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 God asks
obedience of his children, not just for the sake of compelling
obedience, but because obedience to God'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 class the lesson was about Peter going up on the housetop
to pray, and the vision that befell him there. This class 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 God 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 class 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?
True thinking about Bible truths.--What, then, shall we teach the
child about the literalness of the Bible? Nothing. This is not a
question for childhood. The Bible should be brought to the child in the
same spirit as any other book, except with a deep spirit of reverence
and appreciation not due other books. Parts of the Bible are plainly
history, and as accurate as history of other kinds is. Other parts are
accounts of the lives of people, and the descriptions are wonderfully
vivid and true to life. Other parts are plainly poetry, and should be
read and interpreted as poetry. Other parts are clearly the stories and
legends current in the days when the accounts were written, and should
be read as other stories and legends are read. The great question is not
the problem of the literal or the figurative nature of the truth, but
the problem of discovering for the child the _rich nugget of spiritual
wisdom which is always there_.
When the young child first hears the entrancing Bible stories he does
not think anything about their literalness; he only enjoys, and perhaps
dimly senses the hidden lesson or truth they contain. This is as it
should be. Later, when thought, judgment, and discrimination are
developing and beginning to play their part in the expanding mind,
questions are sure to arise at certain points. This is also as it should
be.
When such questions arise let us meet them frankly and wisely. Let us
have the spiritual vision and the reverence for truth that will enable
us, for example, to show the child how the servants of God in those
ancient times used the bold, picturesque figure of "feathers" and
"wings" to express the brooding love and care of God; how they told the
wonderful story of God's creation of the world in the most beautiful
account they could conceive; how they showed forth God's care for his
children, his companionship with them, and man's tendency to sin and
disobedience by one of the most beautiful stories ever written, this
story having its scene laid in the garden of Eden; how these writers
always set down what they believed to be true, and how, though they
might sometimes have been mistaken as to the actual facts, they never
missed presenting the great lesson or deep spiritual truth that God
would have us know.
Protecting the child against intellectual difficulties.--Children
taught the Bible in this reasonable but reverent way will be saved many
intellectual difficulties as they grow older. Their reverence and
respect for the Bible will never suffer from the necessity of attempting
to force their faith to accept what their intellect contradicts. They
will not be troubled by the grave doubts and misgivings which attack so
many adolescents during the time when they are working out their mental
and spiritual adjustment to the new world of individual responsibility
which they have discovered. They will, without strain or questioning,
come to accept the Bible for what it is--the great _Source Book of
spiritual wisdom_, its pages bearing the imprint of divine inspiration
and guidance, and also of human imperfections and greatness.
The developing child should, therefore, be encouraged to use his reason,
his thought, his judgment and discrimination in his study of religion
precisely as in other things. His questions should never be ignored, nor
suppressed, nor treated as something unworthy and sinful. The doubts,
even, which are somewhat characteristic of a stage of adolescent
reconstruction, may be made the stepping-stone to higher reaches of
faith and understanding.
The youth who went to his pastor with certain questionings and doubts,
and who was told that these were "the promptings of Satan," and that
they "must not be dwelt upon, but resolutely be put out of the mind,"
was not fairly nor honestly treated by one from whom he had a right to
expect wiser guidance. He returned from the interview rebellious and
bitter, and it was with much spiritual agony and sweating of blood that
he fought his own way through to a solution which ought to have been
made easy for him by wise enlightenment and sympathetic counsel.
Reverent seekers after truth.--Religion requires the mind at its best.
There is nothing about religion that will not bear full thought and
investigation. We are not asked to lay aside any part of our powers, can
not lay any part of them aside, if we would attain to full religious
growth and stature. Let us therefore train our children to _think_ as
they study religion. Let us lead them to ask and inquire. Let us train
them to investigate and test. Let us teach them that they never need be
afraid of truth, since no bit of truth ever conflicts with, or
contradicts any other truth; let us rather encourage them reverently and
with open hearts and minds diligently to seek the truth, and then _dare
to follow where it leads_.
