The Pastor and the Home (Part II)

Every pastor who faces frankly the prob­lems of his church which to a greater or lesser extent have their origin in the home, must come to the conclusion that definite, well-planned action must be taken to improve the abilities of parents, that they may do more effective work in homemaking and child cul­ture. The only alternative to such a conclusion is a despairing philosophy of predestined dam­nation.

That church is rare indeed which does not contain some families in which discord, negli­gence, and low ideals are playing their part in making the membership feeble in spiritual power, and sometimes disgraceful to the com­munity. What pastor has not faced the prob­lems of obstreperousness in childhood and de­linquency in adolescence, ending sometimes in the juvenile court? Who has not had to deal with the problems of divided homes, of divorce, of working mothers, of street-educated chil­dren, of difficult school discipline, of gangster tendencies among the youth? And who does not long for some solution to what one pastor called "this almost insoluble problem"?

We are not to despair. As God lives, and as He loves His church, there is victory for us in every situation. But that we may have victory, we must follow our Leader, we must accept His plans and adopt His methods. He has laid out for us the course to follow, the means to employ. We can expect success only as we do His bidding. Then He promises that we shall succeed.

"Solomon says, 'Train lip a child in the way he should go : and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' Prov. 22:6. This language is positive. The training that Solomon enjoins is to direct, edu­cate, develop. But in order for parents to do this work, they must themselves understand the 'way' the child should go."—"Counsels to Teachers," p. 108.

"The child's first teacher is the mother. During the period of greatest susceptibility and most rapid development his education is to a great degree in her hands. To her first is given opportunity to mold the character for good or for evil. She should under­stand the value of her opportunity, and, above every other teacher, should be qualified to use it to the best account. Yet there is no other to whose training so little thought is given. The one whose influence in education is most potent and far reaching is the one for whose assistance there is the least systematic effort....

"Upon fathers as well as mothers rests a respon­sibility for the child's earlier as we:I as its later training, and for both parents the demand for careful and thorough preparation is most urgent. . . .

"Never will education accomplish all that it might and should accomplish until the importance of the parents' work is fully recognized, and they receive a training for its sacred responsibilities."—"Educa­tion," pp. 275, 276.

Parents must be trained. Parents must have an education for their sacred responsibilities. They must definitely be seeking improvement in their ability to understand the child's nature and needs, and how to teach and train the child. This requirement laid upon parents by their heavenly Father, their Master Teacher, must be pressed home to them by the pastor, and then he must offer the means for the education demanded.

This he can seldom do by himself, for his duties are many and varied. He may direct, encourage, assist, but he must have the help of fit persons in his church who may be trained, or whom he may train, for these specific teach­ing duties. And he must have means which the church organization, through the General Con­ference, offers for this very purpose. In this he is not left alone. Help is at hand.

Home the Foundation School

First let us note the basic concepts in this matter of home education.

"In His wisdom the Lord has decreed that the family shall be the greatest of all educational agen­cies. It is in the home that the education of the child is to begin. Here is his first school. Here, with his parents as instructors, he is to learn the lessons that are to guide him throughout life,—lessons of respect, obedience, reverence, self-control. The edu­cational influendes of the home are a decided power for good or for evil. They are in many respects silent and gradual, but if exerted on the right side, they become a far-reaching power for truth and right­eousness. If the child is not instructed aright here, Satan will educate him through agencies of his choos­ing. How important, then, is the school in the home!

"In the home school—the first grade—the very best talent should be utilized. Upon all parents there rests the obligation of giving physical, mental, and spiritual instruction. It should be the object of every parent to secure to his child a well-balanced, sym­metrical character. This is a work of no small mag­nitude and importance,—a work requiring earnest thought and prayer no less than patient, persevering effort. A right foundation must be laid, a framework, strong and firm, erected, and then day by day the work of building, polishing, perfecting, must go for­ward."—"Counsels to Teachers," pg. 107, 108.

To grasp this concept of the home as the first, the foundation, school, most of us will have to revise our ideas of education. And we need to. "Our ideas of education take too narrow and too low a range. There is need of a broader' scope, a higher aim."—"Education," p. 13. The place to begin broadening our concept of edu­cation is right here at the start of education. The education of the child does not begin when he enters the schoolroom door. The elementary church school is not his first school. The home is his first school, not in any figurative sense, but actually.

