Teaching Christianly in Public and Private Schools:
A Responsibility Model
Stephen D. Holtrop
May 1996
A paper presented at
Nurturing Reflective Christians to Serve in Public and Private Education: Second Biennial Symposium, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, California
As a Christian professor in an education department at a Christian college, I struggle with how to get my education students to integrate their Christian faith with their thinking about being teachers. A lasting professional concern for me is the scarcity of Christian teachers teaching with fully developed Christian philosophies of education.
Should Christian teachers teach differently?
Teaching Christianly is a tough thing to define. As a teacher in a Christian high school, I interviewed colleagues for a newsletter I edited and was disappointed to find that many Christian educators identified at best only a few minor ways to distinguish their teaching from that of their secular counterparts. For example, some said they were nicer than the non-Christian teachers they knew. Then, as a graduate student and teaching assistant at a Big Ten university, I worked with many public school teachers who were Christians but not teaching very differently from their non-Christian co-workers. And now as a supervisor of student teachers and a methods instructor at Huntington College, I work with future teachers who plan to teach in public schools. I would like them to struggle with integrating their faith and teaching--teaching which, in turn, has the potential to integrate faith and learning for their students.
N. H. Beversluis' (1971) Christian Philosophy of Education makes the case for Christian teachers' nurturing more than just the mind of the whole student: he calls for educating the intellectual, moral, and creative capacities of the learner. Education, we know, can also address the physical, emotional, and spiritual capacities of all students. Beversluis and others have called for Christian foundations on which to build decisions about what to teach and how--decisions based on Christian views of the person and the world. Unfortunately, many of these philosophers of Christian education stop short of identifying "Christian" curricula and methods. Some Christian teachers may be able to see a relationship between their pedagogical decisions and their views of God, humanity, and society. However, I'd like to provide some guidance for these curriculum and methods decisions with the question: How is one’s educational philosophy driven by faith? Or how is one’s faith fully implemented in the classroom?
Is there one Christian way to teach?
Many Christians take a traditional approach to education that stresses that students are sinners, who need rigorous correcting and drilling. These educators may resist multicultural emphases, progressive methods, and educational outcomes, seeing them as extraneous at best and almost certainly a product of the prevailing secular humanist culture. Other Christians embrace modern emphases on learning styles, cultural differences, and student ownership and authority. In their enthusiasm over new theories and ideas that respect the student as a whole person, however, these educators may fail to notice the secular humanist and relativist values that underlie many of these new educational developments. Still other Christian educators--far too many, I think--seemingly ignore the relationship between their faith and their professional conduct. Is one of these approaches more Christian, more responsible, a more appropriate response to God's gifts to Christian teachers--gifts of salvation, intellect, and professional skills? The question goes beyond a Christian teacher's theology and personal beliefs about the nature of humanity and society. It examines the connections between what teachers believe and pedagogical issues like what they pick for course content, how they present their material, and both the hidden and explicit values that hold sway over their entire teaching process.
I will briefly lay out two perspectives on teaching Christianly, two frames of reference I see operating in Christian views of teaching today. Unfortunately, these two picture frames, though mounted on the same big picture of God’s truth and human existence in his creation, often do not overlap. After I discuss these two frames a bit, I will propose a framework that I hope is a broader, fuller perspective that includes the strengths of the first two, a philosophical stance that is not simply a middle of the road approach but an integration of high personal idealism with high social idealism in Christian teaching. I choose the frame metaphor because I don’t want to say there are two separate roads, or two extremes on a continuum, or a correct vs. a deluded way to conduct oneself as a Christian teacher. I don’t want an us-vs.-them mentality of mutual belittling here. I really think we have different frames operating on the same reality of God’s revelations and gifts to us in this world in this time period, different windows on the same ultimate reality of living and serving in the world today. Like the proverbial blind men all experiencing different parts of the elephant, we all see reality through a glass darkly (I Cor. 13:12).
Christianity-Against-Culture Teaching Frame
In one frame of reference, many Christians seem to take a Christianity-against-culture (Niebuhr, 1956) approach to their task of living on earth. The Christianity-in-opposition-to-culture framework is a perspective that sees the Christian life as a safe haven, protected from the evils of the world. The world can be a dangerous and evil place--and it is to a large extent: just look around--and, therefore, safety is in personal salvation, righteous living, and tried and true educational practices. Because of the fallen nature of humankind, any human tinkering with the system is bound to involve fallen motives. Outcomes Based Education is an example of something that looks very questionable through this frame. Because of our fallenness, change is also fallen.
