Education defined
The essence of education is dispelling ignorance, acquainting a learner with reality. However, because the nature of reality is a religious question, education cannot help being driven by a particular worldview. Education (distinguished from training) is discipleship in a view of God, the world, and oneself.

God has established the educational process as the human mechanism for perpetuating and advancing life on earth. Each generation stands on the shoulders of the previous generations in developing an understanding of reality and of the universe in which they live. Few educations will get everything wrong about the world—if it were so, it would prove faulty in one generation and be abandoned. However, the system can be more or less erroneous, and its errors can be more or less severe.

Historical influences that shape education

• Humans have participated in education from the very beginnings of human life. Moses told the Israelites to “teach [the Word of God] diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:7). The Jews have always valued education.
• The Greeks and the Romans had highly developed educational systems that focused on language, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. The Greek child went to school at the age of seven if his parents could afford to pay the fees. He studied basic skills (reading, writing, counting), music (poetry, dance, musical instrument), and physical skills (wrestling, boxing, running, throwing the javelin and discus; see 1 Corinthians 9:24–27). At sixteen, he went on to the gymnasium to study literature, philosophy, and politics. The Romans employed a similar system for the education of their youth.
• For centuries after Christianity became dominant in the West, education was centered around churches and monasteries. Most Westerners—common folk and scholars alike—thought within the framework of a biblical worldview. They assumed that God had created the world, that humans were created in God’s image, that human reason could apprehend truth because God had given them this capacity, that biblical morality was universally true and unchanging, and that the Bible accurately described human nature and the solutions to human problems.
• The founding of the University of Bologna in AD 1158 is generally recognized as the beginning of modern university-level education. Until the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, virtually all education in the West reflected a Christian worldview. The achievements of the Reformation, Renaissance, and Enlightenment all germinated within the soil of a broad Christian consensus. The entire scientific endeavor is rooted in the idea that the universe is understandable because God is the Creator.
• Classical education as understood and taught in the Middle Ages of Western culture is roughly based on the ancient Greek concept of Paideia (child training). The classical model is a time-proven method employing a three-phase model (called the Trivium) that corresponds to the natural stages in child development. This model for centuries has produced extraordinary men and women of achievement and thought.
  • In the early years (5-11), the child enjoys learning knowledge – the grammar stage. Memory work and repetition are what the children enjoy doing at this stage. Contrary to accepted wisdom in secular education, there is nothing useless or inferior about ‘rote learning’. Children of this age thrive on that. Here children are grounded in the basic components of whatever field of knowledge they are learning.
  • In the middle years (12-14), the child enjoys pursuing understanding – the logic stage. The process of trying to order, arrange, weigh, judge, compare, contrast is growing.
  • In the later years (15-18), the child is very conscious of appearance, and wants to be able to present himself to the world winsomely. Here the wisdom stage (the rhetoric stage) takes over, where the knowledge and understanding is to be presented and used well.
• Higher education was universally classical and Christian prior to the late 19th century. Classical Christian higher education tutored men and women in the Christian worldview and immersed them thoroughly in the Scriptures and the great works of Western civilization, which had been radically transformed by the Gospel. After completing their undergraduate studies, generations of classically educated Christian graduates went on to teach or labor in various callings, to “master” various professions or disciplines with further study (hence a Master’s degree), or to pursue vocational training through apprenticeships with reputable Christian craftsmen, businessmen, and professionals. This classical Christian academic tradition nurtured virtually every great Christian scholar, civic leader, and pastor from Augustine to thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th century.
• America began to abandon the classical Christian approach to higher education and vocation in 1862 with passage of the Morrill Act, which established federally funded land-grant universities. These novel secular institutions replaced Christian education with supposedly religiously neutral vocational-technical training at the undergraduate level. John Dewey introduced a pragmatically-based approach to education. The “modern” secular university was born and has continued on a secular, anti-Christian path ever since.
• In the modern era (since the Enlightenment), Christianity has played a decreasingly significant role in influencing education. Discovered truth (science) supplanted revealed truth (the Bible). The authoritative role of the Bible was lost, even among Christians. Institutions originally founded to glorify Christ through Christian education (e.g., Harvard, Princeton, Brown) shed such commitments and have embraced a secularized definition of mission and identity. Beginning in the early 20th century, educational institutions demanded that religious views be excluded from the classroom. As a result, religious speech was relegated to private life and religious institutions.
• Today, the mainstream educational establishment is actively anti-Bible and anti-Christian. Many Christian scholars seek to reinterpret the Bible to fit current-day scientific theories in hope of retaining respectability in the education community.

