Sunday Schools - what are they?

bobbyss

Peregrine wrote:

I also did ten years of Sunday School so I got the best bits anyway.

What exactly is Sunday School?

bobbyss

Permabear wrote:

This post has been deleted.

I see. Where is SS conducted? Who teaches ? What is taught? Is it strictly a 'protestant' thing or could there be a Catholic SS as well?

Zubeneschamali

bobbyss wrote: »

I see. Where is SS conducted? Who teaches ? What is taught? Is it strictly a 'protestant' thing or could there be a Catholic SS as well?

The Catholic ideal in the US is to send your kids to a private religiously run school on weekdays. These cost money, and pay their teachers less than the public schools, but they have a good rep for academic studies, and can keep the riff-raff out leading to less metal detectors, stabbings, shootings, drugs etc.

looksee

Its a very general term that can be applied however the church in question wishes to apply it. I attended a sunday school for a couple of hours at the little methodist chapel near where I lives. We were nominally Anglican but really only for ceremonial purposes. Getting two small kids out of the house for two hours on a Sunday afternoon must have been a great blessing for mums and dads, there was never any shortage of takers anyway.

We were told bible stories, simple prayers, sang songs and coloured pictures. It was all pretty laid back and we enjoyed it.

As I got older I left the Anglican church and became a Methodist and in my mid teens was a sunday school teacher. The children would leave the service after the opening hymn and be taken into one of the rooms where they would be told stories, sing songs and colour pictures etc. Again all very easy going. I gave it up after a year or so because I realised I did not entirely believe what I was teaching. I continued on at the church though.

Of course the Catholic church could have Sunday Schools if they wanted to, but as someone else said, it is not necessary as they have all the teaching done for them in schools. It is quite possible, though I do not know, that the RC church has sunday school equivalents in countries where the children are not taught in schools.

bobbyss

looksee wrote:

Its a very general term that can be applied however the church in question wishes to apply it. I attended a sunday school for a couple of hours at the little methodist chapel near where I lives. We were nominally Anglican but really only for ceremonial purposes. Getting two small kids out of the house for two hours on a Sunday afternoon must have been a great blessing for mums and dads, there was never any shortage of takers anyway.

looksee wrote:

We were told bible stories, simple prayers, sang songs and coloured pictures. It was all pretty laid back and we enjoyed it.

looksee wrote:

As I got older I left the Anglican church and became a Methodist and in my mid teens was a sunday school teacher. The children would leave the service after the opening hymn and be taken into one of the rooms where they would be told stories, sing songs and colour pictures etc. Again all very easy going. I gave it up after a year or so because I realised I did not entirely believe what I was teaching. I continued on at the church though.

looksee wrote:

Its a very general term that can be applied however the church in question wishes to apply it. I attended a sunday school for a couple of hours at the little methodist chapel near where I lives. We were nominally Anglican but really only for ceremonial purposes. Getting two small kids out of the house for two hours on a Sunday afternoon must have been a great blessing for mums and dads, there was never any shortage of takers anyway.

looksee wrote:

We were told bible stories, simple prayers, sang songs and coloured pictures. It was all pretty laid back and we enjoyed it.

looksee wrote:

Of course the Catholic church could have Sunday Schools if they wanted to, but as someone else said, it is not necessary as they have all the teaching done for them in schools. It is quite possible, though I do not know, that the RC church has sunday school equivalents in countries where the children are not taught in schools.

looksee wrote:

Its a very general term that can be applied however the church in question wishes to apply it. I attended a sunday school for a couple of hours at the little methodist chapel near where I lives. We were nominally Anglican but really only for ceremonial purposes. Getting two small kids out of the house for two hours on a Sunday afternoon must have been a great blessing for mums and dads, there was never any shortage of takers anyway.

looksee wrote:

We were told bible stories, simple prayers, sang songs and coloured pictures. It was all pretty laid back and we enjoyed it.

looksee wrote:

Of course the Catholic church could have Sunday Schools if they wanted to, but as someone else said, it is not necessary as they have all the teaching done for them in schools. It is quite possible, though I do not know, that the RC church has sunday school equivalents in countries where the children are not taught in schools.

looksee wrote:

As I got older I left the Anglican church and became a Methodist and in my mid teens was a sunday school teacher. The children would leave the service after the opening hymn and be taken into one of the rooms where they would be told stories, sing songs and colour pictures etc. Again all very easy going. I gave it up after a year or so because I realised I did not entirely believe what I was teaching. I continued on at the church though.

