Make classes more like a conversation, less like a lecture.

[JLHPROF]

3 hours ago, Atheist Mormon said:

The sad thing about religion is no matter what you do you cannot overcome the boredom of the subject; the story is always the same.     I still have the manuals from late seventies which to their credit CES was very inventive about diversifying the subjects......Even then one year you study OT, other year NT, next comes Church History....End of the day the boredom fills the student...as the Ecclesiastes writer so succinctly expresses; "Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity."  "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.".

In contrast the whole Planet races towards knowledge, discovering unknowns of wast Space, Oceans, Medicine......In contrast some us stuck studying myths......

Your rhetoric is getting old and convincing nobody.
You are welcome to your disbelief.

[Atheist Mormon]

46 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Your rhetoric is getting old and convincing nobody.
You are welcome to your disbelief.

fine, isolate a sentence of it & tell me it is old & unconvincing.

PS: Not only that; as a Biblical Scholar put it; "Story of Jesus Christ was 'fabricated to pacify the poor", since it did no better than handing out some free meals for them.....(While the Peddlers (like Popes) reaped the benefits.

Edited October 12, 2016 by Atheist Mormon

[JLHPROF]

2 minutes ago, Atheist Mormon said:

fine, isolate a sentence of it & tell me it is old & unconvincing.

"You cannot overcome the boredom of the subject
End of the day the boredom fills the student
Some us stuck studying myths"

All opinions, not convincing me or any other believer, and all have been stated by atheists before.

 

[toon]

It was common to hear a teacher cut off a class discussion by saying he or she had more material to cover.

To me, more annoying was the corollary to that, where the teacher had material to cover, and by golly, she was going to cover it, even those class should have ended five minutes ago.

 

[carbon dioxide]

12 hours ago, Atheist Mormon said:

 

In contrast the whole Planet races towards knowledge, discovering unknowns of wast Space, Oceans, Medicine......In contrast some us stuck studying myths......

Most ot the knowledge that the planet races towards is meaningless or useless to most people.  Black holes may an interesting subject but for most people dying of cancer, they have figured out the subject is not that important at the end of the day or the end of their lives.

[thesometimesaint]

At the end of the day we're all dead anyway. To me it is more important how I live my life in the here and now that counts.

[mrmarklin]

On 9/28/2016 at 4:39 PM, ALarson said:

I think more of an emphasis on discussion rather than it just being a lecture is a good thing.  I don't know if this will change much, but I think it's an effort in the right direction.

I do have to say though, that there are still quite a few members who hesitate or who are even afraid to raise their hands with questions or comments related to taboo (for lack of a better term) topics.  We get feedback on that privately from members in our ward.  

I also know that attendance in Gospel Doctrine is way down compared to how many adults should be in there (going from who is attending Sacrament meeting) and we hear that they leave early for a variety of reasons.  One of the reasons we hear over and over is that "it's boring and nothing new is ever discussed".

Now, if we could just get these 2 groups together....  

.

Of course attendance is down. They've been rotating the same curricula for a couple of decades now.  It is repetitive and becoming boring.

 

Good teaching is a talent. To some extent it can be taught, but it's a hard road. 

 

Best solution is for Bishops to call good talented teachers.

[CMZ]

On 9/28/2016 at 3:52 PM, JLHPROF said:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865663412/Shaking-up-Sunday-School-Revolution-in-LDS-teaching-seeks-to-activate-learners.html

• Why alter all teaching in the church?
  LDS leaders say they want to help church members become better — and more active — learners, a critical skill in an age saturated by information.
  
  In the past, teachers in Sunday School, Relief Society, Primary and priesthood classes often focused on presenting information. It was common to hear a teacher cut off a class discussion by saying he or she had more material to cover. Leaders want to drum that out of the culture.

So this should be good for some discussion.
What do you see as the perks to this new teaching philosophy and what do you see as the drawbacks?

Is this going to result in members have more understanding of the gospel or less?

This is how things always always always should have been and it has been mentioned in manuals and elsewhere before, including in a different thread in this forum not too long ago. Our classes in church (Sunday School, Relief Society, Priesthood, and whatever else) are not supposed to be about empty minds arriving and waiting passively for a teacher to insert information into those minds. It is supposed to be about mature, prepared class members arriving at class ready to discuss the pre-assigned material. Of course there are a few exceptions, because sometimes you go to a class where there was no pre-assigned material, and you can't always expect new converts to come prepared in the same way a seasoned member is expected to, and there may not be quite the same level of responsibility for children. There are other problems involved such as wards very often losing track of lesson schedules. But the basic principle remains the same.

Edited October 17, 2016 by CMZ

[CMZ]

On 9/29/2016 at 8:24 PM, Duncan said:

as an aside I wonder what the Church will do when they run out of Presidents? Like if the next 2-3 years are Pres. Hinckley and let's say Pres. Monson and Nelson is still around will they have some other thing and then just wait until Pres. Nelson dies?

