How to Teach Religion Part 3

There is, therefore, no abstract truth for truth's sake. Just as all our culture material--our science, our literature, our body of religious truth--had its rise out of the experience of men engaged in the great business of living, so all this material must go back to life for its meaning and significance. The science we teach in our schools attains its end, not when it is learned as a group of facts, but when it has been _set at work_ by those who learn it to the end that they live better, happier, and more fruitful lives. The literature we offer our children has fulfilled its purpose, not when they have studied the mechanism of its structure, read its pages, or committed to memory its lines, but when its glowing ideals and high aspirations have been _realized in the lives_ of those who learn it.

And so this also holds for the Bible and its religious truth. Its rich lessons full of beautiful meaning may be recited and its choicest verses stored in the memory and still be barren of results, except as they are put to the test and find expression in living experience. The only true test of learning a thing is _whether the learner lives it_. The only true test of the value of what one learns is the extent to which it affects his daily life. The value of our teaching is therefore always to be measured by the degree to which it finds expression in the lives of our pupils. _John_, not grammar (nor even the Bible), is the true objective of our teaching.

EFFECT OF THE OBJECTIVE ON OUR TEACHING

Not only will this point of view vitalize our teaching for the pupils, but it will also save it from becoming commonplace and routine for ourselves. This truth is brought out in a conversation that occurred between an old schoolmaster and his friend, a business man.

The true objective saves from the rut of routine.--Said the business man, "Do you teach the same subjects year after year?"

The schoolmaster replied that he did.

"Do you not finally come to know this material all by heart, so that it is old to you?" asked the friend.

The schoolmaster answered that such was the case.

"And yet you must keep going over the same ground, cla.s.s after cla.s.s and year after year!" exclaimed the business man.

The schoolmaster admitted that it was so.

"Then," said his friend, "I should think that you would tire beyond endurance of the old facts, and grow weary beyond expression of repeating them after the charm of novelty and newness has gone. How do you live through the sameness and grind?"

"You forget one thing!" exclaimed the old schoolmaster, who had learned the secret of the _great objective_. "You forget that I am not really teaching that old subject matter at all; I am teaching _living boys and girls!_ The matter I teach may become familiar. It may have lost the first thrill of novelty. But the _boys and girls are always new_; their hearts and minds are always fresh and inviting; their lives are always open to new impressions, and their feet ready to be turned in new directions. The old subject matter is but the means by which I work upon this living material that comes to my cla.s.sroom from day to day. I should no more think of growing tired of it than the musician would think of growing tired of his violin."

And so the schoolmaster's friend was well answered.

Unsafe measures of success.--It is possible to lodge much subject matter in the mind which, once there, does not function. It is possible to teach many facts which play no part in shaping the ideals, quickening the enthusiasms, or directing the conduct. And all mental material which lies dead and unused is but so much rubbish and lumber of the mind.

It plays no part in the child's true education, and it dulls the edge of the learner's interest and his enjoyment of the school and its instruction.

It is possible to have the younger children in our Sunday schools from week to week and still fail to secure sufficient hold on them so that they continue to come after they have reached the age of deciding for themselves. The proof of this is all too evident in the relatively small proportion of youth in our church-school cla.s.ses between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.

It is possible to offer the child lessons from the Bible throughout all the years of childhood, and yet fail to ground sufficient interest in the Bible or religion so that in later years the man or woman naturally turns to the Bible for guidance or comfort, and fails to make religion the determining principle of the life.

The child the only true measure of success.--Let us therefore be sure of our objective. Let us never be proud nor satisfied that we have taught our cla.s.s so much _subject matter_--so many facts, maxims, or lessons of whatever kind. We shall need to teach them all these things, and teach them well. But we must inquire further. We must ask, What have these things _done_ for the boys and girls of my cla.s.s? What has been the outcome of my teaching? How much effect has it had in life, character, conduct? In how far are my pupils different for having been in my cla.s.s, and for the lessons I have taught them? In how far have I accomplished the _true objective_ of my teaching?

Let us never feel secure merely because the children are found in the Sunday school, and because the statistical reports show increase in numbers and in average attendance. These things are all well; without them we cannot do the work which the church should do for its children.

But these are but the externals, the outward signs. We must still inquire what real influence the school is having on the growing spiritual life of its children. We must ask what part our instruction is having in the making of Christians. We must measure all our success in terms of the child's response to our efforts. We must realize that we have failed except as we have caused the child's spiritual nature to unfold and his character to grow toward the Christ ideal.

1. As you think of your own teaching, are you able to decide whether you have been sufficiently clear in your objective? Have you rather _a.s.sumed_ that if you presented the lessons as they came the results must of necessity follow, or have you been alive to the real effects on your pupils?

