Objectives in religious education

Front matter

Objectives in religious education

By

PAUL H. VIETH

Part Two. A Study in Comprehensive Objectives

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XIII, DEFINING OBJECTIVES IN SPECIFIC TERMS..........+--02- 281 Appendices.

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THis is a timely and needed book. The progress of educational theory and practice has thrown the problem of objectives to the fore. So long as education was conceived as a mere transmission of accumulated material from generation to generation, there was no such problem. The sole purpose of the teacher was to see to it that the pupil mastered the stuff, acquired the ideas, or got the habits which constituted the subject-matter of education.

But we have come to see that education should be more than the transmission of existing knowledge or the reproduction of existing skills. It has a creative function. It faces toward the future rather than toward the past—or better, it transmits the past only for the sake of a richer present and a growing future. To a boy who said, “Daddy, when I grow up I want to be just like you,” the father answered, “If you should be just like me, I would be ashamed of you; you are standing on my shoulders.’’ A dynamic, changing society looks to education for the development of those powers which enable it to cope with changing conditions and insure its progress.

Education today aims increasingly at the develop- , ix x Introduction ment within the growing pupil of free, dependable, creative personality. The spirit of such education is that of fellowship; its methods are as various as the forms of association in human activity. Under these conditions the problem is acutely raised: What purposes shall the teacher entertain, and how shall he undertake to realize them? What types of personality have value, and why? How shall the development of such personality be stimulated? What situations, what experiences, are of most value as tending to favor the emergence and growth of such personality?

Questions such as these, which are everywhere being raised with respect to education generally, are especially pertinent and meaningful with respect to religious education, which is in process of emerging from what was in many respects a merely transmissive stage. The progress from “uniform” to “‘oraded”’ lessons, and from these to “‘life-centered”’ curricula, has awakened much questioning and widespread interest in the problem of the objectives or religious education.

Even among those who agree that we must move away from merely transmissive to creative education in the field of religious faith and life as well as in other fields, opposing tendencies are revealing themselves. One group clings to the term “religion,” but is inclined to interpret it as social idealism and to ignore or even deny the existence of a metaphysi-

Introduction Xi cally real, personal God. The other tendency is to emphasize more clearly the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, to stress his revelation of the character and disposition of God, and to substitute the term “Christian education” for the more ambiguous “religious education.” This latter tendency characterized the discussions at two recent world-gatherings—the Jerusalem meeting of the International Missionary Council and the Los Angeles convention of the World’s Sunday School Association.

Dr. Vieth has made a study of comprehensive objectives, based upon an analysis of the writings of leaders in the religious-educational movement, which marks a definite step forward. It sets the main problems into clear relief, and puts us into position to go on more intelligently to the formulation of specific objectives. Best of all, this is no merely academic procedure. This book records one phase of the work which its author has been doing as executive director of the curriculum enterprises of the Commission on Education of the International Council of Religious Education. Further work is in progress, upon an experimental basis, along the lines indicated here; and in this work are associated the forty-two Protestant denominations which are cooperating in the International Council.

L. A. WEIGLE

Yale University

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HIS study in objectives was undertaken because of the author’s conviction that progress in religious education demands a clearer conception of its nature and purpose. A first step in this direction requires a review and evaluation of the best thought on this subject. This study presents in organized | form what ten leaders in religious education and four leaders in general education have to say cerning the objectives of religious education. Anyone who is more interested in the discussion of the objectives themselves than in the philosophy underlying objectives and the method by which this study was made, may skip from Chapter I to Chapter V without loss of essential continuity. This book is a revision of the manuscript submitted by the author to the faculty of Yale University as a dissertation, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. The technical framework of the original study has been removed,

Xiii

XIV Preface and the manuscript cast in more easily readable form.

It is not maintained that it is possible or desirable to secure unanimous agreement on any set of objectives. It is desirable, however, that we see as clearly and concisely as possible the various viewpoints which are held, and recognize the values in each viewpoint. The best result which could be hoped for would be that this study might stimulate others to carry farther the various lines of development which it has opened.

The author wishes to express his indebtedness to Dean Luther Allan Weigle for writing an introduction to this volume; also to Professor Weigle, Pro- ~ fessor Gambrill, and other members of the faculty of the Yale School of Education for their supervision of this study and their helpful suggestions in the preparation of the manuscript; to Mr. Otto Mayer and Miss Lois Rogers who participated in the study; to Hugh S. Magill, General Secretary, and his associates on the International Council Staff for their encouragement and help; and to the men whose writings form the basic data for this study for their generous cooperation.

