How to Teach Religion Part 5

PRESENTING THE LESSON--INSTRUCTION

After the aim has been clearly conceived, and after the lesson material has been wisely chosen and properly organized, there still remains the most important part--that of "getting the lesson across" to the cla.s.s.

Many a valuable lesson, full of helpfulness, has been lost to the pupils because the teacher lacked the power to bring his cla.s.s to the right pitch for receiving and retaining impressions. Many a cla.s.s period has been wasted because the teacher failed to present the material of the lesson so that it gripped interest and compelled attention.

Response a test of instruction.--The _first_ test of good instruction is the _response of the cla.s.s_. Are the children alert? Are they keen for discussion, or for listening to stories told or applications made?

Do they think? Do they enjoy the lesson hour, and give themselves happily and whole-heartedly to it? Is their conduct good, and their att.i.tude serious, reverent, and attentive? Are they all "in the game,"

or are there laggards, inattentive ones, and mischief-makers?

These questions are all crucial. For the first law of all learning is _self-activity_. There is no possibility of teaching a child who is not mentally awake. Only the active mind grasps, a.s.similates, remembers, applies. The birth of new ideas, the reaching of convictions, the arriving at decisions all come in moments of mental stress and tension.

Lethargy of thought and feeling is fatal to all cla.s.sroom achievement.

Therefore, no matter how keenly alert the teacher's mind may be, no matter how skillful his a.n.a.lysis of an important truth may be if his cla.s.s sit with flagging interest and lax attention.

Results a test of instruction.--The _second_ test of good instruction is our skill in handling the material of the lesson, and _shaping the trend of thought and discussion_. Are the children interested in the right things? Are the central truths of the lesson being brought out and applied? Is the discussion centered on topics set for our consideration, or does it degenerate into aimless talk on matters of personal or local interest which have no relation to the lesson? In short, does the recitation period yield the _fruitful knowledge_ we had set as a goal for this lesson? Does it stimulate the _att.i.tudes_ and motives we had meant to reach? Does it lead to the _applications_ in life and conduct which were intended? _Does it get results?_

The four points of this lesson are of supreme importance in teaching religion. The _aim_ must be clear, definite, and possible of attainment.

The _subject matter_ of instruction must be wisely selected as an instrument for reaching the aim set forth. The _organization_ of this material must adapt it to the mind and needs of the child. The _presentation_ of the lesson material in the recitation must be such that its full effect is brought to bear upon the mind and heart of those we teach.

Each of these four points will be further elaborated in the chapters which follow. In fact, the remainder of the text is chiefly a working out and applying of these fundamental principles to the teaching of religion.

1. To what extent would you say you have been directing your teaching toward a definite aim? Just how does the problem of this chapter relate itself to the preceding chapter on the "Great Objective"?

2. Do you think the majority of those who have come up through the church school possess as full and definite a knowledge of the Bible and the fundamentals of religion as we have a right to expect? If not, where is the trouble and what the remedy?

3. Have you been consciously emphasizing the creation of right att.i.tudes as one of the chief outcomes of your teaching? Do you judge that you are as successful in the developing of religious att.i.tudes as in imparting information? If not, can you find a remedy?

4. To what extent do you think your instruction is actually carrying over into the immediate life and conduct of your cla.s.s in their home, school, etc.? If not to so great an extent as you could wish, are you willing to make this one of the great aims of your teaching from this time on, seeking earnestly throughout this text and in other ways to learn how this may be done?

5. Do you on the whole feel that the subject matter you are teaching your pupils is adapted to the aims you seek to reach in their lives? If not, how can you supplement and change to make it more effective? Have you a broad enough knowledge of such material yourself so that you can select material from other sources for them?

6. To what extent do you definitely plan each lesson for the particular children you teach so as to make it most accessible to their interest and grasp? Do you plan each lesson to secure a psychological mode of approach? How do you know when you have a psychological approach?

