Last Sunday at Mass, the wonderful Gospel reading about the master and the servants and the talents was read. In the Scripture passage three servants are given different amounts. One is given 5000 talents which amounts to 5000 gold coins, the next is given 2000 and the third 1000. The servants all go about using the talents differently. The first two invest their talents and generate more. The servant with the 1000 talents buries his. What does the master think of all this? He is proud of the two who have done well, and for the one who buried his, the master is crestfallen, because this lazy servant was given gifts and he only put them in the ground. He was frightened by the master and didn’t want to “get into trouble,” so he buried his lot and hid.
Lots of images there; lots of things you can mentally do with this reading.
One of the things I’d like to do with this reading is apply it to children. Each of our beautiful little children has a lovely respectable amount of talents. It is not for us to question who got more or fewer or why, our job is to be joyful at the talents each has and encourage each child to build his life up and not bury his talents in the ground.
When I think of talents, I think of all the things that could be called talents. The first of these is life itself. When you have life, you have hope. The second is health. Health is a real blessing. There are degrees of health, of course, and health is often the impetus to action. The third, in my opinion, is intelligence. Here is where the amount of talents really becomes diverse. Some children are so gifted and some are not gifted at all. Some rise to every occasion, and some choose to remain in the background. But intelligence is not specific. Some children who are quite bright in one area and limited in another. Some children are people smart and some are book smart and some are building smart and some…
Howard Gardener speaks of the Nine Great Intelligences, and it is true that each of us has at least one. The job of preschool is to present to the child every opportunity to learn by exposing the children to every possible means to learn, and in this way, every child can develop the talents he has been given and multiply them by themselves and live a rich and exciting life.
And this is where good parents and teachers in the very early years can help make a child’s life exciting. It is in the preschool years that a child discovers what he will do with his life. Something during the age 3-6 years will captivate his heart and his mind and he will form an attachment to something that he will pursue all his life. So it is in preschool that a child is beginning to search for that special something. If he is shown a myriad of things in preschool, then he has many things to choose from. If he is exposed to a simple kind of music, he may develop a simple interest in music, but what if he is exposed to a complex kind of music? What if he sings, plays all kinds of instruments, listens to the great musicians of every era, and learns to dance? What if he is encouraged to sing solos or learn to play an instrument at four or five?
If a child is read a little story once a week, he might find reading a amusement once in a while. But if he is read to every day, and learns to listen to little stories, then chapter books, then poetry, then creates his own characters and makes his own stories, and then learns to watch good films and can begin to discuss what he has learned, and can take a role in a play and understand the depth and act it out…
And what about art? If he is exposed to a few bedraggled crayons once in a while he might think art comes into play at Hallmark. But if he is exposed to crayons every day along with chalk, colored pencils, colored paper and glue, clays of all kinds, paper mache, paint and loads of stuff to put together, and drawing lessons on top of that, and then gets to look at all the great paintings he might find that wonderful intellectual attitude about art that allows him to incorporate art into his life all his life.
You can look at all of life’s subjects like science, history, geography, foreign language in either “meager introductions” or ” great submersions” and see that through a great submersion in the early stages of a child’s life how rich and rewarding his life travels will be simply because he can form an attachment to something important and real so very early.
Every child deserves to explore his talents and choose something within his gifts to glorify. This is his gift back to his world and his creator. This is the making of the child. It is not a solitary trek on the part of the child. It is a guided tour by loving and caring parents and teachers with plenty of play time.