TEACHING YOUTH
(Posted 2007-08-16 14:30:55 by ArchPaladin)

This past week at the church has been VBS - vacation Bible school.  For
three days, from 9 AM to noon, the church hosts a program for kids from 3
years old to the sixth grade (about 11).  Kids show up, sing songs, make
some crafts, and play games.  The whole program has a Bible-related theme,
and each day all activities are geared back (as much as possible, at least)
toward the theme chosen for that year (VBS is a yearly program).  As I grew
up in the church, I grew up participating as a child, and now that I am
older, I spent this year staffing the registration table. I handled the
paperwork, attendance numbers, and other organizational-type stuff.  This
has been my first year helping out in a managerial role.

It is interesting seeing VBS now that I am not a kid in the middle of
everything.  All the material presented at VBS was very straightforward and
simple.  There was no ambiguity or vagueness about anything.  This was even
commented upon by one of the younger staff members, who made a note to me
and a few of his friends that it was almost like the material is
brainwashing the kids.

Now for those of you who have never been to my church, I should probably
have mentioned before now that we don't actually brainwash the children. 
Or the adults, for that matter.  If anything, the people that I know that
I've brought to church have commented about how a lot of the classes take
time to ground every statement in Scripture and make sure that opposing and
questioning voices are heard and answered.  It has been a health-inducing
place to be as an adult, spiritually speaking.

Material presented to young children, however, is generally less open for
discussion.  Note that I say _young_ children - kids who are generally not
old enough to wrestle with difficult issues that have any deal of
complexity (like 3 to 11 year olds).  For teenagers in middle and high
school, all material presented grows in complexity, but not so for
children.

I bring all this stuff up in this post because the statement made by the
staff member as well as my observations about the classes make me wonder:
is there any way to present material to young children in a way that
_couldn't_ be construed as brainwashing?  I don't mean to limit this
question to the religious arena either - I think this question applies
equally to secular knowledge.  Some areas of study (like applied science,
or mathematics, or sociology) have concepts for which the explanations and
derivations are more complicated than the concept itself, and can't be
explained very well to younger children.  I believe that the common answer
to this is that until the child is mature enough to handle the concepts,
such concepts aren't even approached (ie. you don't really start science
education until middle school because the abstraction required can't be
performed at a younger age).

For spiritual education, however, I'm not sure how well this applies - or
if it does apply, whether we are going about it in the best manner or not. 
The Bible teaches us to raise up our children in the way that they should
go, so that such teachings will stick with them throughout their lives
(Proverbs 22:6).  I suppose that for young children this could involve
teaching them to adhere to appropriate moral behavior and introducing them
to Christ when they ask about it as they get older.  However, we have been
teaching Christ along with the moral behavior, which to me seems in some
ways like trying to teach the derivation along with the equation, perhaps
before the child is ready.  On the other hand, if we don't introduce them
to Christ early, there's not much point in teaching the moral behavior
along with it, and it might leave children vulnerable to external influence
before Christ is explained.

I suppose this is the difficulty of trying to teach something that is
primarily based upon faith.  Any explanation will fundamentally reduce to
statements of faith about the Bible.  For older individuals you can examine
Scripture, present moral argument, and explore other evidence with them to
add to statements of faith, but younger children wouldn't follow any of
that very well.

And perhaps that is best.  A solid faith and understanding of Christ is so
important to everything else in Christianity that it seems appropriate to
have children grow up being comfortable with it.  As they begin to
question, other evidence and arguments can be introduced to help.

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