THE APPEAL TO IMAGINATION
Imagination, the power of the mind that pictures and makes real, is a
key to vivid and lasting impressions. Unless the imagination recreates
the scenes described in the story, or vivifies the events of the lesson,
they will have little meaning to the child and appeal but little to his
interest.
It is imagination that enables its possessor to take the images
suggested in the account of a battle and build them together into the
mass of struggling soldiers, roaring cannon, whistling bullets, and
bursting shells. It is imagination that makes it possible while reading
the words of the poem to construct the picture which was in the mind of
the author as he wrote "The Village Blacksmith," the twenty-third
psalm, or "Snowbound," and thereby enables the reader himself to take
part in the throbbing scenes of life and action. Without imagination one
may repeat the words which describe an act or an event, may even commit
them to memory or pass an examination upon them, but the living reality
will forever escape him. It is imagination that will save the beautiful
stories and narratives of the Bible from being so many dead words,
without appeal to the child.
Imagination required in the study of religion.--In the teaching of
religion we are especially dependent on the child's use of his
imagination. With younger children the instruction largely takes the
form of stories, which must be appropriated and understood through the
imagination or not at all. The whole Bible account deals with people,
places, and events distant in time and strange to the child in manner of
life and customs. The Bible itself abounds in pictorial descriptions.
The missionary enterprises of the church lead into strange lands and
introduce strange people. The study of the lives and characters of great
men and women and their deeds of service in our own land takes the child
out of the range of his own immediate observation and experience. The
understanding of God and of Jesus--all of these things lose in
significance or are in large degree incomprehensible unless approached
with a vivid and glowing imagination.
Many older persons confess that the Bible times, places, and people were
all very unreal to them while in the Sunday school, and that it hardly
occurred to them that these descriptions and narratives were truly about
men and women like ourselves. Hence the most valuable part of their
instruction was lost.
Limitations of imagination.--Since childhood is the age of
imagination, we might naturally expect that it would be no trouble to
secure ready response from the child's imagination. But we must not
assume too much about the early power of imagination. It is true that
the child's imagination is _ready and active_; but it is not yet ready
for the more difficult and complex picturing we sometimes require of it,
for imagination depends for its material on the store of _images_
accumulated from former experience; and images are the result of past
observation, of percepts, and sensory experiences. The imagination can
build no mental structures without the stuff with which to build; it is
limited to the material on hand. The Indians never dreamed of a heaven
with streets of gold and a great white throne; for their experiences had
given them no knowledge of such things. They therefore made their heaven
out of the "Happy Hunting Grounds," of which they had many images.
Many Chicago school children who were asked to compare the height of a
mountain with that of a tall factory chimney said that the chimney was
higher, because the mountain "does not go straight up" like the chimney.
These children had learned and recited that a mountain "is an elevation
of land a thousand or more than a thousand feet in height," but their
imagination failed to picture the mountain, since not even the smallest
mountain nor a high hill had ever been actually present to their
observation. Small wonder, then, that Sunday school children have some
trouble, living as they do in these modern times, to picture ancient
times and peoples who were so different from any with which their
experience has had to deal!
Guiding principles.--The skillful teacher knows how to help the child
use his imagination. The following laws or principles will aid in such
training:
1. _Relate the new scene or picture with something similar in the
child's experience._ The desert is like the sandy waste or the barren
and stony hillside with which the children are acquainted. The square,
flat-topped houses of eastern lands have their approximate counterpart
in occasional buildings to be found in almost any modern community. The
rivers and lakes of Bible lands may be compared with rivers and lakes
near at hand. The manner of cooking and serving food under primitive
conditions was not so different from our own method on picnics and
excursion days. While the life and work of the shepherd have changed, we
still have the sheep. The walls of the ancient city can be seen in
miniature in stone and concrete embankments, or even the stone fences
common in some sections.
