Matthew and Luke, and the victorious King of Revelation.

(2) _Opportunities for service._ These must be carefully devised by the teacher, with the twofold purpose of giving immediate expression to the desire to do something and leading to the formation of habits of Christian activity.

(3) _Christian heroes._ The teacher ought to be a Christian hero himself. Out of missionary literature, out of the lives of great men who have lived, out of Bible characters, heroes must be multiplied.

The Sunday-school lessons ought to be hero studies, not sermons.

Heroic literature ought to be put into the hands of the children--either directly or through indirect suggestion in some curiosity-arousing reference to the story. This means the most effective type of instruction during all the week as well as Sunday.

(4) _A lesson requiring work on the part of the pupil._ Telling a Junior cla.s.s primary stories will deplete it in numbers and weaken it in strength. a.s.signed work to be prepared at home, questions, note-books, map-making, anything to stimulate and utilize the activity of mind and body through interest, not compulsion, is the great necessity of the lesson hour.

#21. Difficulties of the Junior Age.#--Three difficulties may be encountered.

(1) _A misdirected energy._ Energy means finest growth and development if it is under direction and control, but devastation otherwise. The key to the situation is in the teacher's personality, plus a plan for the hour's work, appealing to interest and calling for constant activity, either mental or physical, on the part of the pupil.

(2) _Evil a.s.sociates._ The teacher cannot guard the child through the seven days of a week; often the home does not, and in this new social interest there is a danger from evil a.s.sociates. Better pastoral work by the teacher, a closer co-operation with the home, and subst.i.tutive--not prohibitive--measures avail much in meeting this difficulty.

(3) _The enticement of bad literature._ This period and the next are the time of greatest hunger for reading and there is a real danger from the temptations of pernicious books. Satan has emissaries on the school-grounds and in the candy store, and boys and girls are his shining marks. The subst.i.tutive measures here again are the only wise and effective ones.

#22. Results to be Expected in the Junior Age.#--The results of work in this period ought to appear in an increase in Bible knowledge, the strengthening of right habits and manly ideals of life, and back of it all the warm love of boyhood and girlhood for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Test Questions

1. How may spiritual ends best be gained?

2. How may the pupil's efforts in right doing be aroused?

3. What is needed in this period in addition to impressions?

4. What essentials of the Christian life may the pupils readily have at this period?

5. What aspect of Christianity appeals most to pupils of this age?

6. What method of teaching should be subst.i.tuted for story telling?

7. What three difficulties may be encountered in the Junior Age?

8. What results may be expected?

Lesson 7

The Intermediate Age--Twelve to Sixteen

#23. General Character of the Period of Adolescence.#--The Intermediate age ushers in a time known as adolescence, including the years approximately from twelve to twenty-four, during which life pa.s.ses from childhood to maturity. The period is marked by the development of new physical powers, new emotions, new ideals and conceptions of life, and a new spiritual consciousness. The change from the old life to the new, from the narrow to the broad, from interests selfish and small to interests as far-reaching as the world and eternity, is often accompanied by more or less upheaval in the soul and this period of re-adjustment may be a time of "storm and stress."

Two facts out of the many suggest the critical nature of adolescence:

(1) During these years the pupil is most susceptible to the power of influence. It does not touch his life simply as an impression, but as an impelling, determining force inciting him to action.

(2) Life rarely changes in its tendencies and character after full maturity has come. There is a physical reason for this in the hardening of the brain which fixes the pathways of habit and renders new lines of thought and action difficult. Therefore, in all probability as life emerges from adolescence will it enter eternity.

#24. General Characteristics of the Intermediate Age.#--Many of the characteristics of the Junior age are still evident, though modified by fuller development. Physical energy has increased and the mind has greater power, especially in its ability to reason. No disillusioning has come to destroy the old hero-worship, but with even more intensity each life clings to that one who embodies its aspirations. The hunger for general reading reaches its climax in this period, to be succeeded by specialized interest in lines determined by the taste of the individual.

Lacking still the self-control of manhood, breaking from the old life and dimly apprehending as yet the meaning of the new, under the domination of impulse and influence as well as of dawning conviction, the Intermediate age offers particularly trying problems with its great opportunities.

#25. Special Characteristics of the Intermediate Age.#

(1) _The functioning of new physical powers._ This is one of the most significant changes in the Intermediate period, because of its physical effects and its reflex influence upon the mental and emotional life. Severe temptations often have to be met, questioning and unwise introspection, and the teacher ought to be a confidential friend as well as instructor.

(2) _A condition of instability and easy excitation._ The nervous system is abnormally sensitive and quickly disturbed. The mind is keyed to vigorous, intense, and often unbalanced thought, but it is in the feelings that the lack of poise is most manifest. Whether the teacher can a.s.sign causes or not, he is conscious that the emotions are a veritable tinder-box, easily kindled into a great fire by a very little matter. Superlatives, slang, and the highest pitches of enthusiasm are common experience, and because action and reaction are equal and opposite, periods of depression corresponding to those of exhilaration are almost inevitable.

(3) _A new personal consciousness._ There are several marked evidences of its existence.

(a) Care for appearance. In the beginning of this period, what others think is a matter of supreme indifference, but it is not long before a desire to appear well manifests itself.

Solicitude as to one's personal looks is supplemented by anxiety over the condition of the home, the standing of the family, the social position and dress of the companions.

Naturally, judgment of others is based on outward appearance rather than on real worth of character.

(b) Desire for appreciation. An intense longing is experienced to have talents, accomplishments, wits, efforts--everything which pertains to self valued at par or above. For this cause there is frequent public parade of wares, as in the case of the smart youth or the girl who draws attention to herself by loud talking and laughter. The same longing works self-consciousness, embarra.s.sment, and awkwardness in others who feel themselves deficient, neither cla.s.s as yet apprehending the truth that character, not external show, wins the truest meed of praise from the world.

(c) A sense of approaching manhood and womanhood. This makes the life sensitive beyond expression to reproof or criticism, particularly in public. It also explains the restlessness and desire to enter at once upon the life-work.