How to Teach Religion Part 14

This principle carries over to the child's own partic.i.p.ation. Everyone is most interested in that in which he has an active part. The meeting in which we presided or made a speech or presented a report is to us a more interesting meeting than one in which we were a silent auditor. To the child, personal response is even more necessary. No small part of the reason why the child "learns by doing" is that he is interested in doing as he is not interested in mere listening. All good teaching will therefore appeal to interest through providing the fullest possible opportunity for the child to have an important share in the lesson. And this part must be something which _to the child_ is worth doing, and not, for example, an oral memory drill on words meaningless to the pupil, nor "expression" work of a kind that lacks purpose and action.

There are always real things to be done if the lesson is vital--personal experiences to be recounted, special a.s.signments to be reported upon, maps to be drawn or remodeled, specimens of flowers or plants to be secured, character parts to be represented in the story, a bit of history to be looked up, prayers to be said, songs to be sung, or a hundred other things done which will appeal to the interest and at the same time fix the points of the lesson.

Interest requires variety and change.--Interest attaches to the _new_, provided the new is sufficiently related to the fund of experience already on hand so that it is fully grasped and understood. While there are certain matters, such as marching, handling supplies, etc., in the recitation which should be done the same way each time so that they may become habit and routine, yet there is a wide range of variety possible in much of the procedure.

The lessons should not be conducted always in the same way. One recitation may consist chiefly of discussion, with question and answer between teacher and cla.s.s. Another may be given largely to reports on special a.s.signments, with the teacher's comments to broaden and apply the points. Another may take the form of stories told and ill.u.s.trations given by the teacher, or of stories retold by the cla.s.s from former lessons. The great thing is to secure change and variety without losing sight of the real aims of the lesson, and to plan for a pleasant surprise now and then without lowering the value of the instruction.

Interest is contagious.--Every observing teacher has learned that interest is contagious. An interested and enthusiastic teacher is seldom troubled by lack of interest and attention on the part of the cla.s.s.

Nor, on the other hand, will interest and attention continue on the part of the cla.s.s if confronted by a mechanical and lifeless teacher. The teacher is the model unconsciously accepted and responded to by his cla.s.s. He leads the way in interest and enthusiasm. Nor will any sham or pretense serve. The interest must be real and deep. Even young children quickly sense any make-believe enthusiasm or vivacity on the part of the teacher, and their ardor immediately cools.

Children's typical interests have their birth, ripen to full strength, and fade away by certain broad stages. What will appeal to the child of five will not appeal to the child of ten, and will secure no response from the youth of fifteen. s.p.a.ce will not permit even an outline of these interest-stages here, but genetic psychology has carefully mapped them out and their nature and order of development should be studied by every teacher.

FREEDOM FROM DISTRACTIONS

There is no possibility of securing good results from a lesson period constantly broken in upon by distractions. The mind cannot do its best work if the attention is diverted every few moments from the train of thought, requiring a new start every now and then. Every teacher has had the experience of the sudden drop in interest and concentration that has come from some interruption, and the impossibility of bringing the cla.s.s back to the former level after the break. The loss in a recitation disturbed by distractions is comparable to the loss of power and efficiency in stopping a train of cars every half mile throughout its run instead of allowing it an unbroken trip. Careful planning and good management can eliminate many of the distractions common to the church school lesson hour.

Distractions from cla.s.ses reciting together.--The cla.s.s should have a room or s.p.a.ce for its own sole use, and not be compelled to recite in a large room occupied by several other cla.s.ses. The older Chinese method of education was to have each pupil study his lesson aloud, each seeking to drown out the confusion by the force of his voice. Many of our church schools of the present day remind one of this ancient method. The church building being planned primarily for adults, not enough cla.s.srooms are provided for the children, and it is a common thing to find half a dozen cla.s.ses grouped in the one room, each constantly distracted by the sights and sounds that so insistently appeal to the senses. It is wholly impossible to do really good teaching under such conditions.

Every church building should provide cla.s.srooms for teaching its children. If these cannot be had in the original edifice, an addition should be made of a special school building. As a last resort, a system of curtains or movable part.i.tions should be provided which will isolate each cla.s.s from every other cla.s.s, and thereby save at least the visual distractions and perhaps a part of the auditory distractions. To fail to do this is to cultivate in the child a habit of inattention to the lesson, and to kill his interest in the church school and its work because of its failure to impress him or attract his loyalty.

