Full Story

News

Students from Snowy Mountains Christian School

A Vision for Christian Schools; Prophetic Not Market Driven

Rev Bob Frisken AM

Understanding Christian Education
Just before he left them Jesus gave to his disciples very clear and explicit instructions about what they were to do about education.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20 NIV)
The key words for Christian education are "teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you".
Jesus did not tell them how they were to do this, at what age group to teach, He just told them to do it, but he told them the task was "teaching for obedience" and the scope was "every thing I have commanded you." It is clear from what we read in Acts that the disciples did just what they were instructed for we read of the early Christians that "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." (Acts 2:42 NIV). Jesus did not tell them at what age to start the teaching orf nor how they were to do it. He left it to the Disciples under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to work out these issues. They will obviously be different in different cultures and at different times.
Through the ages the Church has understood that it had an important teaching responsibility which it has endeavoured to undertake through preaching, Bible studies, Sunday Schools and confirmation or membership and new convert classes and in a number of other ways. For most of its history the Church has been involved in teaching its children through catechism classes, Sunday or Bible schools and day schooling. Over the last two or three hundred years the church has moved further and further away from the "teaching in community" approach that we can see in the Acts 2:42 quote to what Westerhoff calls the schooling/instructional paradigm in which the teaching method is basically an instructional approach with the students seeing themselves in a school context.
The other notable change has been the reduction of the amount of teaching received by the average Church member, as sermons have become shorter, attendance at Bible studies rarer and Sunday schools have become less common. To some extent this has been offset by the emergence of Home Groups but these have tended on the whole to have a fellowship/worship emphasis rather than on a more balanced teaching/fellowship/worship approach and the majority of Christians, at least in our culture do not participate.

Printer Friendly Version

And what does all this have to do with the Christian school?
As we have already noted for much of its history the Church has been involved in teaching children biblical truth in a variety of forms. In England and America those great Protestant countries the Church had often started schools for those who could afford them or for those who were being prepared for ministry. In the backwash of the Industrial revolution as the old structures for learning such as the guilds were broken down and with the movement of so many people to the industrial cities children were often denied any real education. A number of Christian men and women saw the need to something about this and the modern approach to mass education was developed.
These new schools and the Sunday School movement, which was started with similar purposes in mind about the same time in England, taught Biblical knowledge and Christian values as part of the curriculum. However, in the 18th and 19th Century as so called “Enlightenment” thinking affected society more deeply the idea that education was a State responsibility was born and the secular public school was developed. Like the earlier Christian school this also taught a religious perspective in this case the beliefs of secular humanism.

The devastating effects of this change were not evident for nearly a century although there were always those who had the prophetic insight to see what would happen. For example Archbishop Vaughan in the middle of the 19th Century when the Churches were considering giving their schools over to the State to save themselves the time effort and money of educating students warned the protestant churches that if they allowed the State to educate children would result in schools “which the church knows from experience will, in the course of time, fill the country with indifferentists, not to speak of absolute infidels”. He went on to predict that the state schools would be “seed plots of future immorality, infidelity and lawlessness, being calculated to debase the standard of human excellence, and to corrupt the political, social and individual life of future citizens”. Today it is clear that he was correct. While we can't change our history, or unmake bad decisions made in the past, we can make the right decisions now. The Church needs to support schools where Christian parents can send their children with confidence.

A new start
About 30-40 years ago in Australia a few Protestant Christians, realising what was happening to society, began educating their children in Christian day schools. Graduates from these Christian schools already are having positive effects on society. However, many Christians are still unaware of the impact of secular teaching on their children and so are still not sending their children to Christian schools and thus are not adequately educating their children. Parents who choose secular schools for their children often comment, "A State school did not hurt me and I don't see why it should hurt my children" or "If we get all the Christians out of State schools what will happen to our society?" Both of these reflect serious misunderstandings of the nature of schooling and its effect on children.
Sadly after thirty years of successful growth some Christian schools are already showing signs that they are becoming market driven rather than prophetically driven schools. The advantages of State funding has also the downside of influencing schools towards a an emphasis on buildings anmd equipoment to meet state standards and in the hope of attracting more students. In some Christian schoosl there is also a complacency derived from the security of govenment funding and the flight of students from the public schools to the private schools. When \they begin to lose enrolmenst there is a tendency for such schools to move towards a market driven model and thus away from the founding ideals and a prophetic vision.