FOR FURTHER READING

Betts, Cla.s.s-Room Method and Management, Part I.

Coe, A Social Theory of Religious Education, Part II.

DuBois, The Point of Contact in Teaching.

CHAPTER IV

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH

The child comes into the world devoid of all knowledge and understanding. His mind, though at the beginning a blank, is a potential seedbed in which we may plant what teachings we will. The babe born into our home to-day can with equal ease be made into a Christian, a Buddhist, or a Mohammedan. He brings with him the instinct to respond to the appeal religion makes to his life, but the kind and quality of his religion will depend largely on the religious atmosphere he breathes and the religious ideas and concepts placed in his mind through instruction and training.

What, then, shall we teach our children, in religion? If fruitful knowledge is to be one of the chief aims of our teaching, _what_ knowledge shall we call fruitful? What are the great foundations on which a Christian life must rest? Years ago Spencer wrote a brilliant essay on _knowledge of most worth_ in the field of general education.

What knowledge is of most worth in the field of religious education? For not all knowledge, as we have seen, is of equal value. Some religious knowledge is fruitful because it _can be set at work_ to shape our att.i.tudes and guide our acts; other religious knowledge is relatively fruitless because it _finds no point of contact_ with experience.

To answer our question we must therefore ask: "What knowledge will serve to guide the child's foot-steps aright from day to day as he pa.s.ses through his childhood? What truths will even now, while he is still a child, awaken his spiritual appreciation and touch the springs of his emotional response to the heavenly Father? What religious concepts, once developed, will lead the youth into a rich fullness of personal experience and develop in him the will and capacity to serve others?

What religious knowledge will finally make most certain a life of loyalty to the church and the great cause for which it stands?" When we can answer these questions we shall then be able to say what knowledge is of most worth in the religious training of our children.

THE CHILD'S CONCEPT OF G.o.d

The child must come to know about G.o.d, even as a little child. Long before he can understand about _religion_, he can learn about a heavenly Father. This does not imply that the child (or that we ourselves!) can know G.o.d in any full or complete way. Indeed, a G.o.d who could be known in his entirety by even the deepest and wisest finite mind would be no G.o.d at all. Yet everyone must give some meaning to G.o.d. Everyone does have some more or less definite idea, image, or mental picture of the G.o.d he thinks about, prays to, and worships.

The child's idea of G.o.d develops gradually.--We need not be concerned that G.o.d does not mean the same to the child with his mental limitations that he means to us. Meaning comes only out of experience, and this will grow. The great thing is that the child's fundamental concept of G.o.d shall start right, that in so far as it goes it shall be essentially true, and that it shall be clear and definite enough to guide his actions. More than this we cannot ask for; less than this does not give the child a G.o.d real enough to be a vital factor and an active force in his life.

It is to be expected, then, that the child's earliest concepts of G.o.d will be faulty and incomplete, and that in many points they will later need correction. Probably most children first think of G.o.d as having human form and attributes; the idea of spirit is beyond their grasp. G.o.d is to them a kind of magnified and glorified Father after the type of their earthly father. This need not concern us if we make sure that the crude beginnings of the G.o.d-idea have no disturbing elements in them, and that as the concept grows it moves in the right direction.

The harm from false concepts.--Mr. H.G. Wells[2] bitterly complains against the wrong concept of G.o.d that was allowed to grow in his mind as a child. These are his words: "He and his h.e.l.l were the nightmare of my childhood.... I thought of him as a fantastic monster perpetually waiting to condemn and to strike me dead!... He was over me and about my silliness and forgetfulness as the sky and sea would be about a child drowning in mid-Atlantic." It was only as the child grew into youth, and was able to discard this false idea of G.o.d that he came to feel right toward him.

[2] G.o.d the Invisible King, p. 44.

