THE CHICOPEE PLAN.
BY HON. L. E. HITCHCOCK.
CAN the graded system be successfully used in small Sunday schools? The plan described in this article has been in successful operation for several years in the Central Methodist Episcopal Sunday school in Chicopee, Mass., in which the membership during that time has averaged 200 and the average attendance has been about 150.
Before describing in detail the plan it may be well to stale three principles on which the plan is based:
1. A school, in order to be such, must be instructive as well as evangelistic, and if instruction is to be given there are many principles of instruction which have been worked out in our system of public schools and which have come to be accepted as right principles of teaching anything, and these principles cannot be ignored in teaching in the Sunday schools any more than they can in the day schools without impairment of the results desired.
2. In general terms, the most important principle of successful teaching is that it should be progressive and adapted in succeeding years to the normal development of the mind of the average child, and this relates to the method of teaching a given subject as well as to the selection of the subjects which shall be taught.
3. Another principle of successful teaching which is of almost as much importance as the one just alluded to is that there shall be one person at the head with a definite plan of work.
Applying these principles to Sunday school work, this school supposes that there is certain instruction which properly belongs to the Sunday school to give; that there is no reason why the Sunday school should not make use of the best methods of instruction which are known to educators so far as applicable; and that when the superintendent is elected to his place the church in effect commits to him or her the entire care of that part of the work of the church, and that it is perfectly proper for him to direct his teachers in the work which he will have done in his school during his term of office.