THE BIBLE AND THE CHILD: THE METHOD
THE BIBLE AND THE CHILD: THE METHOD
THE BIBLE AND THE CHILD: THE METHOD
This is our second article dealing with the Bible and the child, We approached the first with that paragraph in Paul's second letter to Timothy, at the end of the third chapter, in which we saw the relation of the Sacred Writings to the development of personality, suggested by those two phrases, "a babe" and "the man of God" at work,
In our previous article we saw that the goal of all religious instruction is salvation; that the way of salvation is through faith in Christ Jesus; and that the mental condition for the exercise of that faith is that of the wisdom or knowledge, which comes from a knowledge of the Sacred Writings by which the parents can aid in that process.
In the light of these things, we ask what are our obligations, the responsibility resting upon us to make the Sacred Writings known to the child, that it may have the knowledge which leads to Christ, and reposing faith in whom, may find its way into the experience of salvation,
Our first obligation is that of a recognition of modern revelation in the realm of teaching, Some might use in that connection the word "discovery," I prefer the word "revelation," because I believe that every discovery of man is, in the last analysis, a revelation of God, and that in every realm of life, I am thinking now of the science of teaching, The basic principle, the discovery of which has altered the whole method of teaching since my young days, is that to which I now refer, The old idea was that the teacher should impart information and cram the mind of the scholar, We used to talk about education, misusing the word, Education means drawing out what is there, and instruction is imparting to the mind what is not there; and the two things are necessary in all teaching,
It was the discovery of this fact that it is not enough for teachers to know their subject, they must also know the child, In the old days it did not matter at all about the child, The child was expected to take what the teacher gave, and the teacher knew the subject, and poured it out, and the child was expected to get and hold it, Now we realize that there must be the recognition on our part of the capacity of the child to receive,
This applies to Bible teaching, It is not enough to know the Bible, we must know the child, We must be acquainted with the child mind, and must adapt our impartation of knowledge to the capacity for the receiving of that knowledge,
It is of fundamental importance that we recognize this comparatively modern discovery, And yet is it modern? There is a complete philosophy of psychology in Paul's words in the New Testament, I will content myself, however, with an older reference from the Old Testament:
"Train up a child in the way he should go,
And even when he is old he will not depart from it." (Prov. 22:6)
Do we know what that means? The old idea was that it was the duty of father and mother, or teacher as the case may be, to make up their mind the way in which the child should go, and then to see to it that he or she went that way, But look at that a. little carefully, In the Hebrew text there is no word "go," There is one little word which may be written peh in English, and the statement here is, "Train up a child according to his own way," That may frighten some people, Does that mean the child is to have its own way? Absolutely, But be careful, It does not say the child is to have its own wish or desire,
The first word "train" is arresting, That Hebrew word is only translated "train" in one other place in the Bible, when we read about Abraham and his trained men, In other places the Hebrew word is translated to direct, to dedicate, For us there is no better word than "train," if we understand it means the leading out into realization of what is in the child, "Train up a child in his own way," Oh, the horrible mistake of trying to take some child and make it like some other child, Every child has its own way, its own capacity, Every child has something peculiar to itself, the secret germ and force of personality; and our first business is to recognize that,
Our second obligation consequently is that of the application of the values of this revelation or discovery in our instruction of our children in the Sacred Writings, Take the child when it is in that early stage until it comes to about eight years of age, Watch that little one, and see it has every element in human personality, I am not going into the finer nuances of psychology, I am content to fall back upon Kant's analysis of personality, in which he said personality consists of three faculties, elements, or phases: intellect, emotion, will,
No one will doubt that these little ones have will power, or that they have intelligence and emotion, But this is the remarkable thing, In those little children, while those elements are all present, they are never working together, They act separately, That accounts for the glorious physical restlessness of the child, First the child is in the realm of the intellect, as a little girl was, who asked her uncle, an Oxford don, "Uncle, why is that rose red, and the leaf green?" Her uncle was delighted that his sister's child manifested such intelligence, and he said, "Gladys, I am so glad you have asked that, If you will get that little chair and come here I will explain it to you." By this time Gladys was laughing, He said, "My darling, what are you laughing at?" To which she replied, "I am so sorry, Uncle, but you have got such a funny face," She had forgotten her intellectual question, because her emotion was stirred in the presence of her uncle's face, He was a little annoyed, she was not there, She had forgotten the problem and her uncle's face, and she had gone off down the garden,
Somewhere round eight years of age a change takes place, and for the next period of years, eight to eleven or twelve, watch the mind of that same girl or boy, Intellect and emotion grow, and will recedes, Then they will ask more questions than ever before, or ever will again until they are seventeen, Emotion? They are full of it, but will has receded, it is not absent, that is the easiest period for discipline, the child's will is not its highest consciousness,
