Thoughts for Parents on Christian Education

It's not unusual for parents of young children to become very interested in the question of education and schooling. After all, what was “other people's concern” in their single or childless days now becomes a pretty pressing need! That's to be expected, and this booklet tries to answer questions such as “What should I do: homeschool, private school or public school?”, “What curricula should my child study?” 

It's not a short read, because educating your child is not a small task. If you had hoped to entirely “outsource” education to others, you might find it difficult and tedious to have to read and research about education. But you will reap the reward of your efforts, because few things will have as much influence on your child as education.

Let's Define “Education”

To begin with, we might have to demolish some bad thinking, and clear some ground. One of the problems is that we have all grown up in a society that used the word “education” to mean “skills for a job” or “literacy and numeracy” or “basic knowledge about the world”. That means, we have been taught to think of education as religiously “neutral”, as if education is simply a twelve-year course to obtain a passport to getting a job and earning money. Many Christian parents think of education as a kind of mental gymnasium for their children, with little relationship to the child's spiritual development or overall worldview. 

 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.

Undeniably, secularism is a religion. The religion of secularism preaches that while God may exist, He doesn’t matter for the ‘realities of life’. Therefore, your devotion to Him must be something ‘very personal’, and never preached as true for anyone besides yourself. All religions are equally true, in that they are merely personal choices for your own happiness. Therefore, all religions must be equally represented and be given the same space at the table.

 As much as secularism postures as non-religious, it is profoundly religious. It has a god (“Progress”), a grand myth to explain life (“Evolution”), a set of commands (“thou shalt not judge”), and faith (“believe in human goodness”). It has its own morality (“tolerance”, “inclusivity”). It rejects the centrality of God’s Revelation in the Bible, dethrones God as the source of ultimate reality, and denies human sinfulness.

 “Secular” education is by no means a non-religious education. It is simply an education in the religion of secularism. If we send our children to school, the question is not if the school will be religious, it is which religion it will educate the children in. What then is a Christian education?

A Christian Philosophy of Education

 Christian education is not a veneer of Bible facts lightly painted over the furniture of secularism. Christian education is discipleship. Discipleship is the goal of the Great Commission (Mt 28:19-20). Christ desires that we would be instruments in His miraculous work of turning rebels into worshippers. A disciple loves God supremely, loves his neighbour as himself and loves creation as God loves it. The disciple must be supernaturally regenerated, and then begin a life-long process of instruction and obedience in the local church. Christian education is nothing less than a substantial part of this instruction and training in righteousness.

To understand how a Christian philosophy of education differs from a secular one, we need to point out what a Christian education is not:

Christian education is not primarily preparation for a career. 

Christian education is not chiefly concerned with giving a person a set of ‘marketable skills’. Though these are important, and a good education will certainly lay the foundation for these, Christian education is not an exercise in equipping our children to ‘get a job’. Knowledge is not a tool to be exploited for sheer financial gain. Rightly used, it will certainly provide (Proverbs 24:4), but knowledge is a gift from God to be wisely managed, not an aid to financial mercenaries.

Christian education is not moralism added to secular knowledge. 

Christian education is not merely a moral lesson connected to the curriculum, or Bible verses scattered through the otherwise-secular coursework. It is not merely prayer in the morning, a sermon at assembly and a Bible Education class. These might satisfy some parents’ desires for ‘good moral values to be instilled’, but it still falls short of true Christian education. Disciples are not created by adding a few moral lessons to secular curricula.

Christian education is not mimicking secular education with allusions to Christianity.

Like the home, a school is always faced with the temptation to live lives indistinguishable from its secular counterparts. To borrow from the world’s approach to learning, instruction, discipline, relationships between teachers and scholars, parental involvement, sports and extra-murals, and then add Christian mottoes, vision statements and Bible verses hardly qualifies as Christian education. Cross-carrying, self-denying Christians do not emerge from twelve years of secular education, simply because the school had a Christian vision statement.

