Nestoj, it is too bad you are starting from bottom up. The youngest generation teaching the old. You have to start from somewhere though and it is great that they offer that option at schools. In Greece the opposite case senario. The Gov't has started to make religion class non-mandatory and there is talk about taking out alltogether... what a shame that will be.
As someone who has done youth work over the years I believe that rel. education is best achieved in the Church. DL being the best teacher for all ages. The Church setting is a classroom. Even children as little as 4 can benefit from it. Instuction is important to supplument the experience of religion as expressed through the Eucarist and the sacraments.
I remember bringing my daughter with me at the choir loft. The choir would "cover" her "soft cries" and she learned the hymns pretty early. Now she sings in the choir and she loves it.
It is important for children to experience the fullness of the faith that is precicely the reason we baptize them babies so that they fully participate in the life of the Church.
I had to paste this one as I found it beautiful....
Children in Orthodoxy
Printable version
The Orthodox Church is a Church with a beautiful attitude toward children. It is also a Church to which children like to go. All ages, all kinds and sorts, feel at home in it. Children love to be with their parents and other adults. In the Orthodox Church there is an atmosphere of beauty and music, even the small ones lie relaxed and quiet in their parents' arms. There is no problem of holding young married people, either, when they may bring their little ones to Communion on any Sunday until the child is seven. From this time on, he will only receive Communion after very special preparation, as do the adults.
Among Anglicans and Roman Catholics and Protestants Holy Communion, or Mass, or the Lord's Supper is only partaken after the individual is initiated into full membership in their particular denomination. It is very surprising for Western Christians to see infants receive the Holy Sacrament. This custom is fundamental in the Orthodox Church. Only in Orthodox christianity are infants admitted to full membership through Baptism and Chrisamation (Confirmation) which are administered at the same time, as the rite of Christian initiation.
"The attitude of the Orthodox Church toward the child, and the child's attitude toward the Church, both stem from the nature of Orthodoxy itself. For the genius of the Orthodox Church is its objective approach. Men and women are urged to leave their hopes and fears for a time, and join in the worship of heaven. Christian doctrines are mighty realities. 'That God is great and man is little is everywhere and at all times insisted upon in Orthodox prayers and services. Man...must sink his own hopes and fears in something greater and grander.'"
Typical of this attitude is one of the hymns which is an adaptation of part of the Liturgy of St. James:
- 'Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly-minded,
for with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.'
It is not easy to describe Orthodox worship to one who has not experienced it...
There is a real beauty of holiness in Orthodox churches. Beauty of architecture, of art, of music, and of devotion, all blended together.Music from the choir floods the building. A drama is in process, the Drama of Salvation, and every worshipper is a participant... The sense of freedom is amazing. The sense of belonging, of at-homeness, on the part of the worshippers, even of the small children, is striking. The degree of participation by each one is impressive...
There are interests that divide us: intellectuals from non-intellectuals, educated from non-educated, old from young, rich from poor, Churches which place the main emphasis on the sermon can scarcely avoid such divisions. But in the Orthodox churches you will find all economic and educational levels, all ages...
All of this is but the application of certain basic principles of Christian nurture held by the Orthodox:
1. There is the attitude that the child is to be grafted at once into the Body of the Church. Born to Orthodox parents, membership in the Orthodox Church is open to him by right of birth. In consequense of this belief, the infant is baptized and confirmed in the first weeks of his life, and is taken to the Church for his first Communion at six weeks... Many modern Western 'Christians' would advise letting the child grow up outside the Church in order that he may decide for himself when he is mature. But what family would send its children at birth to an orphanage until the said children were old enough to decide whether or not they would pledge love and loyalty to the family in which they were born? Or, what nation would send its potential citizens away to a neutral spot until they came of an age to decide under which type of government they preferred to live?
2. Nothing is taught the child that is 'childish,' and so to be discarded when he reaches maturity. 'The traditional family training in prayer life also begins with the training in certain devout gestures. Each baby wears its baptismal cross around its neck, has an icon placed over its cot, is taught to make the sign of the cross, to kiss the icon. As the child grows in understanding these gestures are not discarded as a 'child's religion', but are simply filled with a deeper meaning. "The psychology here is in thorough accord with the child's physical, mental, and emotional development. The baby shows his love for his parents through gestures long before he can say 'I love you,' or before he can say the Fourth Commandment.
3. This Church takes the stand that the Church and the home are the institutions responsible for the child's Christian nurture, and not the school, which, more and more has become a tool of the state...
4. The Orthodox Church employs the best character training principle known to psychologists and educators today: the principle of participation. The acolytes in our churches are participating in corporate worship. Participation in worthwhile activities, either with adults or other children, is the soundest of educational principles. We teach our children what we believe, we live in our church together with them.'
This is sound educational doctrine. In any case, the greater part of learning is absorbed from the environment. Children absorb atmosphere as a sponge absorbs water. And when they participate with their parents, and moulding ideas come in association with those who love them best, there is an emotional overtone such as can never be given in parish house 'classes' for nursery age or kindergarten children.
Liturgy
All these prove that the Orthodox Liturgy is not simply an object of admiration for outsiders but something that concerns them more deeply in their studies. Particularly, the liturgical movement which has for some years become so widespread in the West, is systematically studying the Eastern Liturgy and trying to draw from it useful elements for enriching the Western Liturgy. One of such elements recently added to the worship program of the Roman Church is the Eastern Midnight Mass (Vigile Pascale) which was taken from the Eastern tradition and made a great sensation in the Western world. It is generally accepted that "the Roman Catholic theologians by coming in touch with the Orthodox have become better aware of the central position of the liturgic sacraments within Christianity. They have gone deeper into the meaning of worship and have been enriched by the East: "With an ever-increasing interest, the Latin specialists on liturgies turn their eyes, with curiosity and attention toward the eastern liturgical forms. They do not wish to know them so much as to find in them a solution to the problems that their own liturgy has created. At least they expect from them some light that will guide them in their quest for a liturgy more alive and more open to the faithful. " However, of these liturgical treasures we shall speak again in subsequent chapters.
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/gharvey/learning/articles/children.htm
God bless,
Philothei