Petia vs

December 21, 1929.

PART ONE The Place of Objectives in Religious Education

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Chapter I The Meaning Of Religious Education

EFORE we undertake a discussion on objectives B in religious education, it is necessary that we come to an agreement with the reader on the nature and meaning of religious education as the term is used in these pages.

During the past quarter-century religious education has risen to a place of major importance in the life of the Christian church. The first wave of enthusiasm for the movement is now running out, but a more mature and permanent stage of interest is taking its place. The over-zealous are less frequently hailing religious education as the instrument for creating a new world in this generation, while those who declare that religious education is but a passing fad are rapidly decreasing in number. It is becoming obvious to the most casual observer that as religious education assumes the more stable lines of maturity a permanent place of major importance is being accorded it in the life and work of the church.

Many varying views have been held concerning the nature and purpose of religious education. Often the opposition to it has had its roots in some partial or distorted view of its meaning which would not be upheld by those who have been most concerned with its success. The time has come to review the: experience of the past quarter-century and see whether we may discern the major outlines of this new instrument for religious progress. It is the object of this book thus to view the purposes of religious education as they are in process of taking shape.

Let us not suppose that the struggle for giving religious education its rightful place in the church has resulted in complete victory. The battle must still go on. While religious education has achieved a place of honor and is accorded a certain amount of lip service, it is yet far from coming into its own and yielding fruits meet to its capacity. A clearer conception of what religious education may accomplish cannot but turn the attention and energies of -church leaders into its service more fully and fruitfully.

1. The nature of religious education. It is possible at this point to define religious education in a tentative manner only. To define the objectives of religious education is to define the thing itself more completely. This entire book will therefore be directed toward the better understanding of what is meant by religious education. It is necessary, however, that we here make some definition of the term religious education as we propose to use it in the following pages.

Religious education is related in kind to the process of education in general. Its distinguishing

criterion is that it has for its purpose the making

living. The meaning and importance which any person will attach to religious education will depend on the place he accords to religion itself as an interest and activity in life. In so far as general education sets complete living as its major objective, and includes religious interests and values in its definition of complete living, it has opened the way for making a place in its scheme of things for religious education.

We may distinguish two general tendencies in the effort to define religious education. One of these is exclusive i in its viewpoint, attempting to set religious education apart from general education. In this narrow sense, religious education is thought of as a chapter in any inclusive scheme of education, definitely related to the whole in method perhaps, but more or less independent in content. According to this viewpoint, it is altogether feasible to give religious education in a school separate from that in which general education is offered. The content of the education going on in the two school systems being different, the two can be given at separate times and places, without violating the essential unity of the child’s educational experience. Such interrelations as do exist spring largely from the necessity for schedule adjustments, and the desirability, for pedagogic purposes, of the pupils recognizing a continuity of the religious school with the public school.

The other tendency regards religious education in a more inclusive, sense. According to this viewpoint, religious “education embraces the whole of education, and the specifically religious school but “adds emphasis and quality to what is already going forward wherever the educational function is being performed. Religion is concerned with all of life’s values, and any education dealing with life is potentially religious. Those who advocate this. viewpoint would insist, however, that this religious character should not simply be implicit, but should be recognized explicitly both by teachers and by those who are taught. Stated in its extreme form and with certain sectarian presuppositions, this viewpoint becomes the Catholic theory that “by a Catholic education is understood not merely the inclusion of religious courses in the curricula, but such teaching even of secular branches as involves the recognition of the unchangeable principles of Catholic philosophy, theology, and pedagogy.” ? The principle for which the Catholic theory is contending, without its sectarian bias, is found in the more liberal Protestant educators who maintain that all education in the best sense of that term is religious in spirit and purpose. The object of the distinctly religious school is not to aggravate the separation between religious and secular education, but to give more explicit expression to the religious spirit which is present in all education, and to provide for such sectarian interpretations as may be necessary and desirable. Weigle maintains that ‘quite aside from the question as to whether or not the church should undertake the maintenance of schools, it is clearly the church’s duty to endeavor, in one way or another, to contribute Christian principles and motives to the whole of education, and to inspire it with Christian ideals.”’ ?

- Coe does not draw a sharp distinction between

* Resolution passed by the College Department of the Catholic Education Association, Louisville, Ky., 1926, applying to all Catholic Schools and colleges.

