Learning by Questioning
As we make our way through Holy Week, I've been considering how best to discuss Easter with my daughter. The apparently graphic lesson she heard at MOPS last week left her confused and fairly freaked out about death (gotta love the compulsion to evangelize toddlers…). I want to connect her to the story, but to help her make it her own. So I am liking the idea of exploring the Passover meal with her – especially the traditional aspects of the Seder that have the children asking questions about their faith. The purpose of these question isn't to receive some prescribed answer as in a catechism, but simply to ask questions of one's faith.
I like this approach to learning about the faith. I like that the children are encouraged to speak up and explore what they believe and the rituals of the faith. They aren't told to just be quiet and learn what the teacher wants them to know. In the Seder tradition, there are no bad or wrong questions. The child who asks the tricky or even the silly questions is not looked down upon, what is worrisome is the child who asks no questions. Wrestling with faith or even attacking the faith are preferred to passively and unthinkingly going through the motions of faith.
My daughter is four, and is a chatterbox incessantly asking "why?". One of her favorite shows is Sid the Science Kid, a show about a preschool boy who each morning runs into a question he has about the world and then asks that question at preschool where the day is then spent answering his question. She finds that fascinating, and loves the experimental approach they take to figuring out the answers. I watch the show with her with chagrin. No school (or Sunday school) is truly like that – allowing the inquisitive nature of kids guide the learning process. While I understand the impracticalities of such a method, I wonder at what stage kids learn that questioning is bad. Where absorbing facts, memorizing concepts, and reproducing them when asked replaces wondering about the world and wrestling with truth? Even in Seminary my husband says the professors play the poor pedagogical game of having students parrot back the answer they want to hear. Education has become about amassing information instead of learning to think.
So I want to tell the stories to my daughter and to enact the rituals of the faith with her, but I want her to know that those too can (and must) be questioned. She shouldn't just learn about her faith, she needs to live it.
julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
so you like to indulge in the thinking?
I don't know where in austin you are, but Valley View in Eanes is a great school for teaching inquisitive kids. And I know the GT program there, K-5, is based on the inquisitive nature of kids. My mom runs it. It's fab. And she's taught me a lot, which I'm grateful.
Sure is harder than simply going through a day with rote answers to life's deepest questions, isn't it?
I'm exhausted every night. But it's worth it, in my opinion. Exhausting, and worth it. Your daughter is lucky to have you are her mom- walking through life with her in such creative and thoughtful ways.
Julie – What a fantastic post! As I was reading through it I was saying "yes" "exactly" and even "amen"
I think our children (and us) learn at a very, very early age that the "right answers" are what get us accepted/liked/affirmed/praised and that questions indicate that we are contrary/trouble makers/problems to deal with. I think it is even worse for females. It is certainly bad in schools but it may even be worse in most of our churches as there we get an added label of "unfaithful" or "immature believer" if we ask too many questions. And we have to put up with the promises of being prayed for if we ask to many questions – which probably translates into something like: "they will pray that we will shut up and believe what they tell us is true".(just kidding – sort of:>)
Anyway – I loved the post and you touched on one of the things that I am passionate about … "teaching followers of Jesus how to ask good questions and think critically instead of teaching them what to believe"
Good job!
p.s. we're hosting a seder, too. trying to figure out how i'll include the kids as i plan.
but a jewish friend of mine's favorite memories of her youth are of seders and how she played and searched and enjoyed the fun of it.
Seder meals are fantastic. Great learning environments, especially for the more hands-on, explorative, and contemplative types. But most Seder meals I've observed/heard about end up as nothing more than the old folks telling the young folks how it is. Little/no questions. The kids squirm just as much as a protestant kid squirms in Worship on Sunday morning.
Some people respond better to the pedagogical teaching method, but I'll be bold and say that, the more post-modern we become, the less pedagogical learners we'll find in classrooms (or at Seder meals). Post-moderns, by nature, want to "feel" and "experience" what they are learning.
I too have a four year old, who also loves Sid the Science Kid. The trick in teaching this way, especially as a parent, is teaching them to filter all information so that they can appropriately determine what is true, and what is not. Even I have trouble with that from time to time… imagine what our four year olds must think…
And now you know why I homeschool.
Because most public schools and a good many private schools (not all, but many) are meant for teachers and administrators, not students. They teach, but don't educate … there's a huge difference you know.
