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Page 65
3. The _application_ (or deductive) lesson; in which the aim is to make
application of some general truth or lesson already known to particular
problems or cases.
4. The _drill_ lesson; in which the aim is to give readiness and skill
in fundamental facts or material that should be so well known as to be
practically automatic in thought or memory.
5. The _appreciation_ lesson; in which the aim is to create a response
of warmth and interest toward, or appreciation of, a person, object,
situation, or the material studied.
6. The _review_ lesson; in, which the aim is to gather up, relate, and
fix more permanently in the mind the lessons or facts that have been
studied.
7. The _assignment_ lesson; in which help is rendered and interest
inspired, for study of the next lesson.
THE INFORMATIONAL LESSON
The child at the beginning is devoid of all knowledge of and information
about the many objects, activities, and relationships that fill his
world. He must come to know these. His mind can develop no faster than
it has the materials for thoughts, memories, ideas, and whatever else is
to occupy his stream of thought. He must therefore be supplied with
information. He must be given a fund of impressions, of facts, of
knowledge to use in his thinking, feeling, and understanding.
To undertake to teach the child the deeper meanings and relationships of
God to our lives without this necessary background of information is to
confuse him and to fail ourselves as teachers. For example, a certain
primary lesson leaflet tells the children that the Egyptians made slaves
out of the Israelites and that God led the Israelites out of this
slavery. But there had previously been no adequate preparation of the
learners' minds to understand who the Israelites or the Egyptians were,
nor what slavery is. The children lacked all basis of information to
understand the situation described, and it could by no possibility
possess meaning for them.
The use of the information lesson.--It is not meant, of course, that
when the chief purpose of a lesson is to give information no
applications should be made or no interpretations given of the matter
presented. Yet the fact is that often the chief emphasis must be placed
on information, and that for the moment other aims are secondary. To
illustrate: When young children are first told the story of God creating
the world the main purpose of the lesson is _just to give them the
story_, and not to attempt instruction as to the power and wonder of
creative wisdom, nor even at this time to stress the seventh day as a
day of rest. When the story of Moses bringing his people out of Egypt is
told young children, the providence of God will be made evident, but the
facts of the story itself and its enjoyment just as a story should not
in early childhood be overshadowed by attempting to force the moral and
religious applications too closely.
It even happens that the indirect lesson, in which the child is left to
see for himself the application and meaning, is often the most effective
to teaching. The same principle holds when, later in the course, the
youth is first studying in its entirety the life of Jesus. The main
thing is to get a sympathetic, reverent, connected view of Jesus's life
as a whole. There will, of course, be a thousand lessons to be learned
and applications to be made from his teachings, but these should rest on
a fund of _accurate information about Jesus himself and what he taught_.
Danger of neglecting information.--It should be clear, then, that in
advocating the informational lesson there is no thought of asking that
we should teach our children _mere_ facts, or fill their heads with
_mere_ information. The intention is, rather, to stress the important
truth often seemingly forgotten, that to be intelligent in one's
religion there are certain, fundamental _things which must be known_;
that to be a worthy Christian there are certain facts, stories,
personages, and events with a knowledge of which the mind must be well
furnished. There can be little doubt that the common run of teaching in
our church schools has failed to give our children a _sufficient basis_
of information upon which to build their religious experience.
Informational instruction may be combined with other types of lessons,
or may be given as separate lessons which stress almost entirely the
informational aspect of the material. In the younger classes the
information will come to the children chiefly in the form of stories,
and the accounts of lives of great men and women. Later in the course,
Bible narrative, history, and biography will supply the chief sources of
informational material.
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