A major premise/finding of the Good Shepherd work is that a child’s relationship with God is a natural one, an inborn gift, which is beyond social or educational conditioning.
To determine this, Dr. Cavalletti/Gobbi and associates’ research noted a uniformity of responses to meditations presented regardless of the children’s environmental circumstances.
Dr. Cavalletti comments (From Way of Holy Joy):
The golden thread was ever-lengthening, uniting together thousands of children from very diverse milieu and situations, but the response to the religious experience never changed. 37
… there are two seemingly contradictory elements:
- an ever-growing number of children (two to 12 years of age) who live in the most diverse environments and situations, and
- at the same time there is the evidence that all children respond to the religious factor, and always respond to it in the same way. That is to say, there is a counter positioning between the diversification in the milieux and situations in which the children live and the constant uniformity in their response to the religious reality. 37-38
Article Contents:
- Why We Have Chosen this Model
- A Fundamental Theoretical Consideration
- Sample Size
- Behavioral Indicators
- Establishing a Research Environment
- The Research Process and Use of Materials