I sat with my 15 yo daughter the other night and watched a NatGeo television special on Guantanamo and the detainees. We had a fabulous conversation during and after about what is wrong with how we've held those prisoners for so long and violated their rights. And I've never had one course in government with her. Not one. We simply talk about those things all the time … when she's interested.
Here's a good resource for learning more about Passover and Seder and they have all kinds of links. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Passover/At_Home.shtml
Came across an interesting blog post via Twitter this evening, thought you might enjoy it. http://tr.im/ipNa
Follow me @danwboles
Hi Julie – I really enjoyed your posts about Palm Sunday last week, and this one's great too. Have you encountered Montessori inspired Godly Play yet? Bible stories are told in a way that is respectful and accessible to young children, and then kids are invited to "wonder" about the stories and ask whatever questions come up for them. Here's a link to a page from Faith-at-Home.com that has a nice overview of Godly Play: http://www.faith-at-home.com/godly-play.html
Are you referring to the Four Questions? Because those strike me as entirely rote. The questions are predetermined, and at least one of the questions doesn't even make sense any more:
Q. Why is it that on all other nights we dine either sitting upright or reclining, but on this night we all recline?
A. Um, we're not reclining?
Really, the whole Haggadah reading is pretty rote.
AH – I know that the Four Questions have become rote – it was the theory behind them that I was referring to. Asking those questions is meant to get the kids asking all sorts of questions – of course anything can become ritualized and rote over time.
Heather – I have looked into Godly Play, and the Catechisis of the Good Shepherd that it is based on. I like them, but have a few issues with the constraints they put on learning – especially active learning and the suppression of excitement they encourage. But as approaches to church for kids go, they are some of the best things out there.
Actually, I would say they've become rote within some families, just as absolutely anything we can do as human beings can become rote and mechanical. (Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with doing things by rote if that's the best you can muster at the place you are for a time, either.) But I've known plenty of families (at least one of them related to me by marriage) for whom it's not rote at all. I think that needed to be said.
Scott, what do you mean when you say it's not "rote"? I when I said "rote," I meant that the Four Questions and the reading of the Haggadah were from a script, rather than based on free-form Q&A and open discussion. I married into a Jewish family, and we often (not always) think about what we're reading, and discuss it afterward, the actual reading is word-for-word from the script. Are you saying that you do it differently, and deviate from the script?
Hope you had a good Seder!
Ahhhh. I guess I was equating 'rote' with mechanical or empty since that seems to be the way I often hear it used. Sorry about that.
This discussion of the Seder and whether it is (or can be, or can be prevented from being) "rote" is a good parallel with some of the discussions we've had here about liturgical worship. It can be great and enriching, or it can be rote.
I like a "both, and" approach on this matter as well. Learning by questioning (and not being afraid of questions). But also as in the Seder, the sense of the community/family "telling the story" to the next generation with a strong sense that it *does* have "a way" and some answers to pass on to the next generation.
Hi Julie,
I love the words and the beautiful materials used to tell the stories and the wondering about them after the telling… but I don't require silence during the telling (respect yes, but that does not equal silence to me), nor do I get into quashing the excitement the stories can inspire. And I'm all for active learning! I think it's important to claim the freedom to take what works well from any curriculum or teaching method, and leave behind what doesn't work for your setting, you know?
I will confess to not being a "strict" Godly Play-er
Heather
Scott: My fault, I think "rote" was probably not the right word for me to use.
Karl: I figured as an atheist, I didn't have much to contribute to the discuss about liturgy, but here's something a little weird. In the last few years, we've switched to a new Haggadah, which is less formal, significantly more comprehensible, and much "theologically nicer." Despite the fact that I'm a non-Jewish atheist, I find myself missing the old one. It's a little odd.
For education that encourages child-led inquisitive learning, look into constructivism (Jean Piaget). He worked with Maria Montessori originally, then they each went their own way. Montessori is much more structured; Piaget believed in children constructing their own knowledge. You allow the child to follow what s/he is interested in and provide them with materials to go in whatever direction they want.
We had Ry in a constructivist lab school (toddler/preschool aged kids) in Houston and it rocked. We've learned that the Austin Discovery School is constructivist — we haven't officially toured to verify — James and Ry looked into the classrooms — but we're trying to get Ryan in. It's a charter school; they admit by lottery. The web site looks good; my mother-in-law (a teacher in GISD) was impressed with a presentation she saw of their science program. It is, I'm sure, much more structured than the lab school, but it doesn't teach to the test and facilitates hands-on learning!
Julie, read this just now and it reminded me of this thread. Thought you would like to read it.
http://tinyurl.com/c3o8ph