What do you see?

“I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir,” said Alice, “Because I'm not myself you see.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass.

These were Alice’s words to the Caterpillar as she found herself in Wonderland. Nothing seemed to make sense to her and Caterpillar couldn’t make sense of her. All she had seen and experienced no longer had familiar reference points for her to comprehend where she was or how to make sense of it.

It feels like a seismic shift has occurred in the faith development of children today. Working so closely and intently with youngsters of today I am becoming more and more convinced that who they are and how they think has moved to a place that is so foreign and unknown to their forebears. Adults look on with bemusement as they try to make the reality of their faith real for children today.
In 1962 the scientific world was rocked by Thomas Kuhn when he wrote his short book entitled, ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’. In it he first uses the term Paradigm shift in relation to science and the way we see and ‘do’ science. This new viewpoint was alarming and uncomfortable for many at the time but has since become the norm for the way in which science is approached. Since then the term, ‘Paradigm Shift’ has entered into common usage to mean a change in thinking.

If we are to take seriously the spiritual realities for children today, then Christians need to acknowledge the paradigm shift in thinking, understanding and experience of their faith. The way we view faith development and how we ‘see it’ no longer makes sense to this generation and we must become willing to let go of our familiar reference points and allow new ones to become the norm.

This is very uncomfortable for adults to do, but if we are to take seriously the truths and viewpoint of children and how they engage with God we need be willing to step out of our paradigm and stand in theirs. The ministry of FACT continues to do just that. Our challenge is to help children find God not through tried and tested formulas of the past but in ways that make sense for children today. Not simply to replace new clothes for old ones but to consider whether clothes are appropriate at all! We are keen to help others move from their current understanding and positions to new ones that will enable the Truth they hold so dear to be accessible to the next generation.

The story is not optional

The nature of my work means I spend concentrated portions of time working with children in primary schools. On a recent occasion while working with a class of 6 year olds I was struck once again on how important their story was. We had considered a biblical story in many clever and inventive ways. My goal was to drill down into some of the emotions that might have been felt by the main character and then allow the children time to consider whether they could relate to those feelings.

What does it feel like to lose something or have you ever been lost and if so, what did it feel like, were the questions that I wanted to work on. I unwittingly wanted to abandon the story itself and get to these core sentiments.

Each child keenly responded having lapped up the story and the characters in it. However to my surprise and slight frustration, they expressed the pure essence of their feelings in a long story, full of detail, about how they had lost their hamster, and who had helped look for it, and what had happened when it couldn’t be found, and who else had become involved.

I repeated my question about how they felt desiring a word or short sentence answer.

Once again I was taken through another story by another child of how they lost their mum in a supermarket because they had stopped to look at the comics, and she had moved to the next aisle but that they had gone around the corner and seen her and it was all okay.

Suddenly the penny dropped. I had fallen into the trap of reducing the text to simple one word statements and had lost the story as a whole. The emotions couldn’t be detached and examined in isolation they were an intrinsic part of the story we had looked at in the Bible as well as their own personal accounts. My desire to deconstruct and analyse one aspect couldn’t be done for these youngsters, as the whole story would no longer have meaning or validity.

For them the emotions were very important but could only be talked about in the context of a story and not as abstract ideas. This isn’t unusual for this age group who are often seen as literal thinkers.

Following this session I Once again reflected on Jesus’ parables and the accounts of some of the biblical giants of the Old Testament and considered how easily I can fall onto the well worn track of unpacking the meaning, leaving the story deconstructed and abandoned on the side.

I think there is something we can learn again from these 6 year olds who see the whole event and simply ‘know’ how all the elements make up the story. It is the story that has meaning and value and it’s not an optional extra.

God in Schools

The Schools Standard and Framework Act 1998 made clear provision for Collective Acts of Worship in schools. The act built on previous acts going all the way back to the post war Education Act (1944). The common theme running through these acts is that worship should be, ‘wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character’ and they should occur daily. Over the years this requirement has been blatantly flouted, particularly in secondary schools. In primary schools there has been a slippery slop of ignoring the daily requirement and placing other gatherings in its place. It is common to find schools holding ‘hymn practice’ or ‘choir practice’ and ‘celebration assemblies’ to acknowledge the achievements of pupils or school teams. When singing practices first started they were under the guise of preparing elements for a particular ‘act of worship’, but they have quickly become divorced from them and now stand alone as part of the music curriculum.

The use of language has also caused confusion. The vast majority of schools refer to assemblies and not acts of worship. An assembly is a good thing to occur in a school but is not a legal requirement. An assembly draws the school community together with the purpose of imparting information. To begin with these elements were contained within the act of worship but they have now all to often taken their place. Where once a notice to the school at the beginning of November on the dangers of fireworks would have been given at the end of the act of worship, they now form the totality of the content and presentation to the gathering.

