A Guest Post by Michael Davidson
Most Sundays I attend Priesthood and Sunday School and find that it was a good thing that I read the manual in preparation for class. I sit down, eagerly open my scriptures and/or David O. McKay book and prepare to comment on the subject matter to be presented. However, I am often disappointed that the class goes in a completely different direction than what I anticipated. It’s not that the instructor is emphasizing different points than I would have chosen; it’s that the instructor has decided to completely forego anything in the manual for something of his or her own invention. Hence, it is a good thing that I prepared in advance or I would never have heard what the lesson was supposed to be about.
Now, I know that the brethren don’t sit around and actually compile the manuals that we get for use in our meetings, but I have had some insight into how they are written having talked with members of the curriculum committee about the process. Regardless, they are reviewed and approved for our weekly studies, and as such really shouldn’t be dismissed. Why then are some teachers so unwilling to actually refer to them in class?
Having taught my fair share of classes in this Church I think I might have a couple of answers. I think that sometimes our vanity gets to us a little bit. We want to show how involved we are with our callings, or how knowledgeable we are, and so we liberally interject references to outside materials and pose questions which are a bit out of the purview of the original lesson. Or worse, we think that we can come up with something better on our own.
Am I the only one who seems bothered by this? Or, is it silly that I am bothered by this? I can’t think of a good reason to reinvent the wheel, and I can’t think of a good reason to start lessons from scratch when there are excellent materials to review which offer outstanding chances for learning and enlightenment. Gentle reader, the floor is now yours.
Michael Davidson is an attorney living in Salt Lake City with his beautiful and talented wife. He is always prepared for his Sunday School and Priesthood lessons. He blogs on politics, law and current events over at
Davidson’s Law.
I suppose you differentiate between those who leave the lesson material and even the subject matter behind and take off on their own, those who stay on topic but leave the materials on the shelf, those who use the manual but add in some of their own stuff, and those who stick to the manual and nothing else.
I think the problem with the last category (sticking to the manual and nothing else) is that you have to be a very talented teacher to take snippets of talks and comments by a prophet given over his lifetime and turn it into a compelling and spiritually enlightening lesson. I think we rarely have such talented teachers in our gospel doctrine classes (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the point of attending Sunday School is not merely to be wowed by a great teacher–though that is nice every once in a while). The problem with the other three categories (leaving the manual behind to some degree) is that you never know what you are going to get. Sometimes it will be great and doctrinally sound, other times it will be sentimental mush or just plain strange. I see one of the main points of the manual to be the correlation factor–to keep us on track. I know correlation has been discussed a lot on the bloggernacle, however, it does seem to be the crux of any discussion on the manuals.
Michael I am much less concerned about whether someone uses the manual as I am about whether someone sticks to approved doctrine. To the point that the manuals facilitate this I push for strict usage, to the point where members can use both the manual and other material while sticking to doctrinally sound stuff, I say go for it. Plus, the manual should instruct teachers to regularly bring treats. There is almost no problem with a lesson that a good treat can’t fix.
During my military years, three words that were drilled into our heads were, “training to standard.” The Church is no different – that’s why when I served as a member of the Sunday School presidency in my ward, I was, and still am, a firm believer in basing lessons on material developed under the direction of the brethren. One can supplement the basic points, but the danger of spouting false doctrine or circulating questionable information increases with the teacher’s inclination to depart from the standard.
The Teachings of the Presidents of the Church books are incredibly hard to teach from. I think to some extent, people are supplementing because they just don’t know what to do with a choppy collection of quotes. Tell your friend on the curriculum cmte. that things would improve if an entire uncut talk were the basis for each lesson instead of the decontextualized sound bites.
We should not be too quick to lay the responsibility for left-field lessons solely at the feet of the teacher. Presidencies are responsible for the content of lessons, and should be providing adequate support for teachers – as well as accountability – to be able to prepare a good lesson.
There is nothing wrong with supplementing lesson material with information gleaned from one’s own efforts and library. I love the Teaching of the Presidents manuals precisely for this reason – they allow the teacher greater flexibility. However, a teacher who summarily decides that what the class or quorum REALLY needs is a lesson on the Danites, needs to be released.
Elder Oaks address from Oct. 1999 – “Gospel Teaching” – is an excellent resource:
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-14-29,00.html
I hate it when a teacher relies solely upon a lesson manual, following line-by-line as if reading from a script. This is not teaching. There is very little opportunity for the Spirit to interact with the hearts of classmembers, nor does it even provide the teacher an opportunity for personal growth.
Hopefully, every teacher will understand that one of the best pedagological tools is class discussion (thus, enabling Michael an opportunity to share some of his ideas about the lesson material).