Planning routine to prevent distractions.--Not infrequently a wholly unnecessary distraction is caused by a poorly planned method of handling certain routine matters. The writer recently observed a junior cla.s.s get under way in what promised to be a very interesting and profitable lesson. They had an attractive lesson theme, a good teacher, a separate cla.s.sroom, and seemed to be mentally alert. Soon after the lesson had got well started an officer appeared at the door with an envelope for the collection, and the story was stopped to pa.s.s the envelope around the cla.s.s. It was not possible after this interruption to pick up the thread of the lesson without some loss of interest, but the teacher was skillful and did her best. She soon had the attention of the cla.s.s again and the lesson was moving along toward its most interesting part and the practical application. But just at the most critical moment another interruption occurred; the secretary came in with the papers for the cla.s.s and counted out the necessary supply while the cla.s.s looked on. It was impossible now to catch up the current of interest again, but the teacher tried. Once more she was interrupted, however, this time by a note containing some announcement that had been overlooked in the opening exercises!

All such interruptions as these indicate mismanagement and a serious lack of foresight. The fault is not wholly with the teacher, but also with the policy and organization of the school as a whole. The remedy is for both officers and teachers to use the same business sense and ability in running the church school that they would apply to any other concern. The collection can be taken at the beginning of the lesson period. The papers and lesson material can be in the cla.s.sroom or in the teacher's hands before the cla.s.s a.s.sembles, and not require distribution during the lesson period. In short, all matters of routine can be so carefully foreseen and provided for that the cla.s.s will be wholly free from all unnecessary distractions from such sources.

Mischief and disorder.--An especially difficult kind of distraction to control is the tendency to restlessness, mischief, and misbehavior which prevails in certain cla.s.ses or on the part of an occasional pupil.

Pupils sometimes feel that the teacher in the church school does not possess the same authority as that exercised by the public-school teacher, and so take advantage of this fact. The first safeguard against disorder in the cla.s.s is, of course, to secure the interest and loyalty of the members. The ideal is for the children to be attentive, respectful, and well behaved, not because they are required to, but because their sense of duty and pride and their interest in the work leads them to this kind of conduct. It is not possible, however, continuously to reach this ideal with all children. There will be occasional cases of tendency to disorder, and the spirit of mischief will sometimes take possession of a cla.s.s whose conduct is otherwise good.

Whenever it becomes necessary, the teacher should not hesitate to take a positive stand for order and quiet in the cla.s.s. All inattention is contagious. A small center of disturbance can easily spread until it results in a whole storm of disorder. Mischief grows through the power of suggestion, and a small beginning may soon involve a whole cla.s.s.

There is no place for a spirit of irreverence and boisterousness in the church school, and the teacher must have for one of his first principles the maintenance of good conduct in his cla.s.sroom. No one can tell any teacher just how this is to be achieved in individual cases, but it must be done. And the teacher who cannot win control over his cla.s.s would better surrender it to another who has more of the quality of leadership or mastery in his make-up, for no worthy, lasting religious impressions can be given to noisy, boisterous, and inattentive children.

Distractions by the teacher.--Strange as it may seem, the teacher may himself be a distraction in the cla.s.sroom. Any striking mannerism, any peculiarity of manner or carriage, extreme types of dress, or any personal quality that attracts attention to itself is a distraction to the cla.s.s. One teacher may have a very loud or ill-modulated voice; another may speak too low to be heard without too much effort; another may fail to articulate clearly. Whatever attracts attention to the speech itself draws attention away from the thought back of the speech and hinders the listener from giving his full powers to the lesson.

A distracting habit on the part of some teachers is to walk back and forth before the cla.s.s, or to a.s.sume awkward postures in standing or sitting before the cla.s.s, or nervously to finger a book or some object held in the hands. All these may seem like small things, but success or failure often depends upon a conjunction of many small things, each of which in itself may seem unimportant. It is often "the little foxes that spoil the vines."

Avoiding physical distractions.--In the church school, as in the public school, the physical conditions surrounding the recitation should be made as favorable as possible. Not infrequently the children are placed for their lesson hour in seats that were intended for adults, and which are extremely uncomfortable for smaller persons. The children's feet do not touch the floor, and their backs can not secure a support; weariness, wriggling and unrest are sure to follow. Sometimes the ventilation of the cla.s.sroom is bad, and the foul air breathed on one Sunday is carefully shut in for use the next. Bas.e.m.e.nt rooms are not seldom damp, or they have a bad odor, or the lighting is unsatisfactory, or the walls are streaked, dim and uninviting. If such things seem relatively unimportant, we must remember that the child's spiritual life is closely tied up with the whole range of his experiences, and that such things as lack of oxygen in the cla.s.sroom, tired legs whose feet can not touch the floor, eyes offended by unloveliness, or nostrils a.s.sailed by unpleasant odors may get in the way of the soul's development. Our churches should not rest satisfied until children in the church schools work under as hygienic and as pleasant conditions as obtain in the best of our public schools.

