Thirteen Essays on Education (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF BOYS THE REV. J. E. C. WELLDON, M.A. May 1891 THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF BOYS The present essay is not an attempt to deal adequately with the great subject of religious teaching in schools. Such an attempt, if it were made at all, would necessarily demand an ampler leisure and a larger experience than my own. But there are some subjects which it is so important to discuss that one may be forgiven for discussing them imperfectly. It will be my object, then, within such limits as are imposed upon me, to state the conditions of the religious life of a public school, to point out its difficulties and some of the means of overcoming them, the relation of a schoolmaster, as a Christian teacher, to his boys, and the way in which it seems that he may make the best use of such hours as they devote, under the system of the school, to learning the truths, and appropriating the spirit, of their religion. It will not be denied that this subject is serious, or that it occupies a large place in men's thoughts. The age in which we live, despite its scepticism, is peculiarly sensitive to the value of religious influencesupon life. It apprehends with strong conviction the possibility and the duty of making religion a vital force in the lives of the young. In this respect it has made an advance upon preceding ages. For it is impossible, in a survey of English public school life, to help being struck with the long paralysis of the religious interests and emotions which lasted down to the early part of the present century. It is the more remarkable, because schoolmasters were usually clergymen, and, indeed, were much prouder of being clergymen than of being schoolmasters, and the authority of religion was not so much disputed on speculative grounds as it is now...