Our Philosophy of Education
At Greatheart Christian Academy we believe that there must be a comprehensive overhaul of our philosophy of education in order to meet the spiritual needs of our kids. According to Colossians 1:28, the real purpose of education is “to present every person complete in Christ” [NASB]. The goal of biblical education is not to get some great job or go to a terrific college, but to complete (or perfect) our kids in Christ.
First, the primary goal of education is moral and character growth, rather than simply imparting information, fact, and skills. When we think of our goals for our children in a holistic manner this is obvious, but we usually divorce this idea from our kids’ educational experience. Ironically, this fact that true education is moral first and informational second is being more and more pushed by the public school system. Unfortunately with that system diverging further from Christian morality that is a big problem instead of a boon. More and more we need to recognize that we cannot have “all this world holds dear” and follow Christ at the same time.
With real spiritual maturity as the primary goal of education, the first thing we need to build into education is the primary moral authority of the parents. Teachers and professors may have more knowledge about the workings of mathematics or English, but it is primarily the parents responsibility to train children morally ( Prov 22:6, Eph 6:4). Teachers may serve to assist parents in this front but the actual moral accountability stays with the parents. That means that we need to explicitly connect moral teaching with parents, not teachers.
The fourth major change that needs to be made to our philosophy of education is to make sure that each educational experience is fundamentally tailored to each child. Not all people are called to go to an Ivy league school, or make lots of money, or be famous. In fact, as Christians we should be very wary of such goals (1 Cor 1:26-29). Each person has their own path to follow the Lord (Prov 16:9), and to try to push students through a factory style schooling is going to work against that rather than enhance that uniqueness. While there is definitely a minimum standard that should be upheld, each student should be diverging more and more as they pursue their own educational journey.
Finally with all this in view we want our kids to be creators not consumers. Students in most school systems spend most of their days working through a preset curriculum, simply on the receiving end of information with little active creation time. Being able to make or learn something experientially in a classroom setting is considered the holy grail of learning, and it rarely happens. What time they do have where they are called on to create something is often just homework, where they create something they do not inherently value at all based on someone else’s wishes. At Greatheart Christian Academy we believe that we can flip this paradigm on its head, and in the age of constant social media and constant cheap entertainment it has never been more crucial to explicitly call our children to be creators, not consumers. By customizing each person’s educational experience and providing for self-run projects and reports based on what students’ interests are, we can create an environment where students are much more often the creator, rather than just a consumer.
All of these fundamental shifts in the philosophy of education that we hold result in a completely different classroom structure and parent involvement in the school. Ultimately we believe that these values better reflect Biblical values and will serve as a foundation for our children, not of worldly values, raw information, and competition, but instead of strong Biblical foundations, deep character, and creative practice.