To summarise, Christian education is the opposite of worldly education. It is an exercise in antithesis, as Douglas Wilson puts it[1]. That is, Christian education stands in opposition to the values and beliefs of the age. It holds that the earth is the Lord’s (Ps 24:1), and the whole world lies in under the sway of the Wicked One (1 John 5:19). Consequently, Christian education aims to teach Christians to see all of life through God’s eyes – including maths, geography, poetry, and soccer. Christian education holds that there is also an unbelieving way to view maths, geography, poetry and soccer. Christian education stands in antithesis to worldly views that oppose God (2 Cor 10:5-6). Christian education begins with God as the only One who can make sense of human knowledge, and His Word as the infallible record of His mind. Christian education begins with God’s glory as the highest end, God’s Word as the final authority and ultimate love for Him as the chief goal. This antithetical approach affects the curriculum, the discipline, the way knowledge is taught, and myriads of other situations.

Christian education stands in contrast to secular education by its four pursuits. Christian education pursues four goals that distinguish it from secular thinking.

1. Christian education is the pursuit of wisdom. 

Wisdom is nothing like the fact-collecting approach of modern secular education. A wise man’s head is not bursting with disconnected facts gathered from the sciences, the humanities or other areas of knowledge. 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 is not an exercise in collecting facts to turn them into money. Christian education is the pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, to become more like Christ. That’s why at the heart of wisdom, and therefore at the heart of Christian education, is the fear of the Lord (Prov 1:7, 9:10). For this reason, worship is at the heart of Christian education. Only young worshippers will properly construe the knowledge they gain, and turn it into wisdom. A Christian school that ignores worship is not a Christian school in deed. Before all else, Christian education seeks to create reverent disciples – people who fear God, and want to gain His perspective on all of life. Christian ethics and a life of applying Scripture to situations emerge from true Christian education. Christian education has succeeded when it has created people who are skilled at applying God’s Word to God’s world.

Sometimes this is also called exposure to the Great Books or the Great Ideas. The Great Ideas are those which have been discussed by Christians and the culture they influenced for centuries. These are ideas such as truth, goodness, beauty, wisdom, virtue, humanity, freedom, justice, and community. They are the ideas which shape a person’s view of God, himself and the world. A classical Christian education is going to expose its learners to these ideas. One of the key ways this is done is by allowing learners to enter into the Great Conversation of philosophers, poets, musicians, theologians, composers, painters and writers who have discussed these things in their works. The greatest of these are well known to educated people, and the learners are exposed to these works.

These also creates what E.D. Hirsch called "Cultural Literacy"[2]. Hirsch described the large amount of background information that a literate person retains, that enables him to understand and decode the many metaphors, sayings, idioms, people and place names, political events and other terms that are present in sophisticated conversation. Lacking this information, a Christian may be able to read well, but he will be effectively an outsider to many conversations taking place in the public domain. A Christian education aims to initiate children into the millennia-old conversation with its meaning-laden vocabulary.

2. Christian education is the pursuit of a Christian worldview. A worldview is not one window among many for your mind to look out from. Your worldview is the one lens through which you see everything. Worldview is how you understand the past, the present, and the future. Worldview is your standard of judgement: 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.

“The purpose of a Christian education would not be merely to make men and women pious Christians: a system which aimed too rigidly at this end alone would become only obscurantist. A Christian education must primarily teach people to be able to think in Christian categories.”  So said T.S. Eliot.

Christian education aims at nothing less than giving children a thoroughly Christian worldview. 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. This means at least three things.

First, it sees God’s Word as central to understanding, authoritative and final in authority. The Bible provides the framework to understand all knowledge in the world. Scripture is the primary grid through which to view reality. A Christian education does more than pepper secular knowledge with Bible verses, it re-interprets all knowledge through biblical filters.

Second, it educates the imagination.  Christian education will give attention to those things that reach and shape the imagination directly: music, poetry, literature, art.  

Third, it educates within a tradition. A Christian understanding of the world does not emerge out of thin air. Christians do not come up with the faith afresh in every generation. Christians hand the faith on to others, who then hand it on to others (2 Tim 2:2). This means a stream of understanding has flowed and increased from the day of the apostles. Christian education steps into that stream and educates with that momentum behind it. This means understanding the history of Christianity and Christian thought, alongside the study of Western culture and thought. Christian ideas are only properly understood when we understand the history that led up to Christianity and in which it was nursed. Consequently, learning something of the Near-Eastern, Greek, and Roman civilisations is important. Since Christianity was the dominant thought pattern through medieval Europe, it is important to understand the culture and its expressions from the Middle Ages through to its dissolution in the Enlightenment period. South African history must be mixed in with this, to understand our own situation, since ours is a story of Western culture coming into contact with other cultures. The history of Christianity on our own continent is a vital part of this education.