* Weigle, L. A., Report on American Education for Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work, p. 2. Stockholm, 1925.

* religious education and education in general. Rather does he think of religious education as ‘‘education that completes itself by taking account of the whole child, the whole educator, and the whole goal or destiny of man,’ ? and that ‘‘the primary difference between religious and other education is the end in view, or the conception of human life that it represents,’ * so that “for us religious education is simply education in the complete sense of that term.’ ® On this basis it is difficult to say that any education is “secular” rather than religious. It is obvious however that a complete religious education transcends the ability of the present public school to give. Taking much the same position, Cope ® maintains that all education is religious because it deals with persons who are by nature religious, and it deals with them for the ultimately religious purpose of helping them to live in a world of spiritual beings. In a sense its processes also are religious, since they are scientific only in so far as they are based on the unchanging laws of the universe as discovered in the natures of these spiritual

®Coe, G. A., Education in Religion and Morals, Fleming H. Revell, 1904, p. 26.

® Cope, H. F., Religious Education in the Church, Scribners, 1918, p. 35.

beings. This discussion of the more inclusive view of the meaning of religious education would lead us to the position that the full life of education and the full life of religion are bound up with one another.

Thus far we have presented the viewpoint of those who represent religious education. That there is a growing tendency on the part of those who are chiefly responsible for general education to look in the same direction is evident from various recent publications. A widely used text book in the principles of education’ devotes an entire chapter to the place of religion in education. One of the best known authors on the curriculum includes religion as one of the ten areas of activities which constitute his major objectives.* More recently the Committee of the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association, which was commissioned to define the objectives of secondary education, has included as one of its four major objectives “To promote the development of an appreciation of the force of law and of love that is operating universally.” In interpretation of this objective the committee makes the following comment:

* Chapman, J. C., and Counts, G. S., Principles of Education. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924.

*Bobbitt, Franklin, How to Make a Curriculum, chap. ii, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924.

Man craves more than a knowledge of himself, of nature, and of organized society. He hungers and he thirsts after righteousness. Knowing his own imperfections, he feels that somewhere there is perfection. The great universe calls to his spirit, and unless he ignorantly or willfully closes his ears, he hears the voice of God. No question of theology or of ecclesiastical polity is involved here. The individual soul reaches out to orient itself in the universe and to find its place of labor and rest. No partial view suffices. Only the view of the whole, the Weltanschauung, will make it possible to interpret the meanings of day by day experience. When this orientation takes place, life assumes poise, dignity, grandeur. Otherwise its striving, its struggles, its achievements seem trivial and insignificant.

No greater task rests upon the secondary school than to help its pupils to find their God. How this is to be done is the greatest of problems. Of one thing only are we sure: We cannot solve this problem by ignoring it. There is no single way to apprehend Infinity. Each in his own way may draw near.’

It is this broader conception of religious education which is maintained in this book. |

2. The place of religion in life and education. The content of religious education is religion itself. It is not possible to describe the meaning of religious education apart from the conception of the meaning of religion which is implied in the use of the term. Religion is an essential and inalienable ingredient of human experience. Its value is not simply instru-

*°Department of Superintendence—Sixtk Yearbook, 1928, P. 54- mental, but is intrinsic as well. Like beauty and companionship, it is ‘required by men in the simple fulfillment of their lives.2° Religion is the total response of the individual to that which he holds to be of supreme worth, and leads to harmonious adjustment to his total environment.” In addition to this essential value, religion undoubtedly also has great instrumental value in the promotion of other interests, particularly morality. ‘Education remains defective and falls short of its full end if it fails to beget the loyalty to eternal principles, the good will, the creative responsibility which enter into the making of moral character; and moral character is most surely established only when it is undergirded and sustained by a faith that the constitution of the universe itself is moral, and that moral values are therefore eternal. That faith, that conviction, is religion.” ** “So interwoven in the thoughts and actions of men have they become, that to distinguish the moral from the religious is now difficult. Indeed, religion in its highest form has been aptly defined as morality touched with emotion, and, perhaps one

_ “Chapman, J. C., and Counts, G. S., Principles of Education, p. 344, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924.

™ Searles, H. L., School and Society, xxvii, 157.

* Weigle, Luther A., Religious and Secular Education, p. 3, American Tract Society.