DANGER POINTS IN INSTRUCTION

It is a well-known law in pedagogy that negatives are not often inspiring, and that to hold before one his mistakes is not always the best way of helping him avoid them. Along with the positive principles which show what we should do, however, it is well occasionally to note a few of the danger points most commonly met in the cla.s.sroom.

Lack of definiteness.--This may take the form of lack of definiteness of aim or purpose. We may merely "hear" the recitation, or ask the stock questions furnished in the lesson helps, or allow the discussion to wander where it will, or permit aimless arguing or disputing on questions that cannot be decided and that in any case possess no real significance.

Indefiniteness may take the direction of failure to carry the thoughts of the lesson through to their final meaning and application, so that there is no vital connection made between the lesson truths and the lives of those we teach. Or we may be indefinite in our interpretation of the moral and religious values inherent in the lesson, and so fail to make a sharp and definite impression of understanding and conviction on our pupils. Our teaching must be clear-cut and positive without being narrowly dogmatic or opinionated. The truth we present must have an edge, so that it may cleave its way into the heart and mind of the learner.

Dead levels.--We need to avoid _dead levels_ in our teaching. This danger arises from lack of mental perspective. It comes from presenting all the points of a lesson on the same _plane of emphasis_, with a failure to distinguish between the important and the unimportant. Minor details and incidental aspects of the topic often receive the same degree of stress that is given to more important points. This results in a state of monotonous plodding through so much material without responding to its varying shades of meaning and value. Not only does this type of teaching fail to lodge in the mind of the pupil the larger and more important truths which ought to become a permanent part of his mental equipment, but it also fails to train pupils how themselves to pick out and appropriate the significant parts of the lesson material.

It does not develop the sense of value for lesson truths which should be trained through the work of the lesson hour. Each lesson should seek to impress and apply a few important truths, and everything else should be made to work to this end. The points we would have our pupils remember, think about and act upon we must be able to make stand out above all other aspects of the lesson; they must not, for want of emphasis, be lost in a ma.s.s of irrelevant or monotonous material of little value.

Lack of movement in recitation.--Some recitations suffer from _slowness of movement_ of the thought and plan of the lesson. We sometimes say of a book or a play or a sermon that it was "slow." This is equivalent to saying that the book or play or sermon lacks movement; it dallies by the way, and has unnecessary breaks in its continuity, or is slow in its action. The same principle applies in the recitation.

Pauses that are occupied with thought or meditation are not, of course, wasted; they may even be the very best part of the lesson period. But the rather empty lapses which occur for no reason except that the teacher lacks readiness and preparation, and does not quite know at every moment just what he is to do next, or what topic should at this moment come in--it is such awkward and meaningless breaks as these that spoil the continuity of thought and interest and result in boredom. We must remember that every pause or interval of mere empty waiting without expectancy, or without some worthy thought occupying the mind, is a waste of energy, time, and opportunity, and also a training in inattention.

Low standards.--The acceptance of _low standards_ of preparation and response in the recitation is fatal to high-grade work and results. If it comes to be expected and taken as a matter of course both by teacher and pupils that children shall come to the cla.s.s from week to week with no previous study on the lesson, then this is precisely what they will do. The standards of the cla.s.s should make it impossible that continual failure to prepare or recite shall be accepted as the natural and expected thing, or treated with a spirit of levity. The lesson hour is the very heart and center of the school work, and failure here means a breakdown of the whole system. The standards of teacher and cla.s.s should be such that probable failure to do one's part in the recitation shall be looked forward to by the child with some apprehension and looked back upon with some regret if not humiliation. In order to maintain high standards of preparation the cooperation of the home must be secured, at least for the younger children, and parents must help the child wisely and sympathetically in the study of the lesson.

1. To what extent are you able to hold the attention of your pupils in the recitation? Is their attention ready, or do you have to work hard to get it? Are there any particular ones who are less attentive than the rest? If so, can you discover the reason? The remedy?

2. To what extent do you find it necessary to appeal to involuntary attention? If you have to make such an appeal do you seek at once to make interest take hold to retain the attention?

