MRS. C. L. STONE by Mrs. C. L. Stone

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 27, 1915

MRS. C. L. STONE

By Mrs. C. L. Stone

Training in Habits of Order and Helpfulness — No. 2

MRS. C. L. STONE

“THE disposition and habits of youth will be very likely to be manifested in the matured man. You may bend a young tree to almost any form that you may choose; and if you let it remain and grow as you have bent it, it will be a deformed tree, and will ever tell of the injury and abuse received at your hand. You may after years of growth, try to straighten the tree, but all your efforts will prove unavailing. It will ever be a crooked tree. This is the case with the minds of youth. They should be carefully and tenderly trained in childhood. They may be trained in the right direction or the wrong, and they will in their future life pursue the course in which they were directed in youth. The habits formed in youth will grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength; and they will generally be the same in “afterlife, only continuing to grow stronger.”—“Christian Education,” page 13.

All are ready to admit that habits of order and helpfulness should be inculcated in earliest youth. Our perplexity lies in the method of obtaining this desirable result; the little devices which assist us in the everyday teaching of this great principle. It is certain that merely telling a child to be orderly in its habits and helpful in spirit will not bring the desired result, even though we tell him twenty times a day.

The keynote for all work well done is interest. I would write in letters large, this word upon the heart of him who deals with little children. We can accomplish wonders with the child so long as we hold his interest, but when it flags, we might as well cease our efforts, for we shall accomplish nothing. It lies largely with parents and teachers to inspire, to devise plans, to conceive motives which will appeal to the child.

In the case of the children and their missionary garden referred to in a previous article, their interest never flagged because that of the teacher did not flag. To watch the tiny plants grow and develop was a keen delight; to keep the soil well broken and free from weeds was as great a pleasure as any game on the playground. This was in a school where time was taken every day to foster the interest and encourage the enterprise, not by moralizing, and telling the children it was their duty to help the missionaries, but by feeding their interest upon fresh stories and new experiences. Once a missionary from the field gave a talk to them. How glad they were to say to her, “We have a garden, and we are working hard to get some money to send to you.”

“True interest corresponds exactly to the hearty appetite of a healthy child for wholesome food,” says Dr. Charles McMurray. “It is awakened by the inherent quality of the subject, and not by a thin whitewash of agreeable devices. . . . Self-activity is the fundamental basis of a strong interest. It should not be forgotten, however, that this implies aims which the children themselves are working out. Parents are often astonished at the amount of drudgery and hard work which children will encounter in carrying out some project which they themselves have conceived, of building a tree house, or making a cave, or fixing up a playground. In practical life everywhere men will work their way through endless drudgery in order to achieve results which they have set up as desirable.”

If this kind of energy could be let loose for desirable ends, it would save parents and teachers a great deal of anxiety. The problem is how to release this energy along lines of desirable activity.