ABSTRACT
The most formative influence in education in the past thirty years has been the information provided by the psychologists of how children think, and of the age at which their ideas develop. This has given particular guidance as to the time when children are ready and able to advance into a new field of understanding. There is needed a strategy which will prevent children becoming hopelessly confused at this formative age, and enable them to pass easily and rapidly from concrete materialistic thinking about religion to a more abstract and spiritual view. The children who did not attend church showed a regular decline in religious attitude scores over the whole age range tested. It must be noted that the age at which marked deterioration of attitude is observed, coincides with the period of mental development when critical thinking emerges.
