Religious Education in the Family | Page 9

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 or one conceived in a
search for ideals. It is written plain in our passions and strongest

inclinations. That which parents supremely desire for their children is
that they may become strong in body, capable and alert in mind, and
animated by worthy principles and ideals. The parent desires a good
man, fit to take his place, do his work, make his contribution to the
social well-being, able to live to the fulness of his powers, to take life
in all its reaches of meaning and heights of vision and beauty. In true
parenthood all hopes of success, of riches, fame, and ease, are seen but
as avenues to this end, as means of making the finer character, of
growing the ideal person. If we were compelled to choose for our
children we should elect poverty, pain, disgrace, toil, and suffering if
we knew this was the only highway to full manhood and womanhood,
to completeness of character. Indeed, we do constantly so choose,
knowing that they must endure hardness, bear the yoke in their youth,
and learn that
Love and joy are torches lit At altar fires of sacrifice.
With this dominating purpose clearly in mind we are prepared to ask,
What are the elements of family life which among the changes of today
we need most carefully to preserve in order to maintain efficiency in
character development? In days when the outer shell of domestic
arrangements changes, when readjustments are being made in the
organization of the family, what is there too precious to lose, so worthy
and essential that we waste no time when seeking to maintain it?
§ 2. POTENCIES TO BE PRESERVED--SOCIAL QUALITIES
The first great element to be preserved in all family life is that of the
power of the small group for purposes of character development. The
infant's earliest world is the mother's arms. In order to grow into a man
fitted for the wider world of social living, he must learn to live in a
world within his comprehension. A child's life moves through the
widening circles of mother-care, family group, neighborhood, school,
city, state, and nation into world-living. He must take the first steps
before he is able to take the next ones. He must learn to live with the
few as preparation for living with the many. In earliest infancy he takes
his first unconscious lessons in the fine art of living with other folks as
he relates himself to parents and to brothers and sisters.

Secondly, the family life affords the best agency for social training. The
family is the ideal democracy into which the child-life is born. Here
habits are formed, ideals are pictured, and life itself is interpreted. It is
an ideal democracy, first, because it is a social organization existing for
the sake of persons. The family comes nearer to fulfilling the true ideal
of a democratic social order than does any other institution. It is
founded to bring lives into this world; it is maintained for the sake of
those lives; all its life, its methods, and standards are determined,
ideally, by the needs of persons. It is an ideal democracy, secondly,
because its guiding principle is that the greater lives must be devoted to
the good of the lesser, the parent for the little child, the older members
for the younger, in an attempt to extend to the very least the greatest
good enjoyed by all. Thirdly, ideally it is a true democracy in that it
gives to each member a share in its own affairs and develops the power
to bear responsibilities and to carry each his own load in life. Thus the
family group is the best possible training for the life and work of the
larger group, the state, and for world-living.[5] The maintenance of the
ideals of the state, as a democracy, depends on the continuance of this
institution with its peculiar power to train life in infancy