The Boy and the Sunday School | Page 3

teen age boy, if growth and development are
to mark its future progress. Of the approximately ten million teen age
boys in the field of the International Sunday School Association, ninety
per cent are not now reached by the Sunday school. Of the five per cent
enrolled (less than 1,500,000) seventy-five per cent are dropping from
its membership. Every village, town and 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