RITE AND REASON:The spiritual lives of children are developed in the primary school, writes DANIEL O'CONNELL
CHILDREN ARE spiritual by nature. Spirituality is innate and essential to their wellbeing. They are enchanted by the world around them, caught up in the present moment, with a great curiosity to explore relationships seen and unseen.
They possess an ability for wonder and awe; they are capable of profound and significant beliefs, and are always open to more. One of the areas in which this spirituality is nurtured and developed is the primary school. This takes place through the ethos and across the curriculum. If students are taught their maths and geography well, this will also nurture their spiritual lives.
In the Catholic primary school, however, religious education most explicitly honours the spiritual dimension of the child. The school brings the spiritual life of the child into conversation with the Christian tradition – a source of spiritual wisdom, as other religious traditions are.
Although recognising the distinct identities of spirituality and religion, Christian religious education believes they can be partners. Religion without lived spirituality is dead and at times deadening. Spirituality without the structure and resources of a religious tradition and community is without roots and may be held the prisoner of ever-changing fashions.
At the heart of the Christian religious tradition is the belief that God comes looking for us. Christian religious tradition tells stories of how people have tried to tune into this presence and live in response to the revelation of God, particularly through the person of Jesus Christ. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it, “Earth is crammed with heaven/and every common bush afire with God”.
Religious education in Catholic primary schools seeks to nurture the innate spirituality of children by introducing them to this Christian tradition, giving them access to a source of spiritual wisdom. It tries to bring their natural curiosity about relationships, God, their questions about life and death into conversation with the Christian tradition – exploring its insights and questions about these issues in a sustained, critical and reflective manner.
This conversation between religion and spirituality can form a life-giving identity and an openness in faith in one’s stance toward life.
Such an approach helps children to learn about the tradition but, just as importantly, to learn from it for their own lives, in the spirit of openness, awe and wonder. In that context, reason and revelation go hand in hand. Critical thought and religious faith are not mutually exclusive.
In the religious education class, the aim is to bring the children’s lives, their questions, curiosity, hope, and stories into conversation with the Christian tradition. This dynamic needs to engage the memories, imaginations and critical intelligence of children, helping them develop understandings, judgments and decisions.
The teacher helps children to reflect on certain aspects of their lives – for example, friendship or fairness. They then bring this part of the children’s lives to the faith tradition – asking what does it have to say about friendship or fairness. Having entered into dialogue and begun to learn about the tradition, the children will be invited to wonder. What do they make of it for themselves? Does it make sense? What does it have to say to the world today?
Finally, the children are asked if there are any implications for their own lives from their conversation with this particular spiritual tradition. In this way, there is the opportunity for children to learn from the tradition for their own lives. It is important children are agents of their own exploration.
Religious education is a required and important curriculum subject in primary schools. Religion can have a very positive role in society and in the lives of individual persons.
The colleges of education prepare their student teachers to highlight the life-giving potential of religion to engage and educate well the spirituality of the child.
Dr Daniel O’Connell is a lecturer in religious education at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick