CHILD SOLDIERS

Every so often a new documentary is released reminding us of the atrocities happening around our world. A particularly heinous act that has drawn much attention is the recruitment of children as soldiers in third world countries. Fierce war lords capture children, train them, and exploit them for their nefarious purposes. Generally, people are dismayed by these kinds of atrocities. Even if we understand that war is sometimes inevitable in a broken world, we instinctively want to protect the vulnerable. Children should not be fighting wars. Instead children need nurture, care, and guidance as they grow into adulthood. Only when they are thoroughly trained, only when they have reached this stage of adulthood can they be considered prepared for war.

As far as I am aware of, there are only two groups of people that consider sending children into war, a good idea, dangerous warlords and oblivious Evangelicals. We often hear well intentioned Christian parents make the argument that sending children into the public schools is a good idea because they want their children to be a light in the darkness. Although the intentions may be noble, the strategy is foolish. A developing child is exceptionally malleable and therefore will be naturally influenced when placed under the authority of an institution. This is particularly dangerous if the institution not only refuses to espouse the Christian worldview, but at its core hates this worldview.

As parents we often forget that our greatest enemy is not physical but spiritual (Ephesians 6:12). We send our children to some of the darkest spiritual places in our society with a desire for them to be the light, while they are being indoctrinated by wickedness. The long held rationale of sending children as warriors to a spiritually dark

battlefield must be abandoned by Evangelicals.

Although there may still be several outlying reasons as to why it would be acceptable for Christians to send their children to public schools, these reasons are becoming few and far between. Why not choose a school that shares your family's values? Why not choose a school that stands firmly on the gospel of Jesus Christ? Why not choose a school that is committed to Christian excellence in academics? Why not choose a school where your children will feel safe and cared for? Why not choose a school that will teach your children to pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful? Why not choose a Classical Christian School?

GRADE INFLATION

In a recent article titled To Mark Your Child’s Progress, Look Beyond the Grades, CNN contributor Athena Jones writes, “According to the report by Gallup in partnership with the nonprofit Learning Heroes, almost 9 out of 10 US parents think their children are on grade level in math and reading, despite dismal national standardized test scores.” In the article Jones shares a story about a mother whose daughter was getting mostly A’s and B’s in her elementary school. She quotes the mother, “I thought the child was on Honor Roll…Her lowest grade – a C – was in art.” But when the child went to a new school and took a standardized assessment it was revealed that her reading level was 3 grades behind. The author of the article admits that grade inflation is a significant problem throughout schools in America. Now just think about this for a moment, the “A” letter grade traditionally represented a student’s mastery over the academic material, while a “B” represented a student being slightly above average, and a “C” represented an average student. If a child, three grade levels behind in reading, is maintaining a mastery level it begs the question, “What kind of standards are being taught in our schools?” 

The foundational reason as to why grade inflation exists, I think, lies in the identity crisis in our culture. God created humans for a purpose and therefore human beings instinctively long for meaning. The problem is that we look for it in all the wrong places, mainly we look for it within ourselves. This is why the self-esteem movement is so ingrained in our culture. Every athlete deserves a trophy, even if their team loses, every artist deserves a ribbon, even if they just scribbled on a piece of paper, and every student deserves an A, even if they don’t know how to read. For this reason, grade inflation must not exist in Christian schools. We teach our children that their value must not be bound up with a false sense of accomplishment but genuine accomplishments. And of course, even beyond a temporal value, we teach them that their ultimate value is bound up with something outside of themselves. For a human being it is bound up in being created in the image of God, and for the believer it is bound up in the full restoration of that image in Christ. 

This is why at a classical Christian school parents must learn to reorient how we think about grades. Not every child will get an A in reading because not every child excels in reading, and that’s ok. On top of this parents must understand that the curriculum we use is significantly above the national standards. To put this in perspective, an average child reading at grade level  should be scoring in the 50th percentile on standardized tests and theoretically  getting a “C” in school. What we have, instead, is children reading three grade levels behind the “standard” and getting A’s. If a child three grade levels behind is showing mastery over the material, presumably the material being taught would be in the lower 10th percentile when compared with national standards. At most classical schools the exact opposite is true. The material we teach does not correspond to the lower end of the spectrum but the higher end. So, if the national average is a student scoring in the 50th percentile, the average student in a classical school would score in the 70th percentile. Do you see the gulf this creates? In schools across the country a child scoring in the 10th percentile can be bringing home A’s on the report card, while at a classical school a child can be scoring in the 70th percentile and be bringing home C’s on the report card. Now, the action step is not to recalibrate our standards but to reorient how we think of grades. The reason for this, friends, is that our responsibility is never to lower our standards to meet those of a degenerating society but to elevate standards in order to cultivate students to distinguish the true, the good, and the beautiful for the glory of Christ. 