(I’ll take the floor back for a second.) I disagree that the Teachings books are too difficult, but they do require more effort on the part of the instructor to do a good job. I really enjoy their flexibility and find that when I have taught from them I hardly ever go through the lesson in the order laid out and never touch on half of the material. I do bring in references to the scriptures, but I usually keep it to that. Or, to put it more simply, I limit myself to the manual and scriptures, but I stick close to the manual. One can’t do this well by following these like you can follow the manuals for Gospel Doctrine.
I agree with HL and Charles in many respects. There is a lot to be said of “training to standards” particularly on topics as important as those set forth in these lessons. I will also forward your suggestion regarding treats to the EQP. He has a budget, but I can’t see that they use it for anything useful.
I have a similar feeling. My concern is sometimes that all our brethern do is read directly from the talk or lesson manual. While this helps us to focus on what was is being said, I find a lot of the time is spent reading the introductory stories and not neccessarily getting to the meat of the lesson.
I try to encourage our teachers to devote time to each of the headings in the manuals or in the case of Ensign lessons from Teaching for Our Times I try to create an outline for the lesson. With thoughts and notes on different passages from the talks I would like to see discussed in the quorum. Its been a good help to get a lot of discussion going about the lesson without straying from the manuals.
I tend not to get too worried when people mention things not in the manual since its easy to tell when its not.. we don’t read it out of the manual. This, however, does not mean that I feel teach should have free reign to talk about whatever strikes them as fun. The lesson needs to at minimum address the same topic as the manual.
I think there are a few reason why I feel this way, but basically it boils down to this, I think the manuals are sooooo boooooring. Back when we studied the teachings of Brigham Young or Joseph F Smith or even John Taylor, that was fairly fun and we would read things out of the manual that we had never heard before. But when it came time for Heber J. Grant and David O Mc Kay (not that I dislike them or don’t admire them) the lesson materials became very dull. It was all some of the same old stuff, which some people like to hear over and over, but I am not one of those people and I am not alone.
For those who can transform complaints into constructive criticism, each manual contains an email address in the first few pages to send feedback to the Church on the manuals.
Whenever I start to feel guilty that I don’t think the manuals are the best things in the world I remember Elder Maxwell setting up an appointment with then member of the tweleve Harold B. Lee just to complain that the Sunday Schools manuals were worthless. (story retold in Elder Hafen’s Elder Maxwell biography)
HL,
What became of that meeting?
Elder maxwell was called to the Tweleve and ran church education for a couple decades!
I like that. It is good to know that somebody like him feels so similar to the way I do. Sometimes when I express my boredom with most church curriculum, I am bombarded with insulted and charges of personal apostasy.
Do you have a page reference? I’m trying to find that story in the book…
book’s at home. i’ll find it tonight. it is in the section of the book discussing Elder Maxwell when he first returned from DC to work at the U’s press office.
You’ll be happy to know (overjoyed, in fact!) that a similar thread is, um, threading right now at Nauvoo.com.
It’s not that the instructor is emphasizing different points than I would have chosen; it’s that the instructor has decided to completely forego anything in the manual for something of his or her own invention.
I’ve noticed a lot of that.
Disclaimer. I substitute teach Priesthood whenever we are short an instructor (generally on five minutes or less notice, counting from after we have broken to quorum meetings). Remembering that what you are supposed to do is a lead a discussion on the related thoughts people have had on the material, based on your choices from the topics at the end of the lesson, I’ve always found it fairly easy.
Some of the Sunday School lessons are easier than others to teach in a meaningful way (I’ve substitute taught a lot of Sunday School as well), but the Teachings of the Prophets series has been very, very easy — if you are willing to ask questions and lead people through and into conversations and reflections.
But I agree that too often people feel the need to rework the lesson material (e.g. a gospel doctrine teacher we had who had a library of faith promoting rumor and priestcraft books and who would redo every lesson from those sources. arghhh, not a scripture in sight when he taught) (or, e.g. another teacher who turned every lesson into a lecture on his favorite religious writer). That can be frustrating.
Ah well.
For what it’s worth, instruction in the military was pretty bad, in my opinion. Or, at least, it would be pretty bad for creating Saints. It was pretty good at teaching you *actions* until you could do them instinctively, but ‘teaching to standards’ wasn’t so hot for concepts and other things.
The problem is, of course, that I would rather have bad teachers teaching straight out of the manual and the scriptures (those lessons tend to have a sort of wierd power, actually) but I would rather have good teachers who take the manual as a source and a guide, not a straitjacket.
Ah yes, I remember the raw material for a lot of instruction is not inherently interesting, and it’s the supreme challenge for a teacher to bring it to life without taking liberties with the facts and concepts to be presented. That’s why teaching by the spirit requires a lot more preparation than simply reading out of the manual.
