Religious Education in the Family | Page 8

back on the days of home cooking, cannot be any greater than the regrets of our parents or grandparents looking back on the spinning-wheel and the hand loom that cumbered the kitchen of their childhood. Surely no one contends that family life has deteriorated, that human character is one whit the poorer, because we have discarded the family spinning-wheel. Through the changes of a developing civilization, as man has moved from the time when each one built his own house, worked with his own tools to make all his supplies, to these days of specialized service in community living, the home has changed with each step of industrial progress, but the family has remained practically unchanged.
The family stands a practically unchanging factor of personal qualities at the center of our civilization; the family rather than the home determines the character of the coming days. In its social relationships are rooted the things that are best in all our lives. In its social training lie the solutions of more problems in social adjustment and development than we are willing to admit. The family is the soil of society, central to all its problems and possibilities.
Before church or school the family stands potent for character. We are what we are, not by the ideals held before us for thirty minutes a week or once a month in a church, nor by the instructions given in the classroom; we are what parents, kin, and all the circumstances that have touched us daily and hourly for years have determined we should be.
The sweetest memories of our lives cluster about the scenes of family life. The rose-embowered cottage of the poet is not the only spot that claims affectionate gratitude; many look back to a city house wedged into its monotonous row. But, wherever it might be, if it sheltered love and held a shrine where the altar fires of family sacrifice burned, earth has no fairer or more sacred spot. The people rather than the place made it potent.
Stronger even than the memories that remain are the marks of habits, tendencies, tastes, and dispositions there acquired. Many a man who has left no fortune worth recording to his sons has left them something better, the aptitude for things good and honorable, the memory of a good name, and the heritage of a life that was worthy of honor. The personal life has been always the enduring thing. Our concern for the future should be not whether we can pass on intact the forms of home organization, but whether we can give to the next day the force of ideal family life. Perhaps like Mary we would do well to turn our eyes from the much serving, the mechanisms of the home, to set our minds on the better part, the personal values in the association of lives in the family.
I. References for Study
W.F. Lofthouse, Ethics and the Family, chaps. ii, xi, xii. Hodder & Stoughton, $2.50.
Charles R. Henderson, _Social Duties from the Christian Point of View_, chaps. ii, iii. The University of Chicago Press, $1.25.
C.W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home_. Religious Education Association, $0.25.
II. Further Reading
Jacob A. Riis, Peril and Preservation of the Home. Jacobs, Philadelphia, Pa., $1.00.
Charles R. Henderson, Social Elements. Scribner, $1.50.
Charles F. Thwing, The Recovery of the Home. American Baptist Publication Society, $0.15.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. The tendency toward community life illustrated in the schools, amusement parks, and hotel life. Remembering the ultimate purpose of the family, how far is communal life desirable?
2. Does the apartment or tenement building furnish a suitable condition for the higher purposes of the family?
3. Is it possible to restore to the home some of the benefits lost by present factory consolidation of industry?
4. What can take the place of the old household arts and of those which are now passing?
5. What steps should be taken to secure to the family a larger measure of the time in terms of occupation of the parents?
6. What are the important things to contend for in this institution? Why should we expect change in the form of the home and what are the features which should not be changed?
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Figures taken from C.W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home_, 1911.
[3] A.J. Todd, Primitive Family and Education, p. 21. A most valuable and suggestive book.
[4] Cited by Todd, p. 21.
CHAPTER III
THE PERMANENT ELEMENTS IN FAMILY LIFE
�� 1. THE DOMINANT MOTIVE
The chief end of society is to improve the race, to develop the higher and steadily improving type of human beings. We can test the life of the family and determine the values of its elements by asking whether and in what degree they minister to this end, the growth of better persons. This is more than a theoretical aim