Character Reborn: A Philosophy of Christian Education

By James Pietsch

More than one million students in Australia attend schools founded by churches and other Christian organisations.
What is it that sets these schools apart?
More importantly, what is it that should set these schools apart?
In Character Reborn, James Pietsch offers a fresh examination of the unique capacities and opportunities of Christian schools in Australia today.
More than ever before, Christian schools are a significant point of contact between Christian communities and those with little or no understanding of the Christian worldview. Dr Pietsch challenges Christian educators to consider how they might maximise their opportunities to share the good news of Jesus with this wider community that is drawn to Christian schooling. To this end, he sets out an approach to education that focuses on learning character, whereby students in the Christian school context experience and practise the values of the kingdom of God – grace, compassion, kindness, and humility – as integral to their development, whatever their religious or cultural background.
This book presents an inspiring blueprint for building up today’s students as people of Christian character – preparing them for the challenges of the current age and giving them insight into the age to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Acorn Press
• Release date: May 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9780647519806

James Pietsch

Dr James Pietsch is the Principal at Inaburra School in Sydney. Prior to his appointment at Inaburra he was at St Luke’s Grammar School on Sydney's Northern Beaches as the Head of Mathematics and then Dean of Professional Development and Learning. James has written a number of book chapters and journal articles relating to Christian approaches to teaching and learning, mathematics education and educational psychology. He has taught secondary mathematics and tertiary courses in educational psychology, discrete mathematics and child development. James is passionate about learning and enjoys reading books about first-century Rome as well as novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, discussing American politics and listening to the music of Bach, Mozart, U2 and Radiohead.

Book preview

Pietsch

INTRODUCTION

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CHRISTIAN TEACHERS?

Ilove lists. Not the type you write so that you won’t forget something – I generally lose those before I have ticked off everything anyway. I mean the lists of the best songs ever written, or the best songs of the ’80s or ’90s, or even the best songs that came out last week. I love to read these lists and argue the toss over every single entry. Even if there is considerable agreement across different lists there is still room for argument and debate. Seriously – you really think ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is still the best song of all time? Some, though, just reinforce my own preferences – almost every list of the best albums of all time will include Radiohead’s OK Computer and I can’t argue with that one.

My daughter must have inherited this particular predilection, only she is of a different generation that tends not to get so het up about pop music. In her journal she has her top ten Pokemon characters, her top ten Harry Potter characters, her ten least favourite Harry Potter characters, her top ten books, her top 50 movies (she couldn’t choose only ten!) and her top ten colours (I can’t imagine how she decides which comes seventh and which comes eighth, but if you give her the time she will explain it to you). She can spend hours writing lists.

What if we were to write a list of the top ten occupations represented in our churches? What would Jesus’ top ten occupations be? Would doctors and nurses make the list? Politicians? Carpenters? Firefighters?

What about teaching? Would it make the list? I think it would have to be on there somewhere. If you were to put together a list of the top ten occupations represented in any church in the country, in any denomination, any diocese or region, somewhere in the list there would be teaching. It is like Radiohead’s OK Computer – it might take different positions on different lists, but it will almost certainly be there somewhere.

Why is teaching an occupation pursued by so many in our churches? Is it because teaching is viewed as a ‘family friendly’ profession? You know what I mean – long holidays, short working days, time on weekends to spend with the family. If that’s your impression of a teacher’s life, I’m guessing you haven’t spoken to too many recently. Perhaps there was a time when this was the case, but it certainly doesn’t describe the experience of teachers today. So why would people who acknowledge Jesus as Lord choose to become school teachers?

There is something about teaching that attracts people of the kingdom – something more than simply having the opportunity to speak about Jesus through the course of each day. For people whose lives have been transformed by the historical reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection, teaching includes, but is not limited to, specific conversations about who God is and how he has stepped into history to establish his kingdom. It also involves engaging with different spheres of knowledge in the light of the resurrection, understanding and appreciating how the first glimpses of the new creation shape our engagement in cultural practices today. Christian education also focuses our attention on the development of character rather than knowledge and skills, while still recognising that knowledge and skills contribute to the development of character. It is more than simply speaking about the kingdom; it is preparing students to participate in the kingdom – preparing them to participate initially here on earth in whatever occupation they choose to pursue, and then in the new creation to come.

The purpose of this book is to develop a picture of what it might look like to be engaged in this task of educating for the kingdom. Chapters 1 and 2 provide a theological context for educational practice, outlining the biblical metanarrative and the central place of the resurrection in this narrative. Chapters 3 and 4 explore how the desire of educators to reform educational practice might be understood within this metanarrative. One idea fundamental to reform efforts in education is that education should prepare students to engage in culturally relevant activities. Chapter 5 explores how this idea might inform the practice of Christian education.

