New Methods in the Sunday School

Irish Church Quarterly

New Methods in the Sunday SchoolAuthor(s): Samuel HutchinsonSource: The Irish Church Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 17 (Jan., 1912), pp. 60-73Published by: Irish Church QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30067437 .

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60 NEW METHODS IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL.

NEW METHODS IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL.

IT will be readily conceded that there is no more important branch of parochial organization than the Sunday School. It is the Church's nursery. It contains the men and women of the future. It is there that the future life of the Church is to a great extent nourished and moulded. Our fore- fathers established these schools so that the children of our Church might be trained together in the elements of their religion. Other forces have had their share in bringing about the present condition of affairs, but the exist- ence of the Sunday School has helped largely to make parents feel much less than they ought the responsibility of giving personal attention to the religious education of their children. The Sunday Schools are with us; they claim the children; with the result that parents often leave to Sunday School teachers what they would otherwise have felt to be incumbent upon themselves. In many cases it is difficult even to get the parents to superintend or help the children in the preparation of their Sunday School lessons. In fact, something akin to spiritual starvation is often prevalent in homes where the careful religious training of the children might reasonably be expected. Many children come to Sunday School from homes in which there is little or no observance of religious duties. A magnificent field is opened here, not only in the hearts of these children, but also in their homes. It has been said that "the child is of more use to the Church than the Church is to the child." The child forms an important link between these homes and the Church. There are many other reasons, but these are sufficient to emphasize how tremendously important it is for the Church to make her Sunday School work as efficient as possible.

In Ireland we are conservative in religious matters. That fact has its advantages and disadvantages. In educational matters, however, a rigid conservatism is fatal to progress. The Sunday School ought to be educational in the highest sense of the word, and if it is to be



NEW METHODS IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 61

so there must be the same readiness to adapt our methods to the requirements of the age that we find in the most efficient secular schools. Why should not the Sunday Schools be up to date ? We do not believe that they are really efficient. Why not, then, make an effort to learn new methods, and adopt them? New life comes often with new methods, and a new enthusiasm infects both the teachers and the children.

The new methods which have been recently adopted in some Sunday Schools in Dublin, and which have been found so highly successful both in England and America, are, in the main, methods of work for the infant department of the Sunday School. Their virtue is that they represent an effort to look at things from the child's point of view. One of the precepts which the efficient teacher must keep continually in mind is, " Study the child." Our duty is not to endeavour to store the child's mind with certain facts and doctrines which we believe the child ought to know and hold when he is grown up. It is rather to educate the child, to affect his heart, his mind, his character with what we know will make him Christlike in his life. The knowledge of what will do this comes only from a careful study of the child, both the individual child and the collective child. A divinity school lecture will be perfectly unintelligible to a child; therefore it is useless to try to educate him by giving it to him. The child has certain definite capacities and a certain collection of ideas. The teacher must know the capacity of the children of her class, must know the sort of ideas that are in their minds, if she wants, by what she tells them, to touch their hearts, their minds, and their character. Not only will the divinity school lecture be useless to the child, its method will also be fatal. The child is not a divinity student, but a Sunday School scholar; and in the infant

department half a baby and half a scholar. Consequently we must study the child, not only to see what we can tell him, but how we are to tell him, the method which we must

adopt, the apparatus which we shall require, and the furniture which will give him a chance of listening, when he




has to listen, with some sort of comfort. One of the most important features, then, of the new system is, that the study of the child, with a view to learning what and how he can be profitably taught, is definitely before the minds of the teachers as part of their business. The child will be studied in the Sunday School class; he will be studied from books, but he will also be studied in the teacher's weekly preparation class. Each teacher will be able to add from time to time to the common stock of knowledge. The success or failure of the previous Sunday's lesson will suggest points of study. The teacher's preparation class fails utterly to perform its true function in relation to the Sunday School if it does nothing more than help the teachers in the preparation of the next Sunday's lesson. The new preparation class will undertake the prob- lem of child study. The teachers will learn the reasons for their methods of teaching; they will also learn much about the capacities and interests of children, so that un- profitable lessons may be avoided. From this it will be seen that the teachers' preparation class is a sine qua non of the new system. The teachers' class for the infant department ought to be conducted by the leader, or lady in charge, of that department. This will enable harmony of aim and method to prevail in the school. It will also ensure that the child's point of view will be kept constantly before the minds of the teachers. Regular attendance at the class must be the invariaible rule for the teachers; otherwise the whole system will break down. The work for each Sunday will have some definite object. Each teacher will do a part towards effecting that object; the leader and children will do the rest. If the teacher has not studied her part in conjunction with her colleagues, and under the direction of the leader, she is bound to endanger the harmony of aim and method.

