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DISCUSSION. 
171 
Very few concrete sins are mentioned; less than one in a hundred mention swearing,” 
“lying,” “talking dirty talk,” ‘ drinking,” and ‘using tobacco.” 
Many allusions also throw light on the sources of the theological ideas which the 
children hold. Many say: ¢“ My mother has told me,” ‘I have heard in Sunday-school, 
or, ‘they say in church ;” not one mentions what his teachers have told him. Evidently 
the effort to secularize our schools has been but too successful. One boy says he got his 
ideas of the devil from a Punch and Judy show ; two say their ideas of the devil came 
from the pictures or deviled ham. Several mention the hired girl as an authority, and 
2 large number say their ideas came from pictures. 
From the study of the data in hand it would seem that we could safely 
draw the following conclusions: If young children are to be taught a 
theology, it must be in an anthropomorphic and realistic form. We 
may teach that God is a spirit, but the child’s mind at once invests him 
with a form and human attributes. If we do not furnish exalted and 
worthy imagery, the child fills out the form with random pictures, Punch 
and Judy impressions, and images of grocery labels. 
Since pictures furnish so much of this imagery, children should be 
surrounded with worthy pictures—e.g., Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. 
Through confidential conversation with the child, grotesque images 
should be detected and corrected. 
Many California children seem to be ignorant of the most common and 
most generally accepted theological conceptions of Christian people. 
They should be given this knowledge, if for no other reason, because it is 
essential to an intelligent understanding of the literary and artistic life of 
our times. 
The period of most intense critical activity is the period of puberty. 
Some special effort should be made at that time to assist the child in 
rearranging and adjusting his philosophical and theological conceptions. 
In the schools literary, historical, and scientific studies should be dealt 
with in a large and philosophic spirit. The child’s desire to grasp the 
universe should be encouraged, not discouraged. Later he will settle to 
letailed work. 
The general absence of references to nature would seem to indicate that 
children are accepting scientific explanations as final. It would seem that 
the schools should lead them to feel and realize that Greater Power which 
lies back of our superficial explanations and makes this a sane universe. 
DISCUSSION. 
By A MEMBER : I would like to ask if there was found among the authors of those 
papers a single Swedenborgian. 
ProrESSOR BARNES: I cannot tell. We had every variety of faith represented, and 
shey were not required to put their denomination on the paper in any way, so that except 
in cases where I asked the teachers to put that on paper there were no cases oiven.