View of the Student, Curriculum, and School
The Christianity-against-culture perspective views the student primarily as a sinner in need of correction and control. Since the wider culture is dangerous and fraught with sin, adolescent literature, movies, dances, self-esteem teaching, and block scheduling all receive suspicious consideration. The view of the curriculum is equally careful: traditionally emphasis was on the basics so students would be able to read the Bible, make an honest living, and balance their checkbooks. (A few Christian parents today still say those skills are all they want for their children’s education; anything more is too much worldliness and dangerous.) For some Christians, school itself, as an institution of the government, is a dubious establishment and should have as limited a role as possible; thus we see a marked rise in homeschooling among Christian families.
View of Classroom Management
This Christianity-suspicious-of-culture frame often approaches classroom management and discipline with what Barbara Coloroso (1990) calls a brick wall approach. James Dobson (1970) advises Christian parents to set firm boundaries (p. 56) and to stand most firm when their children are going through developmental transitions and feeling most insecure. The authority figure, he counsels, must be especially secure when children are feeling insecure and therefore pushing at their boundaries. (And there is something to this advice.) But he also describes adult-child interactions as conflicts which the adult must "win" (p. 59). Rules, therefore, should not bend, especially when there are lots of other things going on in the life of the child. Christian teachers using this approach force themselves to be rigorous and firm in their application of rules in an effort to "be there" and be strong for the topsy-turvy student. This seems a laudable goal but operating, I am convinced, in too small a frame.
Epistemology
New knowledge, in this frame, is seen as a distorted version of biblical reality, a sin-tainted, brief peep at God’s truth. The Christianity-against-culture teaching stance tends to draw narrow boundaries around what is legitimate knowledge, discounting many modern findings (in science, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, for example) and closing the box to prevent attempts at broadening our view of creation and the Creator. This means new revelations in areas such as science, psychology, or sociology, are at best only slowly and reluctantly accepted. For it is hard to see new knowledge as coming from God if human sinfulness has put an anti-God spin on it. But since "we see through a glass darkly" (I Cor. 13:12), this too is not yet a complete picture. It is part of God’s call to us that we continue to seek truth, not close the book on it.
View of Work
Similarly, work is often viewed in the against-culture frame as toilsome and sweaty instead of as a calling from God. Education is seen by students and teachers alike as merely training for a "good" job, that is, a lucrative job. Education is reduced to a vocationally-oriented service to be consumed. When the potential jobs are seen as monetarily not worth the training efforts, education is abandoned. This, of course, fits hand-in-hand with the consumerism, impatience, and practical, mechanistic views of the human mind that are growing rapidly in the secular culture as well. Additionally, in this view, the individual is emphasized more highly than cooperative groups, competition reigns over collaboration, and, for some Christian parents, trade schools are seen as more practical and relevant than college for a young person wanting simply to get the best paying job for the least amount of time and money invested. Today’s American Christians are often tempted to pair this money-making view of work with a literal interpretation of Matthew 25, the Parable of the Talents, leading to the popular American notion that those who get the most money (for the least work?) are particularly blessed by God. Other life goals such as excellence, versatility, "the examined life," and meeting societal needs, therefore, would take a back seat to costs-benefits analyses.
Eschatology
The idea of a sudden cessation of all earthly activities, paired with the idea that work is maximizing individual rewards for individual efforts, means there is little sense of working toward the coming of God’s kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10). In this frame, souls are the only thing worth saving from the current kingdom. In fact, many Christian teachers, in this frame as well as in the one I am about to describe, see their jobs as missionaries in a hostile environment.
Christianity-Sold-Out-to-Culture Teaching Frame
In a different frame, a different snapshot of living in God’s creation, is the perspective that to some Christians is simply the liberal slippery slope. This "liberal" perspective is often viewed by fundamentalist Christians as holding a Christianity-sold-out-to-culture philosophy and therefore not even really Christian. It is hard for positions coming from this side of the fence to be taken seriously as legitimate Christian thinking by the more inflexible perspectives. In fact, the more inflexible Christians often imply that the so-called liberal positions of the "sold out" perspective reflect exactly what is wrong with American education. To be sure, there are many teachers in this world who go to church but seem to have no connection between their faith and their professional decisions. But there are many others who have a strong faith and at the same time a strong desire to take hold of new teaching ideas.
View of the Student, Curriculum, and School
These more progressive Christians--who represent many slightly different frames of reference, as we all do--these progressives who view the person as image of God--creative, little less than the angels, or a "responsible self" (Niebuhr, 1963)--may push a good thing too far toward moral relativism and self-indulgent appeal to self-esteem above all else. The view of culture, which by progressive Christians is described as a transforming and redeeming stance, is suspected of being mostly a rationalization for being both in the world and of it by those who are suspicious of more romantic views of education and the person.
Similarly, curriculum is viewed by these Christian teachers as broad and inclusive, leaving room for thematic teaching or integrated curricula, new subject area arrangements, and other innovations in opening educational windows on God’s creation. This view is, therefore, also more susceptible to the ubiquitous educational pendulum, because these educators often embrace innovation. Detractors, whose approach would rather define once and for all, smugly point this out that the progressives seem easily blown by the winds of change.
