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Page 61
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.
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