“When Will They Ever Learn?”

The news had just announced the passing of Mary Travers, of Peter, Paul & Mary fame.  It made me sad and nostalgic for that time in my life.  I wanted to dust off my 331/3 collection of their songs, hearing once again “Puff the Magic Dragon”, “Leavin’ On A Jet Plane”, and my personal favorite, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”.  In that song they sing these words, “When will they ever learn, when will they eeeeeeever learn?”

While the song is one of the protest ballads of that era, pointing out the consequences of our apparent lack of learning, it is also a phrase we might use today in reference to our students and their preoccupation with most anything . . . except their learning.  We, as parents and teachers cry, “When will these kids ever learn?”  The more I ponder this time-worn phrase (yes, they did say the same of our generation), the more I realized that more often than not, we are to blame.  It’s the system that is failing, not our students.  We, to quote from Jeremiah chapter 2, ” . . . have committed two sins:  (You) have forsaken Me, the spring of living water, and have dug (your) own cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water”. while this was Jeremiah’s stern warning to the people of Judah’s concerning their departure from God, it has implications for our discussion and call here to HIGHER LEARNING.

We actually need a call to a different learning . . . not different in form necessarily, but in function.  For years, we in education have operated under quite a pendulum swing, going from one philosophy of education to another.  We move from pole to pole in our attempt to keep up with the latest trends and techniques.  We institute the latest fad or philosophy in our attempt to reach our students, and in the end we echo the preceding age . . . “When will they ever learn?”  Perhaps it is WE that are represented in this question.

First, we have forsaken God.  A prophet in our time, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, used the same phrase in his now famous address to the West following his release from a Soviet gulag . . . “We have forsaken God”.  He had come out from under the socialistic, atheistic, totalitarian regime of Communism, and so warned us who claim to be one nation under God, to safeguard that trust so that the generations of Americans to follow would learn to keep God as their trust.  My wife and I have had the privilege of visiting Russia on a number of occasions.  Following her first visit, as our plane left the Moscow runway headed for home, she commented, “I just experienced what it looks like for a nation to forsake God!”  His Word emphatically states that we will never see the righteous forsaken, and God Himself said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”.  It is we who have done the forsaking, we have left Him, the source from Whom we live and move and have our being.  In Him all things were created and hold together.  In this forsaking, the generations to follow bear the brunt of it.

Secondly, we then created our own devices and containers of knowledge.  Instead of planting students by streams of living water (Psalm 1), our forsaking has caused us to construct our own water vessels . . . vessels that are cracked and flawed, not holding that water.   If we cannot acknowledge the Creator of all things and in all that we can know, then we must come up with other explanations, vehicles, and systems for learning that scream for focus, purpose and meaning.  The apostle Paul, writing to young Timothy, talks of those that are “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God ~ having a form of godliness but denying its power . . . always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth.  That sounds like a broken cistern to me!

Now taking this thinking from a spiritual/philosophical discussion to an educational one, the question now becomes, “How should they learn?”  I submit to you that this HIGHER LEARNING, to which we’ve been called, must be lived out practically in the manner of our classroom instruction.  Many parents and teachers think that students learn best by acquiring factual knowledge.  This results in a focus upon achievement (who can acquire the most?), and competition (who can remember it better?).  Rather, Christian schooling is based on several critical distinctives that cannot be overlooked in the education of Kingdom children.

• Students are being educated in responsive discipleship.  That is, viewing students as image-bearers who respond actively to God’s will for their lives and learning.  This biblical view of knowledge implies a multi-faceted engagement with creation.  So it is imperative that instruction in the Christian school classroom must be engaging . . . where students are encouraged to consider their responses to God, themselves, others, and the creation as the basis for any given subject matter and lesson.  This response is where knowledge, understanding and wisdom are formulated and come together in the heart, soul, mind, and strength of the child of God.  This is when learning truly takes place.  When will they ever learn?  When we seek to have them respond to instruction as disciples of Christ.