Christian teachers in the progressive frame are much more positive toward institutionalized schooling than their more suspicious, neo-traditionalist counterparts. They affirm that school is a key place to help young people form their world views and that all teachers have world views that make their way into the styles, methods, and materials teachers use every day.
View of Classroom Management
Classroom management in the so-called Christianity-sold-out-to-culture frame is often very relationship-oriented, both in the teacher-student dimension and the student-student dimension (Sergiovanni & Starratt, 1988). Understanding the individual’s background, relationships, and special needs is more important than rigid, generalized standards for conduct. This, ironically, is one particular area where the more flexible or progressive frame is individual-oriented and the more rigid or traditionalist frame is focused on broad, group standards of behavior--a switch from the way they usually look at economic issues and political rights. The obvious Achilles’ heels, then, for the progressives are relativism in principles again and being so interested in self-esteem and individual relationships that standards take a back seat. Coloroso (1990) uses the term jelly fish to describe teachers (and parents) who are so flexible, laissez-faire, or taken with mitigating circumstances in their discipline that it becomes too flexible and permissive at the expense of authority, standards, and excellence.
Epistemology, View of Work, and Eschatology
The progressive-approaches frame looks at knowledge as flexible and changing instead of carved in stone for all time. Work is often viewed as more communal and holistic--fitting into the social machinery--than individualistic and isolated from other aspects of life. Eschatology in the progressive frame is either put aside in order to focus on the present and the near future, or it is focused on working for the betterment of the current human condition.
I think that in many cases this sold-out-to-culture view of teaching is somewhere on the slippery slope of cultural and moral and individualistic relativism. Some of its adherents are committed Christians who have big hearts and deep social commitments but do not necessarily relate what they are doing to what they believe and therefore run the risk of accepting just about anything that comes along.
Both of these frames--the Christianity-suspicious-of-culture-frame and the Christianity-sold-out-to-culture frame--are limited in perspective but part of the truth. We need to affirm both positions in love while guiding people toward a bigger picture, the broader frame.
A Broader Frame: Responsibility Teaching
If we look through limited frames we have a problem. A huge number of Christian teachers are acting scared of the world God has put them in and seem to work constantly to build walls around their Christianity. They are looking through frames of reference that miss the cultural applications of their faith, that miss the opportunities for Kingdom building in the here and now. Another set of Christians is seemingly swallowing just about everything that comes along without seeming to process much through their filter of faith. They are operating with different frames, but their frames are also too small. Really, there exists a whole array of slightly differing frames spread across the map, and many Christians do not seem to respect Christians who see through different frames. Christians with different perspectives do not work for many of the same goals in education or in the wider culture of social, economic, and political policies. Further, sorting it all out is difficult for any Christian who wants both to protect the faith from secular onslaughts and to maintain a freshness of calling and openness to God’s leading through new knowledge and new perspectives. My vision is for Christian educators to try to sidestep the tugs of war and grasp a purpose that can unify some of those who had previously been at odds. My vision is for a broader vision that includes in one frame the perspectives of many of the currently differing frames.
I propose a frame of reference that is not as polarized and is not as simplified and easy as the neo-traditional circle-the-wagons frame or the more progressive but sometimes sold-out frame. It seems imperative that being a Christian teacher--whether in a public or private school--must mean much more than simply being nicer, stricter and more traditional--and in the Christian schools--mentioning Jesus at least once per class period and having a biblical proof text for everything. None of this gets at what it really means to be Christian in our learning and working and living. Of course, just ignoring one’s faith while on the job is not a viable option either for a committed, thinking Christian professional. Further, philosophical polarizing among Christians causes discord and divisiveness that further separates us and encourages simplistic, quick-fix, sound-bite solutions--a false dualism that easily becomes a rhetorical and philosophical crutch as we vigorously defend ourselves against sisters and brothers in Christ. We cannot settle for either/or in educational struggles like excellence versus equality, responsibilities versus rights, and teacher-centered versus student-centered education. The Bible constantly speaks of applying one’s personal beliefs to one’s surroundings. Christian teachers need not only to do that themselves but also to teach their students how to do that.
The broader frame I propose is oriented toward responsibility education, discipleship, and backbone authority. This is not a compromise between the two main frames I outlined above. It is not a liberal version of the traditional approach nor a conservative reigning-in of the progressives. The stance is neither one of shunning culture and new research as threats to one’s faith, nor is it an attempt to Christianize whatever comes down the road in the popular culture. Instead, this approach sets up responsible Christian discipleship as a firm standard and evaluates new materials, methods, and perspectives according to this standard. Niebuhr (1963) and Wolterstorff (1980a) make strong cases for elevating the responsible Christian life to just such a position above all other cultural and educational objectives and considerations.