Throughout the first five chapters there emerges an idea common to both theological and educational perspectives: the importance of being who we are becoming. We learn, for example, by attempting (poorly at first) to engage in particular activities until we become adept at them. The only way to become a better mathematician, for example, is to be a mathematician – not just doing mathematics in isolation but also engaging with communities of mathematicians, standing out on the periphery of such communities initially, but, over time, becoming more central participants in these communities of practice.

Similarly, we become people of the kingdom by being people of the kingdom. The teaching of the New Testament for the early church was to ‘put on’ the qualities of the new creation – to be the person they were becoming. In both the theology of the New Testament and the educational thinking of the 20th and 21st centuries, therefore, we find this exhortation to be the people we are becoming. Chapter 6 examines how this idea is explored in the Bible as well as in existential philosophy and developmental psychology. Chapter 7 looks at how this idea informs our understanding of pedagogy.

Chapters 8, 9 and 10 bring together the concerns that emerge from educational research and a theological appreciation of how we become people of the kingdom. These chapters examine how educating for the kingdom reshapes our approach to teaching the standard curriculum as well as reframing educational practice in terms of the development of virtue. This represents the core argument of the book: that teaching for the kingdom involves the development of learning character. While our understanding of the biblical narrative and, in particular, the significance of the resurrection inform our approach to the curriculum (examples of this are outlined in Chapter 8), it is not so much the content that we cover in the classroom that defines educational practice from a Christian perspective, but the manner in which we shape the learning character of students. Developing learning character is a common theme found in different theoretical perspectives on educational practice. The learning character associated with the kingdom of God, however, differentiates Christian education from other approaches to teaching and learning. Within the New Testament we find a radical vision of restored humanity that sets out different aspects of Christian character that we should seek to promote amongst students. Rather than self-improvement or self-advancement, the learning character that we seek to promote builds communities of learners rather than empowered individuals. As Christian educators, we seek to encourage young people to become learners who are intellectually humble, who are compassionate towards each other and who find, through their participation in learning activities, opportunities for kindness, gentleness, patience and self-control. Promoting this type of learning character will require the clear and unambiguous presentation of the gospel; but it will also involve providing students with opportunities to understand and experience what it is like to be part of a kingdom community – a kingdom community in which all participants learn from one another as people of grace, humility, kindness and compassion.

How do we become people of learning character – learners who are gracious, seek justice for others and are patient and generous in our interactions with one another? In the New Testament, the people of the kingdom are simply called to be the people they are becoming. That is, we become people of grace by being people of grace – through establishing habits of practice that become so ingrained that, in time, we simply act graciously rather than doing so as a consequence of conscious reflection. In the classroom, therefore, the practice of teaching for the kingdom involves identifying the virtues associated with restored humanity as outlined in the New Testament – virtues such as patience, kindness, gentleness and forbearance that contribute to the three paramount, eternal virtues: faith, hope and love. The process of planning each lesson, therefore, begins by identifying three components: the content to be discussed; the learning dispositions that will support the development of understanding of this content; and the virtues of the kingdom that students will be invited to consider as they interact with each other in the classroom. Once these three components are set out as the focus for a particular learning activity, the second step involves understanding how these interact with one another. The process of understanding these interactions and then identifying the habits of learning that will be associated with the development of these dispositions and virtues represents the deeper work of teaching for the kingdom.

While this is a significant challenge for teachers, it also opens up the possibility of creating learning moments for each student through which they might experience a kingdom learning community. Whether they are currently part of the kingdom or not, there is something powerful about the experience of genuine kingdom communities, something that raises questions about the origins of these communities – even about the Person who makes such communities possible. These moments of insight into the nature of the kingdom of God, and what it looks like to be a learner in such a community, lay the groundwork for the proclamation of the good news that God has established his kingdom through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Chapters 11 to 14 represent applications of the idea that educating for the kingdom involves creating communities where people have opportunities to be who they are becoming – people of learning character. The character that we seek to develop is not that of the self-made person, the empowered individual who has grown in confidence as well as self-assuredness. Instead, we seek to promote the character traits of the restored humanity – traits such as humility, mercy, grace, forgiveness, forbearance and compassion. These traits are often not associated with different cultural practices that form part of our standard curriculum, and these chapters seek to consider how the development of Christian learning character might be associated with the development of learning communities in general, as well as students’ engagement in the creative arts and physical education/sport. Finally, there is a brief discussion surrounding how the development of learning character impacts our approach to assessment.