In the infant department the teachers may be of either sex from fifteen years of age and upwards. Girls of fourteen years have been known to do good work, but perhaps fifteen is the best limit to aim at in the case of girls, and sixteen or seventeen in the case of boys. The




work of the teacher chiefly consists in telling a Bible story, and then superintending its expression in sand- trays, drawing-books, or otherwise.

From the teachers' class we turn to the school. The infant department must have a room to itself. The only alternative, where this is not practicable, is to have the infant school during some hour when the Sunday School room is free. There will be a piano in the room. Of course a harmonium will do, but for this work it becomes a very poor substitute for the piano. A pianist is also desirable, whose sole duty will be to preside at the piano. In small schools, where this is not possible, one of the teachers may add the playing of the piano to her other duties; but this should be avoided if possible. The part that music plays in the infant school is very important. It is a well-known fact that children are very much in- fluenced by their surroundings. The order and arrange- ment of a school will greatly affect discipline. One of the objects of the Sunday School is to train the children in reverence for God, for His word, and for things spiritual. An object, by the way, not very generally achieved by the older methods. When the orders, such as those for change of place, for sitting or kneeling down, or for standing up, are given by chords or calls quietly played on the piano; when the children move about, either into the room or out of it, or ffom place to place, in orderly line to the strains of a suitable march, it has been found that the atmosphere of reverence tends to prevail. The power of suggestion and the action of what has been called the sub-conscious mind are features of human nature which modern psycho- logists bid us take account of in dealing with men and women. It is quite possible that their importance is greater in the training of children. Atmosphere and environment so greatly affect the character of a child, that in some matters the child seems more open to influence through the sub-conscious than through the conscious sphere of mental action. A teacher may tell a class of children to be reverent, with very little result, whereas the appeal through sub-consciousness will be found most effec-




tive. Another very important function of the piano is the accompaniment of the hymn singing. The infants should be taught not merely to repeat hymns, but also to sing them. As a rule now, when a hymn has been selected, the children are taught to repeat and then sing the first verse on the first Sunday. They learn a new verse each suc- ceeding Sunday, always singing the verses already learned, till they can sing the entire hymn.

When we enter the infant room the next feature that catches our eye is the sitting accommodation. In the best equipped schools this will be composed entirely of small chairs, of various sizes, suitable for children from five to eight years old. Where this is not possible forms will be found, but low enough to allow the children to rest their feet comfortably on the floor, and with a framework by which the little ones may support their backs. Is this a sign of decadence or the wanton, thoughtless expenditure of a luxurious age ? If anyone thinks so let him ask himself if he would like to address every week an audience seated on high benches without backs, so that the feet even of the tallest amongst them could not rest upon the floor. It would be almost better to address them reclining in arm-chairs. If reasonably comfortable seats are advisable for adults, how much more are they essential for the children, with their little, weak, undeveloped muscles and bodies.

The blackboard, pictures, models, and maps will also be conspicuous features of the school furniture. The children have been given more than one channel of communi- cation between their little inner selves and the great outer world. The teacher who appeals only to the mind's eye through the sense of hearing handicaps herself tremendously in her efforts td present her story vividly to. the children. In Bible stories there are always so many things beyond the scope of the imagination of the western child. These things can only be successfully presented to his mind by pictures, blackboard sketches, models and objects. Touch and sight are the child's instruments of self-instruction. In the nursery he has been keenly alert




in gathering up scraps of knowledge, mainly by means of his hands and eyes. Things which he can see and feel are the things which interest him most. Surely, then, it would be a fatal mistake to begin his education in Holy Scripture and spiritual things by dispensing with these media. Besides the child has an inborn love of colour. He glories in colour. Beauty in colour as well as in sound appeals to the child's sense of awe, and creates the atmosphere of reverence. The Bible stories, with their splendid eastern colouring, give magnificent material for this. But without the aid of pictures they fail to make their appeal, as the colouring is not within the power of the child's imagination.