• Students will learn when we provide for diversity.  By diversity here, I mean in uncovering and utilizing different ways of learning.  Treating students as if they are all the same actually contradicts the essence of who we are in God.  He has created each one of us individually in personality, temperament, ability and gifting.  While we cannot instruct each student individually, we can offer varying expressions and methods of instruction that reach the various learning styles in our students.  Cynthia Tobias, in her  acclaimed work, “The Way They Learn”, breaks down learning into four basic modes.  Her pivotal point in the book (should be required reading in our Christian schools!) is that teachers, more often than not, teach from one style . . . theirs.  This means that, more often than not, they are teaching to no more than one quarter (25%) of their class, basically those that learn from that style.  So, variety of style in instruction, may be the most vital aspect of diversity in the Christian classroom.  When will they ever learn can now be rephrased as HOW will they ever learn?

• Instruction must contain diversity of cultures.  We live in an international world that is getting smaller and smaller.  Through technology, travel, and exposure, we are finding that the global society is a reality we must attend to.  Christian schools, because of their gospel emphasis, their mission perspective, and their call to “all the little children of the world”, must incorporate this global perspective in the curriculum and in the daily instruction to the whole class of students represented.  Students will learn when they see their own culture being included and when they see the richness of other cultures and expressions of this world.

• Expression must also be taught as it relates to the richness of the body of Christ.  Our children must see the full expression of worship and faith that is found in the diversity of the Church.  One of my greatest experiences was living in Eastern Europe and sharing with others of like faith in Christ, yet in the context of their language, heritage, and customs of faith.  While all students can get the opportunity to visit other places, that international proximity can be brought right into the classroom.  The draw of missionary endeavors should be a natural part of every Christian school, bringing living, breathing expression of other cultures to our students.  This will provide energy and wholeness to a Christian education.  When we speak of a truly biblical worldview, I cannot see how we can ignore this aspect of how they will learn.

So, in answer to, and in honor of Mary Travers’ eternal question, “When will they ever learn”?  I say they will learn when we learn to how to truly instruct and nurture them with a view to see the whole of life and learning from a biblical perspective.  This perspective must contain the elements spoken of here, as well as some others that you can add to this conversation as we walk toward that HIGHER LEARNING . . .

The Classroom As Holy Ground

Along my personal spiritual journey, I have been blessed to visit a fair number of holy places across Europe and Russia.  I’ve seen many of the Gothic cathedrals and abbeys of England, ate lunch on the grounds of Stonehenge, and participated in a service in York minster, where mass has been “said” every day for over nine hundred years!  I’ve stood in the Pope’s residence at the Vatican, sat where Luther preached in Worms, and knelt in a small Polish chapel that memorialized the lives lost at Auschwitz.  My friend, Alan Brown and I walked underground to look at the glass tomb and body of Lenin in Red Square, and then, even farther underground (with just a candle in hand) to view deceased monks and beautiful icons in an Orthodox monastery in Kiev.

Now this is said, not to boast or to sound like I’m mimicking Rick Steves.  In all these places, I found myself awestruck, silenced, and inspired to prayer and meditation toward God.  If the truth be told, I found myself worshiping unlike I experience much of the time in church these days.  Why?  What’s the difference?  Was it the atmosphere, being in a foreign country, or the fact that I was humbled by the majesty displayed?  Being a student and teacher of history, I guess it could have been that I was caught up in the sheer “ancientness” of it all, something we just do not have in our adolescent America.  But the more I pondered this the more I realized three things that made these experiences of worship:  liturgy, mystery and revelation.  In all these settings I found that there coexisted ritual, wonder and reverence . . . and I could not help but worship.