To put it differently, an education is an immersion in a culture. In our case, we wish to immerse our children in Christian culture: how Christians have thought, sang, reasoned, prayed, fought, worshipped, built and created for centuries. 

3. Christian education is the pursuit of sound thinking. 

Because no lie can be used in the service of the truth, a Christian education cannot accept untruths at any point. If knowledge is disordered, wrongly applied, or misunderstood, it deceives. Christian education is fastidious about clarity, logical validity, and sound reason. For this reason, Christian education is exacting when it comes to language. Language expresses ideas, and when the language is disordered, the ideas are wrong. Indeed, Christian education even presses for a study of parent languages to our own, to increase our precision in language, and expand our dexterity. It sees importance in studying the original languages of Scripture.

Similarly, Christian education prizes logic and reason. Sound argumentation, inductive and deductive reasoning and formal logic are needful for a Christian to answer the thought-bombs of Satan (2 Cor 10:5-6). Christian education sees value in subjects like formal logic, mathematics, and geometry, not merely for practical value, but for the rigorous logic and reasoning power they give to the mind.

4. Christian education is the pursuit of vocation. 

Christian education desires to shape disciples, not merely equip careerists. Nevertheless, Christian education cares that its scholars fulfil their callings. First Corinthians 7:18-23 teaches that every Christian has a calling, or vocation. God appoints these stations in life, and fulfilment comes in pursuing and accomplishing one’s callings. 

A Christian education worth the name will pursue wisdom, a Christian worldview, sound thinking and vocation. The child who experiences such an education, be it at home or at a Christian school, will certainly be in a better place, from a pre-evangelism point of view, than his secular counterpart. 

Educational Methodology: Public School, Private School, Christian School or Homeschool?

 Public Schools

These are difficult days, and some parents are just beginning to see that the culture gap between Christianity and the wider society is growing. There was a day when public schools still carried some semblance of Christian moralism and worldview. That is fast being replaced by pluralism, the LGBTQ agenda, and a revisionist view of history and culture. 

 For some parents, finances preclude homeschooling or private schooling.[3] They are not yet able to live on one income, and must rely on state schools. What should they do?

•    Do plenty of debriefing with your children over what they are learning, particularly in “life orientation”. Spend time discussing and correcting worldviews hostile to Christianity. 

•      Exercise your right in a free society to speak up when you believe Christianity is being undermined. Supposedly there is room at the table for all faiths, so make your objection known when the Christian conscience is being trampled in the name of “pluralism”.

•      Recognise that you child's peers will become his cultural mentors, so have plenty of discussions about friends, influences and peer pressure.

•      Be prepared to pull your child out altogether when you can tell you are losing him or her to the world. Don't wait until it is too late.

Private Schools

One would hope that for tuition fees of R10 000 a month and more, you would get the kind of quality education we've spoken of in this booklet. Unfortunately, it is often more secularism with ivy-covered walls and stained-glass windows. Yes, you're certain to get better facilities, better-paid teachers, perhaps some kind of Anglican or Catholic religious backdrop, great extra-murals, but this hardly means that the dominant religion won't be secularism. Just ask anyone who graduated from an elite private school whether the school shaped him or her to think like a Christian and love Christ.

Indeed, too often the influence of peers is just as bad, if not worse. Secular children from wealthy homes are often an even more corrupting influence than those from middle-class or poorer homes. 

For parents who send their children to private schools, the same four points given above for government schools apply.

Christian Schools

 Many Christian parents have withdrawn their children from government schools and have enrolled them in Christian 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 brand of charismatic Christianity, or some form of Catholicism or nominal Protestantism without a clear Gospel (the form of godliness, lacking the power thereof, 2 Tim. 3:5). 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 Christian schools will be only slightly less than those found in public schools. In some cases, children who have been expelled from public or private schools find their way into Christian schools, bringing some of the very worst influences.  To put it simply, a Christian school will be as good as its leadership. If they do not properly understand Christian education, Christian worship, and Christian discipline, the school will fail to be Christian in any real sense.