The use of pictures and objects suggests a principle which lies behind the new method in the infant department. We have said that the Sunday School is the Church's nursery, but the infant department is in a very literal sense the Church's nursery. Many of the children in this department are scarcely out of the nursery. They are not really scholars. They are much more often, as the children of the first division love to term them, "the babies." The principle, then, is that the infant department should be so managed " as to make it a fitting place for infants," and the children managed "so that they be- come scholars without ceasing to be infants." It has been well said that if this department is a type of school it ought also to be a type of nursery. It is the connecting link between the nursery and the Sunday School proper, and must, therefore, combine the essential elements of both. In the home the child has spent most of his time in actively doing things; in handling things and asking questions about them. He has been always on the move. When he has not been running about, his hands have been busy. His tongue has seldom been still. If he has no one else to whom to talk, he chatters to himself. His education in a very real sense has proceeded along these lines. Home education is founded on " the free and spontaneous activity of the child." How very little he would learn if at home he kept perfectly still, waiting always till he was

11




told about things and received answers to questions without ever asking them. The fundamental principle of the new system is to continue as far as possible this method. Continuity between the method of Home Education and that of School Education is one of its most marked features. Dr. Gunn, in his valuable book entitled The Infant School, has put the principle forcibly and clearly thus:

"The work of the teacher is not to check natural tendency or activity, but to utilize and direct it; not to substitute artificial and conventional forms for natural ones, but from the natural and spontaneous to develop just so much conventionality as the neces- sities of collective work may require, and no more. Education is not the uprooting of natural growth and the planting of new, but skilful training, and pruning, and grafting applied to the growth which is already partly developed."

Perhaps from this we might expect the infant department to be more or less of a pandemonium under the new method, but that is very far from being the case. Chil- dren, when they are interested in their play, play seriously enough. Their play is often quite orderly, and not necessarily noisy. Play is essentially the free and spontaneous activity of the child. The new method is an effort to use this activity in the child's spiritual education and development. It has something of the naiture of play, but it has also the nature of serious education. It aims at cap- tivating the child's interest, and directing his activities into useful channels. Interested, the child will be serious and orderly. It would not be true to say that he will think and act as if he were merely playing, but he will be just as happy and content as if he were playing; really more so. He will carry into the Sunday School the interest he has in his play, but he will develop there new interests which will leave their mark upon his life and character. The marching, singing, looking at pictures, handling and examining of objects and models, the expression of the lesson on sand-trays, drawing-books, or plasticine have all sufficiently the characteristics of play to encourage the child's activities and ensure his interest, while at the same time serving as the means to promote




the great and serious object which the teacher has in view. It is quite true to say the child's activities will either be with you or against you. " I don't like taking that infant class; the children are so restless; they keep on fidgeting, pulling one another's arms and clothes, and examining my dress." Why, of course! they were never meant to sit still for an hour. God gave them eyes to see, and hands to handle, and restlessness to ensure their development, mental as well as physical. Provide for the exer- cise of the child's activities in your Sunday School method and this difficulty at all events will vanish.

Before leaving the subject of continuity it will be well to mention one link which emphasizes this bond of union between home and Sunday School. The cradle-roll contains the names of the babies in the parish who are as yet too young to come to the school. New names are brought by the mothers or sisters and are inserted on the roll. Birthday cards are also in many instances sent to these children year by year until they are old enough to join the school.

We now turn to the programme of work for each Sun- day. How much will be done will, of course, depend on the time at the disposal of the leader. In some cases two hours are possible, in others an hour is the limit. We will confine ourselves to the essential features. The school will open with hymn and prayer. The children will learn to say and sing a new verse of a hymn, as we have already mentioned. They will also be taught a verse or verses of Holy Scripture. These verses may form part of a passage which will take several Sundays to teach, but sometimes they may be isolated texts. If the latter, they should be chosen with special reference to the lesson for the day. If, for instance, the lesson hap- pened to be the story of the brazen serpent, then "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness," etc., St. John iii. 14, would be a suitable verse to teach that day. Obviously this could also be done as an extra, when a set passage was part of the programme. Simple forms of prayer suitable for children would also from time to time