The other day I had a deja vu moment while walking through our Christian school.  I was strolling around, greeting the students and teachers, absorbing what was going on in the classrooms.  Suddenly, I was overtaken by the same sensation . . . that I was in a sacred place.  That’s right, it felt like I was standing on holy ground.  I was.  You see, we need to view what we are doing in the hearts and minds of young people as an act of worship.  Oh sure, we have our daily devotions, Bible lessons, weekly chapel . . . we might even sing a bit, but a Christian education IS more than that.  It’s a daily worship service, just like in York minster.  And here’s why,

• There is ritual.  Without ritual, education would be a free-for-all.  The classroom teacher establishes a routine, helping students to organize their thoughts and responses.  And in so doing, orders their steps in their faith/learning journey.  School is filled with ritual and liturgy.  We learn math facts, grammatical rules, natural laws, verb conjugation, chronological events, and warm-up exercises.  The distinctive of a Christian education, like in church, is that the teacher points all these to a Creator God and His Beloved Son who holds all things together.  Frederick Buechner says that ritual is rehearsal for the real thing.  We speak of what we do as “educating for eternity” and so it is.  A truly Christian education is ordering life to worship God on a daily basis, preparing students, not only for life here and now, but for the not yet.  The Christian teacher leads worship through the liturgy of life in the classroom.
• There is mystery.  Much of what we study in school is filled with wonder and kept in secret.  Our role as Christian teachers is to assist our students in unlocking some of that mystery, pondering on some, and accepting some as only belonging to God.  The writer of Ecclesiastes says it so well ~ “He has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end”. We wonder about the cosmos, about a leaf, about a novelist’s intention, about a war, a plague, and a formula (see Job 38-41 for a more detailed list of questions).  We also learn about Christ, God’s grandest mystery, and the One who has hidden within himself “all the treasures of knowledge and wisdom” (Colossians 2:2-3).  The Christian teacher leads the search to unlock the mysteries of life in the world of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.
• There is revelation.  God is in the revelation business.  He has spoken to us through His word, and by the Word made flesh.  He has also made Himself known through His creation and also by His Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:6-13).  The amazing and sobering realization for us is found in these words of Jesus himself ~ “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children . . . for this was your good pleasure”. We as Christian educators become vessels of God’s good pleasure as we point to, explain, open and help them discover the revelation of God.  In the Christian classroom the word of God is spoken, displayed, modeled, discussed, explained, applied, and integrated into all that we can learn and know.  The Christian teacher leads the journey of revealing what God has said to us about life, the life that is truly worth living.

A recent personal experience confirmed these three as distinctive qualities of Christian schooling.   A mom came to see me and asked if she could share about her 5th grade son beginning with us.  They are new to our school and she wanted me to know that after one week, he came and told her, “Mom, I can’t believe how great this school is.  I can’t believe that we can know so much about God in so many ways than just church!” We cried together, prayed together . . . and, I realized afterward, worshiped together.

This is why we must gain a fresh (new?) appreciation of our Christian schools and the individual classrooms as places of worship.  No, the Christian school should never replace the church, but rather is an extension of all our churches.  It should be the educational arm of EVERY church that seeks to worship Christ in spirit and in truth.  Thomas a’ Kempis, a medieval monk, wrote in his classic The Imitation of Christ,  “Without the Way there is no going, without the truth there is no knowing, and without the life there is no living”. It is disconcerting enough that we have lost so much of true worship in church, emphasizing form over function and experience over liturgy, mystery and revelation.  When it comes to education, we have strayed miles away from this in allowing our children to be taught of a foreign culture in the state schools, where none of what I have written here finds any basis.

It’s time for the body of Christ to get a grip . . . to reconnect worship in church with worship at home and worship in the education of the next generation.  The Christian community MUST come to terms with where we are as a people of God in this respect, and where God would have us proceed.  The Christian school stands at a crossroad with the Church in determining the voice we will have in our society in the future.  One significant aspect of that is seeing the classroom of the Christian school as truly sacred ground.

Maybe we should have the students take off their shoes . . . ?

~Bill