How to Teach Religion Part 7

3. Just what does religion seem to you to be? Is it largely a way of living or a set of conventions and restraints? How did religion appeal to you in your childhood? Are you able to tell how the children of your cla.s.s understand religion? What definite help are you giving them toward broadening and enriching their concept of religion? Are you leading them to see that religion is a way of living the day's life?

4. To what extent do you feel that you really know the Bible? Could you give a sketch of twenty of its leading characters, describing the strengths and weaknesses of character of each? Could you describe the great biblical events, and draw the lessons they teach? Could you compare and characterize the Hebrew religion and the religion of Jesus? Are the pupils in your cla.s.s going to be able from the work of the church school to answer favorably these and similar questions?

5. We expect good citizens to know something of the history of their country and their commonwealth. Is it too much to ask members of the Christian Church to have the same information about the church? Could you pa.s.s a fair examination on the history and achievements of the church? Of your own particular church? Are the children of your church school growing in this knowledge? The children of your cla.s.s?

6. To what extent do the children of your cla.s.s know the hymns of the church? Is care taken to give them such hymns as are suited to their age? Are worthy hymns taught them, or the silly rimes found in many church song books? (This does not mean that children should be taught music beyond their comprehension; there is much good music suited to different ages.) Are your children having an opportunity to know the great religious pictures? Religious architecture? (Here also the work must be adapted to the age.)

FOR FURTHER READING

Coe, Education in Religion and Morals.

Brown, The Modern Man's Religion, chapter on "The Use of the Bible."

Fosd.i.c.k, The Manhood of the Master.

Weld and Conant, Songs for Little People.

Bailey, The Gospel in Art.

CHAPTER V

RELIGIOUS ATt.i.tUDES TO BE CULTIVATED

Life never stands still; especially does the life of the child never stand still. It is always advancing, changing, reconstructing. Starting with an unripe brain, and with no fund of knowledge or expression, the child in the first few years of his life makes astonishing progress. By the time he is three years old he has learned to understand and speak a difficult language. He knows the names and uses of hundreds of objects about him. He has acquaintance with a considerable number of people, and has learned to adapt himself to their ways. He has gained much information about every phase of his environment which directly touches his life--his mastery of knowledge has grown apace, without rest or pause.

Nor does the development of what we have called _att.i.tudes_ lag behind.

Parallel with growth in the child's knowledge, his interests are taking root; his ideals are shaping; his standards are developing; his enthusiasms are kindling; his loyalties are being grounded. These changes go on whether we will or not--just because life and growth can not be stopped. The great question that confronts teacher and parent is whether through guidance, that is through education, we shall be able to say _what_ att.i.tudes shall arise and _what_ motives shall come to rule, rather than to leave this all-important matter to chance or to influence hostile to the child's welfare.

The teacher of religion, like all other teachers, must meet two distinct though related problems in the cultivating of att.i.tudes. These are:

1. _The creation of an immediate or direct set of att.i.tudes toward the school and its work._ This is needed to motivate effort and insure right impressions.

2. _The development of a far-reaching set of att.i.tudes that will carry out from the cla.s.sroom into the present and future life of the pupil._ This is needed as a guide and stimulus to spiritual growth, and as a foundation for character.

ATt.i.tUDES TOWARD THE SCHOOL AND ITS WORK

The older view of education sought to drive the child to effort and secure results through pain and compulsion. It was believed that the pathway to learning must of necessity be dreary and strewn with hardships, if, indeed, not freely watered with the tears of childhood.

Now we know better. A knowledge of child psychology and a more sympathetic insight into child nature have shown us that instead of external compulsion we must get hold of the inner springs of action. No mind can exert its full power unless the driving force comes from _within_. The capacities implanted in the child at his birth do not reach full fruition except when freely and gladly used because their use is a pleasure and satisfaction. If worthy results are to be secured, the _whole self_ must be called into action under the stimulus of willingness, desire, and complete a.s.sent of the inner self to the tasks imposed. There must be no lagging, nor holding back, nor partial use of powers.

Religious education is, therefore, not simply a question of getting our children into the church schools. That is easy. Parents who themselves do not attend feel that they have more fully done their duty by their children if they send them to the Sunday school. After securing the attendance of the children the great question still remains--that of the _response_, their att.i.tude toward the activities of the school, the completeness with which they give themselves to its work.

A friend who is a State inspector of public schools tells me that the first thing he looks for when he visits a school is the _school spirit_, the att.i.tude of the pupils toward their teachers and the work of the school. If this is good, there is a foundation upon which to build fruitful work; if the spirit is bad, there is no possibility that the work of the school can be up to standard. For it is out of the schoolroom spirit, the cla.s.sroom att.i.tudes, that the effort necessary to growth and achievement must come.

