Physics

I was listening to a podcast today about ... well, the section I was listening to was about teaching Physics. And what caught my attention was the discussion of how some physics teachers (and university lecturers) had changed their way of teaching by listening to their students. They had learned up. And I got quite excited, because I realised that it might answer part of a question that has been bugging me for ages. 

I am a cautious consumer of the 'kids talk' in church, and my own versions of them never looked like the standard model, because I couldn't work out how to do Part 1. 

The standard model is in two parts:

1. Very exciting thing that seems to have nothing to do with anything, except it has awesome props, lots of colour and movement, generates laughs, and is the Thing That You Will Remember.

2. The bible bit, which is calm and serious, has no props, very little colour and movement, definitely no laughs... and probably is forgotten.

The transition between parts 1 and 2 is the bit that would cause me to cringe. You might have heard these talks. You can feel it coming, and it doesn't feel good. Even the best presenters on occasion would fall into this. And you can see the kids' reactions, too. They know it's coming. You can watch them switch off, as soon as they know the good bit is over. 

Hard.

Anyway. What I learned from the physics teachers was this: people walk into a learning opportunity with a preconceived idea about stuff. If you give an example, tell a story, do an experiment, mostly it will simply reinforce their preconceived idea about stuff. Perhaps the wrong one, but it doesn't tend to change the way they think. 

One guy asked his class a question, took a poll on the answers, then allowed the class to talk amongst themselves for a time. Then he re-polled, and more like 90% of the class got the answer right. 

This is probably old news for most people, and I'm sure I've heard it before. But it got me thinking. If kids walk into church with a preconceived notion of (eg) who God is, and we tell them a regular story about our trip to the zoo, it will simply reinforce their preconceived idea. And if we then follow this with 'and that's exactly what the bible says here'... well, this will work if we were all on the same page to start with. 

What if we weren't? 

My preconceived idea that I had before I listened to this podcast was that bible stories are powerful and don't need dressing up or para-parables to make them accessible, and this podcast just helped reinforce that idea. 

I wonder what kids ministry would look like if we were all brave enough to throw away the 'exciting' stuff, the examples from our own lives, the lecturing model, and just tell the story, and ask the kids to discuss it. 

I wonder what our own lives would look like if we were this brave.