Responsibility means purposeful education, education with impact, education that is student-centered and subject-centered and teacher-centered in the sense that the responsibility is spread all around. We need responsible students who are taught by responsible teachers who use responsible materials and methods. This means students take responsibility for their own learning; teachers take their job as a divine calling to a fully professional endeavor; and curricular materials are not sugar-coated, censored, vacuous and dry, nor merely politically correct. Responsible teachers must painstakingly examine the hundreds of book, software, and audiovisual titles available, choosing responsibly and then setting up responsible guidelines and support structures for maximizing student learning with the chosen materials. Materials and methods should represent the best that both traditional education and current research have to offer while at the same time promoting the goal of responsibility-building in individuals and toward our culture and the world.
Responsibility education, in public or private schools, requires an openness to God’s leading--leading which can take the form of innovative colleagues, new research, historically successful approaches, and examined personal experience. Christian teachers and students have responsibility toward themselves, their peers, their communities, their country, their world, the environment, and their futures. Responsibility implies stewardship, protecting, nurturing. So schools need to be about taking care of ourselves, each other, and the setting God puts us in. This setting can include one’s physical and mental condition, family, church, business, political situation, and community as well as the environment. Adequate schooling must prepare young people to act responsibly in all arenas of their lives. Similarly, Christian teachers must see themselves as called to be stewards of--that is, to manage responsibly--four areas: the body of knowledge they are teaching, the variety of individual students they are teaching, the learning environment, and the forms of instruction they use (Huntington College Education Department model: "Teacher as Effective Steward," NCATE Institutional Report, 1993). I see this frame as much bigger and all-encompassing and therefore harder to focus on than the smaller frames of culture-as-suspect or almost-all-change-as-good, or other comparatively smaller frames like back to basics or leveled funding, to name just a couple of the various other frames through which Christians are looking at education.
Neil Postman (1996) declares that modern education must become more purposeful, more worldview-oriented, asking "Why?" instead of just "How?" How to make a life is the issue instead of just how to make a living. Christian educators have the ultimate reality, the ultimate purpose behind these questions. Being responsible with this knowledge means letting our students see and experience it as well. Looking up the term "responsibility" in a library or on ERIC, one finds many references to education that deal with everything from self-actualization to legal responsibilities. Articles and book chapters advocate establishing in the classroom a context of caring, letting students express personal feelings, learning appreciation for cultural diversity (Berman, 1993), promoting cooperative learning and group responsibility (Dockterman, 1994), or building confidence and self-esteem (Canfield, 1995). To be sure, these are important goals and also part of the larger Christian responsibility frame I am describing here. But Suzanne Toton, in an entire book on the responsibility of Christian educators toward the problem of world hunger (1982), points out that faith is not just an individualistic and private affair (p. 83). Rather, faith must be lived out responsibly in the social and public realms (p. 85). Thus, she asserts, "to remain neutral in the struggle for liberation is equivalent to being a collaborator in the oppression of the poor" (p. 86). Because schools often naturally preserve the status quo in social stratification, she argues, it is particularly important for Christian educators to examine in light of Scripture "the roots of the problems in society" (p. 146). "The goal of educating for justice is nothing less than changing the situation of injustice" (p. 147).
This, I think, is exactly what Wolterstorff (1980b) is saying: it is impossible not to affect students’ "tendencies," to use his term (p. 6). Christian educators are not presenting just a view; it is a way of life, a way of responding to the creator of the universe and the situations he has put us in (p. 14). Botha (1980), a South African scholar, echoes this, saying that there is no such thing as a politically neutral educational institution (p. 49). So, education, according to Wolterstorff, is not just individual self-actualization (p. 19), not just socialization (p. 21). It involves discipline, growth, and development (p. 29). Wolterstorff goes beyond Kohlberg’s "classic optimistic view of humanity and classic liberal trust in the powers of education" (p. 90) and calls for "internalizing correct moral standards" (p. 97). This must be accomplished, says Wolterstorff, using modeling, authority, discipline, and some standard of right and wrong to "aim at responsible action with respect to nature, oneself, one’s fellow human beings, and God" (p. 148, italics mine).
View of the Student and the School
Responsibility teaching goes out in the streets and alleys, in the valleys and on the slopes, some of which are slippery, because it is firmly established in the world, though not of it (Romans 12:2). It is on the cutting edge because that is where the action is, that is where the needs are, that is where the current crop of students are with their Generation X characteristics, alternative families, TV mentalities, hardened perspectives on sex, love, AIDS, parenting, acquiring, and worshipping. Responsibility teaching views the person as unique, made in the image of God, redeemable by Christ, creative, a little less than the angels, but fallen, flawed, and floundering. Further, the responsibility frame of reference says that not only are teachers and schools called to act responsibly and promote responsibility but also the student is a responsible agent, called to the task of maximizing his or her learning.