Johnson & Jones, p. 15.

Modern secular educational philosophy

The great myth of education in the Western world is that it is possible to have a purely ‘secular’ education. Christians have typically bought this lie, thinking that secular education will give their children value-free, neutral ‘facts’ about the world, to which the parents can season and mix in some Bible facts every Sunday. They think schools are simply information mills, cranking out facts that will equip the child to one day ‘get a job’. Interestingly, very few other religions agree. Orthodox Jews educate their children in their own schools. Devout Muslims begin their own schools. Hindus, Buddhists, and others who take their faith seriously see to it that their young are educated in schools of their own making. They do so because they do not believe that secular schools are amoral information factories. Secular schools are also religious schools.

• The goal of education today is to understand the universe and man’s place in it from a completely rationalistic, naturalistic point of view. God is excluded from the universe and the university. A foundational assumption of education is that man is a natural result of random evolutionary forces. A child’s mind is a blank slate that must be filled with the kind of information that will make him a productive citizen and a good employee. Education is simply a mechanism for equipping individuals with the skills to stay out of trouble and to achieve their own personal goals.
• Tolerance is the byword in education today. Students must learn to accept other people and their viewpoints without judgment or criticism. Tolerance demands that students abandon their beliefs that their own understanding of truth has any more validity or value than any other person’s point of view. Any claims to absolute truth will not be tolerated.
• Values are simply opinions. There is no objective basis for judging right or wrong. All historical events, created works and individual actions may or may not have value depending upon a person’s opinion. The ethics of secularism are situational. All must do what they believe is right, and be true to themselves without harming others. And no one’s morality must be forced on anyone else, because what’s right for you isn’t necessarily right for someone else. Moral education is impossible in such an environment. Students are free to form their own values on whatever basis they choose.
• Education should be designed to insure a student’s economic success (a good job), personal fulfillment (happiness), and social stability (fit in with the group).
• Curriculum must represent a wide variety of viewpoints and cultures. A left-of-center political viewpoint is commonly reflected in textbooks.

Other alarming trends in public school education:

• “Student-directed learning” – children, not teachers, decide what to learn
• Focus on “how to learn” rather than on acquisition of specific information and skills
• No objective standards to judge achievement
• Low expectations for student achievement; lack of academic rigor
• Lack of discipline, an immoral environment
• Sex education; indoctrination in liberal sexual ideology

Our children are not only confronted with this religion in the ‘Life-Skills’ class. They hear it when the biology teacher pontificates on the millions of years it took for certain things to evolve. They hear it when the science teacher speaks about ‘Nature’ and ‘the Laws’ as if blind chance rules the universe with such elegance. They hear it when the English teacher tells them that all interpretations of a poem are valid in their own way. They see it when Music class is dispensable, and attendance at sports is compulsory. They hear it when their preachers continually tout the importance of having “”marketable skills””. And of course, they hear it in prejudices and opinions of their peers. For seven hours a day, our children are discipled into secularism. Their cultural mentors are their peers and teachers, who teach them how to construe reality, what to love, and how to love it.

Many Christian parents have withdrawn their children from government schools and have enrolled them in Christian schools, or pursued home education. Some Christian schools do better than the public schools. Too often, in the South African context, a Christian school is fundamentally secular (the curriculum is the national curriculum, or IEB, or Cambridge) and the teachers are not themselves mature Christians, so it is really Christian in name and vision-statement only. Sometimes a ‘Christian’ curriculum of inferior quality is taught. Often these schools either represent some form of popular charismatic Christianity, or some form of Protestantism without a clear Gospel (the form of godliness, lacking the power thereof). Furthermore, the children attending these schools are not often from strong Christian families or from healthy churches, so the social problems or negative influence found in public schools will be only slightly less than those found in public school.

