The Minister’s Workshop: Building Children’s Belief

Do children really learn in Sunday school? Would they learn better if parents helped at home? And do boys and girls respond similarly to these learning opportunities?

The junior departments (grades four to six) of six randomly selected Free Methodist Sunday schools in Michigan were reorganized for an experiment. The juniors were divided into four groups. Group one, the control group, received no relevant instruction; group two received class instruction; group three, home instruction; group four, instruction both in class and at home. There were 239 children involved. (The research is fully described in Donald M. Joy, “The Effects of Value-Oriented Instruction in the Church and in the Home,” thesis, Indiana University, 1969).

The children were randomly assigned to the four experimental groups after being tested in concept and value expressions related to “what is Christian about Christians.” The instruction explored that concept, and afterward the children were tested again, but not for factual recall.

It was at once evident that class instruction can produce significant effects and that home instruction does almost as well. The two in combination showed up even better. Table II pictures the gain in concept score for each of the four conditions.

The two sexes were assigned randomly to all four groups to balance any differences attributable to sex. But since there were 148 girls and only 91 boys, random assignment could not overcome this 38 per cent to 62 per cent sex imbalance. If boys in general responded differently from girls, the boys’ pattern would be diluted or lost by the larger number of girls. Table III shows that when the findings were separated by sex, the patterns were found to be not only different but reverse.

The full implications of these findings are by no means clear. What is evident, however, is that if these congregations and similar ones wish to communicate beliefs to children, they must find ways of using both church and home instruction. If the boys are to be drawn to Christ and the Church, they obviously must have heavy assistance at home during the junior years.

Let us assume that the male-female imbalance, the boys’ poor showing in class, and the boys’ high gains at home are all somehow related. What are possible clues to understanding these findings?

Patriarchal cultural effects? From early childhood, males in our society are made aware that they will perpetuate the family name. “I don’t much like girls,” one ten-year-old is reported to have said, “but I guess I’ll get married all right. If I don’t, there won’t be anybody to carry on the name.” It is a big load for a child, but he wears the responsibility as a badge of honor. Listen to the conversation of schoolboys. They address one another by the family name in a kind of ritual denoting respect. It seems likely that a boy is attentive at home to clues to what “being a Jones” means. In contrast, the young girl discovers that her identity will probably be attached to that of another family name. She may be in open search of value signals from sources outside the home.

“Identification” differences? The studies of such researchers as Robert Sears have begun to define the probable link between a boy’s strength of moral character and the strength of his relationship with his father. No clear similar correlation has been found for girls with either parent (Robert R. Sears, L. Rau, and R. Alpert, Identification and Child Rearing, Stanford University, 1965, p. 231). Sears is forthright in the filmed report The Conscience of a Child. “There is no question,” he says, “development of conscience lies squarely in the hands of parents.”

In a 1960 research project among high-school students in the Free Methodist Church, a correlation appeared between seeing oneself as an “active Christian” and being in a home where there was family prayer “regularly every day.” A teen-ager’s chance of being an “active Christian” was six times greater in such a home than in a home where the family prayed together only “once in a while” or “practically never” (Donald M. Joy, “A Survey and Analysis of the Experiences, Attitudes, and Problems of Senior High Youth of the Free Methodist Church,” thesis, Southern Methodist University, 1960, p. 106). Is it possible that the home, perhaps the father in particular, has been made the prime custodian of values in the grand scheme of things, and that a mysterious “identification” must occur in the home if the values are to be transmitted effectively?

A woman’s church? In the Michigan sample there were almost equal numbers of men and women teachers in the junior departments (fifteen men, seventeen women). But only three of the sixty-one staff members below junior level were men. Imagine the impact upon a young boy of spending the first ten years of his church life in the care of women. He hears religious ideas expressed only in feminine tone and perspective. The sights, sounds and odors are controlled by women. What is more, feminine qualities tend to be rewarded—submissiveness, quietness, inactivity. The display of energy, spontaneity, and curiosity is usually discouraged, even punished. The system may tend either to “feminize” the captive males or to encourage the non-conforming males to leave at the first chance.

Boys slow? Boys lag behind girls in physical maturity. They reach puberty twelve to eighteen months behind girls. To the extent that reasoning prowess or verbal skill also lags, the boy is unequally yoked until high school or college. By then he may be ready to drop out of everything in which the girls showed him up—schools, church, even faith.

What can be done to equalize learning opportunities for boys?

1. More and wider research is needed to ask systematically the kind of questions suggested above and to establish whatever correlations may exist.

2. Parents must be viewed as chief instructors in faith and values. Church programs must hand back the parental role along with instructional materials, making Christian education a home-church team-teaching affair.

3. Men must be placed in strategic roles and in equal numbers with women in early childhood ministries of the church, from crib nursery upward.

4. Boys must be set free from class or other structures where they perceive themselves as inferior to girls. This can be done by placing boys in classes with girls who are a year younger, or by separating the sexes and staffing boys’ classes with persons who respect and can harness the more masculine behavioral expressions.—DONALD M. JOY, executive editor of Sunday-school curriculum, Free Methodist Church, Winona Lake, Indiana.

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