Responsibility teaching sees school as a key to worldview formation, as we saw above in Wolterstorff (1980b), Botha (1980), and Toton (1982). Schools can open students’ eyes to their own needs and the needs of their culture. These needs are presented as challenges and opportunities, not as irritants or encroaching worldliness. Motivation for action is based on God’s call to take care of one’s social and physical and natural surroundings. Unlike many people in the me-first business world, the responsible Christian’s motivation should not be based on an exploiting attitude toward others and creation. And unlike adherents to New Age thinking in its various forms, the responsible Christian’s motivation should not come from an attitude that almost worships animals, the environment, or governmental processes. Humans are not merely co-inhabitants in the world with all other species. Nor are they, therefore, entitled to decimate the world. As the crown of creation, people have a special responsibility toward the world. Students can act most responsibly when they have not only intimate knowledge of many facets of God’s world but also specific training in thinking responsibly about it. This means critical thinking about the issues, not just memorizing facts or someone else’s response. As God’s image, humans are unique in creation with their analytical minds and ability to symbolize. Seeing the world through the responsibility frame means thinking critically, using analysis and language to evaluate the world’s problems and visualize and implement responsible solutions to these problems.
View of the Curriculum
This all implies the use of a curriculum that fosters responsibility perspectives. Materials must goad the student to think responsibly, not robotically. Therefore, curriculum materials need to include a rich assortment of viewpoints and details--not the stripped and safe stuff of recent textbooks nor the artificially sweetened stuff of materials designed to be merely politically correct and not much more. Responsible materials, used responsibly, force the student to react and respond in ways that build individual responsibility in thought and action. This means students should be reading primary sources, varied viewpoints, pagan as well as Christian views from a variety of perspectives. The responsible teacher--the responsibility teacher--meanwhile, is arranging and juxtaposing the curricular materials in ways that maximize the grappling and critical thinking that best foster responsibility in the students.
Molnar (1987) calls for critical thinking that is applied to real problems (p. vii) like unemployment, poverty, unequal division of the earth’s resources, government funding for education vs. for the military, the effects of school tracking, ideologies in textbooks, racial and gender equality, the environment, and literacy. So the curricular materials we teach with and how we present them make a huge difference in the opportunities we have for responsibility teaching. Responsibility is not just a personal choice or a legal safety net. Responsibility curriculum is neither anything-goes nor back-to-basics. It involves careful planning of ways to engage students’ minds and inspire their actions in real issues. In social studies, we can examine social injustices and alternative responsible social structures. In English, we can delve into responsibility themes and brainstorm action outcomes. In math and science, we discuss the effects of things like nuclear research. In PE and health, we can grapple with what it means to be responsible to our bodies and the bodies of those in our care. In business, we can wrestle with big ethical issues.
Monsma (1980) pleads that we engage our students to help figure out ways to provide all people, in this country and around the world, the basic necessities of life, the opportunities to meet these needs, the opportunities for responsible decision making, and mechanisms for reducing the extreme differences, which militate against the other three goals (p. 272). According to Monsma, our curriculum should enable us to "devise strategies that will attempt to change people’s hearts so that they are more willing to seek justice and aid others" (p. 275).
Wolterstorff (1980b) goes even farther, engaging I believe an even slightly bigger frame. After "inducing self-consciousness" of injustice in our students and "unmasking rationalizations" for preserving the status quo (p. 95), and actually working for liberation of the oppressed, Christian educators must ultimately strive for shalom, otherwise liberation teaching is contentious and divisive. Wolterstorff advises, "The goal of human existence is that man should dwell at peace in all his relationships: with God, with himself, with his fellows, with nature" (p. 81).
View of Classroom Management
Responsibility teaching promotes shalom both in the world and in the classroom. It neither whips nor coddles; rather it guides with a shepherd’s staff and rescues with a shepherd’s crook. Classroom management is not just crowd control with unyielding rules and riot gear in place. Nor is it laissez-faire. Classroom discipline is discipling--building responsible agents out of the students, starting with who they are psychologically and where they are developmentally. Instead of using a brick wall approach or a jelly fish approach (Coloroso, 1990), responsibility teaching is high on both the relationship scale and the standards scale (Sergiovanni & Starratt, 1988). It is backbone authority (Coloroso, 1990): firm, supportive, but able to give when necessary--not causing constant and injurious crashes into inflexible walls nor waving formlessly and uncertainly in the changing currents. Backbone authority keeps standing for responsible action. It involves seeing through both the frame of necessary rules and the frame of mitigating circumstances and individual relationships.
Responsibility sees both the culture from which students come and the culture which they will begin to impact as transformable, redeemable--not dangerous and to be avoided as much as possible. Christians know that being in the world does not have to mean being of it (Rom. 12:2; II Cor. 10:3; Col. 2:20). Responsibility teaches the difference. Responsibility teaching is harder than simple legalism or simple succumbing. Therefore, things are rarely starkly and immediately obvious to the responsible, thinking Christian. But a stance of thinking through new issues does not have to be relativism. It’s responsible.
