What do you think?
Rate this book
Today's Children and Yesterday's Heritage
s/t: A Philosophy of Creative Religious Development
238 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1952
5 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 6, 2015
Teachers, students, home-schoolers, parents, anyone interested in teaching and learning: Sophia Lyon Fahs, Today’s Children and Yesterday’s Heritage is a wonder of a book, an argument for experiential learning first published in 1952, way ahead of its time, and then allowed to fade from view after 1976. Discover this book for yourself and your loved ones, now available at smallerpond.com as an ebook replica of the 1976 version.
Mrs. Fahs’s subtitle points the way — A Philosophy of Creative Religious Development. She sketches an education chiefly focused on religious belief discovery, formation and development as a key part of total self-development. She advocates a rational, critical approach to sacred texts and doctrines from the world’s major religions as one main area of study. Go where she takes you and you can see that her plan points beyond elementary or “Sunday School,” indeed all schools, to lifelong learning, lifelong self-development.
She opens with the question, How shall the older generation pass on its religious heritage to the younger generation? Are youngsters to memorize and recite a creed with x number of doctrines to accept and y number of commandments to obey? Or do today’s believers want youngsters to become tomorrow’s believers? And what might belief look like, forty years of scientific and technological development from now?
She lays out a psychological profile of how children learn, from their own experience as well as from instructors. She talks us through examples of classroom study units already tried, children’s responses to them and important lessons teachers learned from their experience. She retells the traditional bible story of redemption where the New, Christian Testament continues the Hebrew narrative. Then she shows how scholars and critics have re-interpreted those traditional narratives and broadened our understanding of Hebrew and Christian history. She then completes the discussion by emphasizing how important both versions of the bible are to religious study today.
Let us all worship together, she concludes, in a universal brother- and sisterhood. Let us venture together into the future of faith determined to keep faith alive because our humanity is only complete when our believing selves are strong and healthy. Mrs. Fahs was seventy-six years old when her book came out. Her whole life’s work is in it. In its 1952 context her book is nothing short of revolutionary — and her vision is prophetic.
Mrs. Fahs’s subtitle points the way — A Philosophy of Creative Religious Development. She sketches an education chiefly focused on religious belief discovery, formation and development as a key part of total self-development. She advocates a rational, critical approach to sacred texts and doctrines from the world’s major religions as one main area of study. Go where she takes you and you can see that her plan points beyond elementary or “Sunday School,” indeed all schools, to lifelong learning, lifelong self-development.
She opens with the question, How shall the older generation pass on its religious heritage to the younger generation? Are youngsters to memorize and recite a creed with x number of doctrines to accept and y number of commandments to obey? Or do today’s believers want youngsters to become tomorrow’s believers? And what might belief look like, forty years of scientific and technological development from now?
She lays out a psychological profile of how children learn, from their own experience as well as from instructors. She talks us through examples of classroom study units already tried, children’s responses to them and important lessons teachers learned from their experience. She retells the traditional bible story of redemption where the New, Christian Testament continues the Hebrew narrative. Then she shows how scholars and critics have re-interpreted those traditional narratives and broadened our understanding of Hebrew and Christian history. She then completes the discussion by emphasizing how important both versions of the bible are to religious study today.
Let us all worship together, she concludes, in a universal brother- and sisterhood. Let us venture together into the future of faith determined to keep faith alive because our humanity is only complete when our believing selves are strong and healthy. Mrs. Fahs was seventy-six years old when her book came out. Her whole life’s work is in it. In its 1952 context her book is nothing short of revolutionary — and her vision is prophetic.
Displaying 1 of 1 review