Children are initiated into society at school
Jesus said (Luke 6:40) “A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher”. Parents who themselves survived a secular school education as effective Christians, are only a small proportion of the children who came from Christian homes. If this was not the case Christianity would have the same place in our society as it had 40 years ago. Whilst not all the children from Christian families that attend secular schools today will lose their faith, a majority will have their Christian values, beliefs and way of life seriously undermined.
It is a sad commentary on Christianity today that often there are not significant differences between Christian and non-Christian young people in their attitude towards premarital sex, drug use, belief in God as Creator and many other areas of thinking and acting.
Jesus told this parable: Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? Many young people are falling into the ditch of unbelief and faithless living because they are being taught by the spiritually blind.

What should Christian schools be doing to play their part?
The school should be considered as a ministry of the Church, and here I am not talking of either a denomination of even a local church as we may know it, though there is no reason why both should not run schools but rather understanding the Church as the Body of Christ and the Christian school as helping to fulfil the teaching role envisaged in the commandment of Jesus in Matthew 28:20.

In saying this however, the very important vocational role of the school should not be overlooked. The biblical idea of education we see, for example, in Deuteronomy is to teach the commandments of God in the context of every day life. (Deuteronomy 6:5-7) This is the model of education we need to accept for the Christian school. It has a vocational task determined in part by its sociological setting and the economic imperatives of an advanced Western society and in part by the biblical directive. This vocational role clearly involves preparing students for the role as stewards over God’s world.

Thus we could envisage the role of the Christian school is to teach the commands of the Lord “when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” or in other words in what ever you are doing as part of your daily life.

This raises a whole lot of questions as to how this can be done. Before I turn to that I want to return to the commandment that Jesus gave and try to explain its relevance to the task of the Christian school.
What Jesus told his disciples to do involved “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Teaching to obey
The first part of this statement shows that the aim of teaching is not accumulation of fact, or skills but changes in attitude and in lifestyle. The aim is not the passing of examinations, important though this may be for other, vocational reasons but that students may live as obedient and faithful disciples who are stewards of God’s Creation
This reminds us that teaching should be aimed primarily for the here and now not just as a preparation for the future. Whatever future informational and skills need we may have they are useless unless there is a change of heart in the here and now and an application of the knowledge to life situations.
Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded
Christian schools most often fail at this point. We give a spattering of knowledge, stories and teaching that lacks coherence and understanding and thus does not lead to responsible and faithful discipleship.
Teaching everything Christ commands is a big task but it is one that hopefully could be well started in the thirteen years that a child is at school. Sadly this is rarely happens- in part because we forget the key reason why we are operating Christian schools.

