But how do you even start when your students don’t care?
Here’s an effective way to make inroads with tough students and keep them tuned in to your teaching.
The Problem of Postmoderns
Most people I deal with are influenced by postmodern thought. This is a problem!
Postmodernism is the mindset that truth is subjective and can be different for everyone. What’s true for you is not necessarily true for me because morality is shaped by your life experience and situation. There’s no truth that can explain everything for everyone.
Generally we think of teens and young adults as being postmodern. But their parents are swimming in it too. It’s not just a symptom of the “younger generation.” It’s everywhere! I was born in 1965 but was postmodern through and through until I converted in my mid-30’s.
As a teenager and young adult, I rejected the Church’s seemingly restricted view of life. It seemed antiquated, medieval, the product of a by-gone age. I never understood WHY I should believe. So, because I didn’t understand, I didn’t think it applied to me. I see that attitude a lot.
The Captain does NOT do it the right way!
A Failure to Communicate
Needless to say, postmodernism is an obstacle to the Catholic evangelization. We believe Jesus Christ reveals the meaning of life…for everyone. He shows mankind how to live in a way that brings fulfillment and happiness…to everyone.
The Church deals in universal truths. Postmoderns reject them or are indifferent!
So, when you expect your students to accept Catholic teaching solely on the basis of Church authority, you may have a problem. To quote the “Captain” in Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is…failure to communicate.”
How To Get Around This
The way to break through is to relate your teaching in the context of your own experience. No one can argue with your experience, it’s yours! How do they know it’s not true for you?
Tell them how this has convicted you, affected you or transformed you. Then, make your application based on that and challenge them to consider an alternative possibility for their own lives.
Postmoderns value experience over credentials or authority, right? That’s fine! It means your experience is as valid as theirs. If you can get them to identify with your experience, now you’ve established a connection and a common ground to work on.
Relating your experience can be powerful. Your truth may not be their’s but if your experience is valid to them and they can relate to it from their own experience — you have a foot in the door. You’ve opened the possibility that your truth could belong to them someday as well.
Have you encountered postmodernism in your classroom? How about in the parents of your students? How do you deal with this kind of thinking? Let me know in the comments.
[This is a part of the Evangelization Basics Series. Have you read the other parts?]
I'm passionate about the most effective ways to transmit the Catholic Faith and spread the Gospel to the world. Join me? You can find me on Facebook, Twitter for the catechetical ramblings of the day.
One danger of speaking from experience is that it’s also so easy to rebut: “Well, you may have experienced insight from reading the Bible, but I haven’t.” Speaking from your own experience is good, but we also need to consider what KIND of experience we communicate.
Primarily, I think the most important kind of experience to communicate is discontentment, emptiness, dissatisfaction, the desire for something more. THIS is what other people will relate to more than anything. All of us tend to see our problems and sufferings as totally unique – nobody else has had it as hard as I have! That’s why conversion stories/testimonies are so powerful – we are able to connect first on the level of pain/longing, and only then do we open up to the possibility that what cured someone else’s sickness might also cure mine!
Testimony is powerful also because no one can argue with it. Take John 9 – the story of the man born blind. The Pharisees argued with him over the law and whether Jesus was really a prophet. In exasperation, the man simply says, “I don’t know about all this – all I know is that I was blind and now I see!”
I think you answered my reply to the first paragraph with your second and third paragraph. You need to hook the experience that you share to something that will resonate with them. Not just a generic sort of thing, but something that you are pretty sure they’re having a problem with. Then it’s not, “Well maybe you did but I haven’t” but “Oh yeah, me too!”
You’re absolutely right that linking it to feelings of emptiness, dissatisfaction, desire for more is one of the best types of experience. Figure out what they can relate to and what they’re longing for!
This, of course, is one of the primary reasons why relationships are so important. You need to get to know them, get inside their heads and figure out what actually is bothering them, what they really do desire. That may take time and it may involve you sharing a lot about yourself first.
Testimony is experience sharing par excellence! That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. No one can argue with it because it’s yours.
Excellent advice and comment! I was thinking the other day how some people view the word of God as a big shiny object that sounds too good to be true and is out of their reach.
You may not realize it, but many people feel they are not worthy of such things–that if anything in life can be so fantastic, it is meant for others. They believe their personal sufferings are indeed unique and require a different, more difficult road to redemption.
Sharing a personal experience they can relate with, then, is indeed what you said: a foot in the door. It’s they aren’t all that different, and that maybe they don’t require some different definition of the truth.
[This is a part of the Evangelization Basics Series. Have you read the other parts?]
One danger of speaking from experience is that it’s also so easy to rebut: “Well, you may have experienced insight from reading the Bible, but I haven’t.” Speaking from your own experience is good, but we also need to consider what KIND of experience we communicate.
Primarily, I think the most important kind of experience to communicate is discontentment, emptiness, dissatisfaction, the desire for something more. THIS is what other people will relate to more than anything. All of us tend to see our problems and sufferings as totally unique – nobody else has had it as hard as I have! That’s why conversion stories/testimonies are so powerful – we are able to connect first on the level of pain/longing, and only then do we open up to the possibility that what cured someone else’s sickness might also cure mine!
Testimony is powerful also because no one can argue with it. Take John 9 – the story of the man born blind. The Pharisees argued with him over the law and whether Jesus was really a prophet. In exasperation, the man simply says, “I don’t know about all this – all I know is that I was blind and now I see!”
I think you answered my reply to the first paragraph with your second and third paragraph. You need to hook the experience that you share to something that will resonate with them. Not just a generic sort of thing, but something that you are pretty sure they’re having a problem with. Then it’s not, “Well maybe you did but I haven’t” but “Oh yeah, me too!”
You’re absolutely right that linking it to feelings of emptiness, dissatisfaction, desire for more is one of the best types of experience. Figure out what they can relate to and what they’re longing for!
This, of course, is one of the primary reasons why relationships are so important. You need to get to know them, get inside their heads and figure out what actually is bothering them, what they really do desire. That may take time and it may involve you sharing a lot about yourself first.
Testimony is experience sharing par excellence! That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. No one can argue with it because it’s yours.
Thanks for the comments!
Excellent advice and comment! I was thinking the other day how some people view the word of God as a big shiny object that sounds too good to be true and is out of their reach.
You may not realize it, but many people feel they are not worthy of such things–that if anything in life can be so fantastic, it is meant for others. They believe their personal sufferings are indeed unique and require a different, more difficult road to redemption.
Sharing a personal experience they can relate with, then, is indeed what you said: a foot in the door. It’s they aren’t all that different, and that maybe they don’t require some different definition of the truth.
Thanks for the comments Paul. You bring a great viewpoint.