It is refreshing to see a post that is so supportive of Church policy. I have only recently started reading blogs such us Millennial Star; and although I have come across many very interesting posts and comments, I have been somewhat disconcerted by the large number of critical and negative views of Church policies on some threads.
My husband and I both consider teaching our favorite calling, and we have had many opportunities to teach over the years. We have always stuck very closely to the manuals and the Scriptures, and class members seemed to enjoy attending and participating. Teachers can be inspired at times to add some material not included in the lesson manual; but personally I see no need for them to regularly abandon the manual. Vanity may indeed be the reason they do so. And perhaps to those who are more intellectually oriented, the manuals may seem too basic—“all some of the same old stuff†(Comment #7).
Stephen M. mentioned an excellent way to avoid boredom in comment #16, when he said that teachers are supposed to “lead a discussion on the related thoughts people have had on the material.†Also, he wrote that lessons based on the manuals are easy to teach (and I would add, interesting to attend), if the teacher is “willing to ask questions and lead people through and into conversations and reflections.â€
Part of Adam Greenwood’s comment #17 also struck a chord. He wrote that lessons by “bad teachers teaching straight out of the manual and the scriptures. . . tend to have a sort of weird power, actually. . . .†Having spent some years living in countries where the Church is relatively new, I have attended many Relief Society and Sunday School lessons that would probably seem incredibly boring to some who have commented on this thread. They were taught by inexperienced teachers who often haltingly read (or had class members haltingly read) straight from the manual, rarely getting even half way through the lesson. One time I remember feeling particularly dismayed that a R.S. lesson ran out of time well before we had reached what I thought was definitely the most important point of all. I was caught up short when the Spirit essentially whispered, “Did the sisters gain important insights from the earlier part of the lesson which was discussed? Did they feel the Spirit and have true principles confirmed in their minds and hearts?†When I realized that the answer to both those questions was a definite “Yes!†I began to see how even a poor presentation of approved material and scriptures can open spiritual channels of communication to individuals in a way that brilliantly presented extraneous material may not.
Of course a better prepared lesson by an able and experienced teacher may be more interesting and enlightening than one taught by an unprepared and/or less talented teacher. But, even though teachers may well be inspired at times to add some material not included in the lesson manual, I personally am usually disappointed when a teacher decides to essentially ignore the approved resources in favor of others.
Certainly class members who are focused on contributing to the discussion and deepening their spiritual understanding are apt to gain more from any lesson than those who are looking more to be entertained.
Students and teachers who are in tune with the Spirit can achieve the communication described in D&C 50:17-22, which concludes with the words, “Wherefore, he that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together.†It seems to me that using the manuals and the Scriptures is probably the best way for most of us to reach that ideal as we teach in the Church. No need at all to “reinvent the wheel.â€
Hmm… I have never had this problem in Relief Society. They *always* teach from the manual. (This is distinct from lessons that start out from the manual, but comments from the audience gradually roam farther afield, which I don’t think you’re trying to address. I’ve seen that happen a lot.) I wonder if this is more of a Priesthood thing?
When I was a Sunday School teacher, I would use the manual about half the time, and supplement it with my own stuff about half the time, especially if that meant I could weave the whole lesson into one theme. (One quibble I have with the SS manuals is that they always seem to go in favor of the making-many-points-without-tying-them-together meme.) And I *almost never* used the given Attention Activity, almost all of which seem pretty lame to me. (They do say they can use your own activity to start the lesson, so I don’t feel at all guilty about saying that 🙂 ) Of course, if you asked my class, they might tell you that my Attention Activities were pretty lame too 🙂
Ben, the reference for the anecdote about Elder Maxwell is on p. 170 of his biography.
The practice to which you allude is alive and well where I live. It strains my Christianity to have a teacher cast aside the lesson manual which has been prepared, prayed over, reviewed, edited, and published by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. These men say in the intro, teachers “should honor such preparation by teaching from Presient McKay’s words.” “It is not necessary or recommended that members purchase additional comentaries or reference texts to supplemnt the material in this book.” Teachings of the President–David O. McKay, vi. Elder Oaks’ talk, cited above, says all this and that there is too much material in any lesson to cover, so don’t bring in supplemental material.
Elder Hugh B. Brown said of David O. McKay, “[he] has lived as nearly as it is humanly possible for a man to live a Christ-like life.” Ensign, Jan. 2005, 46. Why then would we do anything but study his life and his teachings during the hours we’re assigned to do it?
Right on, Greg!
Ben #13: I finally remembered to look the Elder Mawxwell/Elder Lee reference up in his Hafen biography. Look at page 170. I realize by this time you probably already found the refernce and read the book twice through. Oh well…