So my 9-year-old was looking at the current nursery manual with me this evening, and she saw one of the first suggested activities in the “I Belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” lesson (lesson 25, page 104, for those who care to follow along). It reads:
Display the picture on page 106. Tell the children that this is a picture of Jesus Christ and we belong to His Church. Point to the picture and ask, “Who is this?”
Answer: “Jesus Christ.”
Anyway, my 9-year-old read that and said “Isn’t that a little silly? You tell them what the answer is, and then ask them?”
Basically, she was calling the manual out on being manipulative. I think this is evidence that i’m raising my children right.*
* And yes, i realize that there are people out there who would argue that this is evidence that i’m raising my children exactly wrong, and that i’m evil. That’s okay—i’ve learned to live with that.
5 comments:
Yes, you're raising them right. :)
Actually, that is pretty standard practice for teaching very young children. You tell them and have them repeat back what you told them. They do the same thing with things like "These are your hands" and then (pointing to their hands) "What are these called?" "Hands." It's not being manipulative. It's education. We do it all the time with learning letters, colors, shapes, etc.
I still think it’s manipulation when you’re starting out by telling them something that’s not true—it’s not a picture of Jesus, we don’t even know for sure what he looked like!
So they should just totally confuse 18 month to 3 year olds by telling them that there's this Jesus dude but since we don't know what he looks like you're just going to have guess.
'Course my 22 month old is pretty adamant that several of the pictures he is told are Jesus most certainly are NOT. So he may get belligerent during that lesson depending on if he like the picture or not.
You only think that would confuse them ’cause you’re part of the culture you’re a part of. Consider, for example, Islamic children who never, ever see a picture of Mohammad, but they still know who he is.
In the end, i guess, i don’t believe your assertion that children need visual representations of items to understand them. If that were true, after all, no child would ever understand what the word ‘love’ means.
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