Parents and children

by Charlotte M. Mason

2. Members shall be pledged, by the fact of their joining, to supervise the education of their own children, and to urge the responsibility of the parental relationship upon other parents.

3. Lesson sketches shall be furnished monthly to each family in connection with the Union.

4. Members shall bring their children to the monthly catechising, and sit with them, &c., &c.

Probably the “lesson-sketches” are to secure that the children do just such Bible-lessons at home with their parents on Sunday as they have hitherto done at the Sunday-school with teachers.

It seems to be contemplated that parents of every class will undertake their proper duties in this matter, and that the Sunday-school may be allowed to drop, the clergyman undertaking instead to ascertain, by means of catechising, that certain work is done month by month.

The scheme seems full of promise. Nothing should do more to strengthen the bonds of family life than that the children should learn religion at the lips of their parents; and, to grow up in a church which takes constant heed of you from baptism or infancy, until, we will not say confirmation, but through manhood and womanhood, until the end, should give the right tone to corporate life.

No doubt we have parishes, and even whole denominations, in which the young people are taken hold of from first to last; but then it is by clergy, teachers, class leaders, and so on; and all parents do not regard it as an unmixed blessing that the most serious part of their children’s training should be undertaken by outsiders. The thing that seems most worthy of imitation in this Australian movement is, that parents themselves are recognised as the fit instructors of their children in the best things, and that they are led to acknowledge some responsibility to the Church with regard to the instruction they give.

But do we manage these things so well “at home” that we have no occasion to look about us for hints? It may be in the memories of some of us, that in May 1889, a Committee of the House of Laymen for the Province of Canterbury was appointed to examine into the religious education of the upper and middle classes.[8] The committee considered that they might obtain a good basis for their investigations by examining into the religious knowledge of boys entering school. They sent a paper of inquiries to sixty-two head-masters, most of whom sent replies; and from these replies the committee were led to conclude that, “for the most part, the standard of religious education attained by boys before going to school is far below what might be hoped or expected; and that even this standard, thus ascertained to be far too low, is deteriorating; and further, that the chief cause of deterioration is considered to be the want of home-teaching and religion.”

Here is matter of grave consideration for us all—for, though the investigation was conducted by Churchmen, it naturally covered boys of various denominations attending public and middle-class schools; the distinctive character of the religious education was the subject of separate inquiry. No doubt there are many beautiful exceptions—families brought up in quiet homes in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; but if it is, as some of us fear, a fact that there is a tendency among parents of the middle and upper classes to let the religious education of their children take care of itself, it is worth while to ask, What is the reason? and, What is the remedy? Many reasons are assigned for this alleged failure in parental duty—social claims, the restive temper of the young people and their impatience of religious teaching, and much else. But these reasons are inadequate. Parents are, on the whole, very much alive to their responsibilities; perhaps there has never been a generation more earnest and conscientious than the young parents of these days. All the same, these thoughtful young parents do not lay themselves out to teach their children religion, before all things.

The fact is, our religious life has suffered, and by-and-by our national character will suffer, for the discredit thrown upon the Bible by adverse critics. We rightly regard the Bible as the entire collection of our Sacred Books. We have absolutely nothing to teach but what we find written therein. But we no longer go to the Bible with the old confidence: our religion is fading into a sentiment, not easy to impart; we wait until the young people shall conceive it for themselves. Meantime, we give them such æsthetic culture as should tend to develop those needs of the soul that find their satisfaction in worship. The whole superstructure of “liberal” religious thought is miserably shaky, and no wonder there is some shrinking from exposing it to the Ithuriel’s spear of the definite and searching young mind. For we love this flimsy habitation we have builded. It bears a shadowy resemblance to the old home of our souls, and we cling to it with a tender sentiment which the younger generation might not understand.