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Page 58
4. How completely are your pupils usually interested in the
lessons? As the interest varies from time to time, are you studying
the matter to discover the secret of interest on their part. In so
far as interest fails, which of the factors discussed in the
section on interest in this chapter are related to the failure? Are
there still other causes not mentioned in this chapter?
5. What distractions are most common in your class? Can you discover
the cause? The remedy? Do you have any unruly pupils? If so, have
you done your best to win to attention and interest? Have you the
force and decision necessary to bring the class well under control?
6. What do you consider your chief danger points in teaching? Would
it be worth while for you to have some sympathetic teacher friend
visit your class while you teach, and then later talk over with you
the points in which you could improve?
FOR FURTHER READING
Bagley, Class Room Management.
Betts, The Recitation.
Maxwell, The Observation of Teaching.
Strayer and Norsworthy, How to Teach.
Weigle, The Pupil and the Teacher.
CHAPTER X
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.
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