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Page 46
It is possible to distinguish four different types of organization
commonly used in preparing material for religious instruction:
1. The _haphazard_, in which there is no definite plan or order, no
thread of purpose or relationship uniting the parts, no guiding
principle determining the order and sequence.
2. The _logical_, in which the nature and relationships of the material
itself determine the plan and order, the question of ease and
effectiveness in learning being secondary or not considered.
3. The _chronological_, applicable especially to historical material, in
which the events, characters, and facts are taken up in the order of the
time of their appearance and their sequence in the entire situation or
account.
4. The _psychological_, in which the first and most important question
is the most natural and favorable mode of approach for the learner--how
the material shall be planned and arranged to suit his power and grasp,
appeal to his interest, and relate itself to his actual needs and
experience.
TYPES OF ORGANIZATION
Haphazard organization.--The _haphazard_ plan, which is really no plan
at all, is, of course, wholly indefensible. No teacher has a right to go
before his class with his material in so nebulous a state that it lacks
coordination and purpose. It is this that results in chance and
unrelated questions, irrelevant discussions, and fruitless wanderings
without definite purpose over the field of the lesson, such as may
sometimes be seen in church classes.
The outcome of such instruction hardly can be more than occasional,
disconnected scraps of information, or fragmentary impressions which are
never gathered up and bound together into completed ideals and
convictions. The haphazard type of organization may result from
incompetence, indifference, and failure to prepare, or from taking a
ready-made and poorly prepared plan from the "lesson helps" which is not
adapted to our class. Pity the child assigned to a class presided over
by a teacher who esteems his privilege so lightly as not to make ready
for his task by careful planning.
Logical organization.--In the _logical_ arrangement of material, the
first care is not given to planning it in the most favorable way for the
one who studies and learns it, but, rather, to fit together the
different parts of the subject matter in the way best suited to its
logical relationships. The child is pedagogically ignored; the material
receives primary consideration. The logical order of material fits the
mind of the adult, the scholar, the expert, the master in his field of
knowledge; it begins with the most general and abstract truths. But the
child naturally starts with the particular and the concrete. It gives
rules, principles, definitions, while the child asks for illustrations,
applications, real instances, and actual cases.
The logical method is adapted to the trained explorer in the fields of
learning, to one who has been over the ground and knows all of its
details, and not to the young novice just starting his discoveries in
regions that are strange to him. The logical plan will teach the young
child the general plan of salvation, man's fall and need of redemption,
the wonder and significance of the atonement, and gracious effects of
divine regeneration working in the heart--all of which he needs finally
to know--but _not as a child just beginning the study of religion_. The
child must arrive at the general plan of salvation through realizing the
saving power at work in his own life; he must come to understand the
fall of man and his need of redemption through meeting his own childhood
temptations and through seeing the effects of sin at work around him; he
must understand the atonement and regeneration through the present and
growing consciousness of a living Christ daily strengthening and
redeeming his life.
Chronological organization.--The _chronological_ order of material is
desirable at the later stages of the child's growth and development. But
in earlier years the time sequence is not the chief consideration. This
is because the child's historical sense is not yet ready for the concept
of cause and effect at work to produce certain inevitable results in the
lives of men or nations.
The sequence in which certain kings reigned, or the order in which
certain events took place, or in which certain books of the Bible were
written is not the important thing for early childhood. At this time
the great object is to seize upon the event, the character or the
incident, and make it real _and vital_; it is to bring the meaning of
the lesson out of its past setting and attach it to the child's
immediate present.
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