How a tradition decides to pass itself on to children reveals what it most deeply believes about the nature of faith — whether it is primarily inherited identity or chosen commitment, whether it is about belonging or about transformation, whether it trusts children to encounter genuine questions or fears what those questions might do. Every tradition has resources for the formation of children: the Jewish bar and bat mitzvah system, the Buddhist monastic school, the indigenous initiation ceremonies, the Christian catechetical tradition. The central question is not what to teach children but how to form them — how to give them enough of the tradition to have something real to work with, and enough freedom to make it genuinely their own.
Rumi