The Boy and the Sunday School | Page 3

city contributes its share toward this unwarranted leakage. The problem is a universal one.
The teen age represents the most important period of life. Ideals and standards are set up, habits formed and decisions made that will make or mar a life. The high-water mark of conversion is reached at fifteen, and between the ages of thirteen and eighteen more definite stands are made for the Christian life than in all the other combined years of a lifetime.
It marks the period of adolescence, when the powers and passions of manhood enter into the life of the boy, and when the will is not strong enough to control these great forces. Powers must be unfolded before ability to use them can develop, and instincts must be controlled while these are in the process of development. The importance of systematic adult leadership during this period of storm and stress cannot be too strongly emphasized.
The teen age boy is naturally religious. Opportunity, however, must be given him to express his religion in forms that appeal to and are understood by him. In other words, his religion, like his nature, is a positive quantity, and will be carried by him throughout the day, to dominate all of the activities in which he engages.
The problem also reaches through the entire teen years and must be regarded as a whole, rather than as a series of successive stages, each stage being separate and complete in itself.
The great problem, then, which confronts us is to keep the boys in the church and Sunday school during the critical years of adolescence and to bring to their support the strength which comes from God's Word and true Christian friendship, to the end that they may be related to the Son of God as Saviour and Lord through personal faith and loyal service.
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, Editor.--Boy Training (.75). The Sunday School and the Teens. (The Report of the International Commission on Adolescence) ($1.00).
Alexander, Editor.--The Teens and the Rural Sunday School. (The Report of the International Commission on Rural Adolescence.) In preparation.
Boys' Work Message (Men and Religion Movement) ($1.00).
Fiske.--Boy Life and Self-Government ($1.00).
Hall.--Developing into Manhood (Sex Education Series) (.25)
Hall.--Life's Beginnings (Sex Education Series) (.25)
Secondary Division Leaflets, International Sunday School Association (Free).
1. Secondary Division Organization.
2. The Organized Class.
3. State and County Work.
4. Through-the-week Activities.
5. The Secondary Division Crusade.
Swift--Youth and the Race ($1.50).
THE BOY AND HIS EDUCATION
Three institutions are responsible for the education of the adolescent boy. By "education" is meant not merely the acquisition of certain forms of related knowledge, but the symmetrical adaptation of the life to the community in which it lives. The three institutions that cooperate in the community for this purpose are: the home, the school, and the church. There are many organizations and orders that have a large place in the life of the growing boy, but these must be viewed solely in the light of auxiliaries to the home, school and church in the production of efficient boyhood and trained manhood.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON EDUCATION
Draper.--American Education ($2.00).
Payot.--Education of the Will ($1.50).

I
THE HOME AND THE BOY
The greatest of the three institutions affecting boy life, from the very fact that it is the primary one, is the home. The home is the basis of the community, the community merely being the aggregation of a large number of well-organized or ill-organized homes. The first impressions the boy receives are through his home life, and the bent of his whole career is often determined by the home relationships.
The large majority of homes today are merely places in which a boy may eat and sleep. The original prerogatives of the father and mother, so far as they pertain to the physical, social, mental and moral development of boyhood, have been farmed out to other organizations in the community. The home life of today greatly differs from that of previous generations. This is very largely due to social and economic conditions. Our social and economic revolution has made vast inroads upon our normal home life, with the result that the home has been seriously weakened and the boy has been deprived of his normal home heritage.
To give the home at least some of the old power that it used to have over the boy life, there must needs be recognized the very definite place a boy must have in the family councils. The general tendency today, as far as the boy is concerned, is an utter disregard on the part of the father and mother of the importance of the boy as a partner in the family. He is merely the son of his father and mother, and their obligations to him seemingly end in providing him with wholesome food, warm clothing, a place to sleep and a room in which to study and play in common with other members of the household. Very little thought