TEACHING RELIGION —AND LIVING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 383, 25 October 1946, Page 20

TEACHING RELIGION —AND LIVING

UNDERSTANDEST THOU? An Introductory Handbook to the New Testament. By Ian W. Fraser, M.A., B.D., Th.D., Presbyterian Bookroom, Christchurch. RELIGION AND THE FAMILY... Based on BBC talks by Geoffrey Hoyland. George Allen and Unwin, HE former of these books draws its title from the punning question of the apostle Philip to the Queen of Ethiopia’s Chancellor who, like most modern travellers,. tried to read while he rode. Its ob-

ject is, by giving running accounts of the places, practices, events and ideas that one finds referred to in the New Testament as one read it *through, to make both the narrative and its meaning thoroughly intelligible, alive, and relevant. And the writer succeeds in his object. By reading a history of the encient Hellenic world, plus a book on the social conditions of the first century, plus a geography of Palestine, plus an account of Hebrew religion, plus a modern Commentary on the New Tes‘ament, plus a scholarly and scientific life of Jesus, plus a textbook of Christian Theology, plus accounts of the English and Maori Bibles, one could learn all that Dr. Fraser teaches-and of course lots more. The value of his book is that he brings under one, cover everything out of this varied knowledge that the ordinary reader of the New Testament needs to enlighten and enliven its pages as he reads them; and does it without obvious cramming or pre-digesting. Understandeth Thou? is an actual, year’s course in Biblical instruction given to an actual fifth form. The class, moreover, has drawn maps and pictures to illustrate it. If one class found learning along these lines so interesting that it co-operated thus enthusiastically in its own instruction one’feels that many others could also. Its already heavy (almost best-selling) sale for a New Zealand publication seems to indicate, anyhow, that a good many hundred out of New Zealand’s many thousand whole and parttime teachers of religious subjects in "day" schools and Sunday classes believe it will help them to get what their pupils need. Geoffrey Hoyland also combines considerable unobvious erudition, with practical experience in getting the co-opera-tion of young pupils-although his speciality (and delight) is "delinquents" ("the name by which adults, with usual complacence, fob off their own sins on people smaller than themselves.") The former of his two series of talks is a witty and well-based contention that a_ strong family life is eS¥ential to children’s proper development; but that the family to do its job must be a "gang" in which parents and children co-operate in a learning-living adventure. For a hunting gang the family was through the enormously long paleolithic period when our essential human nature ("the old brain") was laid down. We adults may ignore or flout our nature in large part or for long periods without immediate disaster. But children "for all their great mental activity ... run almost 100 per cent. on their instincts and emotions .. . the-old brain tutoring

the new (neolithic) brain, the tail wagging the dog until, bit by bit, the dog learns by experience to wag the tail." This is what education is-‘the process of teaching the new brain to attain the maximum possible degree of control over the old brain without doing violence to it." But modern life does do violence to both child and adult nature by "depriving children more and more of the sense of partnership and co-operation in the family gang for which they are designed and which is a vital factor in their social education. Extension of the state’s "fostermotherly activities" ("the parents of England passing votes of no-confidence in themselves, abdicating individually in favour of themselves corporately"), though inevitable and in many ways good, is "prolonging childhood and increasing (children’s) frustration (by) postponing still further the consciousness of being active and needed partners in society." Similarly, although "the parental pedestal is several feet lower than it was," the old "occupational partnership between parents and children has given place to an emotional dictatorship. _.. The old natural bond of leadership and co-operation being replaced by an unnatural bond of emotional possessiveness." So what shall we do about it? Hoyland suggests quite a lot-particularly in his second series of talks, the series that gives his book its name.

A.M.

R.