If the task is interesting, children do not ask that it shall be easy.  Once catch their enthusiasm and they will exert their powers to the full, and take joy in the effort.  But the effort must be accompanied by a sense of victory and achievement.  There must always be immediately ahead the possibility of winning over the difficulties of their lessons.  Except in rare moments of emotional exaltation the most heroic of us are not capable of hurling our best strength against obstacles upon whose resistance we make no impression.  And the child possesses almost none of this quality.  Without a measurable degree of success in what he attempts to learn his morale suffers, enthusiasm fails, and discouragement creeps in to sap his powers.

Kept in the presence of mental tasks he cannot master nor understand, the child will soon lose interest and anticipation in his work.  Without mastery intellectual defeat comes to be accepted and expected, and the child forms the fatal habit of submission and giving up.  Because he expects defeat from the lesson before him, the learner is already defeated; because he has not learned to look for victory in his study, he will never find it.

Preventing the habit of defeat.—­This is all to say that in teaching the child religion we must not constantly confront him with matter that is beyond his grasp and understanding.  That we are doing this in some of our lesson systems there can be no doubt.  The result is seen in the child’s hazy and indefinite ideas about religion; in a later astonishing lack of interest in the problems of religion on the part of adults; in the child’s unwillingness to undertake the study of his lessons for the Sunday school; in the fact that to many children the Sunday school lesson hour is a task and a bore; and in the fact that the Sunday school does not in a large degree continue to hold the loyalty of its members after they have reached the age of deciding for themselves whether they will attend. Fundamental to all successful classroom results with children are enjoyment, interest, and mastery. How these are to be secured will be developed further as the text proceeds.

ATTITUDES THAT CARRY INTO LIFE BEYOND THE SCHOOL

The great problem of every teacher is to make sure that the effects of his instruction reach beyond the classroom.  While the immediate attitudes of the classroom are the first great care, they are but the beginning.  Growing out of the work of the church school must be a more permanent set of attitudes that underlie life itself, give foundation to character, and in large degree determine the trend and outcome of achievement. The cultivation of moral and religious attitudes is probably the most important aim for the Sunday school. As already explained, the word “attitudes” is used to cover a considerable number of qualities and attributes.

A continuing interest in the Bible and religion.—­On the whole, people do not concern themselves about what they are not interested in.  They do not read the books, study the pictures, go to hear the speakers, or busy themselves with problems to which their interest does not directly and immediately lead them.  A fine sense of duty and obligation is all very well, but it never can take the place of interest as a dynamic force in life.