This movement away from public schools has drained them of the “salt and light” that accompany believers. Christian kids left in public schools face extreme pressures to conform. All parents must determine what educational avenue would be best for their own families. They should consider the pros and cons of their options carefully and realistically.

Biblical principles relating to education

The purpose of education from a Christian perspective

• Education has a strong spiritual component. It is not all about getting a good job and making safe choices in life. A God-honoring education will motivate the student to worship God with his heart, mind, soul and strength (Mark 12:30). A truly Christian education recognizes that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10).
• The highest purpose for mankind in general is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever” (Psalm 73:24-26; John 17:22-24; Romans 11:36; 1 Corinthians 10:31). Thus, the highest purpose in education must be to assist individuals in developing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will enable them to better glorify and enjoy God. Christian education is not moralism added to secular knowledge.
• Christian education is the pursuit of wisdom. Wisdom is the skill to understand knowledge gained from God’s world, and to apply it for God’s glory. When you are wise, you see life from God’s perspective, and turn those perspectives into practical obedience. A life of holiness – the life of a disciple – follows from a heart of wisdom.
• Christian education aims at nothing less than giving children a thoroughly Christian worldview. A worldview is not one window for your mind to look out from. Your worldview is the lens through which you see everything. Worldview is how you understand the past, the present, and the future. Worldview is your standard of judgment: what is good, true and beautiful. Worldview defines God, others, the world, and yourself. Worldview is your idea of reality, your understanding of what is real. Not satisfied with teaching poetry, literature, geography, biology, history or business economics lightly seasoned with Bible verses, it insists that every domain of knowledge be understood as God sees it, and used as God commands it. This means that Christian education has a uniquely Christian epistemology. That is, Christian education believes a right way of knowing exists, and pursues this.
• Another primary purpose is to instill within the student the desire to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19). Christian education is not primarily preparation for a career. Thus, students should be equipped to serve others. Christian education promotes using knowledge to glorify God and to minister to others. Students should learn to obey and serve God more fully so that they may minister to others more effectively. Christian education desires to shape disciples, not merely equip careerists. Nevertheless, Christian education cares that its scholars fulfill their callings. First Corinthians 7:18-23 teaches that every Christian has a calling, or vocation. God appoints these stations in life, and fulfillment comes in pursuing and accomplishing one’s callings. Joy, as Ecclesiastes shows, lies not in sheer financial gain, but in God-ordained work. Eating and drinking, and enjoying the fruit of one’s labour, is not the world’s idea of ‘having a job’ and ‘getting paid’. Christian education hopes to prepare its learners to pursue their callings. In modern life, this means Christian education equips its students to be ready to pursue further training. Christian education does not attempt to provide specialised career training, but it gives a Christian excellent tools to do so. This will mean that Christian education should create careful readers, good writers, skilled researchers, and incisive thinkers. They will understand the technologies and media around them, but more importantly, they will have a Christian understanding of how those should be used. They will understand the market, the politics, the cultural values of the world into which they will be sent as ambassadors of Christ.

Paul repeatedly warns believers that they are in a battle zone fighting a spiritual war (Ephesians 6:10-17). Much of this battle is fought on an intellectual level. Believers must cast down everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bring every thought into the captivity of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). A rigorous education is required for those who desire to “contend for the faith” (Jude 3) against skeptics and critics. God calls upon believers to develop their minds for the purpose of intellectual warfare, and the educational process provides an essential mechanism to assist in this task.

Who is responsible for education?

