Twenty Questions to Ask about Sunday-School Materials

Finding the right teaching materials is a recurring problem for Sunday-school teachers, particularly those who are evangelical in conviction. The evangelical teacher finds he must reject the materials put out by most denominational and some independent publishing houses on theological grounds before he even begins to consider their educational merit. In effect, evangelicals ask publishers two questions: “What do you think of Christ?” and “Will your materials help us educate children, youth, and adults in the things of Christ?”

For a first step into the forest of available materials, here are twenty more specific questions to ask about prospective curricula. In addition, evaluators must expect to supply other criteria appropriate to their own needs and the needs of the people they teach. The first eight of the following questions should be of particular value to evangelicals. The rest are more generally applicable.

Theological Considerations

Evangelical teachers and leaders consider the Scriptures the unique and primary sourcebook in Christian education; other books, however relevant, rank as secondary sources. Evangelicals reject materials that negatively criticize the Scriptures, treat God’s power as limited, and view miracles as myths, as well as materials that encourage learners to “discover their own theology” by piecing together portions of the Scriptures and other literature. Discovery has become a vogue in secular education, but evangelicals, who believe that basic theology has already been formulated for them, use discovery techniques in Christian education only with great care. And they are wary of materials that use the familiar terms of biblical theology to express meanings significantly different from established ones; they reject outright those that use secular content to twist the meaning and intent of the Scriptures.

Some published materials present the Bible as a book that helped people of the past solve certain of their problems but is of limited use for problem-solving in our own sophisticated era. Evangelicals hold that the Bible continues to help man solve his persistent problems because Scripture offers a stable, dependable core of values. In a day in which “situation ethics” (the ethics of “it all depends …”) is taught nearly everywhere in our society, evangelicals want their instructional materials to reveal biblical answers to specific ethical and moral questions.

Evangelicals, then, will want to ask: (1) Are the materials based on the Scriptures as the major instructional source for Christian education? (2) Do they provide a faithful record of, and a friendly commentary on, biblical events and teachings, rather than an interpretation of events and teachings that is actually or potentially negative? (3) Do the materials speak with assurance of God’s power and goodness in performing miracles, including the great miracles of the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth? (4) Do they uphold the Bible’s validity in helping people solve problems today? (5) Do they emphasize the stable, dependable values that the Scriptures teach?

But proper doctrine is not the only theological consideration. Evangelicals believe that the issue of personal commitment to Christ should be raised early in the learner’s Christian education and that it should become a recurring point.

Their next questions will be: (6) Do the materials encourage the learner to commit himself to Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour? (7) Do they make it clear that the learner’s right relationship with God is a necessary precondition to his having right relationships with his fellow men? (8) Do they help those learners who have given themselves to Christ to increase their faith and trust in him?

Substance And Organization

Careful reading of the materials will help prospective purchasers judge whether details—events, facts, examples—contribute to development of main ideas and eventually to development of key concepts. In the best materials, details, main ideas, and key concepts are present in reasonable balance, none being overstressed or slighted. Tables of contents and chapter outlines help to show how selected details are used to build main ideas and key concepts, which are the fundamental elements to be learned. Obviously the materials should serve to teach important spiritual, moral, and ethical lessons. Obscure objectives should alert prospective purchasers to examine the materials with special care. The presence of unacceptable objectives should warn them against purchase.

Order or arrangement need not necessarily be chronological or traditional in some other way, but should provide both for surveying the scope of the subject matter and for “postholing,” dealing with some concepts in depth. Prospective purchasers should note what is surveyed and what is treated in depth. Worthwhile materials provide instruction in all essential biblical teachings at some time during the years they cover. Some essentials deserve repetition, or “spiraling,” in increasingly sophisticated form as students mature.

Evaluators should ask: (9) Do the materials state understandable and acceptable objectives? (10) Do they contain specific data, main ideas, and key concepts in balanced proportion and arrangement? (11) Do they achieve a focus on main ideas and key concepts to which all other content clearly contributes?

Good materials can be used and understood by most learners for whom they are intended, serving common or typical needs and interests. In this sense they are “graded.” But they also contain alternative or optional experiences for the benefit of those whose needs, interests, and abilities are uncommon or atypical—for example, the slow and the gifted learners.

Worthwhile materials avoid the superficiality and discontinuity that come from jumping around among experiences or from moving too hurriedly up important learning steps. Learning should accumulate. It may be expected to proceed in spurts interspersed with review and reinforcement. The materials should become increasingly harder, with fast pacing, slow pacing, and review apparent in the format.

To help determine worth, teachers might ask: (12) Are the materials appropriate to learners’ abilities, needs, and interests? (13) Do they cause learners to repeat important experiences and review important ideas? (14) Do the materials increase in difficulty throughout the span of years they cover?

Features Helpful In Learning

Attractive, stimulating materials prod people to learn. Whatever the general design of the instructional materials, they should foster learning by, for example, capitalizing on learners’ basic interests, fitting in with the normal developmental tasks of the age for which they are intended, stimulating learners’ desire to solve problems, recognizing their concern for tracing events and causes, and cultivating their liking for human biography. Wherever appropriate, materials should involve all the senses and include many varied learning activities. Supplementary learning aids, including maps, still pictures, films, slides, recordings, and bibliographies, should be included or suggested.

Evaluators should ask: (15) Do the materials provide a variety of ways to stimulate learning? (16) Do they contain and suggest supplementary aids to learning? (17) Do they make thrifty use of the time available for learning?

Features Helpful In Teaching

Materials should distinguish between basic, essential methods and teaching aids and more elaborate, optional methods and aids. Teachers’ guides should contain numerous practical suggestions for teaching content and should explain such procedures as grouping, case analysis, and role playing. Many teachers need help in planning teaching episodes and in developing teaching skill; that help should be readily available in the material chosen. Conscientious teachers also need means of evaluating the worth of their contribution to Christian-education programs.

And so, evaluators must know: (18) Are inexperienced teachers able to use the materials without difficulty or confusion? (19) Are teachers’ guides or teachers’ editions of the materials genuinely helpful, suggesting procedures that make teaching easier and more effective? (20) Do they contain suggestions for teacher planning and growth and for ways of evaluating teaching and learning?

The right answer to these questions is, of course, yes, but some yeses will have to outweigh others. Evaluators should note these value differences before they apply the criteria. Perhaps they will want to assign numerical weights to the questions. Although any evaluation system is necessarily subjective, using a system is more reliable than selecting materials by caprice or according to vague, general impressions. And, considering the goals and subject matter of Christian education, choosing the right lesson materials is serious business.

Ronald C. Doll is professor of education in The City University of New York. His doctorate is from Columbia University. He is author and co-author of nine books and monographs having to do with school curriculum.

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