3. What measures are you using to train your pupils in the giving of voluntary attention when this type is required? When _is_ voluntary attention required?

4. How completely are your pupils usually interested in the lessons? As the interest varies from time to time, are you studying the matter to discover the secret of interest on their part. In so far as interest fails, which of the factors discussed in the section on interest in this chapter are related to the failure? Are there still other causes not mentioned in this chapter?

5. What distractions are most common in your cla.s.s? Can you discover the cause? The remedy? Do you have any unruly pupils? If so, have you done your best to win to attention and interest? Have you the force and decision necessary to bring the cla.s.s well under control?

6. What do you consider your chief danger points in teaching? Would it be worth while for you to have some sympathetic teacher friend visit your cla.s.s while you teach, and then later talk over with you the points in which you could improve?

FOR FURTHER READING

Bagley, Cla.s.s Room Management.

Betts, The Recitation.

Maxwell, The Observation of Teaching.

Strayer and Norsworthy, How to Teach.

Weigle, The Pupil and the Teacher.

CHAPTER X

MAKING TRUTH VIVID

Life is a great unbreakable unity. Thought, feeling, and action belong together, and to leave out one destroys the quality and significance of all. Religious growth and development involve the same mental powers that are used in the other affairs of life. The child's training in religion can advance no faster than the expansion of his grasp of thought and comprehension, the deepening of his emotions, and the strengthening of his will.

It follows from this that religious instruction must call for and use the same activities of mind that are called for in other phases of education. Not only must the feelings be reached and the emotions stirred, but the child must be taught to _think_ in his religion. Not only must trust and faith be grounded, but these must be made _intelligent_. Not only must the spirit of worship be cultivated, but the child must know Whom and why he worships. Not only must loyalties be secured, but these must grow out of a _realization of the cost and worth_ of the cause or object to which loyalty attaches. Religious teaching must therefore appeal to the _whole_ mind. Besides appealing to the emotions and will it must make use of and train the power of _thought_, of _imagination_, of _memory_; it must through their agency make truth vivid, real, and lasting, and so lay the foundation for spiritual feeling and devotion.

LEARNING TO THINK IN RELIGION

Much has been gained in teaching religion when we have brought the child to see that _understanding_, _reason_, and _common sense_ are as necessary and as possible here as in other fields of learning. This does not mean that there are not many things in religion that are beyond the grasp and comprehension of even the greatest minds, to say nothing of the undeveloped mind of the child. It means, rather, that where we fail to grasp or understand it is because of the bigness of the problem, or because of its unknowableness, and not because its solution violates the laws of thought and reason.

The reign of law, the inexorable working of cause and effect, and the application of reason to religious matters should be conveyed to the child in his earliest impressions of religion. For example, the child has learned a valuable lesson when he has comprehended that G.o.d asks obedience of his children, not just for the sake of compelling obedience, but because obedience to G.o.d's law is the only way to happy and successful living. The youth has grasped a great truth when it becomes clear to his understanding that Jesus said, "To him that hath shall be given," not from any failure to sympathize with the one who might be short in his share, but _because this is the great and fundamental law of being_ to which even Jesus himself was subject; and that when Paul said, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,"

he was not exacting an arbitrary penalty, but expressing the inevitable working of a great law. The boy who defined faith as "believing something you know can't be true" had been badly taught concerning faith.

Religious truth does not contradict reason.--To begin with, while all of us come to believe many things that we cannot fully understand, not even the child should be asked to believe what plainly contradicts common sense and so puts too great a strain on credulity. In a certain Sunday school cla.s.s the lesson was about Peter going up on the housetop to pray, and the vision that befell him there. This cla.s.s of boys, living in a small village, had had no experience with any kind of housetop except that formed of a sharply sloping roof. Therefore the story looked improbable to them, and one boy asked how Peter could sleep up on the roof and keep from falling off. The teacher, also uninformed concerning the flat roofs of Oriental houses, answered, "John, you must remember that with G.o.d all things are possible." And John had that day had the seeds of skepticism planted in his inquiring mind. Another teacher, thinking to allay any tendency on the part of his cla.s.s to question the literal accuracy of the story of Jonah and the whale, said, "This story is in the Bible, and we must believe it, for whatever is in the Bible is true; and if the Bible were to say that Jonah swallowed the whale that would be true, and we would have to believe that also." But who can doubt that, with boys and girls trained in the schools and by their contact with life itself to think, such an invitation to lay aside all reason and common sense can do other in the long run than to weaken confidence in the Bible, and so lessen the significance of many of its beautiful lessons?