The Characteristics of Christian Schooling
Dr. Noel Weeks
Presented to a Seminar held during the Queensland State Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Queensland, May 1991
Some Preliminary Clarifications:
Those of you who have read my book will know that I am an advocate of Parent-Controlled Christian schools. However, that is not the topic this evening. This evening I am concerned with the question of a Christian approach to the classroom and content of the curriculum. The Christian approach is commonly limited to a more loving and caring attitude towards the pupils. That is partly because Christian supporters of the state school system know that the Christian teacher in that system has little say in curriculum content; hence it is logical to concentrate on things which are under the individual teacher's control. I think we need to go beyond relationships, important as they are, to curriculum and teaching methods. Another reason for the limitation to relationships is that that has seemed a safe area for Christians to withdraw into now that God seems excluded from science and the other disciplines. As will be clear from my previous talk, I do not consider it right for us to retreat in this way.
Mathematics:
Once you raise the possibility of a distinctively Christian curriculum, you almost always encounter the retort that the content of the curriculum is neutral. 2 + 2 = 4 in anybody's mathematics!
Most practitioners of more sophisticated mathematics will tell you that, at the level at which they work, mathematics is closely connected to philosophical and value questions. We are not concerned with that level, however, but with the level of primary and secondary teaching. It is the philosophical and theological questions raised at that level by the competing systems of instruction that I wish to discuss.
I mentioned in the previous talk that one school of non-Christian thought saw unaided human reasoning as the solution to man's problems. However, once philosophy is pursued, it ends up in as many irresolvable disputes as theology. For example an attempt was made to reduce philosophy to logic, and logic to a discipline that would operate with symbols and fixed rules like algebra. A union of logic and mathematics does not solve all problems. What is the basis of mathematics itself? How can we be sure that what we call its "laws" are not mere human conventions'?
A search for a deeper and surer basis to mathematics led some to propose that Set Theory was the solution. This in turn interested some people who were concerned with teaching mathematics. They argued that if we have discovered the deeper logical basis to mathematics, then that is what we should teach in schools. If students can understand the logic and reason from the basics, then they will not need to go through the dull, boring memorisation characteristic of mathematics. Thus was born the New Maths.
I cannot speak for Queensland, but in N.S.W., the New Maths is virtually dead. It simply failed to yield the results claimed for it. Students learned a new jargon, but did not discover the key to all mathematics. Some "unkind" mathematicians also claim that that was because it had been proved years before the mathematically ignorant educators inflicted the New Math on schools that Set Theory could not be the basis of all mathematics.
The point I want to make is that the trends and debates over teaching mathematics in infants' schools in the last decade, cannot be understood without understanding Rationalism. Rationalism is a religious movement; a belief that man, by the use of reason, can surmount his problems. You will notice, further, that the New Math offered to take the drudgery out of mathematics. It is characteristic of many non-Christian approaches that they claim to be able to remove the labour and drudgery that have come into the world as a result of man's sin. Since the New Math has failed to deliver on that promise, other solutions have been proposed. One is to let machines take all the work out of mathematics. Students do not then need to learn anything by rote any longer, since calculators will do all the work. Another proposed solution is the osmosis method. Students should never be forced to actually learn and master anything. Exposure will ensure learning by osmosis without the pain of conscious effort.
We encounter here more examples of the utopian stream in nonchristian culture; the belief that we can escape the curse and return to the garden of Eden without the need of Christ. A Christian approach to mathematics will recognise that there is an order to the world, a regularity maintained by God in His providence; hence the existence of mathematical regularities or "laws". That order is not exhaustively penetrable by the mind of man, however, especially in a world under the curse. We cannot deduce every mathematical truth by flashes of insight based upon a few fundamental axioms and rules. They have to be learned or deduced by a process involving effort. Those beliefs give you a distinctive approach to mathematics.
Literature:
I am deliberately moving from mathematics to literature because I want to argue that similar considerations can lead us to a Christian approach to literature. How is it possible that we can read a novel about people who have never existed, in conditions we have never experienced, and yet find it plausible? It is because there are certain regularities in the human condition that we can believe that people would do the things that are done in the novel. That is not the same as saying that we can predict what people will do. The regularity of the human condition is not the regularity of mathematics. The more complex a situation, the more we are reduced to predicting a number of possible outcomes rather than a single outcome. In retrospect, any one of those outcomes might be believable.
In speaking of fiction being believable, I have not yet asked the question: "Believable to whom?" Your understanding of human action and motivation will influence what you take to be believable; hence much literature appears false and contrived to a Christian for the author lacks the understanding of human nature which comes from Scripture. We do not have time to go into the vast complexity of the human personality, but there is one point I must take up. Scripture teaches us that man is sinful, yet he is not without some knowledge of the truth. There is thus a conflict between the desires of the sinful nature and the truth which his conscience knows. Realistic literature is believable because it portrays that conflict, which is why great literature generally has characters in some sort of conflict.
The significance of this point is that we are currently being swamped with literature that lacks any real conflict. It may have "bash them up", "shoot them dead" conflict between characters, but it lacks the real conflict that occurs in sinful, yet responsible, people. Especially when this unrealistic fiction includes sexuality with no ethical dimensions, it is defended as exposing children to life "as it really is". That is nonsense, but unless we take our biblical understanding of man into our study of literature, we will not perceive why it is nonsense.