Teaching from a Christian perspective is a unique cultural practice, distinct from the activities associated with other occupations. Its object is not the transformation of the physical world to meet some human need or the transformation of individuals to improve their life circumstances. Teaching for the kingdom has as its object the transformation of young men and women so that they might participate as kingdom people in the wider world over the course of their lifetime and, at the end of this age, also participate in the new creation that is to come. This is the vision of education that gets me out of bed in the morning. It is the hope that God will somehow use me in the classroom, in the playground or on the sporting field to bring about his plans to renew this broken world through the restoration of his people.

1

LOCATING PRACTICE WITHIN THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVE

‘Listen, Peter’, said the Lord Digory. ‘When Aslan said that you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And, of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.’

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle¹

Understanding the biblical narrative represents the first step towards understanding how we might approach the task of educating young people within our current cultural-historical context. As the Lord Digory explains to the children in The Last Battle, there is a story that is unfolding behind the scenes of the story (or history) that we know about the rise and fall of earthly kingdoms. It is a story that begins with creation itself and reaches its fulfilment at the end of the age in which we currently find ourselves. Teachers who seek to locate their practice within the biblical narrative, therefore, need to appreciate first of all the narrative arc of this story and how this narrative informs the practice of education.

What is it that characterises the age we live in, compared with the age of the Old Covenant that has already come and gone and the age that is to come? And how does the cultural practice of education fit within the broader activity of God’s people at this point in biblical history?

Understanding the biblical narrative

The biblical narrative presents many separate stories that coalesce to form a grand narrative – a grand narrative of how the creator interacts with the creation, bringing it into being, responding to the brokenness associated with human rebellion, and vindicating and restoring creation through the resurrection of Jesus. This narrative energised a community of first-century believers and now sustains a worldwide movement. Christian communities across the world understand history, the present age and the age to come through the lens provided by the Christ event – his life, death and resurrection. Even those who stand on the outside looking at the kingdom of God can appreciate the power of this story to transform and shape lives. Artists like Nick Cave, U2, Ingmar Bergman and Martin Scorsese return time and again to the biblical themes of mercy and forgiveness, justice, compassion and redemption. Nick Cave’s ‘The Mercy Seat’, for example, takes these themes and weaves them into his frantic tale of a man waiting to be executed.²

The biblical narrative is a story of the transcendent meeting the immanent in a single person whom Kierkegaard describes as both finite and infinite at the same time – a story which challenges our understanding of what is rational and logical. It is a powerful story of the meaning and purpose which lie behind observable reality. And, like many other cultural stories, it supports the development of coherence and shared meaning within the community that places cultural value in the story itself.³

Stories become ritualised aspects of cultural practice, such that the retelling of stories becomes a significant means by which different aspects of culture survive from one generation to the next. However, stories do not merely link the present with the past. They also weave contemporaneous cultural practices together into a coherent whole, creating a fabric of meaning, purpose and intent within which these different practices are understood in relation to one another. Furthermore, stories enable participants in different cultures to appreciate how the culture transcends the present moment, interpreting the past as well as anticipating the future. The biblical story of the exodus is an example of such a story, reminding the Jewish nation of God’s saving work in the past but also pointing to the future in which he will once again restore Israel.

The universe as open, full of meaning and purpose

In a similar manner, the biblical narrative as a whole establishes a metanarrative which describes how God is involved with his creation, bringing about his plans and purposes towards the fulfilment of the current age as heaven and earth are brought together to form the new creation of Revelation 21. A critical aspect of this metanarrative is the claim that the universe is open to the involvement of God in creation – and, as a consequence of God’s involvement, the universe is full of potentiality, meaning and purpose. This particular aspect of the narrative looks beyond the material to acknowledge the immaterial reality – the existence of non-material beings as well as non-material ideas that shape our way of understanding the material world.

The existence (or at least the apparent existence) of non-physical phenomena such as beauty, consciousness, love, justice and order require some explanation.⁴ Both the closed, atheistic view and the open, theistic view offer such explanations. One perspective discounts the possibility of the immaterial, the other remains open to the reality of the immaterial. One suggests that ideas such as faith, hope, love, justice for the oppressed and compassion are no more than ideas – that they have no ontological status separate from our imaginations. The other sees such ideas as closely identified with the character of the creator, who imbues his creation with order, meaning and purpose. One understands the universe as morally empty, closed and inert – devoid of any ultimate meaning that drives history and human activity. The other sees history as the linear outworking of the purposes of God.

Martin Dowson argues that one of the roles of Christian educators is to discuss with students which of these different explanations provides the best explanatory framework for making sense of the world.⁵ For example, do they believe that the universe is open or closed? The Christian worldview implies that the universe is open, full of potentiality yet to be determined. But is the universe, in fact, open in this way? Jürgen Moltmann makes an interesting argument for an open universe, based on the fact that evolution is evident in the biological world.⁶ His argument can be summarised as follows. Individual systems which are evolving are best described as open rather than closed, since the process of evolution involves the development of increasing complexity of structure which, in turn, increases the capacity for communication between systems, resulting in further adaptation and transformation. This process ‘widens the range of anticipation’⁷ so that new possibilities are continually emerging. There is no evidence that this process of evolution is limited in any way, nor that it is at an end. These individual systems are ‘self-transcending systems’, constantly transcending their own forms of existence. At the level of individual systems, therefore, it is more appropriate to consider them as open rather than closed.