PP might add, with meaning.” * If religion occupies such an important place in life, any comprehensive education must include the teaching of religion. While the problem of the genesis of religion in the life of the individual awaits for its solution the findings of much more extensive research in the psychology of religion, and while the existence of the Object of religious devotion is and remains a question to which science alone cannot give an ultimate answer, from the standpoint of its intrinsic value in human life, and its pragmatic value in giving meaning and drive to other values, religion demands its rightful place in the education of every child.

We must proceed a step further in defining the use of the term religion. In ordinary usage morality has to do with ideals of conduct while religion has to do with man’s relation to a Supreme Being. Yet one often finds a life of aspiration or of devotion to ideals spoken of as religion. If religion be defined as ‘‘man’s highest response to what he considers highest,” it is obvious that “the highest’? may be defined in terms either of an abstract ideal or of an existent reality. Professor Macintosh has called this response to a divine ideal fundamental religion, as

*8 Chapman, J. C., and Counts, G. S., Principles of Education, p. 340, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924.

distinct from experimental religion, or response to a Supreme or Divine Being.

Fundamental and experimental religion may be regarded as two phases of religion, discoverable and separable by analytical thought. In its concrete reality religion is a synthesis of. the cosmic and social attitudes. Our attitude toward nature is cosmic; our attitude toward humanity, social; our religion— i.€., our attitude toward the Divine—tends to be both cosmic and social. “Fundamental religion”? stands for the isolation of the social element in religion, recognition of and aspiration toward ideal social values. “Experimental religion” stands for the cosmic element in religion, dependence and various other experimental relations toward the ruling Power in the cosmos. ™ |

Macintosh further makes the point that fundamental religion even in its highest. forms is. not sufficient to meet all of the religious needs of men. It needs the stimulus of religion in the more usual and specific sense of the word, if its highest development is to be reached. “For steady aspiration there is need of inspiration ever new.” It would seem a fair position to take that these two viewpoints of religion are but phases in one complete whole and that the one without the other does not define religion in the true sense of the term—certainly not in the Christian sense of the term. The interpreta-

“Macintosh, D. C., The Reasonableness of Christianity, p. 41, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925. * Tbid., p. 43.

j tion adopted by the present writer is that the distinguishing criterion of a religious experience is its ultimate reference to a Supreme Being. In this sense ‘Education becomes religious when it is conscious . of the presence, power, and love of God as the ulti-

_ mate condition and supreme motive of human life, which includes and integrates all lesser values and motives whose proximate end is some form of human welfare.’ 76

3. The Christian interpretation of religion. No attempt was made to limit the above discussion to religion in the Christian sense of the term. Since, however, this book is to deal primarily with education from the viewpoint of Protestant Christian churches, the term religious education will be used throughout i in the sense of the Christian religion. A more exact term would be Christian religious education. The term Christian education is sometimes used to designate the type of education here described, but we have rejected it for our present purpose because it has been so largely preémpted by the Christian college to describe its total program of, work.

Narrowing the interpretation of religion to the

10 Weigle, L. A., “What Makes Education Religious?” in Religious Education, April, 1923, p. 91.

Christian viewpoint does not make it different in kind from the definition which has been given above. It does, however, add the qualifying cri-_ ~~ terion of Christian, which implies the ultimate reference of experience to God as we know him i in and through Jesus Christ. “Christianity i is the Christo- | centric religion, a Christlike attitude toward a i Christlike God for the sake of realizing Christlike purposes in the individual life and in the world.” 17° Religious experience on this plane, interpreted through the personality and teachings of Jesus, consists, on the one hand, in an experience of and with God, and on the other hand in a devotion to the highest ideals, resulting in ethical unity with the _ purpose of God, and the resulting beliefs inherent in and growing out of such experience. All experience becomes religious, and to the Christian is religious, if it is conditioned by and lived under this consciousness of God and oneness with him and his purpose. There is then no discontinuity between the religious and the secular. To one who knows God as Father in the Christian sense, and has this Christian philosophy of life, the universe itself becomes friendly and expressive of: God’s power

Macintosh, D. C., The Reasonableness of Christianity, p. 156, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925.

and purpose, and every human relation becomes potentially religious.

