Children’s Spiritual Education  

A Bahá’í Inspired Virtues Program for the Spiritual Nourishment of Children

Why is spiritual education important?

Spiritual understanding combined with reason expands a child’s ability to better perceive, empathize and comprehend.

Research shows that children who have positive active relationships to spirituality are 40% less likely to use and abuse substances, and have 60% less depression than other teenagers.  A spiritual framework can become a significant resource for health and healing through adult life. 

Many parents express that spiritual parenting is challenging, due to a lack of support from society, conflicts between practice and everyday life, and having busy schedules.

But children are the most precious treasure a community can possess.  Like a young plant or a tree, children will grow and develop based on the training they receive and the influences they experience.  Nurturing children, in both the community and at home, is integral to the life of the community, for children “bear the seeds of the character of future society”

What is Bahá’í spiritual education?

The aim of Baha’i children’s classes is to nurture the tender hearts and minds of children by helping them to develop spiritual qualities and the habits and behaviours that constitute the essential attributes of a spiritual being.  Teachers of Baha’i children’s classes are volunteers, often youth or adults who live in the neighborhood where classes are offered. They see teaching children’s classes as a service to offer the younger generation, who will soon inherit the spiritual and material progress of their community.  

What does a typical lesson look like?

Each lesson is built around a particular theme or idea.  In classes for young children, these themes may be related to a particular virtue or spiritual quality, such as justice or truthfulness.  Lessons in later grades touch upon a variety of topics, including specific elements of good conduct (e.g. the importance of cooperation)and the nature and history of religion (illustrated by stories across the world’s great religions).

Lessons include a number of different activities, such as songs, stories, arts, crafts, and drama, which build on the central theme.  Prayers and readings from the Baha’i writings which support that theme are studied, and more often than not end up being learned by heart.