Homeschooling

 Because of the cultural collapse around us, many parents have resorted to homeschooling. This means that one of the parents becomes responsible for teaching, or at least facilitating the child's learning at home. 

Homeschooling takes on very different forms, and is probably different in every family. However, the following are non-negotiable:

• The family needs to be able to live on one income, so that one parent can focus on the schooling. This either means downscaling in lifestyle, or an increase in income, and usually it means both.

• Schooling a child at home is a huge time and effort commitment. When done properly, it does not leave much time for anything else for that parent. Don't underestimate the sacrifice that will be required. Begin thinking about what will be done for meals, housework, and so forth, if one parent (usually the mother) gives herself entirely to education.

• Significant personal discipline, discipline of the children, and support of the other parent is essential.

Homeschooling has its drawbacks. No parent is capable of specialising in all the domains of knowledge needed to shape an educated believer. At some point, the child will lack in some area.  Homeschooling is also not always cheap. Quality curricula often have to be imported. These days, laptops, software and a good Internet connection are indispensable. What is usually found in a classroom has to be supplemented at one's own expense of time and money: sports, socialisation, hobbies. This is an added burden for the homeschooling parent.

 In short, there is no perfect system. Sometimes there are hybrid approaches that manage to combine these. What every Christian parent needs to come to terms with is the fact that you can no longer rely on some outside source to completely and successfully educate your child. 

Approaches to Home Christian Education 

 Unschooling

This method is really a non-method. Proponents claim that leaving a child to simply learn about life in an unstructured format will bring about a self-directed, self-motivated learner. Needless to say, the Bible teaches the very opposite about a child. A child is innately foolish (Prov 22:15) and left to himself, brings shame to his parents and himself (Prov. 29:15).

Charlotte Mason

Charlotte Mason put a heavy emphasis on using high-quality literature, which she called “living books,” to teach children. She believed that education should involve the whole person, not just the mind. Charlotte Mason homeschooling uses narrative literature, plenty of outdoors exploring, and a focus on appreciating art, nature, and music. Journaling, narration, dictation and copywork also make up a good deal of it. The Charlotte Mason method has some things in common with the Classical method. Some of Mason’s methods are not very practical for children raised in a city. 

Montessori

“Self-regulation” is a key goal of the Montessori philosophy of education, meaning the ability of a child to regulate his or her conduct in a way that is appropriate to the situation. Once again, there are profound flaws in Montessori’s view of the child’s nature. 

Classical Schooling

Christian Classical homeschooling uses a method from the Christian tradition, known as the Trivium. This is the method my family has opted for. 

Of course, we do not think that this is the only correct route for homeschoolers. Nor do we imagine that it is the “best for everyone”. I need to emphasise that every family has to find what works best for them. However, I outline it at length below because it is the method we are most familiar with, and of course, we believe in its strengths. 

The ‘three ways’, or Trivium, is the classical Christian approach to education, that developed during the Middle Ages. These three ways are the biblical categories of knowledge, understanding and wisdom (Proverbs 2:6, 9:10), or as they have been called in Christian history, grammar, logic, and rhetoric.  These do not simply describe formal subjects. They describe the approach to teaching, and how it shapes learning as a child develops.  

Knowledge, or grammar, is gathering the facts and basic ideas; understanding, or logic, is weighing and relating them to one another; and wisdom, or rhetoric, is the ability to apply them to life. Knowledge is the pieces, understanding puts them together, and wisdom uses the finished product. Interestingly, many Christians have noticed that these three stages seem to correspond to childhood development.

Knowledge / Grammar stage

In the early years (5-11), the child enjoys learning knowledge. Memory work and repetition are what the children enjoy doing at this stage. Analytical work tends to frustrate many of them. Children of this age enjoy chants, songs, rhymes, lists, names, places, dates, and so forth. Contrary to accepted wisdom in secular education, there is nothing useless or inferior about ‘rote learning’. Children of this age thrive on that. In maths, it is the numbers, the multiplication tables, and the types of counting. In language, it is the names of words, the spelling, the memorisation of poems, the taking in and re-telling of stories, the classifying of words. In history, geography and the sciences, it is the dates, places, events, and so on. In music, it is the scales, the notation, the basic melodies. In Bible, it is grounding the children in the biblical narratives, from creation to Christ. Here children are grounded in the basic components of the whatever field of knowledge they are learning. The better the grounding, the more competent they will be to understand and apply it wisely later.