• Every individual is ultimately responsible to God for his own continuing education. God expects every believer to actively seek wisdom (Proverbs 24:1-4). One of the key characteristics that distinguishes a wise person from a fool is his willingness to pursue wisdom and receive instruction (Proverbs 1:22, 9:7-10, 15:15). God’s most direct instruction to the individual comes explicitly through the Bible. Experience—the “school of hard knocks”—is also a good instructor. God expects us to learn from both.
• Parents, and particularly fathers, are responsible for the education of their children. God gives parents the task of teaching their children (Deuteronomy 4:9, 6:7-8, 11:19; Proverbs 22:6). The responsibility of children to obey and honor their parents (Exodus 20:12; Ephesians 6:1-2) implies that the home will be a place of education. The Bible tells parents that they have a moral responsibility before God to bring up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). As teachers labor to nurture, instruct, and discipline students, their central task is to make disciples of Christ.
• Homeschooling is one application of this principle. However, homeschooling requires enough financial resources for one parent (usually the mother) to stay at home and teach. It requires significant investments of time, money as well as being demanding. Its drawbacks include missing some of the organised events that go with schools – extra-murals, and some of the opportunities to learn and apply social skills.
• The Bible nowhere requires that the government be in charge of education. However, several individuals in the Bible likely experienced state-sponsored education (e.g., Moses, Isaiah, Daniel and his friends). We cannot claim that it is anti-biblical for the government to administrate the education of its citizens. A well-educated citizenry is certainly in the best interests of the nation, and without state resources, many citizens would not be educated. The Bible nowhere prohibits governmental sponsorship or control of education, unless such control interferes with parental desires or with biblical expectations. Unfortunately, modern state-run education often conflicts with both.
• Some evidence exists in the Bible for community-based education. In New Testament times, higher education was available at a “house of study.” Such a school was attached to the Jerusalem Temple, and it was perhaps here that Jesus was found when twelve years old (Luke 2:41–52). Jesus would have gone to a house of the book at Nazareth when he was about six years old, sitting as part of a semicircle on the floor, facing the teacher. The only textbook was the Old Testament (2 Timothy 3:15). The traditional law was taught from the age of ten to the age of fifteen, and Jewish law beyond that. The brightest of the boys could go to Jerusalem to one of the law schools. Paul apparently participated in such training. He states that he had been brought up “at the feet of Gamaliel,” a respected Rabbi in Jerusalem, where he was taught “the law of the fathers” (Acts 22:3).
• A version of this in our context may look like: a church-organised educational co-operative, where the children of church members (or others who are known and admitted) gather to supplement their homeschool, Christian school or public school education. Co-ops are the seed-form for thoroughly Christian schools operating out of churches.
• The leaders within the local church are responsible for the education of the membership. Our Lord’s parting command was that his disciples evangelize the world and teach believers (Matthew 28:19-20). One of the central activities of any church is teaching (Acts 2:42). One of the specific qualifications for a pastor is being “apt to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:9). Mature believers ought to teach those new to the faith (Titus 2:1-3), and some will eventually mature to become teachers for the next generation (2 Timothy 2:2; Hebrews 5:12).
• Of course, the primary curriculum in a church context is the Bible. But the study of Scripture provides a foundation for the study of every academic discipline and a guide to every area of life. Many topics of interest relate to the Christian life, so the teaching at church should be broad enough to encompass a wide variety of subjects.
• Formal education in a university, college or tech school provides information and skills required for success on many levels. Instruction in the humanities (history, art, politics, language, philosophy, etc.) is helpful in developing well-rounded, thoughtful, informed citizens.

Educational methodology

The Bible is not an education textbook, but it does give us some helpful examples showing us how to teach effectively. Some biblical methods include: verbal instruction/lecture, small groups, mentoring/apprenticeship, question and answer, stories, historic events, sermons, songs, and poems.

Curriculum guidelines

Required: A Christian worldview demands that the Bible be a central emphasis in education. Flowing out of this, Christian education focuses on five things:

• Knowledge, understanding, wisdom
• Languages
• History – the flow of world history and Christian history
• The arts
• Logic and reason

Prohibited: On the other end of the spectrum, a Christian worldview demands that a student should not be exposed to certain kinds of information. The Bible tells us to “have no fellowship with unfruitful works of darkness” (Ephesians 5:11-12). We are to avoid and be ignorant of sinful, corrupt practices and ideas. We are to be wise concerning what is good and innocent regarding evil (Romans 16:19). Things like profanity, erotic realism, sexual perversion, lurid violence, occultism, and anti-Christian philosophies should be excluded from the educational process, especially for children. However, the Bible does not candy-coat reality. Teachers must protect the innocence of younger students and deal with some topics only with older students.

Adapted from Brad Anderson