68 NEW METHODS IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL:

have a place in the time devoted to repetition. So also would the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the Ten Commandments. But the chief point here to notice is that these would all be taught to the children in the school, not set as repetition to be learned at home. After a march about the room the children resume their seats, and the leader begins the lesson for the day. The lesson proper will be a story, usually a Bible story. We may say usually, for occasionally a story taken from the his- tory of Christ's Church since Bible times, such as the story of St. Patrick, would prove a profitable lesson for the little ones. The story has been rightly called the most nourishing diet for the child's imagination. Children love stories, and the fact that they love them would be in itself a sufficient reason for giving our lessons in this form. It is evidently in accordance with nature's plan for the child's education. One of the most active in- stincts of childhood is the instinct of curiosity. "Curio- sity killed the cat " might be a useful precept for adults occasionally to apply to themselves, but it is frequently addressed to children when parents or teachers are too lazy to think of suitable answers to their questions. The instinct of curiosity, so far from being repressed, ought to be encouraged, developed, guided and directed into fruitful channels, ind used as a means for the storing of the mind and the moulding of the character. The story appeals directly to the instinct of curiosity, and therefore ensures that the child's interest and mental activity will be with the teacher. Again, the story moves the child. It makes him want to do or to be something. It is full of life for him. It appeals to his instinct of imitation, another very strongly marked characteristic of childhood. Therefore the story will be more effective than all the precepts in the world in affecting his character and conduct. The assistant teacher will, of course, tell the story. That is their real business. But the leader has an important part here; she prepares the children for the story. The experience of the teachers is that this preliminary preparation is of great importance. It calls up




those ideas in the child's mind with which the new ideas will readily associate. It whets the instinct of curiosity. It is practically a talk about things of which the children know something. If, for instance, the story was the

anointing of David by Samuel as king, introducing as

part of the story the little incident which David after- wards recounts to Saul about the killing of the lion and the bear, to show David's possession of the royal virtue of

courage, and his fitness for so great a dignity, a preliminary talk about animals and their habits, with special reference to lions and bears and the courage necessary to face them, showing also pictures of the animals, would greatly enhance the children's interest in the story. Or, if the story were the story of the Flood, with the special object, by laying stress on God's subsequent promise, of teaching His providence, a preliminary talk about rainbows, their colours, etc., would stir the children's interest in the " Story of a Rainbow," besides helping to invest Nature with that sacramental aspect which is so

great gain to spiritual life. Every story will have its point of contact with the child's environment; and to work from this environment through the story into the child's heart and mind will ibe to secure an impress on character and conduct which would otherwise be impossible. Again, if the story has a connexion with the last Sunday's lesson, the leader must prepare the way for the new development of scene and action by asking the children about the last

Sunday's lesson, and thus bring the important features

vividly before their minds. The picture that illustrated the previous lesson will also be shown. In this way those ideas will be called to mind with which the new ideas are

required to associate. When the leader has done this the children separate into little classes of three or four, and the new story is told. After this comes one of the most

important features of the new system, namely, the expression of the story. The expression is a form of activity, and as a mode of directing the child's activities into a useful channel it is invaluable to the teacher. But this is by no means its only use. The fact that the child tries to




reproduce the story, or some important incident in the story, in material form will increase very much the impression which the lesson leaves on his mind and heart. The expression intensifies the impression. But to hear a story means very often to forget it; to tell it shortly after hearing it often means to give it a permanent place in the storehouse of memory. The expression is a way of telling the story. Again, the expression is a form of self-activity. It is not mere imitation. It represents the child's own thoughts. It encourages the child to Ithink. Of all the child's activities it is the most educative. " Expression," it has been said, " is a necessary complement to the acquisi- tion of knowledge in order to produce an educated mind." It makes for character, because it helps to develop the individuality of the child. The children should, therefore, as far as possible be free agents in the work of expression. Of course this freedom must have certain limits. Freedom within the limits of the story will be a good working rule. The children, however, are very sus- ceptible to suggestion, and if the story has been well told the expression will generally follow the lines most desired by the teachers. The artistic value of the expression is of very little importance in the Sunday School work, except so far as what seems beautiful to the child gives him special pleasure and is less likely to be forgotten. But the Sun- day School teacher need not trouble about this. Good drawing or picturesque sand-tray work is not her aim, and cannot come within the scope of her teaching. The important thing for her to do is to endeavour that the expression shall represent the spontaneous activity of the child. We have mentioned already some of the materials used for expression: others are also used, and in the case of very young children simpler materials, such as coloured bricks; are advisable. Perhaps an illustration of what is done in sand-tray work will prove helpful. We take, for instance, the story of Creation. The children have just heard how "the earth was without form and.void." The sand-trays before them are very much the same. The sand has been carelessly poured into them, and so they represent nothing




