To prepare for some anticipated work in Christian education, I decided to revisit a few of the authors who have most influenced my understanding of pedagogy over the years. One of my favorite writers is Howard G. Hendricks, whose whimsical, nuts-and-bolts approach to education has served as an excellent counterpoint to more heady theorists like Dewey, Piaget, and Maslow.
In Teaching to Change Lives: Seven Proven Ways to Make Your Teaching Come Alive (Portland, Oregon: Multnomah Books, 2003), Hendricks underscores two, key objectives to teaching that bear continual reflection. The first objective is specific to Christian education, and it boils down to the point that learning should be a process that is not just interesting and logical but marked by a sense of discovery. In Hendricks words, “Truth is always most profitable and productive when you can see it for yourself.” Students of Plato will notice a family resemblance to Socratic dialog in that statement; here’s a more lengthy, illustrative excerpt from the volume’s 2nd chapter, “The Law of Education”:
For three and a half decades I’ve taught a course at Dallas Seminary on “How to Study the Bible for Yourself.” It’s the most enjoyable course I’ve ever been privileged to teach. After studying an assigned passage on their own, the students come back to class and there’s never enough time to share all they’ve found.
I’ll often have a student say, “Dr. Hendricks, I’ll bet you haven’t seen this before”–he’s thinking John Calving and Martin Luther never had a clue about it either–and after he relates a gem of truth gleaned from the text, you’ve never seen a seminary professor get as enthusiastic as I do.
But what do some of us do with a person like that? We tell him, “Yes, Bill, that’s good. In fact, fifty-three years ago, when I first met Jesus, I learned that truth too.”
As a result, the average listener in evangelical churches is not excited by the truth–he’s embalmed by it. The educational program in the churches is often an insult to people’s intelligence. We’re giving them wilted flowers instead of teaching them how to grow by means of God’s word, which is alive! They’ve never had the experience of discovery learning in the word of God…of saying personally, “This is what God has said–this is what he wants me to do. Somebody’s got to hear about it and experience the kind of changes in life that I’m experiencing!”
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