Will Our Children Have Faith Westerhoff

Title: Will Our Children Have Faith?

Author: Westerhoff, John H.

Go back to Books list

Synopsis

Originally written in 1976, revised in 2000, and translated in six languages, this classic critique of Christian education is newly revised and expanded and includes Westerhoff’s overview and perspective on the state of Christian education over the past forty years—plus his role in that history.

According to Westerhoff, instead of guiding faith formation within the family, the church, and the school, we relegate religious education to Sunday morning classes. There, children learn the facts about religion, but how will they learn or experience faith? How can we nourish and nurture the faith of children, instead of only teaching the facts?

Content

The shaking of the foundations update

• Beginnings
  • 1903 the Religious Education Foundation was founded in recognition of problems with "Sunday school"
  • Modeled off of public school "modern pedagogy"
  • in 60s & 70s church schools flourished
• The Problem
  • Since the turn of the century, in spite of nods to other possibilities, Christian educators and local churches have functioned according to a schooling-instructional paradigm.
  • Other models have been considered but have not caught on.
  • John Dewey began his important career by assuring us that all of life educates, and that instruction in schools represents only one small part of our total education.
  • A church school with teachers, subject matter, curriculum resources, supplies, equipment, age-graded classes, classrooms, and, where possible, a professional church educator as administrator, has been the norm. All this must change.
• Anomalies
• The small church
  • church schools became divorced from the people and from church life
  • Small churches don't have resources to do "church schools"
• Ethnic cultures
  • embrace local, cultural norms
• A broken ecology
  • in early part of the century (assume 20th)...
    • typical community life
    • Second, the family was basically secure, extended, and stable.
    • Third, most public schools were Protestant parochial schools. Roman Catholics, in turn, supported their own parochial school system to educate their children.
    • Fourth, there was the church.
    • Fifth, a great number of popular religious periodicals provided the major source of "entertainment" and religious education in the home.
    • Sixth and last, the Sunday school completed this ecology of institutions deliberately engaged in religious education.
  • These six institutions intentionally worked together to produce an effective educational ecology.
  • Now churches are heterogeneous and families have changed

So we are left with a church school (or parish Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (C.C.D.) program) struggling to do alone what it took an ecology of six institutions to do in the past.

• The hidden Curriculum
  • This paradigm eliminates the processes of religious socialization from the concern and attention of church educators and parishioners.
  • Education correctly understood is not identical with schooling. It is an aspect of socialization involving all deliberate, systematic and sustained efforts to transmit or evolve knowledge, attitudes, values, behaviors, or sensibilities.
• The wrong Questions
  • But education grounded in Christian faith cannot be a vehicle for control; it must encourage an equal sharing of life in community, a cooperative opportunity for reflection on the meaning and significance of life.
• Religion or Faith
  • Faith is deeply personal, dynamic, ultimate. Religion, however, is faith's expression. For example, religion is concerned about institutions (churches), documents, statements of belief (Bible and theology), and our convictions and moral codes.
  • You can teach about religion, butt you cannot teach people faith.
• A Bankruptcy
  • A new paradigm must be found
• Update
  • Committed to adult education
  • a new paradigm is needed, and what I call a community of faith-formation paradigm is the one that best addresses the needs of our life.
  • I neglected the importance of the intellectual way of thinking and knowing. Christians do need to know the content of Scripture and how to interpret it; they need to have knowledge of ethical principles and to be able to make moral decisions; they need to know historic Christian doctrine and how to think theologically.
  • how cognitive skills develop.
    1. First comes knowing — being able to repeat what I am told or read;
    2. second, comprehension — being able to put what I read or am told into my own words;
    3. third, application - making use of what I have learned in conversation and the sharing of ideas;
    4. fourth, analysis understanding how another person thinks and has arrived at a particular position and being able to compare and contrast different positions;
    5. fifth, synthesis — being able to put together various positions and make my own considered opinion; and
    6. last, evaluation being able to judge the value or worth of different positions.
  • I have more questions than in 1976 but am more hopeful

Other facts

• Used for: History and Theory of Catechetics II TRS 751C
• Purchased: August 2015

Bibliographic info

• Personal name: Westerhoff, John H.
• Main title Will our children have faith? / John H. Westerhoff III.
• Edition 3rd rev. ed.
• Published/Created: Harrisburg, PA : Morehouse Pub., c2012.
• ISBN: 9780819228000 (pbk.)
• LC classification (full): BV1475.3 .W47 2012
• LC classification (partial) BV1475.3