The chapter on Through-the-Week Activities is very applicable.  The gang will get together some time, on Saturday night, if not at another time.  The Young Men’s Christian Association County Work Secretaries are getting the boys of the open country together for week-night meetings without trouble.  “Get something doing” and see how quickly the rural boys will get together.  These activities again will differ greatly from those of city boys.  There will be great emphasis on the Social and Mental as against the Out-of-Door doings of the urban adolescents.  The principle already laid down, to let the boys themselves decide the activity, will settle this difficulty at the start.

So as to the chapter on the Teen Age Teacher!  Boys and men are the same pretty much, wherever they live.  They may be more deliberate, less showy, and steadier in some places than others, but we cannot admit inferiority or lack of interest on the part of the splendid rural boy.  He is filling the big jobs in our cities today, and will as long as the cities last.  The teen age teacher in the rural school needs to master himself for his task.  He is doing a bigger piece of work than his brother of the city school.  He is preparing men for urban leadership.

To make a long story short, the parts of this book that deal with the small group are applicable to the rural Sunday school.  The teen age teacher in the rural school should begin with these, and maybe after a while he will see opportunities for larger groupings.  The Young Men’s Christian Association County Work Secretary certainly is.  Inter-Sunday school work is possible by the Sunday school forces themselves.

A fitting close to this chapter is the challenge to the teen age teachers of the rural schools, which Mr. Preston G. Orwig has hurled at North America: 

“Every rural school has its quota of workers who are, perhaps unconsciously, limiting their own usefulness, as well as retarding the progress of the school, by meeting every new plan of work proposed with the statement that, ’That plan is all right for the city, but it won’t work here because we have so few members and our people live so far apart.’  With the exception of the man who constantly reminds us that ’we did not do it this way thirty years ago,’ and who, in some cases, is really a menace to the work, there is no greater obstacle confronting workers in rural schools.

“In a recent conference of Secondary Division workers in rural Sunday schools, a speaker was advocating the necessity of recognizing the fourfold—­physical, mental, social and spiritual—­life of the scholars, in planning for the work of the class.  The tremendous opportunity of teachers for reaching adolescent boys for Jesus Christ, through their physical and social instincts, was emphasized.  Luke 2:52 was quoted to clinch the argument.  In the discussion that followed everybody seemed satisfied that a broader policy of work should be pursued.  At this juncture a man in the audience arose, and, in a most uncompromising manner, attempted to show that it was useless to promote such methods for rural schools, as the scattered population and limited membership made it impossible to develop the work along the lines proposed.