Epistemology
Knowledge in the responsibility frame of reference is experiential, relational, and focused on a relational definition of truth: truth as God’s faithfulness in the created order and people’s faithfulness in perceiving it and communicating it (P. Holtrop, 1977). This kind of truth is not a static, timeless correctness. Nor is it relativism. Nor is it a middle-of-the-road mishmash of these two polarities. Knowledge in the Old Testament is relationship-oriented (Hos. 4:1). We lose something crucial when we see knowledge and truth as cold and rigid.
There is one truth, and all truth is God’s truth (Holmes, 1975). However, new knowledge of God’s truth may be revealed by God in different ways to different people in different times. Responsible creatures seek to understand the totality of what God is offering them in their time. Responsibility means graciously accepting that the body of accepted knowledge 50, 500, or 5000 years ago represented God’s faithfulness to those people then. And knowledge tomorrow will be God’s faithfulness then. We in our twentieth-century Western culture have different slants on God’s truth from the slants held by other current cultures or by past cultures. The point is we need to be constantly open to learning more of the truth about God, his creation, his word, and his will for our individual lives and our culture.
God wants Christians to understand the human brain, group dynamics, and technology as much as the secular researcher understands these things. But responsible Christian educators neither mindlessly embrace novelty for novelty’s sake nor put it aside just because it is new. It is tragic that Christianity so often reluctantly accepts new knowledge, thereby sending the message that what is new is viewed as dangerous, threatening, and suspect just because it is new. To be sure, anti-Christian scientists and policy makers interpret new knowledge in ways that can be offensive to some Christians, but responsibility teaching critiques all knowledge and all world views through the lens of the Bible and with the light of God’s faithfulness to us as his loved and redeemed creatures.
Eschatology and View of Work
We pray, "Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10). Therefore, we cannot turn our backs in disgust and despair on this life and this world; rather, we must work to build responsibility wherever we can to promote God’s kingdom being realized as much as possible in the here and now. This is our calling and this is our work as Christians. All Christian teachers, therefore, whether working in a public or Christian school, are doing "full-time Christian service." Since every Christian is to be serving God responsibly full time in all things and all places, promoting this in our students means modeling it in all aspects of our lives. Our responsibility to non-Christian students would also involve modeling kingdom building, cultural transformation for Christ, as well as personal lifestyle responsibility. Helping all students see their lives in this big picture is what responsibility teaching is all about.
Additional Thoughts about Responsibility Teaching
Perspective on Diversity in Education
The responsibility frame of reference skimps on neither equality nor excellence in education. This means working harder to come up with answers to the tough problems of inclusion, diverse populations, ESL, English-only, special education, multicultural education, curriculum reforms, and student-oriented or process approaches to teaching.
Christians are losing a golden opportunity to bear witness to the love and inclusion our faith teaches when we come across as closed-minded, hard-hearted, and mean-spirited concerning educational issues like English only, bilingual education, ESL, and special education. The Bible is full of diverse groups coming into the fold (e.g., "foreigners and aliens" are now one in Christ--Eph. 2). And America, a unique land of opportunity and freedom, founded by immigrants and restless nonconformists--seen by some of our country’s most conservative Christians even as God’s chosen land!--is the place of all places where diverse populations ought to be welcome. Yet many people with cultures, languages, or skin colors other than the American mainstream’s are treated as second class citizens in our schools. Christians in education need to fight this national racism and classism: there but for the grace of God we all would be.
Further, we cannot ignore the changing demographics in education as white, middle class students become another minority in more and more schools, and teachers remain predominantly white, middle class, and female. We are now not only on the verge of losing an opportunity to shape our culture’s response to these changes in a positive, loving, biblical way, but also in danger of confirming many cynics’ opinions that Christians are foot draggers and hateful toward changes and cultural differences. Jesus said that as we do good to the least on earth we do good to him (Matt. 25:40,45). He commanded his disciples to preach the good news to "all nations" (Matt. 28:19; Luke 24:47). Yet, Christian teachers and administrators in America have historically treated African American and Native American students abysmally. These caste-like minorities (Ogbu, 1978), or involuntary minorities (Ogbu in Gibson, 1991), in our own country, minorities who have been in our country for centuries, continue to receive the worst education available. Responsibility teaching, backbone teaching says, yes, there are standards that everyone meets--standards which need to be responsibly hashed out--but there must also be access for all--equal access that is fair and reasonable and just and attainable.