The harm done a child by false and disturbing concepts of G.o.d is hard to estimate. A small boy recently came home from Sunday school and confided to his mother that he "didn't think it was fair for G.o.d to spy on a fellow!" A sympathetic inquiry by the mother revealed the fact that the impression brought from the lesson hour was of G.o.d keeping a lookout for our wrongdoings and sins, and constantly making a record of them against us, as an unsympathetic teacher might in school. The beneficent and watchful oversight and care of G.o.d had not entered into the concept.

It is clear that with this wrong understanding of G.o.d's relation to him the child's att.i.tude and the response of his heart toward G.o.d could not be right. The lesson hour which left so false an impression of G.o.d in the child's mind did him lasting injury instead of good.

How wrong concepts may arise.--Pierre Loti tells in his reminiscences of his own child-life how he went out into the back yard and threw stones at G.o.d because it had rained and spoiled the picnic day. In his teaching, G.o.d had been made responsible for the weather, and the boy had come to look upon prayer as a means of getting what he wanted from G.o.d.

It took many years of experience to rid the child's mind of the last vestiges of these false ideas. The writer recalls a troublesome idea of G.o.d that inadvertently secured lodgment in his own mind through the medium of a picture in his first geography. In the section on China was the representation of a horrid, malignant looking idol underneath which was printed the words, "A G.o.d." For many years the image of this picture was a.s.sociated with the thought of G.o.d, and made it hard to respond to the concept of G.o.d's beauty, goodness, and kindness.

Wrong concepts of G.o.d may leave positive antagonisms which require years to overcome. A little girl of nearly four years had just lost her father. She did not understand the funeral and the flowers and the burial. She came to her mother in the evening and asked where her papa was. The stricken mother replied that "G.o.d had taken him."

"But when is he coming back?" asked the child.

The mother answered that he could not come back.

"Not ever?" persisted the child.

"Not ever," whispered the mother.

"Won't G.o.d let him?" asked the relentless questioner.

The heart-broken mother hesitated for a word of wisdom, but finally answered, "No, G.o.d will not let him come back to us."

Care and wisdom needed.--And in that moment the harm was done. The child had formed a wrong concept of G.o.d as one who would willfully take away her father and not let him return. She burst out in a fit of pa.s.sion: "I don't like G.o.d! He takes my papa and keeps him away."

That night she refused to say her prayer, and for weeks remained rebellious and unforgiving toward the G.o.d whom she accused of having robbed her of her father. How should the mother have answered her child's question? I cannot tell in just what words, but the words in which we answer the child's questions must be chosen with such infinite care and wisdom that bitterness shall not take the place which love toward G.o.d should occupy in the heart.

Another typical difficulty is that children are often led to think of G.o.d as a distant G.o.d. A favorite Sunday school hymn sings of "G.o.d above the great blue sky." To many children G.o.d is "in heaven," and heaven is localized at an immeasurable distance. Hence the fact of G.o.d's nearness is wholly missed. Children come to think of G.o.d as seated on a great white throne, an aged, austere, and severe Person, more an object of fear than of love. And then we tell the children that they "must love G.o.d," forgetting that love never comes from a sense of duty or compulsion, but springs, when it appears, spontaneously from the heart because it is compelled by lovable traits and appealing qualities in the one to be loved!

The concept of G.o.d which the child needs.--The concept of G.o.d which the child first needs, therefore, is G.o.d as loving Father, expecting obedience and trust from his children; G.o.d as inviting Friend; G.o.d as friendly Protector; G.o.d ever near at hand; G.o.d who can understand and sympathize with children and enter into their joys and sorrows; G.o.d as Creator, in the sunshine and the flowers; but above all, G.o.d filling the heart with love and gladness. The concept which the child needs of Jesus is of his surpa.s.sing goodness, his unselfish courage, and his loving service. All religious teaching which will lead to such concepts as these is grounding the child in knowledge that is rich and fruitful, for it is making G.o.d and Christ _real_ to him. All teaching which leads to false concepts is an obstacle in the way of spiritual development.