Serial Teaching
There are short-story writers who are able to hold our attention
charmingly for an episode, and there are other minds which are able to
lead us entranced through the varied scenes of a long serial. So also
there is short-story Sunday-school teaching and serial Sunday-school
teaching. Short-story teaching treats each lesson as a separate unit;
serial teaching considers each lesson a part only of a great, united
whole.
Short-story teaching is far easier than serial teaching. It is
concerned with but one set of circumstances, persons, and principles.
For the serial teacher, on the contrary, every lesson must include a
review and a prospectus. He must learn to see things in their
relations. He must have a good memory, and a better imagination, to
make his memory buoyant. This is not easy; and therefore it is that
short-story teaching is much commoner than serial teaching.
And yet serial teaching is the right kind of teaching, for the
following reasons. Just as a fine serial story adds to the enthusiasm
for good numbers of a periodical, and tides over poor numbers, so, if
you can get up a serial interest in your teaching, it will increase
the interest of the good days, and will tide over with full seats and
bright eyes the rainy, or cold, or hot, or sleepy days.
Besides, Christianity is a whole, and each of its many parts
interdependent. We must not teach it, therefore, as if it were a
patchwork, capable of being taken apart and put together as men will.
We do wrong to the great system we teach, if our lessons do not leave
the impression of a vast, coherent fabric,--too vast for one lesson to
disclose, too coherent for one lesson to stand out apart.
Besides, however our lessons may change, our scholars are still the
same; and this continuity of listeners should impart a serial interest
to the teaching. Cause the scholars to feel that each lesson is to
make definite contribution to their growth in knowledge and character.
It won't hurt them if they are as mechanical about it as Peter, and
enumerate, lesson after lesson, as in the apostle's famous
addition-table, the virtues those lessons may add to their lives.
For these three reasons, then, our teaching should contain some strong
element of serial interest. Many teachers err in using only one sort
of connecting link, year in, year out, and are as likely to fail as
the periodical which always prints serial stories of the same kind of
plot, scenes, and characters. I will mention several serial elements
which a wise teacher will use in turn, holding to one long enough for
profit, but not too long for interest.
In the first place, it is often well to make the serial biographical.
Your serial has then a hero. Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Saul, David,
Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Daniel, John, Peter, Paul, Mary,--what glorious
groups of chapters these names bind together! If we are zealous,
patient, and imaginative, we can easily, with this magnificent material,
construct for our classes serials whose absorbing interest will vie with
any in their pet weekly story-paper. We can lead them to eager study of
a man's development in character and in fortune.
At other times it is better to trust for the serial interest to
history,--to study the evolution of a nation as before of a man. The
wondrous tale of the rise of the Hebrews from Abraham, their
metamorphosis under Moses, their consolidation under judges, their
expansion under kings, their division, their downfall, their
restoration, their subjugation, their new birth in Him who was before
Abraham,--this story may be made to have a deep and constant serial
interest.
Of course, with either the biographical or historical serial plan, great
pains must be taken with that bugbear of the average teacher,--what the
lesson-helps call intervening events, but many a scholar calls
intervening mystifications. Often fully half the lesson-time should be
given to them. Usually the antecedents they contain are absolutely
necessary for an understanding of the lesson,--text, persons, and
principles. With them you teach history; without, episodes. They mean
work, to be sure; but all unifying and solidifying means work.
At still other times or with other classes it is well to let the
serial interest center around principles. Treat one group of lessons
as illustrating the manly or unmanly qualities; consider another group
primarily as a commentary on truth and falsehood; let your binding
topic for another set be "What is True Religion?" "Sin and Salvation,"
"Serving and Served," "Success and Failure,"--how many lessons could
be clustered naturally about these topics! Children are
characteristically philosophers, and a treatment of Sunday-school
lessons as illustrating different phases of some great truth is a
method very attractive to them. "What does the Bible teach about
truth-telling, about penalty for sin, about the conditions of
happiness?" Sunday-school scholars should be ready to answer such
questions, not by haphazard impromptus, but by a careful presentation
of events, characters, and sayings bearing on each point, and
representing the whole Bible.
Another excellent way of binding lessons together is by the scholars
themselves. As I said, however the lessons change, the scholars remain
the same, with the same prominent troubles, faults, and needs. Both
they and you should know what these are. I often have scholars who
bring up, Sunday after Sunday, in connection with topics the most
diverse, the same questions, which are evidently stumbling-blocks to
their minds and lives. These are usually practical matters wherein the
Christian imperatives are strangely incongruous with worldly habits,
such as the choice of a calling, absolute frankness of speech, public
testimony for Christ, the careful observance of the Sabbath, sharp
competition in trade. These are too big questions to be settled in a
few minutes, and young folks who are seized by them in earnest have
found for themselves a serial interest which will last for some time.
If we cannot take advantage of such a linking which our scholars
discover for themselves, we can always bind lessons together by our
own knowledge of our scholars' needs. If you have a young man in your
class to whom the skepticism of the times is alluring, let him find
something faith-inspiring and confirmatory of belief in every lesson.
If you have a young girl burdened with sick-room duties and home cares
beyond her strength, let her know that each lesson will bring her
fresh energy and comfort. You need not tell your scholars that you
know their struggles. Enough that you do know them, and link lesson to
lesson for them in sweet chains of love and helpfulness.
When, by any of the four methods I have outlined, you thus establish a
bond between your lessons, you have gained two great advantages
besides the serial interest which you have aroused. In the first
place, you study the Bible as a whole, not by extracts. You learn to
interpret one portion by another. You find out the fallacy of
fragments. You perceive that Christianity is a system, and not an
anthology. In the second place, you have solved the review problem,
for every lesson is now a review. If you were required to remember, in
order, twelve words chosen at random, you would find it somewhat
difficult; but it would be easy enough if those twelve words were
arranged in a sentence. Serial teaching is building up a sentence, and
the review is merely repeating that sentence. A serial teacher has no
fear of review day. The short-story teacher is compelled to find for
that day a new short story.
Now, have I not reserved mention of the one great tie of all our
teaching? Whether Old Testament or New, history, prophecy, proverbs,
or psalms, it is all one continued story, and the hero is Christ. By
whatever unifying principle we group our lessons together, Christ
unifies the groups. Year in, year out, if Christ is at the heart of
our teaching, that teaching is consecutive, serial, solid. Without
him, it is disjointed, fragmentary, frail. Not retracting a word I
have written about the value of these other methods of arousing
continued interest, yet it must be said that they are all worthless
without Christ. In him each several building, fitly framed together,
groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.