Understanding / Logic Stage

In the middle years (12-14), the child enjoys pursuing understanding. The process of trying to order, arrange, weigh, judge, compare, and contrast is growing. The child enjoys arguing and disputing, as she tries to make sense of the world. This is the stage of sorting out the accumulation of facts. The child is sorting out good from bad, true from false, beautiful from ugly (something which secular schools refrain from doing – or at least pretend to). Once, again, here the teaching goes with this grain. In addition to new facts, the subjects begin to do a lot more comparing, weighing and explaining. In poetry, we are asking, was this good? In literature, the stories are being examined for moral content. In Bible, we are considering the right and wrong of the biblical characters, the beauty of God’s commands, the truth of doctrine. In history, they are considering whether such and such an event was pleasing to God. In science, they are considering the best way to achieve something. In maths, the logic of relating various mathematical principles intensifies. It is at this stage that some courses in formal logic begin. In music, one is advancing to consider style, the meaning of compositions. This stage has a strongly ethical content, and it is vital that Christians with biblical ethics teach it.

Wisdom / Rhetoric Stage

Knowledge and understanding unite in wisdom: the art of skillfully applying truth to life. In the later years (15-18), the child becomes more self-aware, and desires to persuade and present himself wisely. He wants to take the knowledge and understanding he has and now apply it well to the world he lives in. Here the wisdom stage takes over, where the knowledge and understanding is to be presented and used well.  In this stage, the subjects become most interested in being able to carefully argue the case for the Christian understanding of these fields of knowledge. Essays arguing for a particular act in history, critiques of poems and literature, compositions of good short stories, competent singing and playing, with competent critiques of musical pieces, wise use of mathematical principles to solve problems: these are the subjects in the “rhetoric” stage. In Bible we are considering theology, arguing for one theology over another. Apologetics and defence of the faith has begun. Through all the subjects, be they English, second or third languages, history, the earth sciences, music, or art, this approach of knowledge, understanding and wisdom is followed in respect for how God has made the child, and in obedience to His command to pursue wisdom.

Rightly done, the classical Christian approach can inculcate the Christian worldview we considered earlier. 

Why Latin?

Many classical Christian curricula include Latin as a subject. While this is not essential to the curriculum, it is helpful. Why? Several reasons can be given. 

Christians are a people of the book. The eternal Son is called the Word. Christians treasure language because God has communicated to us in the written language of the Bible. Consequently, Christians pursue a careful understanding of grammar and good writing, because God used these. Clear writing makes for clear thinking, and a mind that is well-ordered in language will tend to be coherent in its articulation of ideas. To prepare for this, a knowledge of Latin, which is rather like a fountainhead to languages like English and Greek is very helpful. A knowledge of Latin also greatly increases precision in grammar, and betters one’s style in writing. Classes in Latin begin in the third grade, and must be taken until the ninth grade. In tenth grade, some learners may opt to replace Latin with Greek or Hebrew.

For a sample of the curriculum and reading that is integral to a Classical Christian education, download the Logos Literature list at https://logosschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Elementary-Lit-List.pdf 

Of course, this is simply a sample, and an idea of what a classical education would look like. There is far more that goes into discipling a child: developing personal spiritual disciplines such as prayer, Bible reading and memorisation, participation in family worship, encouraging baptism and membership and involvement in church, developing service of one another at home, and reading for personal spiritual growth. 

 While educating our children to have a Christian worldview may seem daunting, it is at the heart of why children go on to live out their faith in adulthood, or why they abandon it for secularism. If we wish to see truly converted children that become life-long disciples, we cannot do any less.

David de Bruyn

[1] Wilson, Douglas. The Case for Classical Christian Education (p. 231). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

[2] E. D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1988).

[3] This assessment should be made carefully. What we can or cannot afford is a complex question that includes our spending priorities, our “lifestyle” and desired “standard of living”. Our choice of house, car, holidays and luxuries are often the reason why other kinds of education is deemed unaffordable. Having said that, it is undeniable that increasingly, families require two incomes to even afford a modest lifestyle.