If the universe is made up of individual systems which are open, then it makes sense to think, by analogy, of the universe as being open as well. Furthermore, if individual systems are ‘self-transcending’ then, also by analogy, it is reasonable to think of the universe as self-transcending. Moltmann concludes that the universe can be understood as ‘a self-transcending totality of a diversity of communicating, individual open systems. All individual systems of matter and life, and all their complexes of communication as a whole, ex-ist into a transcendence and subsist out of that transcendence.’⁸

The possibility of the miraculous (such as the resurrection) requires an open rather than a closed view of the universe. We can pretend to be people who believe in ‘scientism’ – the belief that science has unlimited explanatory power. But this would mean ignoring much of the biblical narrative which challenges the idea that the world is a pre-determined machine, set in motion according to the laws of physics. In both worldviews, the universe is perceived to be orderly (in contrast to magical worldviews), with patterns that allow for human minds to predict the seasons, the effects of gravity and what might happen when two compounds are mixed together. But in the end, the biblical narrative speaks of a transcendent, creator God who is not constrained by his creation but exists separate from the universe he has created.

Although God remains ontologically distinct from creation, it would be erroneous to think of God as distant and unconcerned for creation. By way of contrast, the Spirit of God becomes immanent in creation,⁹ energising creation, sustaining it and leading it towards its future restoration. Moltmann, by way of developing a doctrine of creation, argues that the Trinitarian understanding of God identifies a transcendent/immanent tension within the Godhead.

God creates the world, and at the same time enters into it. He calls it into existence, and at the same time manifests himself through its being. It lives from his creative power, and yet he lives in it … The God who is transcendent in relation to the world, and the God who is immanent in that world, are one and the same God.¹⁰

The claim that the Spirit of God is at work within the world sets the biblical narrative at odds with deterministic models of the universe, whether these are scientific or theological in origin. The biblical narrative speaks of an open, yet-to-be-determined reality, full of possibilities. Even in the age to come, there is the possibility that the universe continues to be a place of potentiality, as God continues to surprise and amaze through his creative engagement with the created order.

I do not imagine for a minute that in the coming age we shall arrive at a point where we shall have experienced everything the new world has to offer, and will become bored … That is a gross caricature, born of the bland talk about ‘heaven’ which has characterised ‘afterlife’ speculation in the Western world over the last century or two. In contrast, because I believe that the God we know in Jesus is the God of utterly generous, outflowing love, I believe that there will be no end to the new creation of this God, and that within the new age itself there will always be more to hope for, more to celebrate. Learning to hope in the present time is learning not just to hope for a better place than we currently find ourselves in, but learning to trust the God who is and will remain the God of the future.¹¹

Locating practice within the biblical narrative does not, therefore, preclude the possibility of the intervention of God in the material world. But neither does it require practitioners to choose between belief in an interventionist God and belief in the capacity of science to provide technical ways of appreciating the created order. While the miraculous is not necessarily expected day to day, the biblical worldview categorically upholds the reality of God being engaged in, though ontologically separate from, the material world, bringing about his purposes and plans in that world.

The work of the Spirit of God

How, then, do we understand the way that this transcendent God becomes immanent and involved with creation? While we see God in human form for a period of roughly thirty-three years in the first century, it is through the Spirit that God continues to be involved with his people and the world.

Throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, we find the Spirit of God at work in the world. In Genesis 1:2 the Spirit of God is hovering over the waters of the earth, waiting in eager anticipation, ready to be part of God’s work. In the book of Revelation, it is the Spirit of God who draws back the curtain, unveiling the spiritual dimension that is hidden behind the material veil. John describes these moments as being taken up into heaven – that is, seeing the kingdom of heaven that is, in fact, all around us. The Spirit gives us eyes to see the world the way God sees it, and to recognise the manifestations of the kingdom of God that are evident in Christian communities, in the acts of the faithful as they seek to bring justice to the world and in the words of hope that are found in churches and other organisations that claim there is a king who stands apart from the kingdoms of this world, and the name of this king is Jesus.

Schools can produce emergent learning communities within which there exists a community of believers who, together, seek to make Jesus known. But this is not merely an academic exercise of teaching about Jesus. Rather, such communities become conduits for the work of the Spirit which connects people with Jesus. Such communities allow the free work of the Spirit within their midst by declaring that Jesus is Lord, by sharing with one another what