| The Spirit of the Child, written by David Hay and Rebecca Nye, (HarperCollins, London, 1998) provides an insightful historical grounding in theories of religion and spirituality. It then explores findings from the Children's Spirituality Project in light of these and makes some practical suggestions for developing children's spirituality in the classroom.
What exactly is spirituality?
In their exploration of spiritual sensitivity in children Hay and Nye develop three categories:
- Awareness Sensing - focussing on the here and now, tuning in to a particular experience such as music or nature, being lost or absorbed in a task or moment and focussing on the felt senses.
- Mystery-sensing - Wonder and awe, for example, of the expanse of a starry sky or ultimate mysteries; imagination, exploring dreams and fantasy.
- Value-sensing - the experience of delight and despair over the events of daily life, sense of the ultimate goodness and security, reflecting upon meaning and experiencing a sense of oneness with the universe.
Where did spirituality go?
Some theorists consider spirituality to be biologically natural or inbuilt in humans, closely linked to a child's simplicity and sense of wonder. Hay and Nye refer to research, such as that by Kalevi Tamminen and Leslie Francis, which have found high levels of spirituality in children under thirteen and a sharp decline of this in adolescence (p.49).
Hay and Nye report that many children found it difficult to express their spirituality or felt embarrassed because they felt it was not socially acceptable. Some children even admitted they were afraid of being laughed at or thought stupid or even mad, not only by their peer group, but within their families (including 'religious' families), if they talked about their personal sense of the religious in their lives (p.105).
Nurturing the Spiritual
Hay and Nye suggest some practical exercises to illustrate possibilities for spiritual education in schools. For example:
Help children to keep an open mind recognising that every individual will see things differently.Have the children sit in a circle for 5 minutes and quietly write what they observe. No list will be the same. The intention is that the children realise that all individuals are unique (p.164).
Explore ways of seeing: To encourage a broad-minded outlook, show children a picture of a cube and asking them how they see it. Pointing out that the cube can be seen in different ways can help free children from dogmatism, suggests Hay and Nye (p.168).
Encourage personal awareness: With eyes closed children are encouraged to concentrate on the here and now, the self and the senses, for 2 minutes (p.170).
Become personally aware of the social and political dimension of spirituality: By encouraging children to think through the many steps from the growth of an apple-tree from a seed to the purchase of an apple in a shop, children are encouraged to see the social context of life (p.172).
Sharon Bond
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