Not a problem at all. There's been all sorts of other manuals used besides the Teachings of Presidents of the Church series.

[CMZ]

On 9/30/2016 at 0:52 PM, JLHPROF said:

Either the correlated model starts putting more fact and doctrine into the manuals or we are pretty much stuck drinking milk.

Or well-learned teachers can distribute some meat now and then.

[CMZ]

On 10/14/2016 at 2:25 AM, thesometimesaint said:

At the end of the day we're all dead anyway. To me it is more important how I live my life in the here and now that counts.

Brigham Young felt largely the same way.

[CMZ]

Quote

Teachers and Learners: Equal Responsibility to Contribute

Sometimes we find people on the scriptural dole—they want the scriptures husked before they partake. They want the gospel in a series of entertaining sound bites or video clips. They want the Sunday School teacher to prepare and spoon-feed them the lesson with little preparation or participation on their part.

In contrast, the Savior once invited His learners to go home because they could not understand His words. He commanded them to pray, ponder, and “prepare [their] minds for the morrow,” when He would “come unto [them] again” (see 3 Nephi 17:2–3).

The lesson was this: It is the responsibility not only of the teacher to come prepared but also of the learner. Just as the teacher has the responsibility to teach by the Spirit, so too the learner has the responsibility to learn by the Spirit (see D&C 50:13–21).

The Book of Mormon records: “The preacher was no better than the hearer, neither was the teacher any better than the learner; and thus they were all equal” (Alma 1:26; emphasis added).

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2016/10/the-joy-of-learning?lang=eng

From this month's Ensign.

[bsjkki]

16 minutes ago, CMZ said:

This is how things always always always should have been and it has been mentioned in manuals and elsewhere before, including in a different thread in this forum not too long ago. Our classes in church (Sunday School, Relief Society, Priesthood, and whatever else) are not supposed to be about empty minds arriving and waiting passively for a teacher to insert information into those minds. It is supposed to be about mature, prepared class members arriving at class ready to discuss the pre-assigned material. Of course there are a few exceptions, because sometimes you go to a class where there was no pre-assigned material, and you can't always expect new converts to come prepared in the same way a seasoned member is expected to, and there may not be quite the same level of responsibility for children. There are other problems involved such as wards very often losing track of lesson schedules. But the basic principle remains the same.

I often found preparing for lessons and reading the material more frustrating.  We had a gospel doctrine teacher who would project the teachers manual on the wall during class.  He would read his portion and give us time to read the scriptures silently to ourselves and then ask if anyone had any comments.  I downgraded myself to the gospel principles class. In RS, you can read the lesson and study it for yourselves but that doesn't mean the teacher will actually cover anything from the manual but one or two soundbites.  Often, they just go off with conference talk or something from pinterest. I'm much happier just letting the teacher go with it without preconceived notions of what is going to be taught. I find it less frustrating. Everyone learns differently.  When I teach RS, my leaders only leave me 20-25 minutes so that is frustrating too.  It's not a lot of time.  Sometimes we don't even hit my 6 bullet points with discussion.

[CMZ]

11 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

I often found preparing for lessons and reading the material more frustrating.  We had a gospel doctrine teacher who would project the teachers manual on the wall during class.  He would read his portion and give us time to read the scriptures silently to ourselves and then ask if anyone had any comments.  I downgraded myself to the gospel principles class. In RS, you can read the lesson and study it for yourselves but that doesn't mean the teacher will actually cover anything from the manual but one or two soundbites.  Often, they just go off with conference talk or something from pinterest. I'm much happier just letting the teacher go with it without preconceived notions of what is going to be taught. I find it less frustrating. Everyone learns differently.  When I teach RS, my leaders only leave me 20-25 minutes so that is frustrating too.  It's not a lot of time.  Sometimes we don't even hit my 6 bullet points with discussion.

Yes, there are problems with teachers not even coming very close to teaching from the curriculum. I study all the material on my own time. It's very rare that a teacher conveys some new principle to me. But it's still good to attend our meetings. The willingness to do so is one thing that opens us up to our own revelation from the Spirit.

[bsjkki]

1 hour ago, CMZ said:

Yes, there are problems with teachers not even coming very close to teaching from the curriculum. I study all the material on my own time. It's very rare that a teacher conveys some new principle to me. But it's still good to attend our meetings. The willingness to do so is one thing that opens us up to our own revelation from the Spirit.

Yes, it is still important to attend even if you have a hard time sitting and focusing for three hours. That is really hard for me.  I think everyone will have different strategies that work for them to get the most out of meetings. I am really trying to be less critical and not preparing actually helps me. I would not give this a blanket recommendation though.

[CMZ]

The good thing is that you probably won't get arrested for not preparing.