Fuzzy Goals

Because many in the current generation of parents and teachers were educated in the public system, it is natural to design today’s Christian schools in that model. However, this is not a distinctively Christian model. Gorman (2001) wrote of the confusion that seems to exist in the Christian community on what the goals of schools should be and how these ought to be achieved:

We lack clarity in terms of what we want to produce. We have listened to the many hawkers who have told us what our students must be and who we must be and we have found our teaching shaped by lesser values. Our goals have become fuzzy. While the needs have become more complex, it has been hard to establish priority and even harder to stand against the tide. We have played to clamoring audiences and played down our uniqueness as God’s image in the world. It has been easier to settle for the ends of “passing the final” or “designing a project.” And learners, facing a multitude of pressures in a society that values external “paste-ons” over internal commitment, action over values, and content more than character, encourage this compromise. . . . The question remains whether our students (as taught Christianly) are spiritually different because of their learning experiences. (p. 24)

At the local level, Christian school leadership and interested parents must come together to design school schedules, curriculum, learning outcomes, classroom discipline policies, teaching methodologies, and assessments geared to serve the key commands of Scripture, instead of accepting the world’s standards and functioning as de facto public schools with occasional Bible memory or chapels. Because so few people have received their education in institutions that are distinctively Christian, this will require a change of perspective for many, and pastors need to take the lead in educating the flock on how necessary this process truly is.

Although teachers have significant influence on student learning, Christian schools also must develop students of character who have internal motivation to serve the Lord in their learning. As Cox (2002) wrote, “While teachers can salt the educational content to make the liquid of learning more appealing, the ultimate responsibility for actual drinking of learning is the student’s, not the teacher’s” (p. 10). Although this does not devolve all responsibility from the teacher, it does suggest that education is more complex than simply hiring a skilled teacher. The intricacies of education involve the teacher, the student, the parents, the school culture, the family background of each individual, and many other factors. This is one reason that federal control of education practices and strict national standards do not suffice. Individual situations are only properly understood at the local level where the numerous variables can be weighed. This suggests that standards for teacher qualifications and curriculum can be cooperatively developed at the national, international, or denominational level to give guidance to Christian schools, but the control over final decisions needs to rest at the local level to allow for individual circumstances.