That's interesting thanks. My understanding is that SS is very much a protestant thing. It happens in a chapel ? Typically what ages do children attend ? You mentioned colour pictures so does that mean SS is strictly for little kiddies until the age of ... ? Two hours seems an extraordinary amount of time to spend on one day on God (as it were) esp for young kids. Do the parents accompany them, as you mentioned parents getting them out of the house and so on? I don't understand that. Don't older children 15-17 smart at that? Do they attend? Adolescents can be difficult and usually, dont want to be (seen ) with parents at all. Would you be seen as a superior person if you attended SS?

looksee

bobbyss - We are going a bit off topic from the OP's question but I will try and answer - certainly a lot of the introduction to the bible would have been in the sunday school environment.

There are no strict rules as everywhere is different. Children up to maybe 7 or so would go to sunday school. When I attended SS it was in the early 1950s and it had not occurred to people that there might be any issues, and there were not. As kids we went on Sunday afternoon when there was no service in the chapel, I cant remember exactly how long it was - we found it enjoyable but maybe my memory is playing tricks and it was less than 2 hours.

In my teens we used to have Sunday Club, when we got together and read the bible and discussed it, along with other topics of interest. In that church the SS was while the service was on - older children and parents stayed for the hour of the service, the young ones went into one of the 'church rooms' for kind of pre-school / first class age songs and prayers etc. This was the one I was a 'teacher' for - and then I would attend the service in the evening for my own sake.

In all cases children and teens attended because they wanted to be there, I do not recall any issues with reluctant attendees. Yes it was a protestant thing, though at the time I had no knowledge of the Catholic Church (except we invited a priest to come and talk to us about Catholicism in Sunday Club one time). It was really more a Chapel thing I suppose - nonconformists, I don't think the Church of England did Sunday Schools to any extent.

recedite

bobbyss wrote: »

That's interesting thanks. My understanding is that SS is very much a protestant thing. It happens in a chapel ? Typically what ages do children attend ? You mentioned colour pictures so does that mean SS is strictly for little kiddies until the age of ... ? Two hours seems an extraordinary amount of time to spend on one day on God (as it were) esp for young kids. Do the parents accompany them, as you mentioned parents getting them out of the house and so on? I don't understand that. Don't older children 15-17 smart at that? Do they attend? Adolescents can be difficult and usually, dont want to be (seen ) with parents at all. Would you be seen as a superior person if you attended SS?

I think you have got the wrong end of the stick here. Its more of a creche service which has two functions; it provides age appropriate entertainment/indoctrination for small kids, and equally importantly it allows the congregation (and especially the mothers) to sit and participate in their own stuff without having to suffer from the distractions of fidgety children.
It does seem to be a protestant thing, but it wouldn't have to be. And it only goes on during the time of the church service, after which the parents collect the kids. Any child enough to separate from their parent can join in, if they want to. After the first hymn, the ss teacher, who is usually only a volunteer who gets on well with kids, walks up the aisle like the pied piper, and then the kids jump up and follow them out.

I can still remember the first time I did it. I was about 5 yrs old, and had been trying to pluck up the courage for weeks, but its a scary thing to do at that age.
Then they all go out to a soundproofed room off the main church or a neighbouring building. Its all bible stories with animals in them, like Noahs Ark, and bible colouring books, and of course endless renditions of "All things bright and beautiful". I was delighted to get away from the dreary stuff that the adults were being subjected to. I did enjoy it, given the alternative.
I think it gave me an interest in natural history and the concept of how life and everything might have began long ago. Then, moving from Noahs Ark to reading about evolution outside of ss, it indirectly put me on the path to atheism. At some point, as you say, kids just grow out of it, and stop going. Just sit in their pew when the pied piper walks past. Definitely before confirmation age anyway. At some point, I reached the age where I preferred to just snooze through the main service.

Maybe its not such a great meme strategy in the long run, from the church's point of view.
Maybe making the kids suffer through a long mass, and generally making them feel guilty about themselves gives better long term results.

bobbyss

looksee wrote:

bobbyss - We are going a bit off topic from the OP's question but I will try and answer - certainly a lot of the introduction to the bible would have been in the sunday school environment.

Apologies for that. Thank you.

looksee

The whole topic of Sunday Schools has not been touched on before and may be of some interest, so it has been put into this new thread.

