merican Institute of Child
Life, Philadelphia, Pa.

IV. Topics for Discussion

1. What is the real problem of Sunday in the family? Is it that of
securing quiet or of wisely directing the action of the young?

2. Recall your childhood's Sundays. Were they for good or ill?

3. What are the arguments against children playing on Sunday? Is
there any essential relation between the play of children and the
wide-open Sunday of commercialized amusements?

4. Can you describe forms of play in which practically all the
family might unite?

5. What characteristics should distinguish play on Sundays from
other days? Is it wise to attempt thus to distinguish this day?

6. Criticize the suggestions on occupations for Sunday afternoons.

7. Recall any especially helpful forms of the use of this day in
your childhood, or coming under your observation.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] See chap. xvii, "The Family and the Church."

[32] See chap. vii on "Directed Activity," and the references for study
at its end.

[33] Much may be learned by a study of Primary plans in a modern Sunday
school. See Athearn, _The Church School_, chap. vi.

[34] Since we are dealing here especially with religious education in
the family, the author refers to his more extended treatment of the
question of children in church services in _Efficiency in the Sunday
School_, chap. xv.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MINISTRY OF THE TABLE

Shall the periods for meals be for the body only or shall we see in them
happy occasions for the enriching of the higher life? Upon the answer
depends whether the table shall be little more than a feeding-trough or
the scene of constant mental and character development. In some memories
the meals stand out only in terms of food, while pictures of dishes and
fragments of food fill the mind; in others there are borne through all
life pictures of happy faces and thoughts of cheer, of knowledge gained
and ideals created in the glow of conversation.

Sec. 1. THE OPPORTUNITY

The family is together as a united group at the table more than anywhere
besides. Table-talk, by its informality and by the aid of the pleasures
of social eating, is one of the most influential means of education.
Depend upon it, children are more impressed by table-talk than by
teacher-talk or by pulpit-talk. They expect moralizing on the other
occasions, but here the moral lessons