The spirit of the cla.s.sroom.--_Do the children enjoy the lesson hour?_ The first of the motivating conditions to seek for our cla.s.sroom is a prevailing att.i.tude of happiness, good cheer, enjoyment. These are the natural attributes and att.i.tudes of childhood. Unhappiness is an abnormal state for the child. The child's nature unfolds and his mind expands normally only when in an atmosphere of sympathy, kindness, and good feeling. Our pupils must enjoy what they are doing, if they are to give themselves whole-heartedly to it. If loyalty to the school and the church is to result, they must not feel that the Sunday school hour is a drag and a bore. If such is the case, they cannot be expected to carry away lasting impressions for good. They must not look upon attendance as an imposition, nor wait with eager impatience for the closing gong.

While loyalty should be permeated by a sense of duty and obligation, and even of self-sacrifice, it cannot rest on this alone. Most children and youth are loyal to their homes; but this loyalty rests chiefly on a sentiment formed from day to day and year to year out of the satisfying experiences connected with the love, care, protection, and a.s.sociations of the home. Let these happy, satisfying home experiences be lacking, and loyalty to the home fails or loses its fine quality.

In similar way, if the experiences in the Sunday school and the church continuously yield satisfaction, enjoyment, and good feeling, the child's loyalty and devotion are a.s.sured; if, on the other hand, these experiences come to be a.s.sociated with dislike, reluctance, and aversion, loyalty is in danger of breaking under the strain.

The response of interest.--_Are the children interested?_ While, as we have seen, the atmosphere or spirit of the cla.s.sroom supplies the condition necessary to successful work, interest supplies the motive force. For interest is the mainspring of action. A child may politely listen, or from a sense of courtesy or good will sit quietly pa.s.sive and not disturb others, but this does not meet the requirement. His thought, interest, and enthusiasm must be centered on the matter in hand. He must withdraw his attention from all wandering thoughts, pa.s.sing fancies, distracting surroundings, and concentrate upon the lesson itself. There is no subst.i.tute for this. There is no possibility of making lasting impressions on a mind with its energies dispersed through lack of attention. And there is no possibility of securing fruitful attention without interest.

Interest therefore becomes a primary consideration in our teaching of religion. The teacher must constantly ask himself: "What is the state of my pupils' interest? How completely am I commanding their enthusiasm?

Suppose I were to grade them on a scale with _complete-indifference_ as the interest zero, and with the _'exploding-point'-of-enthusiasm_ as the highest interest mark, where would the score mark of my cla.s.s stand? And if I cannot reasonably hope to keep my cla.s.s at the high-water mark of interest at all times, what shall I call an attainable standard? If one hundred per cent is to represent the supreme achievement of interest, shall I be satisfied with fifty per cent, with twenty-five per cent, or with complete indifference? If the minds of my pupils can receive and retain lasting impressions only under the stimulus of the higher range of interest, in how far am I now making lasting impressions on my cla.s.s?

In short, _is the interest att.i.tude of my cla.s.s as good as I can make it?_"

The sense of victory.--_Is there a feeling of confidence and mastery?_ Do the children _understand_ what they are asked to learn? Without this the att.i.tude toward the cla.s.s hour cannot be good, for the mind is always ill at ease when forced to work upon matter it cannot grasp nor a.s.similate. Nor is it possible to secure full effort without a reasonable degree of mastery. The feeling of confidence and a.s.surance that comes from successful achievement increases the amount of power available. The victorious army or the winning football team is always more formidable than the same organization when oppressed and disheartened by continued defeat.

If the task is interesting, children do not ask that it shall be easy.

Once catch their enthusiasm and they will exert their powers to the full, and take joy in the effort. But the effort must be accompanied by a sense of victory and achievement. There must always be immediately ahead the possibility of winning over the difficulties of their lessons.

Except in rare moments of emotional exaltation the most heroic of us are not capable of hurling our best strength against obstacles upon whose resistance we make no impression. And the child possesses almost none of this quality. Without a measurable degree of success in what he attempts to learn his _morale_ suffers, enthusiasm fails, and discouragement creeps in to sap his powers.

Kept in the presence of mental tasks he cannot master nor understand, the child will soon lose interest and antic.i.p.ation in his work. Without mastery intellectual defeat comes to be accepted and expected, and the child forms the fatal habit of submission and giving up. Because he expects defeat from the lesson before him, the learner is already defeated; because he has not learned to look for victory in his study, he will never find it.

Preventing the habit of defeat.--This is all to say that in teaching the child religion we must not constantly confront him with matter that is beyond his grasp and understanding. That we are doing this in some of our lesson systems there can be no doubt. The result is seen in the child's hazy and indefinite ideas about religion; in a later astonishing lack of interest in the problems of religion on the part of adults; in the child's unwillingness to undertake the study of his lessons for the Sunday school; in the fact that to many children the Sunday school lesson hour is a task and a bore; and in the fact that the Sunday school does not in a large degree continue to hold the loyalty of its members after they have reached the age of deciding for themselves whether they will attend. _Fundamental to all successful cla.s.sroom results with children are enjoyment, interest, and mastery._ How these are to be secured will be developed further as the text proceeds.