The intrinsic element of an act of worship is that a deity is afforded worship. Schools have moved from focussing their worship to the Christian God to providing an act of worship that is eclectic to all and every god, so that it is now common to see assemblies in the autumn on the theme of light, where children are reminded of Hanukkah, Diwali and Advent all within the same setting.

The move from corporate worship to collective worship has placed the emphasis of individuals worshipping their god alongside another individual worshipping a different god or no god at the same time. The original act was unworkable and unenforceable and to try and recognise that the policy and practice are vastly different, it has undergone numerous revisions. The latest has been to remove the requirement from all but faith schools to hold a gathering to worship. This might seem like a good thing but this will further act to segregate children in society. It will increase pressure on places in faith schools from those who want some faith input and pressure on non-faith schools for places by those who most definitely do not want any faith input.

Catholic schools have always taken an exclusive approach to their admission requirements and so have often been seen as isolationist while in reality they have clear ideas of what they think and believe and will operate their schools under those guidelines. However, Church of England schools have a long history of being inclusive. They accept children from homes of Christians, other faiths and none. In the past they have been clear about their Christian distinctiveness as a church school and while not forcing anyone to believe what they have held to be true they have attempted to offer opportunities for children to explore and discover this truth for themselves.

This distinctiveness has waned in recent years and there is currently a renewed drive to re-establish it. The simple cry from many to remove religion from schools seems reasonable on the surface but do we really want to follow the USA or France in this? The continued drive by Ofsted to reduce children to a series of pieces of data is seen in the latest revised structure that is now being used to inspect schools. The element of the child’s wellbeing has been lost as a distinctive strand and is, in theory, woven throughout the other four elements. Schools are being forced to treat children as organic academic processing vehicles with little or no regard to the whole person. For those of us who hold faith as being vital to our being the smelting down of children to these basic components is to miss the reality of what makes us human.

Ofsted have a role to play in maintaining the learning and teaching that must occur in our schools but this cannot be the totality of what happens between nine and three fifteen each day. Children must be allowed and encourage to, explore and investigate faith. Not coerced or manipulated but experienced and questioned in a safe and open environment. Teachers are often ill equipped to carry out this task and so more training and resources are needed. It is incumbent on churches of all denominations and other faith groups to come to the aid of their local schools by offering this spiritual diet for children to feast upon.

We run the risk of educating a generation who can read and write but have no moral or spiritual compass to guide them through life and when life throws up tragedy and hardship they will have nothing to aid their turmoil or provide answers to why these things have happened. Neither will they have a means to direct their moments of exuberance and sheer joy other than in self indulgence which they will find unfulfilling. The continued erosion of the place of God in schools will lead to a narrowing of the life experiences of children. The previous system was flawed but something was most definitely better than nothing. Local churches need to step up to the challenge as my experience would suggest that primary schools want and value collective acts of worship but feel unsure of how best to offer something of reflective value and depth.

The truth is out there!

15 years ago the American TV series, ‘The X Files’ became popular with it’s slogan, ‘The Truth is out there’.
So what is truth?
In our Post Modern, Post Christian world, in the SE of England at the front end of the second decade of this millennium, there is a marked change in the way we think and approach issues. This is prominent in education and is starting to be evidenced more in churches. At one time information in the form of facts & figures plus names & places would have been taught as truth. From those truths people would have been encouraged to make sense of their lives and experience. Today this has changed. Now the emphasis is on discovery & questions plus reflection & pondering. Truth is something to be found rather than imparted. Truth has ceased to be an absolute and has become subjective and relative. What is true for you isn’t necessarily true for me. So in History we are less likely to be taught the dates of battles and more likely to consider what the social changes were that brought about conflicts. In Science we are less likely to be taught the 4 bases of DNA and more likely to consider the ethical issues about genetically modified crops. When it comes to engaging with the truths of faith, today’s churches need to be less focused on teaching the facts of the stories in the Bible and more focused on allowing and encouraging questions about what difference the story makes to them. There needs to be more time and space to allow children to discover things for themselves rather than being told what they should feel or know from a particular story or parable. Belief comes, not from a well constructed argument, but in an honest simple search for what is real and true for them. This process of questioning and discovery can be very messy and less structured with fewer absolutes. Eventually children who are allowed the space to consider the claims of Christianity may discover a truth that isn’t in the facts of the text but in a person - Jesus, their friend. At FACT we are gearing up for another year of working with children in schools and churches offering them opportunities to try and make sense of the big questions in life: Who am I? Where am I going? Is there more to life than what I know? Also trying to help them find truth in their own situations of: financially stressful  home environments; broken relationships; consumerism; materialism; ambition of fame and the immense pressure of personal image.
What, or perhaps who, will be true for them?