Recedite's description of it as a creche is accurate enough, in the ones that involve the smaller children leaving the service and kept entertained. However there is a whole lot more levels to it in different churches, with bible teaching for children up to their teens.

Yes it is indoctrination, the difference being that parents actively want their children to be involved, and generally the children are happy to be involved, which is a whole lot better than indoctrinating all children in school as a matter of course.

I got a great deal of interest and pleasure out of my teen years attached to a chapel. At the same time I realised even then that I was not entirely convinced. I think on balance it was a beneficial experience, and in fact it actually gave me the ability to figure out my stance on religion later in life.

bobbyss

looksee wrote:

In my teens we used to have Sunday Club, when we got together and read the bible and discussed it, along with other topics of interest. In that church the SS was while the service was on - older children and parents stayed for the hour of the service, the young ones went into one of the 'church rooms' for kind of pre-school / first class age songs and prayers etc. This was the one I was a 'teacher' for - and then I would attend the service in the evening for my own sake.

I see. I had a completely different understanding of this. I thought it was mainly for teenagers and was a bible thumping exercise. I had the notion it was a bigger deal than what you described. Maybe even with exams you had to pass! My oh my. In the Catholic church the same thing happens. Kiddies are brought to a side room for (presumably) colouring and stories and so on. I didn't realise that actually was Sunday School in essence . Catholics would simply say we were going to mass as a family and make no reference to the kids doing their own thing as we would all be attending the same church anyway. No Catholic would ever say I went to SS as it would be seen as incidental. But strictly for kiddies.

Peregrinus

“Sunday school” is a name that can be, and has been, applied to a wide variety of different things.

The Sunday School movement started in the eighteenth century in England. At that time Sunday schools weren’t a supplement to conventional schools; they were an alternative, aimed at children who had no access to existing schools (public schools, grammar schools) or to home education by a governess or similar. This was a very large (and mostly very poor) slice of the population.

They weren’t mainly intended to “teach Christianity”; they sought to provide a general elementary education - reading, writing and the basics of arithmetic. But they were religiously inspired, led and conducted, and teaching Christian doctrine and morality was a strong theme, and they were mostly conducted in church halls and the like.

They were called “Sunday schools” because they were conducted on a Sunday, but this wasn’t done to coincide with church service. (In fact, they mostly conducted in the afternoon or evening, and when conducted in the morning often broke for church services.) It was done because a large part of student body were employed (in mines, in factories, in mills, in domestic service) and Sunday was the only day they could attend. (The teachers were mostly volunteers, and many of them were employed too, of course, so Sunday worked for them too.)

The system spread from the UK to Ireland (where it was a mostly Catholic thing, except in Ulster, and it overlapped with the existing hedge school movement) and then to the US. But in the nineteenth century it developed differently in the different countries.

In the US, as free secular elementary education was provide by the state (the Americans may not like socialised medicine, but they were early adapters of socialised education) the Sunday schools became essentially classes in Christian doctrine (or more accurately in religious formation; Jewish congregations established similar schools but they tended to call them “Sabbath schools” or “Torah schools”). The Catholic church had a more holistic view of Christian education and didn’t favour isolating doctrinal instruction from general education, so they set up parochial schools, which of course they still have, and that’s where most of their educational endeavour goes. But there is a limited Catholic Sunday school phenomenon in the US to cater for Catholic children who go to state schools.

In the UK (including Ireland) when free public elementary education was rolled out somewhat later, religious education was provided in the schools, so Sunday school came to be seen as a supplement to that, or as something aimed at pre-schoolers, or as a child-friendly alternative to participation in regular services. Because in England the public schools were dominated by the Church of England, “Sunday school” had greater significance for Nonconformists and remained a more robust institution for them, and in time came to be seen as essentially a Nonconformist thing. The Catholic church was effectively excluded from the state school system but, as in America, rather than beef up Sunday school they established free or very cheap church schools which were five-day-a-week alternatives to the state schools. (They had the institutions and the organisation to do this through the teaching orders, which the Nonconformists didn’t have.)

In Ireland, of course, the Catholic church was welcome in the publicly funded school system, so Catholic Sunday schools pretty well disappeared; there was no longer any need for them as a provider of either of general education or religious formation.

In recent decades, there has been a growth of the Catholic equivalent of the Sunday-school-as-child-friendly-alternative-to-mass phenomenon, but it isn’t usually called “Sunday school”; more like “children’s mass” or something of the kind.