Children’s Museums and Spiritual Formation
Yesterday we took Emma to a local children’s museum. She calls the place the “museum house” and begs to go there. Basically it’s a place where the kids get to “play” with all sorts of educational installations that supposedly teach them about gravity, light, sound, wind… Mike had never been, so we braved a museum on a Saturday in winter (if it feels like winter, it’s still winter - the picture’s from last summer btw). To clarify, Mike braved the masses and interacted with Emma and I sorta waddled around and claimed whatever chair/bench I could find.
We’re museum members, so I generally take Emma there on weekdays after lunch (when it’s not crowded). There’s generally mostly moms and grandparents there with kids, and a respectable number of dads letting the kids play. I had never been on a Saturday before and from my aloof pregnancy observation post I was intrigued by the new variety of visitor present. At the risk of gender stereotyping, I will call him the “Engineer/CEO Dad.”* The take charge and achieve perfection sort of dad. This is the dad who works a traditional schedule and so would never show up mid-week with the work-at-home, stay-at-home, flexible schedule dads. From what I typically see, most other parents at the museum might explain a certain exhibit to a kid, but they then let the kid play. The Engineer/CEO Dad jumped right in. Not to play with their kid per se, but to figure out how everything worked and to show their kid the right way to do things. If the kid was building a track for a ball to cascade down, the dad would jump in to improve on the design so it worked better. If the kid was building a tower of blocks, the dad would insist on strengthening the foundation so it wouldn’t fall. The drums had to be played in rhythm and the manipulable shapes had to be made into a recognizable design. If their kid couldn’t handle it, the dad did it for them.
I was fascinated. At first I was a bit annoyed - the point is about letting the kids discover things for themselves! Then I was convicted about how much I step-in to prevent Emma from having to struggle as she learns. Then I started to wonder about how much we as the church step in to prevent fellow Christians from struggling to figure things out for themselves. We want people to have all the right answers and especially the right theology. So instead of encouraging questions and self-discovery, we spoon feed answers. Not that I’m against education, but like these dads we assume we need to take charge of other people’s spiritual journey. But will that actually help them learn or develop a deep faith? Or does it just lead them to parrot answers they don’t really believe because they know those are the “right answers”? If we think allowing kids to discover things for themselves is good pedagogy, then why don’t we allow the for the same when it comes to spiritual formation?
*(I am sure that dads who are Engineers (hi dad) and CEOs are great dads and that there are a lot of moms who act this way too… just observing what I saw)
Julie Clawson
Topics: parenting, Emma, Church |
March 30th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I couldn’t agree more. Shoveling cliche one liners down believers’ throats does not enhance faith, it stifles faith.
March 30th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
“So instead of encouraging questions and self-discovery, we spoon feed answers. Not that I’m against education, but like these dads we assume we need to take charge of other people’s spiritual journey.”
John Dewey once said something to the effect of…
Today (in the late 19th c.) education consists of hearing the recitation, acurrately copying the recitation into your notes, and then, at the end of the term, re-copying those notes from memory and handing them to the professor. The student is then evaluated on how accurately their recollection of their notes matches what the lecture content originally was. And that is not education.
The best teachers are the patient ones who let the students struggle. You have to create dissonance in order for their minds to adapt in a certain way to the material and methods. If you step in to rescue them from that dissonance, they simply will not learn as best as they can, and will require a rescue when things are difficult to grasp.
I would commend an essay that Simone Weil wrote on School Studies where she likens this very process to spiritual discipline. It is in the book Waiting for God.
Cheers.
March 30th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Interesting insight, Julie. It’s always a temptation to try to make things easier for our kids, even when we know they learn by doing, trying and failing. I suppose it’s also a common temptation to look for someone to give us the “answers” that will spare us the process of doing, trying and failing in the spiritual realm as well.
March 30th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
I think you can probably take it another step or two further. Because when we teach the answers, we assume that either a) there’s only one “correct” answer or outcome, or b) that the answer we have is the best and most complete outcome. When we’re willing to let kids play (in both the metaphorical and literal situations), the answers they come out with might not be the “expected” outcome, but can often be equally as important, and bring a perspective that we don’t expect.
Mmmm, it’s a bit of a worry - I’m becoming quite the post-modern.
March 31st, 2008 at 12:18 am
Yes! As I read, it was as looking in a mirror. However, and possibly in my own defense, there’s something to be said for constructive play. That’s the balance I’m trying to achieve with my son when we go to the local children’s museum or equivalent experience - to give him freedom to try new things, to fail, to play by himself, but also to show him the way things work (as I best understand them). There’s something about legacy embedded in that moment, and probably holds much more potency when the context changes and it’s a farmer teaching his kids how to chop wood or handle a rifle or change the oil in the tractor. Not to suggest that we’re comparing apples to apples there, but for a more urbanized parent, maybe the blocks and marble tracks are what we have left to show our sons, the vapors of a more utilitarian legacy.
March 31st, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Drew - thanks for that info. Sadly many still see education as being rote memorization. This might impact facts but it doesn’t educate or develop thinkers.
Geoff - great point. It makes me wonder how often we are open to letting our kids teach us things. Or in learning from the perspective of believers different from us.
John - like I said, I see nothing wrong with teaching, that needs to happen. Its the freedom to learn in their own way as we teach that often scares us as parents.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:56 pm
IN THEIR OWN WAY–the title of a great book by Thomas Armstrong about helping children learn by recognizing the multiple intelligences. One draw back to too much self guidance is not jumping in or giving options, clues, diversions, when a child hits a wall of frustration. Some A-personality parents are too caught up in the idea of competition. In other words, doing it better or faster means the doer is superior.