The main thing is to get some _starting point_ in actual observation
from which the child can proceed. The teacher must then help the child
to modify from the actual in such a way as to picture the object or
place described as nearly true to reality as possible. The child who
said, "A mountain is a mound of earth with brush growing on it" had been
shown a hillock covered with growing brush and had been told that the
mountain was like this, only bigger. The imagination had not been
sufficiently stimulated to realize the significant differences and to
picture the real mountain from the miniature suggestion.
2. _Articles and objects from ancient times or from other lands may
occasionally be secured to show the children._ Even if such objects may
not date back to Bible times, they are still useful as a vantage point
for the imagination. A modern copy of the old-time Oriental lamp, a
candelabrum, a pair of sandals, a turban, a robe, or garment such as the
ancients wore--these accompanied by intelligent description of the times
and places to which they belonged are all a stimulus to the child's
imagination which should not be overlooked. The very fact that they
suggest other peoples and other modes of living than our own is an
invitation and incentive to the mind to reach out beyond the immediate
and the familiar to the new and the strange.
3. _Pictures can be made a great help to the imagination._ In the better
type of our church schools we are now making free use of pictures as
teaching material. It is not always enough, however, merely to place the
picture before the child. It requires a certain fund of information and
interest in order to see in a picture what it is intended to convey. The
child cannot get from the picture more than he brings to it. The teacher
may therefore need to give the picture its proper setting by describing
the kind of life or the type of action or event with which it deals. He
may need to ask questions, and make suggestions in order to be sure that
the child sees in the picture the interesting and important things, and
that his imagination carries out beyond what is actually presented in
the picture itself to what it suggests. While the first response of the
child to a picture, as to a story, should be that of enjoyment and
interest, this does not mean that the picture, like the story, may not
reach much deeper than the immediate interest and enjoyment. The picture
which has failed to stimulate the child's imagination to see much more
than the picture contains has failed of one of its chief objects.
4. _Stimulate the imagination by use of vivid descriptions and
thought-provoking questions._ Every teacher, whether of young children
or of older ones, should strive to be a good teller of stories and a
good user of illustrations. This requires study and practice, but it is
worth the cost--even outside of the classroom. The good story-teller
must be able to speak freely, easily, and naturally. He must have a
sense of the important and significant in a story or illustration, and
be able to work to a climax. He must know just how much of detail to use
to appeal to the imagination to supply the remainder, and not employ so
great an amount of detail as to leave nothing to the imagination of the
listener. He must himself enter fully into the spirit and enthusiasm of
the story, and must have his own imagination filled with the pictures he
would create in his pupils' minds. He must himself enjoy the story or
the illustration, and thus be able in his expression and manner to
suggest the response he desires from the children. Well told stories
that have in them the dramatic quality can hardly fail to stir the most
sluggish imagination and prepare it for the important part it must play
in the child's religious development.
Skillfully used questions and suggestions can be made an important means
of stimulating the imagination. Such helps as: Do you think the sea of
Galilee looked like the lake (here name one near at hand) which you
know? How did it differ? What tree have you in mind which is about the
same size as the fig tree in the lesson? How does it differ in
appearance? Close your eyes and try to see in your mind just how the
river looked where the baby Moses was found. Have you ever seen a man
who you think looks much as Elijah must have looked? Describe him. If
you were going to make a coat like the one Joseph wore, what colors
would you select? What kind of cloth? What would be the cut or shape of
it?--Hardly a lesson period will pass without many opportunities for
wise questions whose chief purpose is to make real and vivid to the
child the persons or places described, and so add to their significance
to him.
5. _Dramatic representation can be used as an incentive to the
imagination._ Children easily and naturally imagine themselves to be
some other person, and often play at being nurse or school teacher or
doctor or preacher. Nearly every child possesses a large measure of the
dramatic impulse, and is something of an actor. It is great fun for
children to "tog up" and to "show off" in their play. And not only is
all this an expression of imagination actively at work, but such
activities are themselves a great stimulus to the imagination. The child
who has dressed up as George Washington and impersonated him in some
ceremonial or on a public occasion will ever after feel a closer reality
in the life and work of Washington than would come from mere reading
about him. A group of children who have acted out the story of the good
Samaritan will get a little closer to its inner meaning than merely to
hear the story told. The girl who has taken the part of Esther appearing
before the king in behalf of her people will realize a little more fully
from that experience what devotion and courage were required from the
real Esther. A class who have participated in a pageant of the Nativity
will always be a little nearer to the original event than if their
imaginations had not been called upon to make real the characters and
incidents.
