Day 192: Grade Fours On God

My kids are so bright! I've mentioned this on numerous occasions before, but I had another reminder today during class that reaffirmed just how intelligent, and how well-conversed in English, my kids are for such a young age.

I was teaching my Grade 4's today (only eleven years old, keep in mind) and we were learning about pioneers in America during the 1800's. One of our vocab words for the story that came up was 'Missionary' and I had to explain to the kids what missionaries are and what they do. Well this sparked an interesting debate that I didn't even prompt myself...

One of the boys, Matthew, piped up with "Well God's not real anyways so it doesn't matter." Immediately another student, Grace, hammered back with "Yes he is!!! You're just crazy!" Well this brought on a back and forth debate between the two students who went on for quite some time discussing/arguing about whether or not God really exists.

I just had to stand back and watch, in complete fascination, at the opinions and rebuttles that were flying back and forth. I didn't say a word or interject for two reasons - the first being that we're supposed to avoid speaking about controversial religious or political topics (or sharing our own particular opinions on such matters) in class to avoid upsetting a student or parent, and the second reason was that I just wanted to see how far this little debate between Matthew and Grace would go on, what they'd come up with next, and who would 'win' in the end.

Again, the fact that English is not these kids' mother tongue yet they can have religious debates is AWESOME! I'm so proud of their speaking abilities! Granted, their sentences are very simple and ideas rather basic, but nonetheless mesmerizing to watch unfold before your very eyes, completely unaided by myself.

Matthew's main points was that you can't see God and that he never comes to visit, "If you call out to God to come down why doesn't he? I want to see him and he never comes so he's not real!" In which Grace replies "Well if you call someone on the phone in Busan, you can't see them either but you know they're real!"

And then when talking about whether or not "the heaven" really exists, Matthew says "The astronauts go up in space all the time and they never see the heaven, just ask NASA! Airplanes too, you never see the heaven when you fly in the sky." I don't think Grace had much of a reply to this (she was starting to get a bit frustrated and flustered) and may have just said "Whatever Matthew, you're just crazy, I go to church and so I know God is real."

It was totally awesome to watch. My kids are so cool. I love my job! :-)