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New Emphasis on Spiritual Development of Children
April 28, 2017
“Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.”
-Kay Redfield Jamison

In their article, "Supporting the Spiritual Development of Young Children" (Exchange March/April 2017) Ruth A. Wilson and Deborah L. Schein explain that, "recent studies indicate that religion and spirituality can be studied and addressed separately and that spiritual development can be nurtured apart from religious doctrines and practices." The authors suggest that paying attention to children’s spirituality "will not only promote the holistic development of students, but may also help address some of the serious problems facing education and society today."

Wilson and Schein go on to ask, "how might spirituality be defined in a broad educational sense?...We already use the term 'spirit' in an early childhood education context when we say that education should be about developing the whole child – body, mind and spirit...Spirit in this sense refers to the animating principle of our being, the non-material part of what it means to be human."





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Comments (1)

Displaying 1 Comment
Cara E. Koch · April 28, 2017
Colorado Springs, CO, United States



Spiritual nurture of children was the topic of study for my 2007 doctoral studies under the leadership of Dr. Donald B. Rogers at United Theological Seminary. Our working definition for spirituality was “relational consciousness encompassing four categories: child/self; child/people, child/world and child/God.” My own research was based on a project with preschoolers, with a dissertation entitled, Fostering Spirituality in A Preschool Sunday School with a Team of Grandfathers using Blessing Based Spiritual Nurture. Although this project was done in a Christian setting, this definition of spirituality can easily be used to guide spiritual nurture without teaching religious doctrine



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