Perspective on Multiculturalism
Another hot topic in education today is multiculturalism (by which I mean pluralism not a tug of war in as many directions as there are oppressed groups in our society). Like many of the other topics I have discussed in this paper, multiculturalism does not have easy answers, and looking at it through the big frame of responsibility teaching reveals a very complex issue. The heated debate over multiculturalism versus a canon of basic knowledge must be conducted with love and compassion and understanding. Otherwise Christians look and act like the biggest bigots around. However, this cultural question is being debated with religious fervor from all sides. Christians must not let themselves come out as the most racist-sounding contributors to the debate. Paul interacted frequently and equitably with the variety of cultures in the different early churches around the Mediterranean Sea. He used the most effective cultural tools at hand, focusing on what really mattered and treating the cultural but non-religious and non-faith-threatening practices as what Calvin calls adiaphora: not essential to the faith. Paul counseled love and respect and mutual submission--not dominance--in marital relationships, church offices, and other social associations. Conversely, the sound of the debate in multicultural education today smacks of dominance struggles.
Backbone responses to this issue--instead of brick wall or jelly fish responses--refuse to allow the attitude that anything goes in American education and asserts that there is truth and excellence to be sought (Phil. 4:8), yet this view is open to the many opportunities to expand our vision and broaden our knowledge, our truth and excellence, by including elements and approaches from other cultures. Responsibility in this issue means justice (fairness in access and content) and preparing students for acting justly (Micah 6:8) and knowledgeably: with understanding of the cultures they will deal with as twenty-first-century adults in America.
Christians have either the opportunity to embrace and welcome newcomers to the nation’s culture or to be the belligerent foot-draggers. Although America is not the new Israel, the new chosen people of God, it is especially inconsistent for those Christians who do believe this to slam the doors on the nation’s newcomers: If a non-Jewish nation can be the new chosen people, then Gentiles of all shades must qualify for full-fledged citizenship in that new chosen people. However, in fact, the new chosen people are the people of God everywhere, the Christian church, all over the world (Matt. 24:14; Matt. 26:13; Mark 16:15; John 3:17; Rom. 1:8; Eph. 2; Col. 2:8; I Peter 1:1; Rev. 11:15)--not in one region with geographic or political boundaries. This new Israel is already multicultural, and the Christian church in America is only one facet of this broader group of God’s elect. Who are we, then, to act as if we already have the only ethnic, cultural, and spiritual characteristics of the kingdom of God? I think it is crucial that we responsibly look at the whole picture--research on both sides, anecdotes, the feelings of the various parties, and the philosophical stances--all given to us by God to evaluate and debate in love.
Perspective on Process-Oriented and Student-Centered Teaching
Another area where Christian educators can be (1) too eager to accept change without responsible examination, (2) belligerently obstructionist toward a perceived threat, or (3) proactive toward a new opportunity or is in the area of teaching methods now being promoted by major researchers and subject area theorists. I am talking about process-oriented teaching and student-centered teaching. These approaches can be caricatured as being touchy-feely, without solid standards, relativistic, and just more flashes in the pan or extremes of the pendulum. However, they are not really just jelly fish approaches to teaching. That is the limited perspective of the traditionalist, brick wall frame of reference on these new methods. Or in another frame, many teachers are tempted when they first encounter an exciting new method to entirely throw out the old method and all the old materials as well--calling down the pendulum metaphor for educational change. But there is a bigger picture: Langer and Applebee (1987), key promoters of instructional scaffolding in the teaching of writing--a process and student-centered stance--do not advocate a laissez-faire, absent-teacher approach: instead, they break scaffolding down into necessary elements such as support, structure, modeling, and appropriateness. Exactly in the context of such bolstering and reinforcement for student learning can other elements such as student ownership, collaboration, and internalization have their full effect. Giving choices, then, without any structure, would be putting the cart before the horse and irresponsible.
Scaffolding, which is applicable to any subject at any level, implies that both process and product are important; both teacher and student (plus effective materials, of course) are central to the learning process. This is backbone teaching--neither rigidly laying down the law with only one way of learning nor indecisively saying that anything goes. This is responsibility teaching: it demands an excellent product from everyone; there are true standards of mastery or outcome that everyone must meet. In fact, if excellence is not attained, the process is repeated. It is kinder and gentler; it works for more people, for greater effects. It is more equal as well, more fair and just: everyone must learn the processes and produce the products. To adapt a Chinese proverb to this teaching approach: students not only need to catch a fish, they need to learn how to fish. A well-taught process approach embraces all peoples; it is less arbitrary than the one-method, one-style, like-it-or-leave-it approach. And it gets better results! Students retain more facts, for longer periods, and leave the learning experience more confident, more successful, more self-motivated, and of course with more self-esteem. This approach helps not only the speaker of halting English, but also the students who are fidgety, ADHD, too outgoing for school, too creative, too bored, or too unwilling to write about the same thing as everyone else. If teachers use a variety of teaching styles and assignment formats, they will connect with many more learning styles and activate much more prior knowledge in the students. That’s the point of Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences research (Fogarty & Stoehr, 1995). Regardless of the learning styles and cultural differences represented in a classroom, a good process approach to teaching expects teacher and students both to be responsible for the learning, the processes, and the products. The products include well-reasoned, responsible positions on living in this world today and tomorrow.
