MAKE IT INTERESTING by Lulu T. White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 23, 1901

MAKE IT INTERESTING

By Lulu T. White

LULU T. WHITE

Do YOU sometimes wonder why your children take so little interest in the study of the Bible; why, after all your efforts to instruct them in the Scriptures, they have no intelligent idea of the principles of our faith, and can scarcely remember the Sabbath-school lesson from Friday till Sabbath? Do you sometimes feel discouraged, and think that your children are uncommonly dull, or born with an aversion to religious study?

I wonder if the manner in which you teach them is accountable for this. There is a right and a wrong way of doing everything, and this is nowhere more manifest than in teaching the gospel to the little ones.

Are you making the lesson attractive to them, presenting it in such a form that their young minds can appreciate it? or are you trying the old method of pouring it in, forgetting that the mind is a leaky vessel, which will retain only so much, and that of material that is especially interesting to it?

I know of families where the parent gathers the children around him, and from the lesson pamphlet hurls a question first at one child then at another. Often the child does not understand the language of the question; and upon his failure to answer at once, it is thrown back in a louder tone of voice, while the face of the parent plainly shows his irritation. This is continued until all present are literally worn out; and when a heartfelt prayer is offered that the children may become interested in studying the Scriptures, they wonder in their inmost hearts how they possibly can be interested in anything so dull and tedious.

Think of the sermons preached by Christ when on earth. Can you find one in which He sought to teach the people by giving them a set of questions and answers to be learned?—No! In the attractive guise of a story He presented the truths of the gospel, while the multitudes listened spell-bound, forgetting to eat or sleep. By the scattered grain of the sower, the leaven of the bread, and other familiar objects and scenes, He represented the nature of the kingdom of heaven.

Think also of the many devices of Satan to lead the young astray. At the theater, the dime museum, the circus, and similar resorts, all is life and motion. The seeds which shall bring forth a harvest of sin and sorrow are subtly woven in with pleasing pictures, interesting exhibits, and anything that will interest the mind and hold the attention. Shall we be less wise than the adversary of our children’s souls?

In teaching we forget that a child is not prepared to grasp abstract ideas, and that these ideas must be associated with concrete things many times before he can appreciate them alone.

Connect the lesson with life on the farm, at the store, or at school, so interweaving the blessed truths with practical and familiar things, that these things can not be seen without recalling the lesson.

It is a law of the mind that interest will wane if the attention is directed toward one object for too long a time. This applies to a young mind in a greater degree than to a mature one. Therefore the study must be varied, and not continued too long at one time. It is not necessary to go through the lesson every day. Better have an interesting, animated study for five minutes than to leave every one tired at the end of half an hour. Talk about the lesson in a simple, conversational fashion, until the children forget that they are studying, and become eager to tell all they know about it.

A few thoughts that have been clearly associated in the child’s mind will be of much more value than a whole lesson lost in a haze of indistinctness.

Do not become discouraged. If, after you have done your best, your children do not manifest all the interest you desire, you must ask God more earnestly to make you truly a teacher, and to assist you in adapting the lesson to the capabilities of each child. Remember it is “precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little.” Learn to look through the eyes of the children, to hear with their ears, to become truly “a little child.” Then enter the lesson with a cheerful face, close it before the interest has abated, and you will be surprised to see that your children have really become interested in that which has been made interesting.