1.  Do your pupils enjoy the church school, and like to come?  Do they enjoy the lesson hour?  By what means do you tell?  Is the spirit of the class good toward the school and toward the class?  How do you judge this?

2.  Do your pupils come to the lesson hour full of expectancy?  Or is there an indifference and lack of interest with which you have to contend?  If the class fails in some degree to manifest expectancy and interest, where do you judge the trouble to lie?  What is the remedy?

3.  To what degree do you think your pupils are comprehending and mastering what you are teaching them?  How does their mastery compare with that secured in the public schools?  Have you plans for making their mastery more complete?

4.  Do you judge that your pupils are developing such an attitude toward the Bible that their interest will carry on beyond the time they are in your class?  Do you think they have an increasing interest in religion?  Are you making these questions one of the problems of your teaching?

5.  Are your pupils developing through the work you are doing a growing consciousness of God in their lives?  Do they count themselves as children of God?  Just what do you believe is the status of your children spiritually?  Do they need conservation or conversion?  What difference will your answer make in your teaching?

6.  To what degree are your pupils loyal to the church school?  To their particular class?  To the church?  What are the tests of loyalty?  Do they come regularly?  Do they seek to promote the interests of the class and the school?  Do they do their part?  What can be done to increase loyalty?

FOR FURTHER READING

Wilber, A Child’s Religion.

Bushnell, Christian Nurture (Revised Ed.).

Betts, The Mind and Its Education, chapter on “Interest.”

Fisk, Boy Life and Self-Government.

CHAPTER VI

CONNECTING RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION WITH LIFE AND CONDUCT

We have now come to the third of the great trio of aims in religious education—­right living.  This, of course, is the aim to which the gathering of religious knowledge and the setting up of religious attitudes are but secondary; or, rather, fruitful religious knowledge, and right religious attitudes are the means by which to lead to skill in right living as the end.

In the last analysis the child does not come to us that he may learn this or that set of facts, nor that he may develop such and such a group of feelings, but that through these he may live better.  The final test of our teaching, therefore, is just this:  Because of our instruction, does the child live differently here and now, as a child, in all his multiform relations in the home, the school, the church, the community, and in his own personal life?  Are the lessons we teach translated continuously into better conduct, finer acts, and stronger character as shown in the daily run of the learner’s experience?