Article May 16, 1953 Issue

Pupils Find Renewed Interest

[From a teacher in a branch church Sunday School]

On page 582 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we find a definition of "children" which reads in part, "The spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love." Although I had long been familiar with this definition, on one particular Sunday morning it took on new significance to me. The pupils in my Sunday School class had begun to be apathetic about preparing their Sunday School lessons. Indeed they had seemed unwilling to increase their understanding of any required subject. Referring to her day school work, Anne would lament, "I don't like the third grade at all."

"If you think that's hard, wait until you're in the fourth grade and have long division," rejoined Susan. Betty complained that she didn't like history unless she saw it on television. All agreed that there had been so many interesting programs to watch every night that there was no time that week to do the assigned Sunday School lesson.

Then the argument presented itself to me that I did not know how to talk to children, that I was separated from them by a barrier of somewhat greater learning and experience. It was at this point that the need of seeing the situation in a new perspective became apparent. In the first place the problem was not peculiar to this class. Indifference on the part of pupils toward the liberating power of true knowledge had been observed to some extent by other workers in the Sunday School; and in my professional work as an educator it had been the subject of lengthy and often hopeless discussions by my colleagues.

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