Religious education -- Teaching methods; Visual education
"Another child who was feeble-minded was helped to be free from his
mental inertia and day-dreaming by a story written expressly for him,
in which 'I AM THAT WHICH WILLS' was pictured as a fairy, coming softly
to the little boy whose power to try was lost, kissing his eyes,
breathing softly upon his lips, putting her finger softly upon his
ears--making each more ready and attentive--and finally enthroning the
little boy's own fairy in its place in his brain, where the fairy grows
more and more princely, and the little boy more and more manly, trying
hard, so very hard, to keep the dear little fairy on his throne."
Here, then, we have some of the types of picture-work: the picture and
the story, the parable in its various forms, and the word-picture--whether
of things or actions; illustrations or side-lights, the "likes" with
which a skilful teacher illumines his teaching, and the objects, models,
maps, and sketches on pad or blackboard, with which he re-enforces the
lagging imaginations of his hearers.
What, then, is a picture? A picture is anything that helps us to see
more clearly, feel more heartily, and act upon more faithfully the
truth which is not or cannot be immediately present to our senses. The
truth to be pictured may be the truth of people, places, and
actions--external things; it may be the truth of character and of inner
life--the things that are unseen, which we could never see at all
except by the aid of real things or pictures of real things; just as,
for example, our idea of God is built out of our experience of
mountains, flowers, thunder-storms, our mother's tenderness, and our
father's strength. These pictures may be drawn or painted; they may be
expressed in words or in deeds, with pen or brush, with actions, with
things.
Where to find our materials and how to use these tools with economy and
effectiveness are the questions that next claim our attention.
III.
A PICTURE-BOOK, AND HOW TO USE IT.
The Bible is a picture-book. It is history, literature, logic,
philosophy; but, more than all these, for children and all who have the
heart of childhood, it is a store-house of pictures.
The first thing needful for a teacher, if he would touch his pupils, is
to see these pictures himself. This, we must admit, is seldom done. For
it is one of the sad things about the human mind that it possesses the
power to read the words that set the picture forth without seeing the
picture, and without being touched by the emotion which only the
picture can arouse. We can seem to pray the Lord's Prayer, for example,
while in reality we are merely making articulate--sometimes
inarticulate--sounds.
"I believe it would startle and move any one," said Robert Louis
Stevenson, referring to the gospel of St. Matthew, "if he could make a
certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not
droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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