USING THE MEMORY
The memory should play an important part in religion. Gems from the
Bible, stories, characters, and events, inspiring thoughts and maxims,
and many other such things should become a permanent part of the
furnishing of the mind, recorded and faithfully preserved by the memory.
Laws of use of memory.--The laws by which the memory works have been
thoroughly studied and carefully described, and should be fully
understood by every teacher. Further than this, _they should be
faithfully observed in all memory work_. These laws may be stated as
follows:
1. The law of _complete registration_. The first act in the memory
process is fully and completely to register, or _learn_, the matter to
be retained. The retention can never be better than the registration of
the facts given into the memory's keeping. Half-learned matter easily
slips away, never having been completely impressed on the mind. It is
possible to lose both effort and efficiency by committing a verse of a
poem barely up to the point where it can doubtfully be repeated instead
of giving it the relatively small amount of additional study and
practice which would register it firmly and completely. Whatever is
worth committing to memory should therefore be carried past the barely
known stage and committed fully and completely.
2. The law of _multiple association_. This only means that the new facts
learned shall be related as closely as may be to matter already in the
mind. And this is equivalent to saying that the material learned shall
be _understood_, its meaning grasped and its significance comprehended.
To understand for yourself the value of association, make this
experiment: Have some one write down a list of ten unrelated words in a
column, and hold the list before you while you have time to read it over
just once slowly and carefully. Now try repeating the words in order
from memory. Next, have your friend write ten other words which this
time form a connected sentence. After reading these words over once as
you did the first list, try repeating them in order. You find that you
have much trouble to memorize the first list, while the second presents
no difficulty at all. The difference lies in the fact that the words of
the first list were unrelated, lacking all associative connections with
each other, while those of the second list formed a connected chain of
associations.
It is possible to give the child biblical or other matter to memorize
that has little more meaning to him than the list of unrelated words
have to us. For example, this text is required of primary and junior
children in a lesson series: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free." And this: "Let us therefore draw near with
boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may
find grace to help us in time of need." It is evident that younger
children could by no possibility understand either of these beautiful
passages, and hence in committing them will only be learning so many
unrelated words.
The same is true of church catechisms. The memorizing of such material
will be difficult and unpleasant, and no value will come from it. The
most likely outcome of such ill-advised requirements is to discourage
the child and make him dislike the church school and all its work. It is
not to be expected that the child will understand the _full_ meaning of
every bit of matter suitable for him to memorize; this will have to
await broader experience and fuller development. The material should,
however, be sufficiently comprehended that its general meaning is clear
and its significance understood.
3. The law of _vividness of impression_. The relation of vividness of
impression to learning has already been discussed in another chapter. In
no one of the mind's activities is vividness a more important factor
than in memorizing. Matter committed under the stimulus of high interest
and keen attention is relatively secure, while matter committed under
slack concentration is sure to fade quickly from the memory. Songs can
therefore best be committed under the elation of the interesting singing
of the words; a verse of poetry, when the mind is alert and the feelings
aroused by a story in which the sentiment of the verse fits; a prayer
when the spirit of devotion has been quickened by worship. To insure
full vividness the imagination must also be called upon to picture and
make real such parts of memory material as contain imagery.
