Editorial April 19, 1952 Issue

TEACHING THE CHILDREN

Richard J. Davis

No greater privilege, no more sacred trust, can be bestowed on a Christian Scientist than the opportunity to teach Christian Science to the budding thought of children. In her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy, the revelator of Christian Science, writes (p. 236): "Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right. While age is halting between two opinions or battling with false beliefs, youth makes easy and rapid strides towards Truth."

The word education, derived from the Latin educere—to bring or lead out—takes on a higher significance in the understanding of Christian Science, for education rightly understood does not consist in imposing the personal opinions or concepts of one human or mortal mind on another so-called unenlightened mortal mind, but rather brings to light the fact that man in his true and forever perfection already knows and possesses all good. It reveals the fact that man is now and always has been the expression or reflection of omniscience.

The teacher in Christian Science, therefore, does not approach his class from the incorrect, pedagogical standpoint that he as a teacher knows, but that his pupils do not know. He does not assume the possession of a personal understanding which he proposes to give to others. Scientifically understanding the oneness of being and Mind's infinitude, he knows that Mind is its own interpreter, and that spiritually and divinely there is nothing that he knows which is not in truth the possession of his pupils. He knows that in the oneness of Mind and its unfoldment both teacher and pupil will be and are taught of God.

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