Taking a Proactive Stance
Christian educators must not retreat to an imagined golden age of American education--that would be too small a view of our educational mission today--through a frame, incidentally, that distorts what many educational historians say life was really like in our bygone schoolhouses. Our country’s educational system is currently doing more for more people than any other country is doing or ever has done. Though SAT scores are declining, the reason is more and more people are getting the opportunity and feeling prepared to go to college. Scores for all minority groups are rising, despite their pulling down the average of white, traditionally college-bound students, whose scores are not changing in either direction very much. The challenges that come with this burgeoning educational success are the exploding multifaceted nature of American education today and the concerns over new approaches and new cultures and new curricula. It is neither possible nor Christian to retreat from this situation. Nor is it ethical or biblical to espouse some sort of legalistic backlash that attempts to recreate the imagined educational system of the ‘40s or ‘50s when those who did not fit the mold simply did something else. Dropping out is no longer the viable option it once was--states are considering taking drivers’ licenses away from drop outs, businesses can afford to require high school completion and beyond for new hires, and college is required for a greater percentage of careers. It is too easy for Christians to say their faith doesn’t have anything to do with these issues, on the one hand. Or to say that anything that threatens the status quo in this our "Christian" nation is to be avoided. These perspectives are easy, but they are not responsible. There is a bigger picture for the responsible Christian educator to perceive.
Jesus rejected the legalism of his culture. He was a radical. Jesus and Paul blasted the rigid structures they encountered; they patiently nurtured and served the individuals they dealt with. Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount that simply keeping the letter of the law was not the way to best serve him; for example, he said not only murder and adultery but also hating and lusting were wrong (Matt. 5:21-30)--yet he forgave the adulterous woman at the well (John 4). There are no easy answers when it comes to moral action. The Bible, especially the New Testament, continually stresses high standards for oneself and a high level of tolerance and acceptance for others. Paul’s advice to wives and husbands of unbelievers is not to argue and provoke but to lovingly model the Christian life so that the spouses may be impressed and won over (I Cor. 7; I Pet. 3). Maybe there is an application here for Christian teachers: gently, lovingly accept every student and work with their differences, needs, hangups, foibles, even sins--constantly modeling the high standards of the Christian life and a personal, responsible integration of faith and learning that eventually can be emulated by the students. First, of course, Christian teachers need to examine what potentially radical living God wants us to do before our students can emulate it.
A Christian approach to teaching must embrace all peoples. We must "do it to the least of these." We must remember that the last shall be first and the first shall be last (Matt. 19:30)--a sobering thought for those of us in this first of the "first world" countries right now--especially those of us with bigger educations and salaries than many in our own country. We must make sure our educational system, so revered by everyone from Jefferson to nineteenth-century immigrants to the foreign exchange students in our colleges today, is up to the task of caring for the widows’ children, the orphans, the poor, weak, and oppressed that God so clearly wants protected in Bible times and today. Jesus associated with the lowest classes and touched the most infectious individuals. And he didn’t determine first whether they deserved their fate because of bad decisions and immoral behavior. Teaching Christianly cannot continue to involve the closed-minded, threatened, circle-the-wagons approaches we have been seeing, hearing, and reading about. Nor can it be a nice ethereal debate topic unrelated to real life. We need to take a proactive stance toward the culture God has put us in, acknowledge the challenges, thank God for giving us the opportunity and responsibility (response ability) and wherewithal to meet the challenges, and pray for guidance, knowledge, and wisdom in doing this task. If we are open to God’s leading we will find answers to our questions about how to teach Christianly in the twenty-first century--answers right in our own classrooms, in the Bible, in traditional approaches, and also in the Christian and secular research on new populations, new needs, and new methods. We must test everything; we must act responsibly to teach responsibility to our students; we can be neither brick walls nor jelly fish, for that would not be teaching responsibility responsibly. In short, we must walk humbly with God as we seek shalom through loving mercy and acting justly.
References
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Discussion Questions on
"Teaching Christianly" by S. Holtrop
Can Christians teach differently? Should they? Is this a legal issue? A moral issue? An integrity issue?
Is there one Christian way to teach?
Are students inherent sinners in need of constant restraint or innocent blank slates tainted only by bad environment and needing only freedom to pursue their innate desires to learn?
Does God want Christians to dive headfirst into every new theory or "discovery"? What is the responsible thing to do with all new knowledge?
Do you recognize the portraits of the Christianity-against-culture stance and the Christianity-sold-out-to-culture stance? Are these perspectives presented accurately in the article? Fairly?
Can a Christian be a jellyfish? A brick wall?
Why do some Christians resist diversity, multiculturalism, critical thinking, and student-centered teaching methods?
How will being a Christian influence your teaching?