Brainstorming
The questions asked in the lesson manuals for teens and older Primary children are designed to help them learn to apply the lessons learned to their real lives.
Your friends want to watch an R-rated movie. What should you do?
You are invited to a really special swim party. All your friends decide to go shopping together and choose new matching bikinis. What will you do?
These are situations teens and preteens do encounter, and they are a very important part of the lesson. The problem is that your students have been answering these types of questions since they were little Sunbeams, and they know the stock answers. They chant them without even stopping to think. If they don't think about the answer, they don't incorporate the answer into their lives. Those of you who have taught little children in Primary know they tend to answer every question with one of these phrases: Choose the right. Obey your parents. Read the scriptures. They don't even hear the questions-they simply know one of those will work. Teens are not much better. If you want your students to learn from your questions, you must surprise them-ask a question they haven't been asked before, or ask it in a different way.
Let's take the question about the movie. With videos, children no longer have to sneak into R-rated movies. Despite the fact that we are asked not to watch them, many children and teens do. These same children will answer, "Don't watch it," when you ask them what they should do. They know the answer, but they haven't spent enough time thinking about it yet. This topic arose when I was substituting in a class of older girls. The bored tone of their voices told me they had answered this same question a million times. It no longer held their attention. I repeated the question, but this time gave the movie a name: Titanic. Their blushes and guilty looks told me many of them had seen it, and those who hadn't knew why they shouldn't. Giving the movie a real name took the question out of the ordinary. Naturally, I didn't ask who had seen it, although some of the girls volunteered that they had seen it, but their parents skipped the bad parts for them. This gave me a new idea. I went to the chalkboard and told the girls we were going to make some lists. I explained the rules of brainstorming and told them we would be using this technique for the rest of class.
In brainstorming, the teacher asks a question. Students are encouraged to call out every answer that comes to mind. They shouldn't give it too much thought or worry about whether the answer is right or wrong. In fact, you want both kinds of answers in order to aid the discussion. Teachers must remind students not to judge the answers of others-sometimes a seemingly silly answer leads to valuable discoveries.
The girls made a list of reasons you should or shouldn't see Titanic. They came to the conclusion that the reasons for not seeing it were better than the reasons for seeing it. In the next round of brainstorming, I asked them to think of every choice they had if they were asked to watch it. At the start of the questions, they had simply said "Don't watch it." Now they had to come up with every possible reaction to the request, including watching it. After reviewing this list, they discovered there were gray areas and they weren't sure how to answer the questions anymore. Finally, they had to think. For instance, is it okay to buy the movie if you have someone else edit or skip the bad parts? Lots of members do this. I guided their thinking by continually asking more questions, but I did not tell them what to do. "Who will do the editing? Can they edit without seeing the bad parts themselves? Is it a sin to get someone else to watch the bad parts or is it okay if it's for a good purpose?"
One interesting point arose in our discussion. The girls decided that buying the movie was sending a wrong message to film makers, who wouldn't know they skipped the bad parts, and wouldn't care either. They decided that film makers might decide that people who like immorality might not see a moral movie, but moral people will see an immoral movie and skip the bad parts. Therefore, more people will buy immoral movies and more of them will get made. On their own, they discovered good reasons to avoid seeing the movies and practiced ways of getting out of the situation.
As the final step, I encouraged the girls to discuss these questions with their parents, who were the final authority. Together, they should formulate a family policy on movies. Although the lesson had been on making choices, and not on movies, the girls were drawn into the topic through the use of questions that forced them to analyze their stock answers. Many of them did formulate policies for themselves. I helped them to realize that they could use this process to make all sorts of important decisions throughout their lives. Questions, properly used, can change lives.