Something's Missing ....

The folks at the Two Institutions blog noticed something missing from their children's' Sunday School lesson for Easter -- the Resurrection.

According to the folks at First Look, the Gospel is "simply too violent for preschoolers."

This is what they said in a letter (from the Two Institutions site above):

“because of the graphic nature of the Easter story and the crucifixion specifically, we need to be careful as we choose what we tell our preschoolers about Easter.” Further they say, “We have made this choice because the crucifixion is simply too violent for preschoolers.” They go on to justify their reason for this by suggesting that theories of cognitive development show that preschoolers are concrete thinkers and therefore “are simply unable to truly grasp what it means to die and then be raised again through the power of God.”

The full letter is available here.
What a shame that we're not willing to tell our kids the good news of Easter! Jesus said to let the little children come to Him, didn't he? I guess the folks at First Look think he must have meant to let the older kids come to Him. I know my daughter understood the basics of Easter quite well when she was in preschool -- because we taught her. One thing I've learned in teaching - kids will always live down to our expectations. We need to keep them higher than this.

{edited in response to correction mentioned in comments}

Posted by Warren Kelly at March 16, 2008 08:30 PM | TrackBack