There are two different ways of learning presented in this essay. Both of them have the purpose to help the Christian communities at churches to increase the knowledge that the congregation has about their beliefs and traditions. Equally, they can be very useful for the people in charge of a group at church, from pastors to ministries’ leaders. There are advantages and disadvantages for each one of them and this essay has the purpose of analyzing and contrasting them in order to select which one can help in a better way to have good results for the people attending to the church, from kids to adults and their different objectives.
These methods are Rote learning and Conversational …show more content…
In the other hand, Rote Learning “Inhibits the ability for a student to manipulate information in a way to solve problems” this shows that while Conversational Teaching has an objective doing something practical with the knowledge, Rote Learning just transmits certain information to pass it through people as a fact but because it is not understood, it cannot be put it into practice.
Furthermore, Rote learning is focus just on “expect good retention” (Smelley 312) and on the contrary, Conversational teaching transfers that information into actions or into a “process of conversion” (Johnson-Miller 379). Consequently, the one that is going to show clearer results is going to be Conversational teaching, because there is happening a meaningful learning that through visible things can help to show others new things and create a chain of changes in the community of the church by actions and sharing of …show more content…
Churches use Rote Learning to teach this set of questions and answers about faith and it is very useful in order to have a congregation that knows what their principles and values are as the church of which they belong but it can be risky to left that knowledge like that without taking any further step and even Smelley Jr. recognizes it when he says «The catechism, through rote learning, does run the danger of creating “death weight”» (Smelley Jr. 319). In making this comment, Smelley reaffirms that rote learning cannot be used by itself if what you are looking for is a meaningful learning (Conversational Teaching), it is just one step of the process. With this in mind, catechism within the churches needs to keep the same process but if they wanted their congregation to be even more aware and understood of what they are as religion or denomination, it is necessary that they apply Conversational Learning, involving parents, elders, kids, teenagers, in other words, everyone, to share their experiences and learn in a way that they can put into practice the