The Needs of Youth : Part 3

Religious Education in the Family
by Henry F. Cope

(Page 18 of 23)

The theater, whether of the regular drama or of the motion-picture type, offers a perplexing problem, principally because, in the first place, American people have been too busy conquering a new soil and making a living to give careful thought to the social side of aesthetics and recreation, and, secondly, because the ministry of social recreation has fallen almost entirely under the dominance of the same trend; it has been thoroughly commercialized. We cannot cut the puzzling knot by simply prohibiting all forms of public theatrical entertainment. For one reason, these forms shade off imperceptibly from the church service to the extremes of the vaudeville. But the simple fact is that we no longer indiscriminately class all theaters as baneful and immoral; we are coming to see their potentialities for good. If the young will go, as they will - and ought - to the theater, and if the theater can lift their ideals, parents would do well to guide their children in this matter and to enlist the aid of the theater.

It is worth while to come to a sympathetic understanding of the place of the drama and the opera, to see what they have meant in the education of the race and what is the significance, to us, of the fact of the strong dramatic instinct in childhood. Naturally the subject can only be mentioned here and the suggestion be offered that parents take time to cultivate an appreciation of good orchestral and concert music and of the drama.

The social life will find outlet in other directions. Young people need our aid to find social groups which will inspire and develop them, especially groups that are serviceful.

7. The Call to Service

This is the period when ideals begin to give direction to the hitherto undirected activity of childhood and youth. Young people are idealists. They see no height too giddy, no task too hard, no dream too roseate, and no hope unattainable. If the times are out of joint they believe they were "born to set them right." Whatever is wrong or imperfect they would take a hand in setting it right. We know we felt that way, but we are loath to believe our children also cherish their high hopes. And so the tendency of the adult is to treat with cynicism the dreams of youth. Often we sedulously endeavor to pervert him to our blasé view of the world; we would have him believe it is a fated heap of cinders instead of an almost new thing to be formed and made perfect. In the home those ideals must be nourished and guided. See that at hand there are the songs and essays of the idealists. Give them Emerson and forget your Nietzsche. Renew your own youth. Get some of Isaiah's passion and let it breathe its fervor on them. Feed by poem, song, story, essay, and conversation the life of ideals.

Stop long enough to see the life that like an engine with steam up is surely going somewhere and help it to find an engineer. We call this the period of sowing wild oats. Wild oats are simply energies invested in the wrong places. The dynamic of youth must go somewhere and do something. Fundamentally it would rather go to the good than the bad. We know that this was true of us at that time; why should we assume less of others? Hold to your faith in youth. Fathers who with open eyes and active minds - not with sleepy fatalism - believe in their boys, have boys who believe in them.

They wait for leadership. If you have dropped into the easy slippers of indifference to social reform and other types of ideal service, get back into the fight again beside this new man of yours.

They wait for friendship in this matter of their ideals and their service. At any cost keep open house of the heart.

They wait for a life-task. This is the period of vocational choice. It will make a tremendous difference to this life whether his work shall be merely a matter of making a living or shall be his chance to invest life in accordance with his new ideals. Shall he go out to be merely one of the many wage-earners or salary-winners to whom life is a great orange from which he will get all the juice if he can, regardless of who else goes thirsty? Or shall he see an occupation as his chance to pay back to today and tomorrow that which he owes to yesterday? as his chance to give the world himself? He need not be a minister or a missionary to make his life a ministry; he will find life, he will be a religious person in no other way than as his dominating motive shall be to find the fulness of life in order to have a full life to give to God's world. The answer will depend on what life means to you, how you are interpreting it, and how you aid him in thinking of it and making his high choice. You will have abundant opportunity to show what it is to you - as you have been doing all along - by your daily attitude; you will have abundant opportunity to talk it all over, for he will certainly discuss his trade or profession with you. The family must give to the life of the new day makers of families to whom life means a chance to realize the God-vision of the world.

I. References for Study

H. C. King, Personal and Ideal Elements in Education, pp. 105-27. Macmillan, $1.50.

E. D. Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion, chaps., xvi-xxi. Scribner, $1.50.

II. Further Reading

1. ON YOUTH

C. R. Brown, The Young Man's Affairs. Crowell, $1.00.

Wayne, Building the Young Man. McClurg, $0.50.

Swift, Youth and the Race. Scribner, $1.50.

Wilson, Making the Most of Ourselves. McClurg, $1.00.

2. ON RECREATIONS

L. C. Lillie, The Story of Music and the Musicians. Harper, $0.60.

Gustav Kobbe, How to Appreciate Music. Moffat, $1.50.

P. Chubb, Festivals and Plays. Harper, $2.00.

Dramatics in the Home, Children in the Theater, Problems of Dramatic Plays, monographs published by the American Institute of Child Life. Philadelphia, Pa.

L. H. Gulick, Popular Recreation and Public Morality. American Unitarian Association. Free.

M. Fowler, Morality of Social Pleasures. Longmans, $1.00.

Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. Macmillan, $1.25.

The moving-picture or cinema presents a problem to parents; see Herbert A. Jump, The Religious Possibilities of the Motion Picture (a pamphlet) and Vaudeville and Moving Pictures, a report of an investigation in Portland, Ore. Reed College Record, No. 16.

III. Topics for Discussion

1. What are the reasons why young people leave home?

2. Where do the young men and young women whom you know spend their evenings? Why is this the case?

3. Mention the special needs of young people in the family.

4. What are the difficulties in maintaining the friendship of our young people?

5. Have you ever seen evidences of the phase mentioned as aversion to parents?

6. What are some common mistakes of treating the subject of courtship?

7. What are the special social needs of young people?

8. What is the religious significance of the period of social awakening?

9. What are the special dangerous tendencies in public amusements?

10. How does the social instinct express itself in social service?

11. What of the relation of "wild oats" to directed work?

12. What may be done for vocational direction in the family?

Copyright 1915 by The University of Chicago