people as well as for the younger
ones. But the very period when they slip from church school is also the
period when they are often lost to the real life of the family. In some
measure this is due to the natural development of the social life. The
youths go out to work, move forward into enlarging social groups which
demand more of their free time. They are learning the life of the larger
world of which they are now a part.

Sec. 1. THE SCHOOL OF YOUTH

But the family is still the home of these young people; normally it is
still the most vital educational influence for them. Yet there is no
problem more baffling than that of family ministry for, and leadership
of, the higher life of youth.

It is a short-measure interpretation of the home which thinks of it as
only for young children and old folks. The young men and women from
sixteen to twenty and over still need training and direction; they need
close touch with other lives in affection and in an ideal atmosphere. In
a few years they, too, will be home-makers, and here in the home they
are very directly learning the art of family life.

For youth there are few effective schools, outside the home, other than
the streets and the places of commercialized amusement. Even where the
other agencies of training are used, such as college, classes, and
associations (such as the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A.), life, at that
period, needs the restraints on selfishness that come from family life,
the refining and socializing power of the family group.

Sec. 2. SPECIAL NEEDS OF YOUTH

What are the special needs of youth upon which the family may base a
reasonable program for their higher needs?

First, the need of sound physical health. This is a period of physical
adjustment. Rapid bodily growth is nearly or quite at an end; new
functions are asserting themselves. The new demands for directed
activity may, under the ambitious impulses of youth, make undue drafts
on the energies. The apparent moodiness that at times characterizes this
period may be due to poor health. The moral strain of the period will
need sound muscles and good health. Parents who would sit up all
night--perhaps involuntarily--when the baby has the colic treat with
indifference sickness in youth and too readily assume that the young
man or the young woman will outgrow these physical ills. But bodily
maladjustment or incapacity has most serious character effects. To live
the right life and render high s