Science and the Environment:
We tend to group Mathematics with science and Literature with History. My move from Mathematics to Literature, and then to Science, is not haphazard. Before coming to Science, I made two points crucial to Science. The first is that the regularity of the creation is preserved by God's patient providence alone. The second is that man is a sinful but responsible creature.
Science is in trouble today, because a fundamental premise of the movement which developed modern science, was that man's mind was untouched by depravity. The emotions might be affected, and man might need reason to overcome the power of those passions, but the reason was pure. Thus science was an area to be pursued without moral considerations. Further, science, in that it unlocked the secrets of the universe, was seen as what would lead man to salvation. Against it was arrayed the dark forces of religion and superstition, but the light of reason would prevail. We are reaping the consequences of a false religious hope in science.
This is not an argument against science as an examination and utilisation of the regularities of the creation. Like all other human endeavours, however, it has to be governed by the commands of God.
Currently, science curricula are being invaded by large amounts of environmentalism, which is dangerous for two reasons. To the extent that it is coherent environmentalism, it is held together by pantheism. A lot of the time it is not coherent, and the result is a disjointed curriculum. Hence children receive no general overview of the working of the physical and biotic parts of the creation. Only a Christian view of the world can combine the regularity of the world and man's role in it.
The Human World:
Once again, I can build upon what has already been said to discuss briefly the social sciences. The things I have said about the regularity of the cosmos are relevant for Geography. My picture of man as a creature forced to make decisions, is relevant for History. There are important interactions. The geographical environment creates the context in which many of man's decisions are made. The decisions of man have, in turn, an important impact upon the geographical environment.
It is crucial to note that the geographical context sets many of the issues to which man must respond. However, it does not cause his response. One of the consequences of seeing man as a machine or a conditioned animal, is that the outside inputs determine the actions of man. Responsibility is removed, and hence we have forms of geographical or environmental determinism. Thus History tends to disappear in Humanistic curricula.
There is another common tendency in curricula in the social sciences. If there is no right or wrong and we must live pragmatically; what is for the good of the state, or what most people want, becomes the standard of judgment. Morality is replaced by the opinion poll. In line with this, Sociology, which attempts to study and predict the way the mass will react becomes very important. Australian Studies curricula are appearing in schools with practically nothing on Australian history or geography, and largely devoted to sociology.
Primary Emphases:
You may object that most of what I have been saying, concerns the secondary school and not the primary. I would dispute that for reasons which will emerge later. However, I would like to take up specifically the primary school. I said in my earlier talk that there was a tendency for rationalism to rule the Sciences, and the defence of freedom and creativity to rule the Humanities, especially the Fine Arts. I need to qualify that by saying that there is also a tendency for the idea of freedom to play a more important role in primary than in secondary. Indeed, if you want to see what are the dominant fads in education, you look to primary rather than secondary. The pressures of preparing for employment or tertiary study force the secondary school to confront reality. Primary tends to be more driven by theory; and one such theory that I have already mentioned: the belief that we can learn without work.
Another common idea derives from the influence of Romanticism. It was a reaction to the priority of reason, stressing freedom and creativity. Hence there is a tendency to argue that children are discouraged by the discipline of school, and will learn much better if they are left free to teach themselves.
A second part of this opposition to reason was opposition to the analytical nature of science. Science breaks things up into bits in order to understand the bits as a means of understanding the larger whole. Philosophical movements opposed to empiricism will oppose analysis as a way of understanding, and say that the pupil must be exposed to the whole, from which they will intuit the pattern.
For example, it is a common tendency today to deride phonics as a means of teaching a child to read. That is, we are not supposed to teach the sounds of individual letters. Nor are we to teach children individual words. Rather, we are supposed to expose the child to whole sentences until he intuits how the script works.
Similarly the curriculum is not to be divided into separate subjects like English, Mathematics, History and so on. Rather, we are to devise ways to teach all at once.
On the practical level, the great problem with expecting children to learn everything for themselves, or to intuit how a script works, is that only some children will do so. The child not gifted with that sort of mind is severely disadvantaged. A Christian school cannot cater just for the academically gifted.
On a more theoretical level, the opposition to analysis is misconstrued. The world has regularities on many levels. Take an animal for instance. It has organ systems, and it is legitimate to study the regular.-workings of organ systems. Such systems involve cells and we can study those in turn. Each cell is a functioning system, as are the mitochondria within a cell. Opposition to analysis is really a denial of the many layered regularity and wonderful interrelationship of the cosmos.
Commission of Assembly, 13 November 1991 [On Education]:
9. (iii) Reaffirm that it is the right of parents to conscientiously and prayerfully place their child(ren) in a Christian, Private or State School, or to teach them at home, if they have the necessary gifts and skills.
(iv) Acknowledge the many Christian teachers, parents and students involved in all the sectors of education, be it Private, Christian or State, and acknowledge also the valuable contribution they make in their respective areas of calling.
(v) Call upon all members of the Presbyterian Church to respect the rights, views, and actions of individual members and adherents who have prayerfully and conscientiously made decisions concerning the type of education for their children, be it Private, Christian or State, and call upon all members to bring about reconciliation where division and tension have occurred.