2. Are you able to discover definite changes that are working out in the lives of your pupils from month to month as you have them under your instruction? Are they more reverent, more truthful, more sure against temptation, increasingly conscious of G.o.d in their lives? What other effects might you look for?

3. Do you think that the church is in some degree overlooking its most strategic opportunity in not providing more efficiently for the religious education of its children? If more attention were given to religious nurture of children, would the problems of evangelism be less pressing, and a larger proportion of adults found in the church? What can the church school do to help? What can your cla.s.s do?

4. Do you love the matter that you seek to teach the children? Do you love it for what it means to you, or for what through it you can do for them? Do you look upon the material you teach truly as a means and not as an end? Are you teaching subject matter or children?

5. Do you feel the real worth and dignity of childhood? Do you sometimes stop to remember that the ignorant child before you to-day may become the Phillips Brooks, the Henry Ward Beecher, the Livingstone, the Frances Willard, the Luther of to-morrow? Do you realize the responsibility that one takes upon himself when he undertakes to guide the development of a life?

6. Can you now make a statement of the measures that you will wish to apply to determine your degree of success as a teacher? It will be worth your while to try to make a list of the immediate objectives you will seek for your cla.s.s to attain in their personal lives. Keep this list and see whether it is modified by the chapters that lie ahead.

FOR FURTHER READING

Harrison, A Study of Child Nature.

Moxcey, Girlhood and Character.

Dawson, The Child and His Religion.

Forbush, The Boy Problem.

Richardson (Editor), The American Home Series.

Richardson, Religious Education of Adolescents.

CHAPTER III

THE FOURFOLD FOUNDATION[1]

[1] The point of view and in some degree the outlines of this and several following chapters have been adapted from the author's text "Cla.s.s-Room Method and Management," by permission of the publishers, _The Bobbs-Merrill Co._, Indianapolis.

All good teaching rests on a fourfold foundation of principles. These principles are the same from the kindergarten to the university, and they apply equally to the teaching of religion in the church school or subjects in the day school. Every teacher must answer four questions growing out of these principles, or, failing to answer them, cla.s.sify himself with the unworthy and incompetent. These are the four supreme questions:

1. What definite _aims_ have I set as the goal of my teaching? What _outcomes_ do I seek?

2. What _material_, or _subject matter_, will best accomplish these aims? What shall I stress and what shall I omit?

3. How can this material best be _organized_, or arranged, to adapt it to the child in his learning? How shall I plan my material?

4. What shall be my plan or _method of presentation_ of this material to make it achieve its purpose? What of my technique of instruction?

THE AIM IN TEACHING RELIGION

First of all, the teacher of religion must _have_ an aim; he must know what ends he seeks to accomplish. Some statistically minded person has computed that, with all the marvelous accuracy of aiming modern guns, more than one thousand shots are fired for every man hit in battle. One cannot but wonder how many shots would be required to hit a man if the guns were not aimed at anything!

Is the a.n.a.logy too strong? Is the teacher more likely than the gunner to reach his objective without consciously aiming at it? And can the teacher set up for attainment as definite aims as are offered the gunner? Do we _know_ just what ends we seek in the religious training of our children?

Life itself sets the aim.--This much at least is certain. We know _where to look for_ the aims that must guide us. We shall not try to formulate an aim for our teaching out of our own thought or reasoning upon the subject. We shall rather look out upon life, the life the child is now living and the later life he is to live, and ask: "_What are the demands that life makes on the individual?_ What is the equipment this child will need as he meets the problems and tests of experience in the daily round of living? What qualities and powers will he require that he may the most fully realize his own potentialities and at the same time most fruitfully serve his generation? What abilities must he have trained in order that he may the most completely express G.o.d's plan for his life?" When we can answer such questions as these we shall have defined the aim of religious education and of our teaching.

The knowledge aim.--First of all, life demands _knowledge_. There are things that we must know if we are to avoid dangers and pitfalls.

Knowledge shows the way, while ignorance shrouds the path in darkness.

To be without knowledge is to be as a s.h.i.+p without a rudder, left to drift on the rocks and shoals. The religious life is intelligent; it must grasp, understand, and know how to use many great truths. To supply our children with _religious knowledge_ is, therefore, one of the chief aims of our teaching.

Yet not all knowledge is of equal worth. Even religious knowledge is of all degrees of fruitfulness. Some knowledge, once acquired, fails to function. It has no point of contact with our lives. It does not deal with matters we are meeting in the day's round of experience. It therefore lies in the mind unused, or, because it is not used, it quickly pa.s.ses from the memory and is gone. Such knowledge as this is of no real value. It is not worth the time and effort put upon its mastery; and it crowds out other and more fruitful knowledge that might take its place.