ort of teaching material is well adapted to the Junior age?

Lesson 6

Junior Age (Concluded)

#19. Opportunities of the Junior Age.#--No period offers opportunities
bearing more directly and openly upon the formation of character than
the Junior period, when manhood- and womanhood-to-be are so rapidly
determining. Out of these opportunities five may be selected as most
significant:

(1) _The opportunity to gain spiritual ends through social means._ The
more a teacher can enter into the fun-loving, companionship-craving
side of the pupil's heart, the greater his power over that life for
distinctly spiritual things. It is after the party or the picnic or
the tramp together that the personal message can be spoken.

(2) _The opportunity to arouse and to guide the pupil's effort through
heroic ideals._ Sermonizing on what they should do is practically
valueless with boys and girls of this age, for considerations of duty
weigh little until the larger moral consciousness of the next period.
Furthermore, they live but for the day, and do not appreciate the
relationship between present action and future character. What they
may do later as a result of their own convictions and understanding,
they may be inspired to do now through the hero who has aroused their
admiration and desire of imitation.

(3) _The opportunity to establish right habits of life._ The pathways
of service through which the Christian life ought to express itself
must be definitely and painstakingly traced in this period and the
next. Motives for the action may not be the highest, and must often be
supplied by another. For example, the daily Bible reading that ought
to be prompted by real love for the Word later may now be done for
love of the teacher--or because the promise was given, but in any
event it is leaving its indelible impress--and making the "Quiet Hour"
more assured in the future.

(4) _The opportunity to build Bible knowledge into character._
Impressions are necessary and effective in their place, but something
more definite is needed for stability of character. The opportunity
of supplementing impressions with facts is the one offered by this
Golden Memory period. Two points should be noted:

/#
(_a_) The mind is growing in its power to associate facts.
The association of events around a person or a place is
easily made now, and toward the end of the period sequences
of time and cause and effect are graspe