How to Teach Religion: Principles and MethodsBetts, George Herbert
Religion
How to Teach Religion: Principles and Methods
Betts, George Herbert
Religion -- Study and teaching; Religious education
But knowledge alone is not enough. Indeed, knowledge is but the
beginning of religious education, whereas we have been in danger of
considering it the end. Many there are who _know_ the ways of life but
do not follow them. Many _know_ the paths of duty, but choose an easier
way. Many _know_ the road to service and achievement, but do not enter
thereon. If _to do_ were as easy as to know what to do, then all of us
would mount to greater heights.
The attitudes aim.--Life demands _goals_ set ahead for achievement. It
must have clearly defined the "worth whiles" which lead to endeavor.
Along with the knowledge that guides our steps must be the impulses that
drive to right action. Besides knowing what to do there must be inner
compelling forces that _get things done_. The chief source of our goals
and of the driving power within us is what, for want of a better term,
we may call our _attitudes_.
Prominent among our attitudes are the _interests, enthusiasms,
affections, ambitions, ideals, appreciations, loyalties, standards, and
attachments_ which predominate. These all have their roots set deep in
our emotions; they are the measure of life's values. They are the "worth
whiles" which give life its quality, and which define the goal for
effort.
Chesterton tells us that the most important thing about any man is the
_kind of philosophy he keeps_--that is to say, his _attitudes_. For it
is out of one's attitudes that his philosophy of life develops, and that
he settles upon the great aims to which he devotes himself. It is in
one's attitudes that we find the springs of action and the incentives to
endeavor. It is in attitudes that we find the forces that direct conduct
and lead to character.
To train the intellect and store the mind with knowledge without
developing a fund of right attitudes to shape the course of action is
therefore even fraught with danger. The men in positions of political
power who often misgovern cities or use public office as a means to
private gain do not act from lack of knowledge or in ignorance of civic
duty; their failure is one of ideals and loyalties; their attitude
toward social trust and service to their fellow men is wrong. The men
who use their power of wealth to oppress the poor and helpless, or
unfairly exploit the labor of others to their own selfish advantage do
not sin from lack of knowledge; their weakness lies in false standards
and unsocial attitudes. Men and women everywhere who depart from paths
of honor and rectitude fall more often from the lack of high ideals than
because they do not know the better way.
The goal and the motive power in all such cases comes from a false
philosophy of life; it is grounded in wrong attitudes. The education of
those who thus misconceive life has failed of one of its chief aims--_to
develop right attitudes_. Hence character is wanting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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