Religious Education in the Family | Page 4

is being made fit to dwell long in the land, in the family at home.
I. References for Study
Edward Lyttleton, The Corner-Stone of Education, chaps. i, vii. Putnam, $1.50.
A. Gandier, "Religious Education in the Home," _Religious Education_, June, 1914, pp. 233-42.
II. Further Reading
The Family a Religious Agency
C.F. and C.B. Thwing, The Family. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, $1.60.
J.D. Folsom, Religious Education in the Home. Eaton & Mains, $0.75.
G.A. Coe, Education in Religion and Morals. Revell, $1.35.
The Place of the Family
A.J. Todd, The Family as an Educational Agency. Putnam, $2.00.
W.F. Lofthouse, Ethics and the Family. Hodder & Stoughton, $2.50.
J.B. Robins, The Family a Necessity. Revell, $1.25.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. Describe the changes within recent times in the conditions of the home, its work, housing, and supplies. How far have these changes affected the community of the family, the continuity of its personal relationships, and its religious service?
2. What are the fundamental causes of family disasters? Admitting that there are sufficient grounds for divorce in numerous instances, what other causes enter into the high number of divorces?
3. State in your own terms the ultimate reasons for the maintenance of a family.
4. What are the motives which would make people willing to bear the high cost of founding and conducting a home?
5. What points of emphasis does this study suggest in the matter of the education of public opinion?
6. State your distinction between the family and the home; which is the more important and why?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Corner-Stone of Education, by Edward Lyttleton, headmaster of Eton, is a striking argument on the determinative influence of parental habits and attitudes of mind.
CHAPTER II
THE PRESENT STATUS OF FAMILY LIFE
§ 1. CONTRASTED TYPES
In a beautiful village, in one of the farther western states, two men were discussing the possible future of the home and of family life. Sitting in the brilliant moonlight, looking through the leafy shades, watching the lights of a score of homes, each surrounded by lawn and shade trees, each with its group on the front porch, where vines trailed and flowers bloomed, listening to the hum of conversation and the strains of music in one home and another, it seemed, to at least one of these men, that this type of living could hardly pass away. The separate home, each family a complete social integer, each with its own circle of activities and interests, its own group, and its own table and fireside, seemed too fine and beautiful, too fair and helpful, to perish under economic pressure. Indeed, one felt that the village home furnished a setting for life and a soil for character development far higher and more efficient than could be afforded by any other domestic arrangement--that it approached the ideal.
But two weeks later two men sat in an upper room, in the second largest city in America, discussing again the future of the family. Instead of the quiet music of the village, the clang of street cars filled the ears, trains rushed by, children shouted from the paved highway, families were seated by open windows in crowded apartments, seeking cool air; the total impression was that of being placed in a pigeonhole in a huge, heated, filing-case, where each separate space was occupied by a family. One felt the pressure of heated, crowded kitchens, suffocating little dining-rooms; one knew that the babies lay crying in their beds at night, gasping their very lives away, and that the young folks were wandering off to amusement parks and moving-picture shows. Here was an entirely different picture. How long could family life persist under these conditions where privacy was almost gone and comfort almost unknown?
In the village separate home integers appear ideal; in the city they are possible only to the few. The many, at present, find them a crushing burden. Desirable as privacy is, it can be purchased at too high a price. It costs too much to maintain separate kitchens and dining-rooms under city conditions.
§ 2. COMMUNAL TENDENCIES
Present conditions spell waste, inefficiency, discomfort. The woman lives all day in stifling rooms, poorly lighted, with the nerve-racking life of neighbors pouring itself through walls and windows. The men come from crowded shops and the children from crowded schoolrooms to crowd themselves into these rooms, to snatch a meal, or to sleep. How can there be real family life? What joy can there be or what ideals created in daily discomfort and distress? Little wonder that such homes are sleeping-places only, that there is no sense of family intercourse and unity. Little wonder that restaurant life has succeeded family life.
Many hold that we are ready for a movement into community living, that just as the social life of the separate house porches in the villages has become communized into the amusement parks in the cities, so all the activities of the family will move in