In my last post I summarized various philosophies of education. I promised to say something about Christian education. The main question for Christian education is: How do Christians integrate faith and learning? This question is about the integral relationships between the content of one’s faith and human knowledge found in particular disciplines. There are various schools of thought roughly related to distinctive doctrines held by various denominations. Richard Hughes explains how each relates faith to learning: The Reformed Model stresses the sovereignty of God. Since God is sovereign over every part of human experience God is related to every part of human experience by virtue of his authority over it.…
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Why Philosophy Makes a Difference at School
When considering what school is best for one’s children (or even when one does not have a choice and is merely analyzing the school that one’s children are going to attend) one should not only ask what is being taught, but why it is being taught. In other words, one should have a rough idea of the philosophy of a school. A very helpful book is Philosophy and Education by George Knight from which I draw on for a summary of the various schools of thought. Traditional educational theories set the stage for what follows. There are three main theories stressing ideas, the world and human nature. Idealism stresses ideas,…
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Van Til’s Philosophy of Education
For Van Til, two doctrines are vital for Christian education – creation and providence. God makes all the facts and arranges them according to his own will. No fact is outside the control of God or originates in anyone other than God. Experiences of human beings all originate in the plan of God. For Van Til, all facts are related to God, they are his facts. Being related to God, facts are automatically revealing of God. A fact that is determined by God reveals God to human beings who themselves are created by God. In scripture God provides the right interpretation of nature, experience and all the other facts humankind…
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Christian Relativism Anyone?
After an accumulation of facts, meticulously researched in the most objective way possible, a researcher has the task of presenting the facts in a coherent way. The question is: can he do this without imposing his own political ideology, psychological leanings or scientific paradigm? Historian, Mark Noll, suggests that there are three attitudes available in response to the question. The scientistic attitude requires a scrupulous attention to method. If we get the method right the rest will follow. This attitude is held by positivist scientists and requires the adoption of a verificationist methodology modeled on an “empirical conception of the physical sciences.” The ideological attitude suggests that “historical writing exists…
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Learning Conditions
There are three conditions necessary for human learning. First, it must be possible, in principle, for human beings to obtain knowledge. They must be able to come to true beliefs. Second, it must be possible for human beings to make sense of experience; the world must be intelligible. Third, it must be possible for human beings to communicate with one another. A teacher has to be able to impart knowledge to the student. The question is: what reality would provide all three conditions? Answer: the God of the Bible. First, God is omniscient. Since God knows all things, past, present and future, God cannot be mistaken about anything. God defines…
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American Confucionism?
A class changes your life. Ideas gained from reading, discussing and listening to lectures usually transforms, to some degree, how one sees and lives in the world. This fact is fast becoming the aim of education. Whereas modernity stressed the objective analysis of differing theories, new education systems will, perhaps, stress what has, up to now, only been implicit – that theory should shape life. An example of such an educator is Michael Puett, professor of Chinese history at Harvard University, who now teaches the third most popular course at the university. Puett’s course, “Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory,” is aimed explicitly at shaping students’ worldviews. The aim of…
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Student Virtue
Many see study as preparation for their life’s work. I saw my life’s work as a preparation for study. At 34 I began my bachelors degree. So, allow me, at least for a minute or two, to reminisce over the past four years before I return to writing about the real world. No, wait; that’s not right. I never left the real world. That is another wrongheaded idea – that school is somehow not part of the real world. It is very much the real world. So let me talk of the very small part of the real world in which I have dwelt for the past four years –…