special to the child's imagination. They are formless. They are void also. There is no life there; nothing to represent anything with motion or life. They have just heard how God brought out of this formlessness and emptiness beauty and life. They set to work to reproduce this idea which has taken possession of their minds. They smooth down the sand, and it is dry land. They make a mountain in the corner of the tray. A river will soon flow from it through a valley into a lake. Slips of blue paper to represent water will help to heighten the colouring of their picture. They will now want to represent the grass and the trees. They will appeal to the teacher for material. Some of them will themselves have supplied this material by plucking leaves and little sprigs and bringing them to the teacher. They do this of their own accord regularly, without knowing beforehand what will be the nature of the expression, as this sort of material frequently proves useful in sand-tray work. They will now want fishes and birds and animals. These the teacher has ready, cut out in paper; but she neither gives nor shows them to the children until she is asked for them. Of course this rule would not apply in superintending the expression of a class of children who had never done sand-tray work before. Last of all they will want man, and they will be given some object to represent him. This is not a complete reproduction of the Creation story, but it is what was actually done by a class of children, and represents a very real expression of the idea which this story conveyed to their minds. All animal life need not necessarily be represented by figures cut out in paper. These are specially good in the case of birds, which can then be placed on the trees, and when some one or two animals are conspicuous in the story. But a number of beans may represent a flock of sheep: a bit of stick the shepherd. The shepherd's crook will be cut from paper, and if it is mentioned in the story it will be asked for. In the expression of a lesson on David and Goliath the armies of the Israelites and of the Philistines were very effectively represented on the slopes on either side of the valley by a number of




little paper tents. Where the sand-trays are not suitable the drawing-books and coloured chalks are a very useful medium. The story of the Flood, told with special reference to the rainbow as a symbol of the providence of God, resulted one Sunday in the children all drawing rainbows. Some also brought in other features of the story, but all made the rainbow the central feature of the expression. After the expression the leader will ask the children a few questions on the lesson, and show them, or, if this has been already done, draw their attention again to the illustrat- ing picture or model. Then, unless there is any special feature, such as putting new names on the cradle-roll, wishing any child whose birthday happens to fall on that day or during the week "many happy returns of the day," or the effort to give practical expression to the lesson, the children will, after the singing of a hymn or prayer, march out and go home.

This is not, of course, a complete account of all that is being done in primary departments. But it is as much as could be said within the limits of this paper. It touches on the essentials. But while more could be done and is being done, it is also true that where even this programme is at present impossible, some of the features mentioned will, if introduced as a beginning, help to make the Sun- day School more attractive and the lessons more effective than they often are.

Some features of this system would also be extremely helpful in other divisions. Pictures, maps and models will prove as useful here as in the Infant School. The maps used should be blank maps; and the places filled in from time to time, as they occur in the lessons. Where the children are old enough it is a good plan to get them to draw and fill in the maps themselves. The small classes of four will be much more manageable. The clos- ing of the lesson with some general questions addressed to all the classes in the room will prove stimulating to both children and teachers.

In connexion with this suggestion there is one plan which has been found very effective wherever it has been adopted.




At the teachers' preparation class a leading thought is selected as the central idea which the lesson is meant to bring home to the children. Two or more sub-thoughts are then sought which will in a few words express the different aspects of the leading thought presented, respec- tively, by the different sections of the lesson. The children have note-books, in which they write down the sub- thoughts and finally the leading thought. If the latter happens to be a good one and the sub-thoughts illustrate it clearly, the children will often arrive at it of themselves. But the writing of these by the children is important as a form of activity. Finally, the clergyman, or someone deputed by him, will ask some general questions on the lesson which will bring out these thoughts. Of course the teachers have proceeded by questioning rather than by sermonizing, but these general questions are an excellent form of expression, and, besides being stimulating to teachers and children, give unity to the lesson and a reasonable amount of uniformity to the teaching of the school. In this, as in many of the points touched upon in this paper, we are reminded that the more we get the children to do the more will their interest be enlisted, and thus the more surely will the Sunday School class achieve the great aim of affecting their hearts and minds and charac- ters with the knowledge and love of Christ.

S. HUTCHINSON.

The following books are recommended to those who desire to study new methods :-

New Methods in the Junior Sunday School. By Hetty Lee, M.A.

Talks to the Training Class. By Hetty Lee, M.A. The

Training. of Infants. By Rev. H. Kingsmill Moore, D.D.

The Primary Scholar. By W. A. Bone. The Infant School. By J. Gunn, M.A., D.Sc.



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New Methods in the Sunday School