Article January 22, 1944 Issue

The Older Sunday School Student

INEZ FIELD DAMON

The viewpoint of the older Sunday school student provides a definite challenge to the Christian Science Sunday School and to its teachers. In the first place, the high school or college student is intensely knowledge conscious. He is in possession of an amazing amount of factual knowledge relating to the world around him. Some of the facts, which perhaps his Sunday school teachers may have discovered and discarded long ago, he has just discovered. He is thrilled with them, and he is quite sure that he is going to do something wonderful with them. Here the teacher needs to express much sympathetic interest, for these discoveries must not be met with indifference, or be scorned, or arbitrarily rejected. Discrimination and desirable rejection must come from the student himself as a result of his enlightened spiritual understanding. To develop such understanding is an important part of the work in the Sunday school.

It should also be remembered that the student is fresh from his history and literature classroom and from his laboratory. He is trained to be accurate in the letter of these subjects. Therefore, should the teacher refer loosely to some historical episode, let him beware that he make no chronological mistake. To make a mistake in one's dates is to risk losing prestige with the boys and girls. One teacher expressed it well, in speaking of her experience with the Sunday school class, when she said, "You have to be so awfully right!" Accuracy is imperative in teaching in the Sunday school. The student's expectation that Christian Science—like any science— be accurately stated, is realized in the never-failing exactness of Mary Baker Eddy's use of words and method of presentation in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."

In addition to his demand for accuracy, does the student sometimes seem critical? Let it be remembered that this is due to his training. In school or college it may be called "analytical procedure." "comparative religion," or "comparative methods." Does he seem argumentative? This too may be the result of his training. He is taught to weigh arguments, pro and con. In school they may call it "debating." In any case, it is clear that, consciously or unconsciously, in the Sunday school, in its administration, its teaching, and its teachers, he is looking for the educational standards to which he is accustomed in his academic experience. He is the product of his educational environment and must be accepted as such.

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