Christian education is not merely the ac­quirement of knowledge of the common branches, the sciences, and the humanities. Christian education is the work of character building. ("Counsels to Teachers," p. 61.) That work begins in the home. Education be­gins with the beginning of life. And accord­ing as the home school, "the greatest of all educational agencies," does its work well or ill, the aftereducation of the individual is staple and valuable, or otherwise.

Mark well, then, that in the scheme of Chris­tian education there are four divisions: first, the home school ; second, the elementary church school ; third, the secondary school, or acad­emy; fourth, the finishing school, or college.

The home must be visualized as an educa­tional agency, a school. But that does not mean that it must be organized upon the plan of the formal school. Quite otherwise. The school is not the model of the home ; the home is the model of the school. So God planned it, and so are we to make it. (See "Education," pp. 20, 30.) In many respects the professional school is defective in its forms and methods, and its reform should come through study of God's model, the home. In any case, let us not try to put the home upon the status of the school, with its confining regimentation, its formal lessons, and its mass-education methods.

The home school is to be organized ; and it may gain some very valuable lessons from the experience of the day school. But essentially it is to be a home, conducting its educational work according to the conditions and needs of the home. Education does not consist merely of set lessons. Education goes on all the time. The attitudes and the acts of the parents, as well as their specific lessons (which are many), constitute their teaching.

New Courses in Parent Training Offered

But since parents, "above every other teacher, should be qualified" to teach, they must "receive a training for its sacred re­sponsibilities." Such training is offered by our church. The work of parent education which the Home Commission initiated in 1922, and has carried and developed for twenty years, has now been recognized as an integral part of our educational system, and as such is incorporated in the Department of Education, co-ordinate with the elementary, the secondary, and the college divisions, and staffed accordingly. New courses in homemaking and child culture have been prepared, and will hereafter be provided by the Home Study Institute, at slight charge.* This work of parent education and home educa­tion will be under the fostering care of the Department of Education, and the secretaries and superintendents of education in the Gen­eral Conference and in all the various division, union, and local conferences will be in charge of its promotion and upbuilding.

The courses of study may be taken through the Home Study Institute by any individual —parent, youth, or other. But there is far greater inspiration and mutual help to be gained and given in group study ; and every church should provide for this. The local organization at our hand for this group study is the Home and School Association. This is the Adventist equivalent of the Parent-Teacher Association. But it is much more. It is, as its name is meant to indicate, an agency for unit­ing the educational work of the home and the later schools. It belongs not only to parents and teachers, but to all the youth and all the children and all the church members and all the church officers and the pastor.

The Home and School Association should be organized and conducted in every church in which there are any children. Certainly it must function where there is a church school. But also it should come into existence and func­tion strongly where there is no church school. Where there is any home with children, there is a school. And the teachers of that school must receive training. The Home and School Asso­ciation is to be made the school for parents. It may have other worthy objectives, some of them financial, some of them recreational, but the prime purpose of the Home and School Association is to give parents essential training.

This organization should be conducted much as the Sabbath school is organized and con­ducted. The Sabbath school has financial goals, and it puts much of its energy into reaching them. It has entertainment features to make it attractive to young and old, but those entertainment features are to be educa­tional, pointing to its prime object. The main purpose of the Sabbath school is to be a school to train in Bible knowledge and mis­sionary enterprise. To this end it gives the greater part of its time to its classes.

So also should the Home and School Asso­ciation be organized. It may have its financial projects, in building, improving, and maintain­ing the church school ; and it may continue to give them due attention. It may have enter­tainment features, but that entertainment must not be idle and purposeless; it must be con­structive, educational. Its prime objective, however, is to be a school for parents, and to this end it should organize a class or classes, according to the needs and desires of its members.

This classwork, with related activities out­side and inside the organization, is to be the chief interest and work of the Home and School Association. It should meet as regu­larly, though not necessarily as frequently, as the Sabbath school. Those who take its courses will be given recognition by the Home Study Institute, but the great benefit to be gained will be shown by the improvement in the homes—in their order, purposefulness, discipline, reverence, and general efficiency for Christian work. So will the Home and School Association prove a mighty power in the hands of the pastor to build the church. "The suc­cess of the church depends upon home inftu­ences."