There is another change somewhere round twelve years of age in every normal boy or girl, It is the most remarkable and volcanic change that takes place in the development of personality, Intellect recedes, but it is not dead, They will cease asking questions about things, one reason being that they do not want anyone to think there is anything in the heavens above or the earth beneath that they do not know! That is always a sign of arrested development either in a child or a man, Emotion is positively crushed now, No healthy girl or boy will let you see them cry, But will has sprung up, almost in a night; and the child in that period is now beginning to elect, to choose, to select, to exercise its right of choice, God help father, mother, teacher who does not recognize that right,
In a brief statement I will repeat what I told him. Whenever a boy or girl comes to that moment of the manifestation of will, quit commanding and begin communing. Get down by the side of the boy, and talk to him, of the girl, and talk to her; commune with them, and show them reasons,
That period ends somewhere in the teens—fifteen to seventeen, then what happens? The same qualities are seen, but intellect comes back again in multiplied questions, Emotion has a strange awakening, into all the details of which I will not go! Will is there, and once again in that developing personality the same elements are seen as in the little one, and, if I may use the term, they are the same in bulk just as in the wee children, with this difference, In the little ones they acted independently, and crisscrossed, Now the three are coming into co-operation, Will moves to the center of personality, and emotion flanks it, so does intellect; and emotion and intellect
appeal to will, which is the final arbiter, and will decide, always on the basis of what emotion or intellect says, If at that point the light in them is darkness, if emotion has become debased, and intellect has become clouded, the decisions will be disastrous, but the fact remains,
All that is a very rough attempt to see the development of personality, and that is the reason of grading in our schools, It is not the fad of a few fanatics, It is intelligent co-operation with God,
Our third obligation then is that of facing the task, difficult though it may appear to be, of dealing with the Sacred Writings so as to co-operate with this development of character, To put it simply, it means the Sacred Writings must be presented to each stage of development so that the interest of the child is never lost, but held,
The account (better account) is all the child wants, and it is all it needs, or is capable of receiving, How they love the account! Only do not make the mistake of explaining it to them, They will sit still while the account is told, but not when it is explained, Why not? Because they have seen something, perhaps something out of the window! But the account holds them, I will tell you what happens, when you tell the account, mother, teacher, to a little child, The child will forget it in thirty minutes, and remember it in thirty years, You have planted down in that little child's mind something it forgets, and remembers on the other side of the world thirty years after,
What about the next stage, the period after eight and up to eleven or twelve? The period when will recedes, and intellect and emotion come to the fore? At that time they want something more than the account rounded off, They want the account going on, That is the period when children love to take in a magazine that has an account "to be continued in our next," There are some older people who read these accounts, but it is a sign of second childhood! Now in teaching the Bible we go over the same ground, but show how the accounts link, and that in the simplest way, That is the period when the Bible is taught most successfully by taking the great biographies, They want at that age to see how this man's life was related to that man's life, They are ready for his account, We take them over the Bible now from that standpoint of the great movements of his account, What a chance teachers have in that period of instilling into the minds of those developing boys and girls the Biblical philosophy of his account, What is the Biblical philosophy of his account? That there is one Throne, and that all other thrones are subservient to it; that they rise or fall according to their relationship to that one Throne; and all human inter-relationships of the family and society and nationality are based upon the authority of that Throne, That is what the Bible teaches us, We must show that historic movement to those minds that are beginning to be social, The gang spirit is born in this period, They want to go together, and to see men act together, and all national movements are seen seething in the melting pot of the thinking of boys and girls from twelve to sixteen or seventeen years of age, They will be held if we give them Bible his account, with that foreground of Hebrew his account, and the background of the other nations as they appear; and then the brief span of human his account when Jesus was here, and all the forces round Him,
When we move up to what we call the higher levels, the special emphasis is on teaching, the moralistic values, We take the Laws of Israel, the Prophets, the Psalms, and the Epistles, and the teaching of Jesus centrally, Then the whole Bible is in front of them, nothing hidden, nothing omitted, nothing added, the special emphasis being on its teaching,
Our final obligation is that through all these processes we never lose sight of the final purpose, we teach the writings in order to make wise, we make wise in order to inspire faith; we inspire faith in order to secure salvation. How beautiful is that marvelous analysis of the value of the God-breathed Writings! Paul said, profitable "for teaching," That means authoritative statement, upon which we can build, "Reproof," that does not mean rebuke, The root of the word means the plumb-line let down by the side of the wall, to show if it is in the straight, We build on what we find in the teaching, We prove our own building with the plumb-line of the Bible, "Correction," literally pulling back into the straight, In the Bible we find the way of putting the building back into the straight, And then "discipline," Instruction is discipline going on, until the man is complete, not only complete in personality, but complete for service, perfect in every good work,
The work of Bible teaching to the young is in the interest of the individual, of family life, of the State, and of the race, When we are teaching children, knowing their minds, knowing the Book, adapting the giving of the Book to the child mind, we are doing wondrous work, work for today, work for tomorrow, and work for the undying ages of eternity for the King.
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