Supporting Theological Reflection and Conversation that Strengthen the Ministry of the Church
	BOOK REVIEW: Educating for Life: Reflections on Christian Teaching and Learning. By Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, edited by Gloria Goris Stronks and Clarence W. Joldersma. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002. 304 pp. $21.99 (paperback). ISBN 080102479X.  In this well-written and accessible collection of essays and speeches, Nicholas Wolterstorff, addresses a number of topics related to Christian day schooling.  He outlines the purpose of the Christian day school and relates that purpose to curriculum concerns.  He answers a diverse number of critics of the Christian day school endeavor who believe that it is, variously, conformist, isolationist, or irrelevant in modern society.   He advocates altering the current system of school funding to make public funds available for private, religious schools.  Finally, he discusses the Christian life of gratitude, peace-making, and justice-seeking that the Christian day school should inculcate. These diverse essays do not advance a single line of argument and are hard to summarize.  Yet, throughout, Wolterstorff draws upon the rich tradition of American Dutch Calvinism to construct a theological vision of education and its place in society. From Wolterstroff’s perspective, education is an inescapable feature of human existence.  In contrast to bugs and rocks, humans are created to learn.  Being finite, they must choose what they learn.  We cannot learn it all.  When teachers make decisions regarding the curriculum, they not only select what their students will learn, but they decide the sorts of people their students will become. Building on this foundation, Wolterstorff corrects a previous generation of Christian day school proponents who thought that the aim of Christian education was imparting a Christian worldview.  Such a goal, he contends, is far too modest.  He argues that a better goal is educating for the life of faithful discipleship in today’s world.  Faithful disciples, he says, live their whole life before God and seek Christ’s Lordship in every sphere of life.  Wolterstorff concludes that education in the service of this purpose must address the whole person.  It must recognize that we are embodied creatures with intellect and affections.  It must be relevant to who students are today and who they will become tomorrow.  It must attend to the powerful unspoken messages that are imparted through the school’s ethos so that they are consistent with the life for which the school educates.  It must approach every field of knowledge in a way that teaches students that all life is lived before God.  Such an education must not isolate students in a Christian ghetto, but must expose them to non-Christian and anti-Christian voices of the broader culture.  Thus equipped, students can exercise the cultural mandate of Genesis 1 and develop a culture that is oriented to God and that sustains flourishing. Wolterstorff draws on the Kuyperian understanding of spheres to articulate his view of the school’s authority.  Like many in this tradition he believes that since God has given children to parents, the basic right and responsibility for a child’s education inheres in the parents.  The realities of life, however, are such that parents cannot fulfill this obligation by themselves and must entrust their children to schools.  Teachers and schools derive their authority to teach from parents and maintain that authority based on their educational competence.  Although parents bestow educational authority on the school they choose, they retain the responsibility of seeing to it that their children are educated according to their religious beliefs and, if they are not, to seek an education elsewhere. Wolterstorff  thinks that public education in common schools is a mistake.  He complains that education in common schools violates the conscience of those who, like him, think that all life is lived before God.  Furthermore, he observes that public schools cannot present a morally thick or compelling account of citizenship because they cannot refer to transcendent values.  To remedy to this situation Wolterstorff advocates a system of school choice.  Such a system would empower all parents, whatever their religious beliefs, to educate their children according to the dictates of their conscience.  Reformed Christians have long been divided on the wisdom of common schooling.  When common schooling started, voices within the reformed tradition objected.  For example, the Southern Presbyterian theologian, Charles Dabney, denied that secular education was possible, claimed that public education encroached on the sphere of the family, and predicted that the dynamic of common schooling in a pluralistic society would make schools and society godless.  Dutch Calvinists in the mid-west viewed things similarly and formed their own schools. In most other reformed communions, however, this position became the minority voice.  Education historian, Lawrence Cremin, reminds us that the advocates and leaders of the early common school movement in most states were largely drawn from the ranks of the Congregational and Presbyterian clergy.  Inspired by John Calvin and the Puritans, these leaders viewed public education as a common good.  They continued supporting public education as shed its religious content during the 19th Century and when it dropped prayer and bible reading in the 20th Century.  They stood by public education during integration and the gloomy days of massive resistance.  Through the years they maintained that public education was indispensable to a happy and holy society and trusted that a secular education would not hinder them in the task of forming disciples. In recent years the minority position has received a new hearing.  In the 1980’s a nascent school choice movement began championing public funding for private and religious schools.  This movement has grown considerably and is challenging common schooling across America.  Voices in this movement range from libertarians, such as Myron Lieberman, to religious conservatives, such as Pat Robertson.  From this reviewer’s perspective, none is as articulate as Nicholas Wolterstorff. There are many things to affirm in Wolterstorff’s thinking.  Surely he is correct to maintain that faithful disciples live all life before God and seek Christ’s Lordship in every sphere of life.  Surely he is correct to call our attention to the theological dimensions of all fields of knowledge.  The God we worship is, after all, the God of all things.  Finally, he is surely right to say that the purpose of the church’s educational program goes beyond inculcating a Christian worldview, but must aim to educate for the faithful life. Having said this, this reviewer disagrees with Wolterstorff’s reading of the spheres as it pertains to education.  Wolterstorff, as we have seen, believes that God gives parents the primary right and responsibility to determine their child’s education.  In an ideal world, parents bequeath this responsibility to the school they choose, while retaining the right to choose another school or no school.  God surely does entrust children to parents, but doesn’t God also entrust children to the world?  In no society, not even one, are parents the sole educators of their children.  Although parents do have a significant responsibility to oversee their children’s education, an obligation also rests on the larger whole community to ensure that every child is well educated.  Public schools fail when they do not provide some equality of opportunity and prepare everyone to participate in civil society.  A fuller understanding of education in relationship to the spheres will lead us to resist lodging educational responsibility entirely in any one sphere, whether it be the family or the public school.  It will also help us appreciate that God has given each sphere (the family, church, state, the media, etc.) a distinctive role to play in the stewardship of the education and nurture of children. Wolterstorff is concerned that public schools teach children that God is irrelevant or limited to a sphere of life called “religion.”  Either result would, admittedly, distort the formation of a faithful disciple.  Yet, this need not be the case.  This is illustrated by a second criticism he levels at the public schools:  he says that public schools are unable to answer when their teaching about morals leads students to ask “why?” or “who says so?”  Isn’t it the case, though, that anytime the school has moved a student to “why?” the school has succeeded in conveying the profound importance of religion?  Wolterstorff complains that if schools can’t answer “why?” its moral education must be incoherent.  True, but a bit of incoherence at this point would only be a bad thing in a society without a church.  When a student asks, “Why?” the public school should tell students that the question is very important and worth pursuing, but they have no authority to answer (because the question is so important), and refer them to those with that authority: their family and religious institution.  This, of course, means that those of us in the church and the family need to be ready and equipped to answer. Raymond R. Roberts Pastor, Grace Presbyterian Church Jenkintown, PA  PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, WINTER 2004, VOL. 4, #1. Return to Bulletin page
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