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
We cannot teach the child religion on the basis of ethics alone,
necessary as morality is to life. We cannot help the child to spiritual
growth and the consciousness of God in his life without having the
matter we teach him permeated and made alive with the spirit and
presence of God in it. Nor is there the least difficulty for the child
to understand God in the stories. The child, like the Hebrews
themselves, does not feel any necessity of explaining or accounting for
God, but readily and naturally accepts him and the part he plays in our
affairs as a matter of course.
Stories from other than Bible sources.--But once a sufficient
proportion of Bible stories is provided for, stories should be freely
drawn from other fields. An abundance of rich material possessing true
religious worth can be found in the myths, legends, folk lore, and
heroic tales of many literatures. These are a treasure house with which
every teacher of children should be familiar; nor is the task a
burdensome one, for much of this material holds a value and charm even
for the older ones of us.
Later writers have enriched the fund of material available for children
by treating many of the aspects of nature in story form, thereby opening
up to the mind and heart of the child something of the meaning and
beauty of the physical world, and showing God as the giver of many good
gifts in this realm of our lives. There are also available the stories
of history, and of the real men and women whose lives have blessed our
own or other times, and whose deeds and achievements will appeal to the
imagination and stir the ideals of youth.
The teacher as a story teller.--The successful teacher of religion
must therefore possess the art which will enable him to use the story as
one of the chief forms of material in his instruction. He must _know_
the stories. He must be able to tell them interestingly. The story loses
half of its effectiveness if it must be _read_ to the child, but it may
lose in similar proportion if it is haltingly or ineffectively told. It
is not necessary, at least for the younger children, to use a large
number of stories. In fact, there is positive disadvantage in attempting
to employ so many stories that the child does not become wholly familiar
with each separate one. Children do not tire of the stories they like;
indeed, their love for a story increases as they come to know it well,
and they will demand to have the same story told over and over in
preference to a new one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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