4. Education as religious growth. If education be thought of as a series of progressive changes toward an objective—that is, a process of growth —then religious education must be a process of growth in religious experience and life. As such, it is continuous with life itself, for the possibility of growth is not only always present, but should indeed be encouraged to the full at every stage of maturity. The processes of education for spiritual growth represent the human endeavor to enable each growing individual to adjust himself to his total environment, with particular reference to spiritual values. Religious education is not a substitute for the work of the Divine in human life, but sets as its task such working with God in bring- _ ing about right religious adjustment that the highest spiritual development of the learner may take place. Any process of growth will no doubt have its hills and valleys, its periods of greater and lesser intensity. Some experiences will overshadow others in their potency for producing growth. Some may even be so marked with emotional concomi- — tants as to seem different in kind from all others. Each individual must advance according to the laws of his own being, and the true measure of growth in the religious life is the fruit of the spirit. It follows that if religiousness in the individual is the resultant of growth, then religion itself must become responsive to the influence of education, with the possibility of change and development.

Chapter II The Nature And Function Of Objectives

HERE is no general agreement on what should Ail constitute the objectives of religious education. In most cases, when objectives are expressed at all, they are stated in terms of such generalized theological preconceptions, that, if educational procedure should take account of such goals, it would constitute a sin against the nature of the child. Often they are stated in such abstract terms as to provide utterly inadequate guidance to procedure. — It is inevitable under these circumstances that much of religious education today should be so purposeless, so bewildered, and so thoroughly unscientific as to merit the scorn of the true educator.

1. What are educational objectives? An objective is a statement of a result consciously accepted as a desired outcome of a given process. It springs from the recognition that there: are alternative consequences which may follow from acting in given situations in different ways. It signifies that an activity has been raised to the level of consciousness, — where the desired outcome may enter as a factor in controlling the possible ways of responding to given situations. An objective introduces foresight into a process and uses the anticipated outcome in directing that process.*

Educational objectives are statements of desired outcomes to be achieved through the process of education. Their function is to set a mark in advance. [hey constitute the goal for which education exists—the raison d’étre for its being. Objectives are to education what the architectural drawing is to the builder or the vision of an abundant harvest to the farmer. With a goal in view, proper activities may be selected for reaching that goal, each in its proper sequence, and their success measured by the criterion of the results achieved toward the building of a house according to pattern or the production of a harvest in abundance.

There is a sense, however, in which this figure is inadequate as an illustration of educational objectives: Education is a process which is coextensive with life. Its result cannot be stated in terms of finished products, such as houses and crops, except in so far as successive attainment signifies stages of achievement in a constantly on-going process. In

* Dewey, John, Democracy and Education, p. 129, The Macmillan Company, ’

this sense the function of objectives is that of a compass to the mariner, an instrument by which activities may be directed toward the successful achievement of many specific goals. Educational objectives must be so stated as to provide for a conception of society, not as something which is, but as forever becoming. But such progressive revision of objectives can most intelligently be made when the desired general direction is known.

2. The function of educational objectives. Objectives are essential to effective education. They serve at least five major purposes: (1) Objectives give direction to the processes through which desirable changes are to be realized. Though the very essence of education is the promotion of changes, change in itself is no virtue. The change must be in a given desirable direction. (2) Objectives serve to give proper sequence to educational activities. They introduce meaning into the process. (3) Objectives serve as guides to activity through which desirable changes may be produced. Activity? as such is a function of human life which is present in every waking moment. It becomes educational only

2'The word “activity” as used here is not limited to the usual meaning of overt physical acts, but is used in the more general sense of including mental and intellectual decisions, emotional reactions, and other non-physical responses. (See Charters, W. W., The Teaching of Ideals, chap. ii, The Macmillan Company, 1927.)

when it is directed in the light of possible alternative consequences resulting from the reactions to given situations. (4) Objectives serve as guides to the selection of materials for use in the effective carrying out of desirable activities. (5) Finally, objectives serve as measures of the effectiveness of the educational processes. They provide the norm of desirable changes produced. They serve as the divining rods of progress. To insist that the educator must know the goal of his undertaking is imperative if education is to realize its high purpose for society.

3. Individual or Seaut goals. The ghiedives of education may be stated either in terms of changes to be brought about in individuals or changes to be brought about in society. Both approaches are found in the literature on objectives, and often the same author will look at the matter now from one viewpoint and again from another. This is the inevitable result of the close interrelation of the individual and society. It may be argued with equal success that society consists fundamentally of individuals or that individuals have no existence apart from society. Unless we limit ourselves to an otherworldly viewpoint in determining our values, we may again argue with equal effectiveness either that the individual is the unit of primary concern or that society should challenge our greatest interest. We may therefore approach the question of objectives from either the individual or the social aspect. To avoid confusion, however, the viewpoint should not be shifted now to the one and now to the other.