What Should a Christian School Do?
by Loren E. Swartzendruber
first published in Gospel Herald
February 17, 1987
Deciding
where one's children will attend school is not easy. In
some measure it may be similar to shopping for an automobile.
There is a variety of options from which to choose; there
is a wide range of prices; what seems appropriate for one
family may not meet the needs of another.
To be sure, choosing a school for one's children is a more
important decision than selecting a car. Educational experiences
do affect our children more than whether the family rides
in a Cadillac, a Chevrolet, or a Honda although the advertisers
might attempt to convince us otherwise! On the other hand
one must wrestle with the fact that choosing a car does
education our children. That decision communicates a sense
of the values held by the family.
When an item is bought in the marketplace, one is quite
concerned that the quality received is equal to the amount
of money spent. We want to be good stewards of our resources.
It should surprise none of us that the same interest in
stewardship pervades our decisions regarding education.
We expect that our resources are being well managed.
I suggest, however, that education, whether public or private,
is no place to look for a bargain. We applaud responsible
stewardship, but we cannot afford to be miserly in educating
our children.
A Christian school certainly is of unique interest to the
church. What is it that we want a Christian school to accomplish?
How will we know if our investment in Christian education
is making a difference? How can Christian education be done
in an environment that is sometimes suspicious of intellectual
growth and where exposure to the liberal arts is occasionally
resisted?
All truth is God's truth. It is our intention in Christian
education to hold commitment and reflection, faith and reason
together. In the words of the evangelical theologian, John
R. Stott, "We are looking for a warm devotion set on
fire by truth." Arthur Homes, a philosophy professor
at Wheaton College, states it another way: "All truth
is God's truth." If that premise is foundational for
the work of the Christian school, it will mean several things:
1.Our students will receive information and gain a perspective
on the stream of people of which they are a part. Someone
has suggested that what a person finally becomes is conditioned
by his or her choice of a tradition. Our tradition is Christian,
and more specifically Anabaptist/Mennonite. We seek to be
rooted in the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition while respecting
the contributions which other theological perspectives make
to the Christian experience.
As we stand firmly in a particular tradition, we do well
to hear the words of Daniel Hertzler: "Education is
not concerned simply to transmit a tradition. The process
of education should result in a continuing restatement,
redefinition, and reformulation of the people's uniqueness
and calling." (Mennonite Education: Why and How!, Herald
Press, 1971, pp. 20-21.)
This is to say that taking one's tradition seriously does
not suggest that the maintenance of the status quo is a
primary goal or even desirable. In reality, if the expression
of one generation's faith is expected to be identical to
that of a previous generation, it is almost certain that
the second generation is not being faithful to God's call
in its time.
2.If all truth is God's, our students will learn to think.
Education should prepare one to critique, to adapt, to be
creative. Some might suppose that it is obvious that we
want our people to be intellectually alert. In practice,
however, that commitment is not so clear. We are more likely
to reward indoctrination than to encourage the development
of critical intellectual skills. We are satisfied when the
student believes and behaves just like his or her teachers,
but we risk much if he or she does not own the beliefs.
3.A Christian school should be about the task of preparing
students for living in the 21st century. That calls the
school to do more than teach the student a skill that will
be vocationally rewarding. Since our children will be doing
many jobs that do not now exist, we must be concerned to
give them tools by which they can adapt to a constantly
changing environment. For this reason, not to mention many
others, liberal arts education is truly liberating.
4.Our children should receive an education that helps them
to understand the church as a growing organism interacting
with the society around it. The Christian school does not
exist primarily for the purpose of protecting our children
from the world. Surely there are many values in society
with which we disagree. We are confronted by practices that
we do not accept as biblical. Education for mission means,
however, that Christian schools cannot be isolated form
the world, but must have positive reasons for their existence.
Many persons have observed that the Christian school movement
in North America has sometimes been fueled by negative reactions
and by fears of the society. Some of those same fears are
present in us. I would argue that such fears are not adequate
reason for our involvement in Christian education. We need
leader who articulate a positive vision for the future and
who see the church as involved in bringing that vision to
reality.
5.Our people can be called educated when they express values
that are biblical, and not only know certain facts about
our world. Albert J. Meyer, executive secretary of Mennonite
Board of Education , has sometimes said, "Education
is conversation between the generations."
We look to the teachers and administrators of our schools
to help us articulate biblical values that give us an identity
as God's people. We expect our children to learn science,
math, literature, and foreign languages. And we want them
to pursue that knowledge within the framework of a Christian
value system that is modeled by parents, teacher, and other
persons in the church.
Investment in the future. Education for mission is not an
economic bargain. Unlike the purchase of an automobile there
are no "sales" in education. It is true that the
escalating costs of Christian education are of concern and
some families are being priced out of the market. Our response
should be one of mutual aid. Brothers and sisters in the
church must take up the slack. Such partnership is not an
act of charity, but an investment in the mission and future
of the church.
