|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 28
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 associations
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 assured; if, on the other hand, these
experiences come to be associated 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 classroom 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 passive 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, passing fancies,
distracting surroundings, and concentrate upon the lesson itself. There
is no substitute 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 class stand? And
if I cannot reasonably hope to keep my class 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 class?
In short, _is the interest attitude of my class 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 attitude toward the class hour cannot be good, for the mind is
always ill at ease when forced to work upon matter it cannot grasp nor
assimilate. Nor is it possible to secure full effort without a
reasonable degree of mastery. The feeling of confidence and assurance
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 anticipation 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 classroom results with
children are enjoyment, interest, and mastery._ How these are to be
secured will be developed further as the text proceeds.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|