4. The law of _repetition_. For most minds memory depends on repetition.
The impressions must be deepened and made lasting by being stamped again
and again on the mind. The neurons of the brain which do the work of
retaining and recalling must be made to repeat the process over and over
until their action is secure. It is therefore not enough to make sure
that the child has his memory material committed for this particular
Sunday. If the matter was worth committing in the first place, it is
worth keeping permanently. If it is to be kept permanently, it must be
frequently reviewed; for otherwise it will surely be forgotten. It is to
be feared that much, if not most, of the matter memorized by the pupils
in many church schools lasts only long enough to show the teacher that
it has once been learned, and that not many children know in any
permanent sense the Bible passages they have committed. In so far as
this is true it would be much better to select a smaller amount of the
choicest and best adapted material to be found, and then so thoroughly
teach this that it is permanently retained.
5. The law of _wholes instead of parts_. Many persons in setting at work
to commit a poem, a Bible passage, a psalm have a tendency to learn it
first by verses or sections and then, put the parts together to form the
whole. Tests upon the memory have shown, that this is a less economical
and efficient method than from the first to commit the material as a
whole. This method requires that we go over all of it completely from
beginning to end, then over it again, and so on until we can repeat much
of it without reference to the text. We then refer to the text for what
the memory has not yet grasped, requiring the memory to repeat all that
has been committed, until the whole is in this manner fully learned. The
method of learning by wholes not only requires less time and effort, but
gives a better sense of unity in the matter committed.
6. The law of _divided practice_. If to learn a certain piece of
material the child must go over it, say, fifteen times, the results are
much better if the whole number of repetitions are not carried out at
one time. Time seems necessary to give the associations an opportunity
to set up their relationships; also, the interval between repetitions
allows the parts that are hardest to commit to begin fading out, and
thereby reveal where further practice is demanded. Where songs, Bible
verses, or other material are committed in the lesson hour, provision
ought to be made for the children to continue study and practice on the
material at home during the week. The so-called cramming process of
learning will not work any better in the church school than in the
day-school lessons.
7. The law of _motivation_. Like other activities of the mind, memory
works best under the stimulus of some appealing motive. The very best
possible motive is, of course, an interest in and love for the matter
committed. This kind of response can hardly be expected, however, in all
of the material children are asked to commit. It is necessary to use
additional motives to secure full effort. The approval of the teacher
and parents, the child's standing in the class, and his own sense of
achievement are some of the motives that should be employed.
A very powerful motive not always sufficiently made use of is the wider
_social motive_ that comes from working in groups for a particular end.
For example, a school or class pageant based on some biblical story or
religious event has the effect of centralizing effort and stimulating
endeavor to a degree impossible in individual work. Hymns and songs are
committed, Bible passages or other religious material learned, stories
mastered, characters studied and their words committed under the stress
of an immediate need for them in order to take one's part in a social
group and prove one's mastery before an audience of interested
listeners. The church school can with great advantage centralize more of
its religious memory work in preparation for such special occasions as
Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, or other church celebrations or
pageants.
1. What reasons can you give why children should be taught to think
in their study of religion just as in the study of any other
subject? Do you find a thoughtful attitude on the part of your
class? What methods do you use to encourage reverent thinking in
religion?
2. One thinks best in connection with some question or problem
which he wishes to have answered. Do you plan in connection with
your preparation of the lesson to bring out some definite problem
suited to the age of your class and help your pupils think it
through to a solution?
3. What evidences can you suggest from your class work which show
that children readily think upon any problem that interests them?
Have your pupils asked questions showing that they are thinking?
When such questions are asked, how do you treat them?
4. What lessons of recent date in your work have you in mind which
especially required the use of imagination? Can you judge the
degree to which the descriptive parts of the lessons appeal to your
pupils as real?
5. How successfully do you feel that you are applying the
principles for the use of the imagination? Do you definitely seek
to apply these principles in your lessons? Which of these is
probably the hardest to apply? What is your method of seeking its
application?
6. Are your pupils good in memory work? Do you ever give them
material to memorize the meaning of which is not wholly clear to
them? What help do you give the children when you assign them
memory work? Do you instruct them how to memorize what you assign?
To what extent are you following the laws of memory as stated in
the chapter?
FOR FURTHER READING
Betts, The Mind and Its Education.
Dewey, How We Think.
Coe, Education in Religion and Morals.