Ideal Sunday School

In 1780 a pious Gloucester man named Robert Raikes formed the first Sunday School. His purpose was to keep children off the streets while teaching them their letters, "the truths of the gospel" and "moral restraint." As time passed a further objective appeared--to lead children into church membership. Today in the U. S., 21,038,526 persons attend Sunday School, under the guidance of 2,167,848 officers and teachers in 184,686 churches. Only 17 small denominations, such as the Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists, do not run Sunday Schools.

As now constituted, Sunday Schools are a religious liability. So wrote Mrs. Margueritte Harmon Bro, mother of four, lecturer, onetime Disciples of Christ missionary, last December in the first of three Christian Century articles. The Sunday School, said she, has fallen short of its aims as follows:

Some Sunday Schools keep children off the streets "but for a vast number of Christian homes the Sunday movie does a more thorough job." In a large part of the world, the State has taken over the Sunday School's function of ABC-teaching. As for religious instruction, "the average Sunday School is taught by an untrained staff; its equipment is woefully meager; the curriculum is neither scientifically sound, comprehensive, nor sufficiently centred in the child's experience; the textbooks are biased in attitude and limited in scope; the pupils' attendance is haphazard, and the time spent by the average child in the average Protestant Sunday School is something less than 30 minutes of instruction per week and less than 40 hours per year."

Finally, wrote Mrs. Bro, the Sunday School "offers an insufficient interpretation of religious experience." By its very existence it "tends to block off more adequate interpretations." Parents pack their children off to Sunday School, feel no further responsibility. And most children who go to Sunday School do not go to church afterward.

In last week's Christian Century Mrs. Bro described a Sunday School which she regards as ideal and indeed unique. Its virtues include: "a physical plant equal to the needs of its student body; financial means for providing all desirable equipment ; a staff of trained teachers under the direction of experts; time enough to fulfill its task in a dignified, adequate manner; a twelve-year course of study; . . . the almost unanimous co-operation of parents; . . . a pastor of great comprehension (himself a doctor of philosophy and a trained educationalist) who makes the Sunday School his deepest interest."

This school, which enrolls 1,000 youngsters, meets for 50-minute periods including a five-minute sermon by the pastor. Its professional teaching staff includes a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a religious educationalist. Its curriculum is full and varied. Outside the classroom its children visit social service agencies, put on plays, write essays on Peace, study local politics.

Yet this ideal Sunday School is neither Catholic nor Protestant but Jewish. It is run by Rabbi Louis Leopold Mann, 44, of Sinai Congregation in Chicago.

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