Nathan:
You’re onto something, but it needs much more articulation. The teaching that we do by pedagogy (teacher lecturing to students) is useful for the transmission of data. The computer world does this in 1’s and 0’s. People use words. But that is just a small fraction of what children need for their growth into adulthood as a genuine Yid, shomer Torah and Mitzvos. The lectures about these values can indeed be verbalized, which is what appears in the pages of sifrei mussar and chassidus. But all the tapes, lectures, phone lines, etc. cannot truly fill the need.
What is needed is serious modeling of the midos we wish to see in our children. The joy of mitzvos and learning will go nowhere if it is only given to them as a written or spoken word. It must be modeled. However, our modeling, if only an act, will fail on contact. It is our own emotional involvement in Torah and Mitzvos that must be 100% real. If we allow our children to witness treating davening as a chore, or being disrespectful of it by behaving in shul in ways that we shouldn’t, that will be what they learn. They ingest and absorb what we do first, and only secondarily what we say, if at all.
What do our children see in our mesiras nefesh to follow mitzvos? Daven? Learn Torah? Caring for others, tzedokoh, etc.? What is the health of the air in our homes? Have we made our homes a place where the shechinah is welcome? Do we behave in ways that show our propensity to physical pleasure, or do we prioritize the spiritual?
It is the action – our action that makes the biggest difference. The best lectures, shmoozim, maamorim, etc., cannot shine a candle to the impact of bringing the simchas hachayim of Yiddishkeit into our homes. We communicate this by making this the norm of our behavior, not by verbalizing it.