Content area
Full Text
Something for everyone in faith education
OK! Listen up, you parents out there. Also you teachers, directors of religious education, youth ministers and even small-group facilitators. This review has something for you.
All five of these books start with the premise that children and families are worth our effort. Effort translates into time and, aside from necessary timeconsuming tasks, time well spent translates into the sharing and passing on of Christian values. Each of these books is either a pep talk for parents or a handbook for intergenerational faith- and value-sharing, or both.
Kathleen Chesto has a broad background in family ministry and religious education, all grounded in her personal experience as a mother. Raising Kids Who Care is a series of essays exploring the "spiritual and moral development of children and the particular problems they face growing up."
The essays are directed at "those who feel we are capable of making a difference in creating a more loving, less violent society for the next generation."
All children seem to be born with some degree of empathy, she contends. "How that empathy develops into moral reasoning and what we as parents and teachers can do to enhance that development" is the focus of the first part of her book. "Empathy," she asserts, "is the most basic [route] to morality," and from empathy she moves into shame and guilt, sharing, rules and decisionmaking.
Shame and guilt are not necessarily destructive feelings. They are, as they should be, "uncomfortable feelings" and as such can prod us to a higher standard of behavior. "Sharing" is her litmus test of morality. "Real sharing represents the ability to consider not just the rights but the feelings and needs of others. ... Real sharing is the child's introduction to the gospel's fundamental option for the poor."
Under "rules" she writes that a child's respect for authority is the single most important moral legacy we pass on to our children and, moving on, that "decision-making is one of the most important life skills to be acquired in early childhood."
With this grounding in basic values, Chesto advances in Part Two to address some of the common dilemmas young people face today, examining such issues as cheating, lying, jealousy, bullying and sexual...