Teaching them in community
The promise Jesus gave to the Church if they would engage themselves in this wonderful, life changing world changing task was “surely I am with you always,”
This surely is the secret to achieving what God wants us to do- but it is a hidden secret to many teachers. Jesus promises us "Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." (Matthew 18:19-20).
It is as we have a class or a school that functions as a Christian community that we have the power to change people lives because we have the presence of Jesus and His Holy Spirit with us.
How can we do this?
Paul’s shows us the importance of Christian community when he said in Ephesians 4:15 “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.” This would be better translated as “Practising the truth in love in all things we will grow up into Christ who is the Head of His Body.
Only as we put the living truth revealed in Jesus Christ into practice in a community characterised by love will we see real growth of the students and of the Church which is His Body.
With our crowded curriculum and the ever increasing requirements introduced by the State it is clear that we need to take some new initiatives if we are to teach differently
Perhaps Palmer gives us the way forward when says “to teach is to create space in which obedience to the truth is practiced”
Creating Space
This definition of teaching sounds a bit vague and poetic but it contains some real and practical directions for us. We all need space if we are to grow. In a crowded situation such as a crowded train or bus or at work where there is so much to be done we do not have time or space to be open to new ideas and our deeper knowledge stays hidden but when we get out into the open at a beach or in an open field and there is no pressure on us ideas and feelings arise within us. So often in our classrooms we box in our students as we stuff their minds with information and knowledge, when we seek set answers, prescribe tasks that must be done and done our way and when we are little interested in what the students are really thinking. Palmer contrasts this when he says (1993 page 70) “to study with a teacher who not only speaks but listens, who not only gives answers but also asks questions and welcomes our insights, who provides information and theories that do not close doors but open new one, who encourages students to help each other to learn –to study with such a teacher is to know the power of a learning space”.
How then can we create a learning space for our students? Palmer suggests there are three characteristics of a learning space, openness, boundaries and hospitality.
Openness
Openness refers to the common sense meaning of space- To create space in this sense means removing impediments to learning that we find around us or that we have erected ourselves because of our fear of being exposed to truth. To create openness means resisting our tendency to clutter up our consciousness and our classrooms- Busy activity is perhaps one of the worst way we close off our classrooms. Part of pur reluctance to clutter up our teaching comes from our insecurity or our fear of appearing ignorant to others or to ourselves. Yet acknowledging ignorance can lead us to learning. Not knowing can be the first step toward truth. Our anxiety about not knowing should lead not to a cover-up by a surplus of only partially relevant information and knowledge but an adventurous journey into discovery of the unknown.
Boundaries
A learning space not only needs openness it also needs boundaries. Without boundaries a space would not be a structure for learning but for confusion. So if we are to create an open learning space, the teacher needs to define the boundaries. The students are not allowed to go wherever they want to or to do whatever they want to do. The boundaries must be defined and defended. This will help keep the space open but will also keep students fleeing from the space into the security of activity. Today’s child often is surrounded the whole day with noise and electronic imagery and so becomes afraid of silence and quietness.
Hospitality
Because a space can feel hostile a learning space needs to have the characteristic of hospitality. Hospitality means receiving each other with our struggles and our half-formed ideas, with openness and care. Hospitality involves welcoming others, creating a secure environment where relationships can be formed because people can be trusted not to harm but to help. Too often in order to control students, a teacher will instil an element of fear. Fear is the opposite of hospitality.
In a hospitable class room the students receive the teacher as well as the teacher the students and they receive each other. There is no need to score points because in a hospitable class room failure is acceptable as well as success. Showing off is not necessary because everyone feels accepted. There is no need for competitiveness because each is valued. In such an environment we form a relationship with others and are transformed by the truth we encounter.
Where Obedience to the Truth is Practised
In a conventional class room the only thing that is practised are exercises designed to teach. The idea that learning ought to be put into practice now is far removed from the thinking of most teachers. Palmer (1993 88) says, “To speak of the classroom as a place ‘in which obedience to the truth is practiced’ is to break the barriers between the classroom and the world- past, present and future. To speak this way is to affirm that what happens in the classroom is happening in the world; the way we relate to each other and our subject reflects and shapes the way we conduct our relationships in the world. “In this understanding reality is no longer perceived as “out there” but between us and neither knowing nor living can become a spectator sport.
To understand this concept we need to be clear that truth is neither objective nor private but a relational truth which seeks to understand not only information through scientific research but meaning that is found in community. There needs to be a communal search for what is true. This means understanding that all that we study will ultimately be related to what is revealed in the Word of God. It also means that all that is learned is part of a relationship we have with others. If my presentation of truth belittles my students I am not obeying the truth and nor will they. The facts might be right but the relationships are all wrong. Truth should build up not tear down. Truth should enable not disable.
The search for truth should be cooperative and communal not individual and competitive.

T o make significant change requires dramatic changes in the way we think about and undertake our teaching. It involves a change of paradigm form our current “schooling-instructional” approach to one based on understanding the school as a learning community. This is no simple task and will take immense courage and effort but it is I believe the Vision to which we are called.