Several of the professors I had in college had a dramatic impact on me, especially on how to think and live as a Christian. I experienced a sort of transformation, not all at once, but over the four years I was there. I could not put my finger on any particular pedagogical method employed by those professors, with the exception that the things they taught were not mere facts or opinions, but they were real and meaningful and played a crucial defining role in how they as Christians lived their lives in this world. This has also continued here in seminary.

The other day I was browsing through the library and came across the magazine, Crisis. I had never seen or heard of the magazine before, and when I picked up the issue which was dated from last September, I found out they were no longer printing it and all the content would now be available online. Still, I paged through it, and came across an article entitled, "Teaching Teens: The Risk of Education" by Dwight Longenecker. He writes about the difficulties that face teachers, especially Christian teachers teaching Christian students (or at least students raised in a Christian tradition), referencing the thought of Luigi Giussani, an Italian priest and teacher who is author of the book, The Risk of Education. In reading through the article, the way my professors impacted me became a little clearer.

Giussani was confronted with the problem of apathetic faith in his students. For many of them, it had become irrelevant and incapable of making a difference in their lives. Wondering how he could rectify this, Longenecker points out the following observations the priest made:

Giussani concluded that the problem was in the transmission of the Christian Faith. Faith had to be communicated not merely as a tradition handed down by authority figures, but as a reasonable and relevant philosophy of life. Furthermore, faith had to be verified; it had to be put into action and experienced in order to be real.

This is risky for two reasons. First of all, faith cannot be proven mathematically. While it is reasonable to believe, faith cannot be proven by reason, and attempts to help young people engage with the Faith reasonably might backfire and cause them to lose their faith. Furthermore, to claim that religious experience is necessary is also risky. Religious experiences are notoriously subjective and fickle. They can be faked both by the educator and the student. The religious experience must be authentic, and this means it will be unpredictable. The religious educator must therefore be willing to accept the 'quicksand of freedom.'

If this risk is taken, religious education becomes an adventure of faith rather than simply the rote acceptance of religious dogma and practice. For Monsignor Giussani, religious education is a quest on which the educator and student embark together into the mystery of God.

One of the important things that Giussani points out, Longenecker writes, is that parents and educators need to recognize that a so-called "crisis of faith" is not a negative thing. In fact, it is quite the opposite, for such critical engagement with the faith is one of the methods of making it become real. Parents and teachers who are attempting to instruct their children in their own faith tend to recoil and rebuke children when they do not accept the things that are being taught. Instead, they should be willing and ready to deal with the questions that are posed to them (as all Christians should--cf. 1 Peter 3:15) and help students move beyond mere intellectual ascent to a truth toward a living affirmation of that truth, one that makes a substantial impact on how they live. Longenecker says,

Engaging the critical instinct in education also brings teenagers into a higher level of responsibility. If he is simply learning facts, the student is not taking responsibility for his learning. But if he is engaging the critical instinct, he is automatically responsible for what he learns. As this becomes a habitual way of responding to his world, the student learns in a most natural way how to apply this critical instinct to every other aspect of life, and so learns to take responsibility for his thoughts, words, and actions.

The struggle to make faith real is a difficult one. I have had lots of firsthand experience with faith being too intellectualized. Longenecker says that for faith to make a difference in the lives of students, it needs to be real and dynamic. They need to see it at work in the lives of their teachers (and parents) and they need to experience the reality of it themselves.

If we are to teach teens, then we must be the faithful fathers in the story. We give them their inheritance, the [Christian] Faith, and then we give them their freedom, and as they seek to verify the truth we accompany them, so that the adventure of their lives becomes an authentic encounter with the Lord of Life.

Though this article is written from a Catholic perspective, these principles are equally applicable to Christianity as a whole. What Longenecker and Giussani lay out for educators to consider in teaching their students is really the same as Jesus did. He did not just preach a message, but his life was the embodiment of that message. Although none of us can do that perfectly like Christ did, it lays down a standard for us. I know my professors had their failings, but in some measure they modeled themselves after Christ. And so I hope to do when I become a teacher, as well. Reading these sorts of things is encouraging and challenging. If I want to have an impact on my future students, what better way to do than to be like my Teacher.

Labels: education, faith, Jesus Christ, theology