While living in Greece as part of my university’s study abroad program, I worked on my senior capstone project. I ended up presenting on the “culture of medicine” and ran across plenty of papers discussing the “secondary curriculum” of medical school.
Secondary curriculum typically refers to the things you’re being taught unconsciously while you are learning the primary, in-your-face curriculum. This type of learning is usually the ins and outs of social systems and norms. For instance, a piece of “secondary curriculum” learned in medical school is that deep emotional attachment clouds clinical judgment. (This is actually refuted by evidence, but is something subtly ingrained during those important years.)
This morning as I sat in a dusty village classroom for children’s church, I couldn’t help but think back to the articles I read about secondary curriculum.
The morning went like this:
Show up in village, play songs for the children, have the children sit down.
Pass out coloring sheets of a Bible story and then pass out colors.
Peruvian teachers instructing what colors the robe, hands, wings of the angel on the coloring sheet should be.
Older children sneaky-coloring the younger children’s sheets.
The children receiving grades….based on their coloring…and then receiving cookies.
Me asking a child what she’d colored, and her having no idea what the story was about.
The children repeating the pastor’s prayer.
Saying good-bye.
Huh?!
Really?!
Reflecting on the experience in the bumpy moto ride back, I thought of the “secondary curriculum” the children may have learned from church:
>What I say matters more than what I feel and believe at church. My job in prayer is to repeat someone else’s words.
>I can (and should) trick my authorities to get the result I want. If I know my authority gives me cookies for a coloring sheet, I’ll color mine AND my siblings’.
>There is a split reality between the stories I read in the Bible and what I should expect in my reality. Angels, messages from God, and resurrection are past-tense.
>I can steal from my friends and not share without consequence, as long as I hide from my authorities.
>It’s time to leave church when church stops entertaining me. It is the church’s job to entertain me.
>If I am told to be quiet, I don’t really need to listen; my leaders will just get louder and talk over me. They’ll work harder to make up for my lack of obedience.
>I’m not sure why these adults come to sing, give me cookies, and make me repeat after them, but I do know that my job here in the church is to follow the rules.
>My creative expression is less important than my leaders’ creative expression through me. I should be told how to express myself creatively and then do exactly what they do.
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It’s amazing how many of these lessons you & I have learned, too.
We’ve learned we should sneak around from God to avoid punishment. We’ve learned to open our mouths and repeat prayers and songs even when our hearts aren’t there. We’ve learned to disbelieve most of what is written in the Bible. We’ve learned that our leaders will (and should) handle our irresponsibility. We’ve learned we don’t need to clean up our own messes. We’ve learned that there is a “right” way for creative expression, and it is found by copying someone else. We’ve learned to be either entertained (or dissatisfied with the lack of entertainment) at church. We’ve learned that God is shallow, only there when we acknowledge him, and easily duped.
We’ve learned that God cares more about appearance than reality.
I’m grieved to consider how much unlearning needs to happen in the body of Christ before we can start manifesting the kingdom of heaven on this earth.
God have mercy on us.
May Jesus give us new curriculum–both primary & secondary–as we live as his disciples.