ATt.i.tUDES THAT CARRY INTO LIFE BEYOND THE SCHOOL

The great problem of every teacher is to make sure that the effects of his instruction reach beyond the cla.s.sroom. While the immediate att.i.tudes of the cla.s.sroom are the first great care, they are but the beginning. Growing out of the work of the church school must be a more permanent set of att.i.tudes that underlie life itself, give foundation to character, and in large degree determine the trend and outcome of achievement. _The cultivation of moral and religious att.i.tudes is probably the most important aim for the Sunday school._ As already explained, the word "att.i.tudes" is used to cover a considerable number of qualities and attributes.

A continuing interest in the Bible and religion.--On the whole, people do not concern themselves about what they are not interested in. They do not read the books, study the pictures, go to hear the speakers, or busy themselves with problems to which their interest does not directly and immediately lead them. A fine sense of duty and obligation is all very well, but it never can take the place of interest as a dynamic force in life.

The number of Bibles sold every year would lead one to suppose that our people are great students of the Scriptures. Yet the almost universal ignorance of the Bible proves that it is one thing to own a Bible, and quite another thing to read it. We may buy the Bible because other people own Bibles, because we believe in its principles, and because it seems altogether desirable to have the Bible among our collection of books. But the extent to which we _read_ the Bible depends on our interest in it and the truths with which it deals.

Nor should we forget that, while the United States is rightly counted as one of the great Christian nations, only about two out of five of our people are members of Christian churches. It is true that this proportion would be considerably increased if all churches admitted the younger children to membership; but even making allowance for this fact, it is evident that a great task still confronts the church in interesting our own millions in religion in such a way that they shall take part in its organized activities.

Let each teacher of religion therefore ask himself: "To what extent am I grounding in my pupils a _permanent and continuing interest_ in the Bible and in the Christian religion? Growing out of lessons I teach these children are they coming to _like_ the Bible? will they want to know more about it? will they turn to it naturally as a matter of course because they have found it interesting and helpful? will they care enough for it through the years to search for its deeper meanings and for its hidden beauties? and because of this will they build the strength and inspiration of the Bible increasingly into their lives?"

And, further: "Are my pupils developing a _growing_ interest in religion? Do they increasingly find it attractive and inspiring, or is religion to them chiefly a set of restraints and prohibitions? Do they look upon religion as a means to a happier and fuller life, or as a limitation and check upon life. Is religion being revealed to them as the pearl of great price, or does it possess but little value in their standard of what is worth while?" These questions are of supreme significance, for in their right answers are the very issues of spiritual life for those we teach.

Spiritual responsiveness.--The teacher must accept responsibility for the spiritual growth as well as the intellectual training of his pupils.

There is no escape from this. We must be satisfied with nothing less than a constantly increasing consciousness of G.o.d's presence and reality in the lives of those we teach.

As the child's knowledge grows and his concept of G.o.d, develops, this should naturally and inevitably lead to an increasing warmth of att.i.tude toward G.o.d and a tendency to turn to him constantly for guidance, strength, comradeship, and forgiveness. Indeed, the cultivation of this trend of the life toward G.o.d is the supreme aim in our religious leadership of children. Without this result, whatever may have been the facts learned or the knowledge gleaned, there has been no worthy progress made in spiritual growth and development.

The evolution of spiritual responsiveness.--The realization of this new spiritual consciousness in the child's life may not involve any special nor abrupt upheaval. If the child is wisely led, and if he develops normally in his religion, it almost certainly will not.

Countless thousands of those who are living lives very full of spiritual values have come into the rich consciousness of divine relationship so gradually that the separate steps cannot be distinguished. "First the blade, then the ear, and then the full grain in the ear" is the natural law of spiritual growth.

The bearing of this truth upon our teaching is that we must seek for the unfolding of the child's spiritual nature and for the turning of his thought and affections toward G.o.d from the first. We must not point to some distant day ahead when the child will "accept Jesus" or become "a child of G.o.d." We must ourselves think of the child, and lead the child to think of himself, as a member of G.o.d's family.

This does not mean that the child, as he grows from childhood into youth and adulthood, will not need to make a personal and definite decision to give G.o.d and the Christ first place in his life; he will need to do this not once, but many times. It only means that from his earliest years the child is to be made to feel that he belongs to G.o.d, and should turn to him as Father and Friend. Day by day and week by week the child should be growing more vitally conscious of G.o.d's place in his life, and more responsive to this relationship. Only by this steady and continuous process of growth will the spiritual nature take on the depth and quality which the Christian ideal sets for its attainment.