The epidemic of grade inflation clearly displays the importance of the vision at Providence Academy. At Providence we honor Christ through excellence in education. If the trend is that students in the lower 10th percentile are receiving A’s and B’s, what is happening to the students in the 90th percentile? The answer is that they become bored and disinterested in school. For this reason, the curriculum at Providence Academy is difficult, it is intended for students scoring on the higher end of the spectrum. And it is for this reason that to be accepted into Providence students must score above the 50th percentile on standardized assessments. This doesn’t mean that as a school we believe that higher achieving students are more valuable than lower achieving ones, it simply means that as a school we took note that higher achieving students are significantly underserved in the Christian school community. As a school, Providence Academy desires to be faithful in meeting that need, so that as Christians we have an outlet to educate our future leaders that this society desperately needs.

CHILDREN AND THE TRUE, GOOD, AND BEAUTIFUL

I once heard someone say, “The best way to teach a child music is not through systematically teaching them notes, but to start teaching music through songs they already love.” This appears to be a wise approach to education and honestly in certain ways it is. Educators must never see the learning process as merely discipline with no joy. Discipline is a tool, it is a means that brings children to an end, joy in the true, the good and the beautiful. Not only that, but using what children enjoy in the educational process is a great way to engage students, it is a wonderful educational strategy. That being said, one effective strategy must not lead us to think that from it we can build a robust pedagogy or philosophy of education. A sculptor, for example, often uses a soft instrument to brush away any dust in the fine details he is working on. The brush is an effective tool for this work. Does this translate to us walking away with the conclusion that everything we know about sculpting revolves around the brush? Of course not. Yet, so many modern approaches to education begin with the focus on what the child loves. But friends, from a biblical perspective this is the worst place to begin.

The reason a biblical pedagogy does not begin with what the child loves is because we understand that sin causes our loves to be misplaced or distorted. A child by nature does not love what is ultimately true, good, and beautiful and therefore the job of the educator is not to encourage the pursuit of false loves and idolatry but instead to present to the child that which is true, and good, and beautiful. In the book of Proverbs we read, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” According to this Proverb, a child needs training. The author does not say, “Let your child pursue their loves and everything will turn out great in the end.” No, a child’s heart is not predisposed to what is good but quite the opposite, it is predisposed to folly and therefore, it needs to be trained. Consequently,  biblical pedagogy must never begin or have as its aim the loves of a child’s heart but with the transcendentals, it must begin and have as its aim what is objectively true, good, and beautiful. 

For a Christian school like Providence it is disconcerting how many parents buy into this modern and anti-biblical approach to education. We often hear statements like, “My child doesn’t like to read” or “Why can’t the students do fun things all day long?” These statements reveal a Pelagian approach to our theology of education. Pelagius was a heretic in the fourth century that denied original sin and believed that human beings are morally neutral. If a child is born not with sinful desires, but neutral ones, then of course the job of the educator would be different. Our goal would not be to train and reorient loves but to come along and foster the potential for goodness every child has within themselves. But to a biblical worldview that rejects Pelagianism this approach simply does not make sense. And yet as Christians we are often uncareful and buy into these anti biblical approaches to education because they disguise themselves as “Christian.” A great example of this is the Charlotte Mason method. Mason bases her entire method of education on Pelagian theology. In the second of her 20 principles on education she states that children are “born neither good or bad, but with possibilities for good and for evil.”

In light of a correct theological approach to education we must understand that school will not always be “fun.” This does not mean that a Christian school will somehow be a joyless institution, indeed the opposite must be true, where Christ is preached there joy will necessarily be found. But it does mean that a child, particularly an unregenerate one, will not always see where true joy is found. When Paul writes his first letter to Timothy he calls the young pastor to train in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul goes into more detail he tells him that a follower of Christ it to be  like a soldier who doesn’t get entangled in civilian pursuits or an athlete who is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules, or a  hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Even for a regenerate pastor growing in godliness requires training and hard work. Our flesh or pre-regenerate desires still make it an effort for us to see God as ultimately true, good, and beautiful. If Timothy’s loves still need to be sanctified, then clearly so do those of our students and as we see in Paul’s letters this is not an easy endeavor, but one that requires discipline, rigor, and hard work. 

If our approach to education is simply following the desires of our students then the outcome of this education will be entrenched idolatry. Our children, if left untrained, will not pursue that which is lovely. Imagine teaching music at schools where the primary focus was not to teach the notes but only the songs that students love. Sure they would become experts in all things Taylor Swift, but very possibly never grow beyond that. How sad? As a Christian community we understand that what is needed to a world devoid of the true, good, and beautiful  is not the trite and the popular but the rewards of hard work and discipline of a good education.