By Bethany Brady Spalding
For three years, I have had an on-going war waging inside my head: public school or home school for my three young daughters? Our neighborhood public school is a lovely place. The teachers and administration are bright and nurturing, the student body comes from over 40 countries—giving my girls exposure to the world, and there are a breadth of resources there that I just can’t replicate on my own. But, for all of its goodness, I find the curriculum lacking.
Seems like I can say the exact same thing about church. I am in the Primary Presidency in my ward and we work incredibly hard to make Primary a vibrant place to be on Sundays. Our teachers are devoted and creative, our children are spunky and diverse, and there are often moments infused with the Spirit where everyone present gets a glimpse of a God-like life. But….for all of its goodness, I find the curriculum lacking.
The Primary Sharing Time outline for 2016 was recently released and the theme for next year is, “I Know the Scriptures are True.” Having co-authored two children’s books on women in the scriptures, I was eager to see what was in store. But after a review, I was sorely disappointed to discover that in 52 weeks of Sharing Time, women or girls are only mentioned six times. Six times. If roughly half of our Primary children are girls, this number is clearly insufficient. Our girls need spiritual role-models, our boys need to grow up seeing girls as their spiritual equals, and too many valuable lessons from the stories of bold women and girls in the scriptures are being missed.
So…what to do? Do I pull my girls out of school, do I pull them out of Primary? Some days I would like to. But then I remember an important truth: I can’t outsource my children’s development to anyone—not school, not church, not anybody. The intellectual, spiritual, moral, emotional, physical, and social development of my girls’ is my job. Teachers at school and church can inspire them along their way and curriculum at school and church can impart certain knowledge and skills. But the heart of my children’s development will always be up to me.
That’s the main reason I co-authored the books Girls Who Choose God with my friend, McArthur Krishna. Current Primary curriculum is not going to give my daughters the depth of education they need on powerful women in our faith tradition. So we wanted to create resources to help fill that void. Our first volume, Stories of Courageous Women from the Bible celebrates the wisdom of Eve, the bravery of Miriam, and the generosity of the woman at the well, along with many others. And we’ve just released our second volume, Stories of Strong Women from the Book of Mormon. It wasn’t an easy task, but we’ve culled out ten narratives of named and unnamed women in Book of Mormon and tried to give them greater voice and visibility–Sariah’s commitment to unconditional love, Nephi’s sisters’ willingness to break from tradition, the daughters from the land of Zeniff standing up to a ferocious army to save their families.
Surprisingly, the Book of Mormon is filled with strong women and girls doing difficult, important things. These impressive stories need to be included in our Primary curriculum. But until they are, we hope that our books will be a valuable resource to parents as they take charge of their children’s moral and spiritual education.