RELIGION
It is hardly possible to pick up a newspaper nowadays without seeing the word education heading many columns of printed matter containing the views and theories on this subject from all kinds and conditions of people and from all parts of the kingdom. Most of the newspaper discussions are generally about the more or less trivial failings on the part of our modern education, and rarely seem to make any definite effort to discuss the serious evils which exist, and owe their existence to the curious lack of reason and understanding in the rearing of our young. It seems difficult to understand how any one who has ever given the matter a moment’s serious thought can fail to realise the hopelessness of the present methods of education, which the average child of both rich and poor has to suffer from—both during the period of that education and in their lives afterwards where the effects of it follow them to the grave.
The evils of modern education are many, and not to be eradicated in a day; but the great root of most of these evils, and that from which they all spring, is that our children are given no God to worship, or, rather, they are given a name, to which they gabble a prayer morning and night, titter at if they hear mentioned, and thoroughly abominate on Sundays on account of the boredom and discomfort inflicted on that day in His Name.
Surely it would be well worth the experiment to replace what is merely a disliked or ignored name with a real and living God in the children’s minds, and I think the result would be that education would be helped farther towards a perfect and sound basis than it has ever been before.
Teach them to have something strong and wonderful to believe in, a reason for doing the right and avoiding the wrong, a great and splendid helping presence, a living thought, instead of a hopelessly unjust and tiresome nonentity, which at present is what He represents to the average child.
Many people are trying and trying faithfully to find out the cause of the failure in our modern education; and why, when so much money is spent, results are so disappointing. Yet it seems to occur to few that it is building on sand to try and impress upon the brain of a developing human being the right way of living and learning, and at the same time giving that human being no true reason as to why that way is more right than any other way. The extremely young will believe, perhaps, that because mother or teacher says such-and-such a thing, that it is right, but the brain a little more developed rejects an edict given with no reason behind it, and I feel most sincerely certain that until God is made into a real living and helping thought in the mind of the young, education will remain much where it is. From our schools and homes a stream of men and women will continue to issue forth with indifferent educations, lacking in culture, and with the lowest of ideals, who are helpless prey to the first and strongest influences that may seize on them. If the influences are for the good, all may be well; but if they be for the bad, what help or strength has ever been given in our education, mentally or physically, to assist in combating them?
Religion as it is taught to the average child is not only worse than useless, it is a blasphemy!—a strong word, I know, but a true one; take any average child, rich or poor, and mention the Almighty to him or her, and see the result: either a blank and uncomprehending stare will be the result, or an inane giggle, followed by a bored and long-suffering expression. Is not that blasphemy? Not from the child, whose fault it is not, but from the people who are responsible for that child and its upbringing.
I have travelled in many lands, but only in English-speaking countries have I found the name of God treated with so little respect and understanding amongst the young. And yet we call ourselves Christians, the meaning of which word is followers after Christ. Children are the most reasonable of creatures, and give them really strong and beautiful reasons for everything they are asked to do, and they will cling to those reasons with the greatest of strength and faith. Surely if we could conquer our curious aversion to bringing God’s name into our daily lives, except when we wish to take it in vain, it would make a wonderful difference in the rearing of our children—to try and make Him into a real and living presence, to help and strengthen in work and play, not merely a Name to be bored, frowned, and laughed at; and I feel certain education would show the most surprising results. It is indeed difficult to understand that any one can seriously believe that the manner in which religion is taught to children in our schools and homes can ever have any influence or be of any help to them in their future lives, still less in their work at school.
I imagine the question that might be asked is: What have the Almighty and school-work to do with each other? Personally, I think the answer is, ‘Everything.’ Unless the feeling of God’s presence and help is made a real thing to children in the little worries, difficulties, and joys of childhood, unless they learn to turn to Him in those small trials, they are not, I think, likely when the large troubles of manhood and womanhood come along to look for help and comfort in the only direction from which it can come.
The feeling of His nearness ought never to be absent, whether it is a sum to be struggled with or a page of history to be conquered; the sum is struggled with and the page of history conquered, not because of the punishment that might occur otherwise, but because a brain has been given to us to be taken care of and developed to the best of our ability, and that to neglect to develop it is to show that a trust God has given us has been misplaced.
Later in life, when it is not a sum or a page of history that is our difficulty or temptation, the habit of feeling the nearness of God’s presence and the responsibility to Him will surely prove a very great and real help.
Let us at least try to give our children something more than a name to hold by in their hours of darkness and trouble, and if people who ‘having eyes see not and having ears hear not,’ cry Idealism and Utopianism, let us take no heed, for all things are possible, even Utopia.
London: Strangeways. Printers.